Chapter I: Front Matter

THE DARK AGES
AND OTHER POEMS

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BY “L.”

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LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1908

_All rights reserved_

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. THE DARK AGES 1
II. THE BELLS OF VENICE 4
III. AN ANCIENT CHURCH 5
IV. TO THE ENGLISH GIPSIES 6
V. AUTUMN DYING 9
VI. THE DEPARTURE FOR CYTHERA 10
VII. THE VILLAGE CHURCH 13
VIII. LADY DAY NEAR BIGNOR 14
IX. A COTTAGE INSCRIPTION 16
X. A MEMORY OF IRELAND 18
XI. “TÍR NAN ÓG” 19
XII. A HIGHLAND DAY 21
XIII. TO THE FIRS 23
XIV. GOOD-BYE 24
XV. THE FAIRY GLEN REVISITED 26
XVI. WAITING 28
XVII. NEAR HAARLEM 30
XVIII. THE TOMB OF SAINT AUGUSTINE AT PAVIA 31
XIX. MODERN FLORENCE 32
XX. TO DANTE 33
XXI. TO PETRARCH 34
XXII. TO A LADY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 35
XXIII. THE “LIBERAL” DIVINE 37
XXIV. THE QUARREL 38
XXV. THE OLD FOUNTAIN 40
XXVI. LOVE AND DEATH 41
XXVII. VIOLETS 43
XXVIII. THE GARDENS OF THE SOUL 44
XXIX. A MAN TO CHILDISH THINGS 46
XXX. THE KNIGHT 47
XXXI. HOPES 48
XXXII. THE PATH 50
XXXIII. THE CALL TO BETHLEHEM 52
XXXIV. A CHRISTMAS LULLABY 53
XXXV. TO THE HOLY CHILD 55
XXXVI. MATER AMABILIS 56
XXXVII. SAINT STEPHEN 57
XXXVIII. SAINT JOHN AT EPHESUS 59
XXXIX. THE LITTLE CHILDREN 61
XL. THE CIRCUMCISION 63
XLI. THE RETURN OF THE MAGI 64
XLII. ATONEMENT 66
XLIII. CALVARY 67
XLIV. “THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM” 68
XLV. RESURRECTION 69
XLVI. THE ASCENSION 71
XLVII. A HYMN TO THE HOLY SPIRIT 73
XLVIII. “ADORA ET TACE” 76
XLIX. THE REFUGE OF THE WANDERING 77
L. THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER 79
LI. THE LIGHT INVISIBLE 81
LII. ONWARD 83
LIII. THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 84
LIV. LETHE 86
LV. AVE ATQUE VALE 88

I THE DARK AGES

MEN call you “dark.” What factory then blurred the light
Of golden suns, when nothing blacker than the shades
Of coming rain climbed up the heather-mantled height?
While the air
Breathed all the scents of all untrodden flowers,
And brooks poured silver through the glimmering glades,
Then sweetly wound through virgin ground.
Must all that beauty pass?
And must our pleasure trains
Like foul eruptions belch upon the mountain head?
Must we perforce build vulgar villa lanes,
And on sweet fields of grass
The canting scutcheons of a cheating commerce spread?

Men call you “dark.” Did that faith see with cobwebbed eyes,
That built the airy octagon on Ely’s hill,
And Gloucester’s Eastern wall that woos the topaz skies,
Where the hymn
Angelic “Glory be to God on high,
And peace on earth to men who feel good will,”
Might softly sound God’s throne around?
Is that a perfect faith
Which pew-filled chapels rears,
Where Gothic fronts of stone mask backs of ill-baked bricks,
And where the frothy fighting preacher fears,
As peasants fear a wraith,
His deacon’s frown or some just change in politics?

Men call you “dark.” Was Chaucer’s speech a muddy stream,
The language born of Norman sun and Saxon snow?
Was Langland’s verse or Wyclif’s prose mere glow-worm’s gleam?
And the tales
Of Arthur’s sword and of the holy Grail,
And Avalon, the isle where no storms blow:
From such romance did no light glance?
Have we not heard a tongue,
Whose words the Saxon thralls
Would scorn to speak above their muck-rake and their fork,
The speech of barrack-rooms and music-halls,
Where every fool has flung
The rotten refuse of Calcutta and New York?

Men call you “dark.” But _chivalry_ and _honour_ stand
As words that you, not we, did fashion, when the need
Of food beyond the price of gold awoke our land.
For you taught
Inconstancy is like a standard lost;
And we who prove untrue in love or deed
Will doubly shame an ancient name.
Your robes were not all white,
Your soul was not a sea
Where all the crystal rivulets of God found room:
But we must often to your lessons flee,
Our truth with yours unite,
Before we meet the holy dayspring of the doom.

II THE BELLS OF VENICE

RING out again that faltering strain,
Cease not so soon,
Sweet peal that brought to me the thought
Of some deep shadowed English lane
Across the blue lagoon.

The water street where oarsmen meet
And shout ahead,
The glowing quay, all noise and glee,
Seemed hallowed as when angels’ feet
Touched Jacob’s stony bed.

