[Sidenote: GEORGE MEREDITH]
I.
With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,
And made them on each side a shadow seem.
Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,
Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream
To fall on daylight; and night puts away
Her darker veil for grey.
II.
In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by;
We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead
Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky:
Around, save for those shapes, with him who led
And linked them, desert varied by no sign
Of other life than mine.
III.
By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide,
From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne,
Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried,
Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn:
And those two shapes the splendour interweaved,
Hung web-like, sank and heaved.
IV.
Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun
To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow.
Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one.
Whichever is, the other is: but know,
It is thy craving self that thou dost see,
Not in them seeing me.
V.
Shall man into the mystery of breath,
From his quick breathing pulse a pathway spy?
Or learn the secret of the shrouded death,
By lifting up the lid of a white eye?
Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire
Of fire to reach to fire.
VI.
Look now where Colour, the soul’s bridegroom, makes
The house of heaven splendid for the bride.
To him as leaps a fountain she awakes,
In knotting arms, yet boundless: him beside,
She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power
Brings heaven to the flower.
VII.
He gives her homeliness in desert air,
And sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads
Through widening chambers of surprise to where
Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes,
Because his touch is infinite and lends
A yonder to all ends.
VIII.
Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades
To keep long day with his caresses graced.
He is the heart of light, the wing of shades,
The crown of beauty; never soul embraced
Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him
Possessed walks never dim.
IX.
Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang:
O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf
Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang
The space of dewdrops running over leaf;
Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost
Than Time with all his host!
X.
Of thee to say behold, has said adieu:
But love remembers how the sky was green,
And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue;
How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen
Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came
Between a blush and flame.
[Sidenote: GEORGE MEREDITH]
XI.
Love saw the emissary eglantine
Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom;
Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line
With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom,
Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down,
Earth under rolling brown.
XII.
They do not look through love to look on thee,
Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight,
Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be
Its wrecking and last issue of delight.
Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot
Of colour unforgot.
XIII.
This way have men come out of brutishness
To spell the letters of the sky and read
A reflex upon earth else meaningless.
With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead;
Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged
Shall on through brave wars waged.
XIV.
More gardens will they win than any lost;
The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain.
Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed,
To stature of the Gods will they attain.
They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord,
Themselves the attuning chord!
XV.
The song had ceased; my vision with the song.
Then of those Shadows, which one made descent
Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long
Came on me in the public ways and bent
Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too,
And saw the dawn glow through
Shadows.
[Sidenote: SEBASTIAN EVANS]
Lonely o’er the dying ember
I the past recall,
And remember in December
April buds and August skies,
As the shadows fall and rise,
As the shadows rise and fall.
Quicker now they lift and flicker
On the dreary wall;
Aye, and quicker still and thicker
Throng the fitful fantasies,
As the shadows fall and rise,
As the shadows rise and fall.
Dimmer now they shoot and shimmer
On the dreary wall,
Dimmer, dimmer, still they glimmer
Till the light in darkness dies,
And the other shadows rise,
And the other shadows fall.
When the World is Burning.
[Sidenote: EBENEZER JONES]
When the world is burning,
Fired within, yet turning
Round with face unscathed;
Ere fierce flames, uprushing,
O’er all lands leap, crushing,
Till earth fall, fire-swathed;
Up against the meadows,
Gently through the shadows,
Gentle flames will glide,
Small, and blue, and golden.
Though by bard beholden,
When in calm dreams folden,--
Calm his dreams will bide.
Where the dance is sweeping,
Through the greensward peeping,
Shall the soft lights start;
Laughing maids, unstaying,
Deeming it trick-playing,
High their robes upswaying,
O’er the lights shall dart;
And the woodland haunter
Shall not cease to saunter
When, far down some glade,
Of the great world’s burning,
One soft flame upturning
Seems, to his discerning,
Crocus in the shade.
The Hand.
Lone o’er the moors I stray’d;
With basely timid mind,
Because by some betray’d
Denouncing human-kind;
I heard the lonely wind,
And wickedly did mourn
I could not share its loneliness,
And all things human scorn.