On pearly dome and princely home
Day’s glory dies:
Once more the bells’ low murmur tells
That faith is not a line of foam
Nor life a bridge of sighs.

III AN ANCIENT CHURCH

SO little dost thou seem of common earth,
So much of spirit doth thy fabric show,
That we, who watch thee through the azure glow,
Might deem that with the stars thou cam’st to birth.

So sweet and true the voices from thy spire,
Which bless the day’s betrothal unto night,
That when they falter with the fading light,
We well might think an angel touched his lyre.

If chiselled stone and molten bronze instil
Hopes deeper than the fountains of my tears,
And love that hungers for eternity,

God, I believe Thou hast some use for me;
Leave me no life of dumb and sluggard years,
But cut or melt me till I speak Thy will.

IV TO THE ENGLISH GIPSIES {6}

ROUGH swarthy Gipsy folk,
Would that my voice could once forget to falter,
And sing a song as free as swallows’ wings
Of ancient Gipsies, and their “dukes” and “kings,”
The men who braved the branding-rod and halter,
Because like birds they nimbly came and went,
And loved the stars and road, and crouching tent
Beneath a grove of oak.

In ages long ago
The Brahman priests pursued you with their curses,
Because you found life sweeter at the core
Without the mumbling of their magic lore.
And you have lived to see their Sanskrit verses
Fall dead; and Brahmans, like mere Romany,
Now tempt their gods by trusting to the sea,
Though trembling while they go.

Then hardened against fear
You looted caravans of gold-shot dresses
And gems upon their way to bright Baghdad,
And drove the Moslem Khalif rampant mad,
When pearls culled from the ocean for the tresses
Of his Circassian, in your pouches fell,
As trifles to adorn the dusky shell
Of some black virgin’s ear.

Next Greece and Thessaly
Became the home of many a jocund roamer,
Who gaily danced, or begged with mien forlorn,
And patched his Indian speech where it was torn
With remnants from Demosthenes and Homer,
Until you struck your blackened tents again
And tattered pageants crossed the endless plain
Of fertile Hungary.

’Tis even said you planned
To trick the Pope with penitential moaning,
And gained his leave to wander seven years
Towards the melancholy North, with tears
The sin of feigned apostasy atoning:
Thus fortified against enquiring foes,
You, with the budding of the Tudor rose,
Alighted on our land.

Who says it was not good
To see your handkerchiefs of red and yellow,
And silver rings and basket-laden carts,
And hear the honey-lipped prophetic arts
Of wheedling witches, or a clean-limbed fellow
Who fiddled by the hedgerow in the smoke,
And roused the antique Gipsy song that woke
The silence of the wood?

Now that your blood must fail,
What artist soul revengefully remembers
You raided the domain of chanticleer,
Or deftly poisoned pigs to swell your cheer
Of hedgehogs cooked in clay amid the embers?
Who says you sometimes wedded art to force,
Or made the worse appear the better horse
Before a coming sale?

You soon will pass away;
Laid one by one below the village steeple
You face the East from which your fathers sprang,
Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang
Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people
Whom no true Romany will call by name,
The folk departed like the camp-fire flame
Of withered yesterday.

V AUTUMN DYING

AUTUMN shakes in golden raiment,
Gashed with red;
None can ransom him by payment
From the dead.

They have shorn his strength with reaping,
Left him cold;
Now he wakes each morning weeping,
Weak and old.

And last night he sought my casement,
Came and fled;
Wailed for aid from roof to basement,
Touched my bed.

Though I cannot find his ransom,
Ere he dies;
I will pay all that I can—some
Hopes and sighs.

VI THE DEPARTURE FOR CYTHERA

ERE they parted for Cythera
When the spring had reached its bloom,
Phyllis, Doris and Neaera
Peeped into their pictured room,
Wished to go, yet wished to linger,
Lifted each a taper finger,
Threw a kiss towards their portraits set in walls of rose brocade.

Where the beeches lift a curtain
Over shifting sunlit scenes,
They with footsteps light and certain
Used to dance like fairy queens;
Now they speed beneath the beeches
Till the path the water reaches
And the bay just softly ripples by a marble balustrade.

Purple were the sails that beckoned
And the deck was ivory,
Love stood smiling there and reckoned
His embarking company;
Every mast wore silver sheathing,
Music in the air was breathing,
In the rigging little laughing cupids upwards climbed and strayed.

On they sailed through fields of azure,
White was all their furrowed way,
Melting in a blue erasure,
Melting fast like yesterday;
Radiant Hope still steered them hoping,
Steered them past the woodlands sloping,
Where the doves descend and flutter on an ancient colonnade.

On they passed through golden hazes,
Watching distant peaks of snow,
On through shadowed island mazes,
Where the dreamy spices blow;
Till the moon herself was setting,
And the dew fell fast and wetting,
And the silver masts no image on the blackening waves displayed.

Frayed are now the rose-red panels
Filled with squares of rare brocade,
In the ceiling Time carves channels
Where the frescoes slowly fade;
Chipped are now the scrolls of plaster,
Which a skilled Italian master
Moulded all along the cornice, and with tips of gold o’erlaid.

But the shallow oval spaces
Underneath the white festoons,
Hold the tender pastel faces
Waiting endless afternoons;
For they never touched Cythera,
Phyllis, Doris, and Neaera,
And again they never landed by the marble balustrade.

VII THE VILLAGE CHERUB

UP at the church at the edge of the moor,
Flat on the pathway that leads to the door,
Worn by the tread of the mourning and poor,
There is a face that is fit for God’s floor.

How could a mason create in his brain
Just such a cherub to sob in the rain?
How could the pride of the dying but vain
Want such a cherub to blow a refrain?

This one had ankles with which he could run—
Is it a fact that a cherub has none?
This one had love-locks that flashed in the sun,
Yes, and his lips often pouted in fun.

Who was the angel that played on the street;
Whose was the face I can’t soil with my feet?
Nobody knows; but I hope I shall meet
One such a cherub in front of God’s seat.

VIII LADY DAY NEAR BIGNOR

SOUTH-EASTWARD where the waving line of hills
Bears up the clouds that speed like passing boats,
On one sweet spot which distant sunlight fills
A sudden silver haze descends and floats.

The trees below like lace veil glistening streams,
The gorse puts on its tiny gloves of gold,
The cattle move as though they fed in dreams,
And timid lambs are bleating in the fold.

Though tangled bracken like an old man’s beard
Blends autumn’s ruddy brown with winter’s grey,
Soft blows the breeze that through the pines is heard,
Green moss and yellow primrose deck the way.

The Roman villa level on the grass,
With wrestling cupids on the floor within;
The church where first a Norman priest said mass,
The ivied chimneys of the Georgian inn:

These have their message. All things tell the change
Of seasons, races, and of man’s estate:
All bid us mark within how small a range
There moves a story tragically great.

The hills abide, and that mysterious Breath
Which brooded on the slowly shaping earth,
And came to-day like dew to Nazareth
To fashion our Redeemer’s Virgin-birth.

IX A COTTAGE INSCRIPTION

“TIME trieth troth.” Who carved the text
Above the narrow cottage door?
Two hundred years of storm have vexed
The words which front the western moor.

Was it a hind who loved the king
That held his court beyond the sea,
A hind who taught his child to sing
Of Stuart rose and Stuart tree?

Was it a swain whose soul adored
A maid who went to London town?
And did she choose some spangled lord
And coldly flout her country clown?

“Time trieth troth.” And was he true
Whose chisel carved that rugged line?
And was he loyal till the yew
O’erarched his heart’s now silent shrine?

Then, though bereft of king or love,
He found the poet’s secret gain,
The sympathy of suns above,
The friendship of the falling rain.

X A MEMORY OF IRELAND

WHERE the saints of Holy Ireland sleep
No chancels pen them round,
But the waving trees their vigils keep
Above each verdant mound.

Here they climbed no lofty marble beds
To find a frigid rest,
But a canopy of golden threads
Hangs o’er them in the west.

When the larks have ceased their thankful hymn,
The ocean booms his bell,
And the lamps of heaven swing o’er the rim
Of every holy well.

May the Lord bring back that race of men
Whom charity enticed
To desert the world for some poor glen
And give the people Christ.

XI “TÍR NAN ÓG” {19}

WHEN thou didst die, they say a fairy’s pipe
Was heard outside the castle door,
And wee folk thick as August corn that’s ripe
Came trooping down the moor,
And bore thy soul with laughter and with light
O’er glen and heathered height.

Friends waked thee till the dawn thrice slanted by
To quench the tapers round thy bier,
And countless decades of the rosary
They numbered with a tear;
But yet they whispered, “She is now a queen,
And clad in rainbow green.”

They set thy form near blessed Finnan’s side,
And wailed the Gaelic death-lament;
But they believed thee happy as a bride
With long-dreamed joys content
Within the land they name with wistful tongue,
“The land where all are young.”

XII A HIGHLAND DAY WITHIN SIGHT OF CULLODEN

THE snow-white borders of the grey-green sea
Peep through the mist that veils the strait with dew,
The sun grows bold and smites the landscape free,
The burn, the woods, the rocks of rose-red hue.

The world lies warm upon the heart of day,
The callants push their boat from off the shore,
The white gulls sail and flutter through the bay,
The jet-black daws are calling evermore.

The doves fly wheeling past their mountain wall,
The whispering pine trees weave a ceiling cool,
The rowans redden o’er the foaming fall,
The ferns keep guard around the fairies’ pool.

The distant moorland where the tribesmen bled
To win their wandering prince a royal home,
Now wraps a deeper purple on their bed,
While he sleeps cold below St. Peter’s dome.

The waves turn opal in the waning light,
The rocks exchange for grey their rose-red bloom,
The finite sinks into the infinite,
And sea and sky are wedded in the gloom.

XIII TO THE FIRS