And bitter were the tears,
I cursed as they fell;
And bitterer the sneers
I strove not to repel:
With blindly mutter’d yell,
I cried unto mine heart,--
“Thou shalt beat the world in falsehood
And stab it ere we part.”
My hand I backward drave
As one who seeks a knife;
When startlingly did crave
To quell that hand’s wild strife
Some other hand; all rife
With kindness, clasp’d it hard
On mine, quick frequent claspings
That would not be debarr’d.
I dared not turn my gaze
To the creature of the hand;
And no sound did it raise,
Its nature to disband
Of mystery; vast, and grand,
The moors around me spread,
And I thought, some angel message
Perchance their God may have sped.
[Sidenote: EBENEZER JONES]
But it press’d another press,
So full of earnest prayer,
While o’er it fell a tress
Of cool soft human hair,
I fear’d not;--I did dare
Turn round, ’twas Hannah there!
Oh! to no one out of heaven
Could I what pass’d declare.
We wander’d o’er the moor
Through all that blessed day;
And we drank its waters pure,
And felt the world away;
In many a dell we lay,
And we twined flower-crowns bright;
And I fed her with moor-berries
And bless’d her glad eye-light.
And still that earnest prayer
That saved me many stings,
Was oft a silent sayer
Of countless loving things;--
I’ll ring it all with rings,
Each ring a jewell’d band;
For heaven shouldn’t purchase
That little sister hand.
A Song of Winter.
[Sidenote: EMILY DAVIS
(Mrs Pfeiffer)]
Barb’d blossom of the guarded gorse,
I love thee where I see thee shine:
Thou sweetener of our common-ways,
And brightener of our wintry days.
Flower of the gorse, the rose is dead,
Thou art undying, O be mine!
Be mine with all thy thorns, and prest
Close on a heart that asks not rest.
I pluck thee and thy stigma set
Upon my breast, and on my brow;
Blow, buds, and plenish so my wreath
That none may know the wounds beneath.
O crown of thorn that seem’st of gold,
No festal coronal art thou;
Thy honey’d blossoms are but hives
That guard the growth of winged lives.
I saw thee in the time of flowers
As sunshine spill’d upon the land,
Or burning bushes all ablaze
With sacred fire; but went my ways;
I went my ways, and as I went
Pluck’d kindlier blooms on either hand;
Now of those blooms so passing sweet
None lives to stay my passing feet.
And still thy lamp upon the hill
Feeds on the autumn’s dying sigh,
And from thy midst comes murmuring
A music sweeter than in spring.
Barb’d blossoms of the guarded gorse,
Be mine to wear until I die,
And mine the wounds of love which still
Bear witness to his human will.
The Night Ride.
[Sidenote: ERNEST RHYS]
To-night we rode beneath a moon
That made the moorland pale;
And our horses’ feet kept well the tune
And our pulses did not fail.
The moon shone clear; the hoar-frost fell,
The world slept, as it seemed;
Sleep held the night, but we rode well,
And as we rode we dreamed.
We dreamed of ghostly horse and hound,
And flight at dead of night;--
The more the fearful thoughts we found,
The more was our delight.
And when we saw the white-owl fly,
With hoot, how woebegone!
We thought to see dead men go by,
And pressed our horses on.
The merrier then was Sylvia’s song
Upon the homeward road,--
Oh, whether the way be short or long
Is all in the rider’s mood!
And still our pulses kept the tale,
Our gallop kept the tune,
As round and over hill and vale
We rode beneath the moon.
The House of Hendra.
_‘S’ai Plas Hendre_
_Yn Nghaer Fyrddin:_
_Canu Brechfa,_
_Tithau Lywelyn’._
I.
[Sidenote:
The House of Hendra stood in Merlin’s Town, and was sung by Brechva
on his Harp of gold at the October Feasting of Ivor.
]
In the town where wondrous Merlin
Lived, and still
In deep sleep, they say, lies dreaming
Near it, under Merlin’s Hill,
In that town of pastoral Towy,
Once of old
Stood the ancient House of Hendra,
Sung on Brechva’s harp of gold.
With his harp to Ivor’s feasting
Brechva came,
There he sang and made this ballad,
While the last torch spent its flame.
Long they told,--the men of Ivor,
Of the strain
At the heart of Brechva’s harping
Heard that night, and not again.
[Sidenote: ERNEST RHYS]
II.
[Sidenote:
_Incipit_ Brechva’s Ballad of the House of Hendra, and of his deep
sleep there on Hallowmas Night, and of his strange awaking.
]
In yon town, he sang,--there Hendra
Waits my feet,
In renownèd Merlin’s town where
Clare’s white castle keeps the street.
There, within that house of heroes,
I drew breath;
And ’tis there my feet must bear me,
For the darker grace of death.
There that last year’s night I journeyed,--
Hallowmas!
When the dead of Earth, unburied,
In the darkness rise and pass.
Then in Hendra (all his harp cried
At the stroke),
Twelve moons gone, there came upon me
Sleep like death. At length I woke:
I awoke to utter darkness,
Still and deep,
With the walls around me fallen
Of the sombre halls of sleep:
With my hall of dreams downfallen,
Dark I lay,
Like one houseless, though about me
Hendra stood, more fast than they:
But what broke my sleep asunder,--
Light or sound?
There was shown no sound, where only
Night, and shadow’s heart, were found.
III.
[Sidenote:
Anon he hears a voice in the night, and rising from sleep, looks
out upon the sleeping town.
]
So it passed, till with a troubled
Lonely noise,
Like a cry of men benighted,
Midnight made itself a voice.
Then I rose, and from the stairloop,
Looking down,
Nothing saw, where far before me
Lay, one darkness, all the town.
In that grave day seemed for ever
To lie dead,
Nevermore at wake of morning
To lift up its pleasant head:
All its friendly foolish clamour,
Its delight,
Fast asleep, or dead, beneath me,
In that black descent of night:
But anon, like fitful harping,
Hark, a noise!
As in dream, suppose your dreamer’s
Men of shadow found a voice.
[Sidenote: ERNEST RHYS]
IV.
[Sidenote:
Hearing his name called, Brechva descends to the postern, and sees
thence a circle of Shadows, in a solemn dance of Death.
]
Night-wind never sang more strangely
Song more strange;
All confused, yet with a music
In confusion’s interchange.
Now it cried, like harried night-birds,
Flying near,
Now, more nigh, with multiplying
Voice on voice, “O Brechva, hear!”
I was filled with fearful pleasure
At the call,
And I turned, and by the stairway
Gained the postern in the wall:
Deep as Annwn lay the darkness
At my feet;--
Like a yawning grave before me,
When I opened, lay the street.
Dark as death, and deep as Annwn,--
But these eyes
Yet more deeply, strangely, seeing,
From that grave saw life arise.
And therewith a mist of shadows
In a ring,
Like the sea-mist on the sea-wind,
Waxing, waning, vanishing.
Circling as the wheel of spirits
Whirled and spun,
Spun and whirled, to forewarn Merlin
In the woods of Caledon.
V.
[Sidenote:
The spirits are no dream-folk; but ancient inmates of the House of
Hendra.
]
Shades of men, ay, bards and warriors!--
Wrought of air,
You may deem, but ’twas no dream-folk,
Born of night, that crossed me there.
And my heart cried out,--“O Vorwyn!
They are those
Who of old-time lived to know here
Life’s great sweetness in this house.”
I had bid them kinsman’s welcome,
In a word,
For the ancient sake of Hendra,
Which they served with harp and sword.
But as still I watched them, wondering,
Curiously,
Knowing all they should forewarn me,--
Of my death and destiny!
Ere I marked all in the silence,
Ere I knew,
Swift as they had come, as strangely
Now their shadowy life withdrew.
[Sidenote: ERNEST RHYS]
VI.
[Sidenote:
The Spirits being gone, Brechva hears aërial music, and sees in
vision all the Bards in the seventh Heaven.
]
They were gone; but what sweet wonder
Filled the air!--
With a thousand harping noises,--
Harping, chiming, crying there.
At that harping and that chiming,
Straightway strong
Grew my heart, and in the darkness
Found great solace at that song.
Through the gate of night, its vision,
Three times fine,
Saw the seventh heaven of heroes,
’Mid a thousand torches’ shine:
All the bards and all the heroes
Of old time
There with Arthur and with Merlin
Weave again the bardic rhyme.
There a seat is set and ready,
And the name
There inscribed, and set on high there,--
Brechva of the Bards of Fame.
V
CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS
(Manx)
The Childhood of Kitty of the Sherragh Vane.
[Sidenote: T. E. BROWN]
Nice lookin’, eh?
Aye, that’s your way--
Well, I tell ye, the first time ever I seen her,
She wasn’ much more till[27] a baby--
Six years, may be,
Would have been her
Age; at the little clogs at her,[28]
Clitter-clatter,
And her little hand
In mine, to show me the way, you’ll understand,
Down yandher brew,
And me a stranger too,
That was lost on the mountain;
And the little sowl in the house all alone,
And for her to be goin’
The best part of a mile--
Bless the chile!
Till she got me right--
Not a bit shy, not her!
Nor freckened,[29] but talkin’ as purty
As a woman of thirty--
And--“That’s the way down to the School,” says she
“And Saul and me
Is goin’ there every day;
You’ll aisy find the way”--
And turns, and off like a bird on the wing,
Aw, a bright little thing!
Isn’ it that way with these people of the mountain?
No accountin’
But seemin very fearless though--
Very--not for fightin’, no!
Nor tearin’, but just the used they are
Of fogs and bogs, and all the war
Of winds and clouds, and ghos’es creepin’
Unknownst upon them, and fairies cheepin’
Like birds, you’d think, and big bugganes[30]
In holes in rocks; lek makin’ frens
With the like, that’ll work like niggers, they will,
If you’ll only let them; and paisible
Uncommon they are; and little scraps,
That’s hardly off their mammies’ laps
’ll walk about there in the night
The same as the day, and all right--
Bless ye! ghos’es! ar’n’ they half
Ghos’es themselves? Just hear them laugh,
Or hear them cry,
It’s like up in the sky--
Aw, differin’
Total--aye; for the air is thin
And fine up there, and they suck it in
Very strong,
Very long,
And mixes it in the mould
Of all their body and all their sowl--
So they’re often seemin’
Like people dreamin’,
With their eyes open like a surt of a trance.
Graih my Chree.
(Love of my Heart.)
[Sidenote: HALL CAINE]
I.
She was Joney, the rich man’s only child,
He was Juan, a son of the sea.
“Thy father hath cast me forth of his door,
But, poor as I am, to his teeth I swore
I should wed thee, O graih my chree.”
He broke a ring and gave her the half,
And she buried it close at her heart.
“I must leave thee, love of my soul,” he said,
“But I vow by our troth that living or dead,
I will come back rich to thine arms and thy bed,
And fetch thee as sure as we part.”
He sailed to the north, he sailed to the south,
He sailed to the foreign strand,
But whether he touched on the icy cone
Or the coral reef of the Indian zone,
It turned to a golden land.
And he cried to his crew, “Hoist sail and about,
For no more do I need to roam;
I have silks and satins and lace and gold,
I have treasure as deep as my ship will hold
To win me a wife at home.”
They had not sailed but half of their course
To the haven where they would be,
When the devil beguiled their barque on a rock,
And down it sank with a woeful shock
On the banks of Italy.
Then over the roar of the clamorous waves
The skipper his voice was heard,
“I vowed by our troth that dead or alive
I should come back yet to wed and to wive,
And by t’ Lady I keep my word.
“I will come to thee still, O love of my heart,
From the arms of the envious sea;
Though the tempest should swallow my choking breath,
In the spite of hell and the devil and death
I will come to thee, graih my chree.”
II.
“He will come no more to thine arms, my child,
He is false or lost and dead,
Now wherefore make ye these five years’ moan,
And wherefore sit by the sea alone?”
“He will keep his vow,” she said.
She climbed the brows of the cliffs at home,
She gazed on the false, false sea.
“It comes and it goes for ever,” she cried,
“And tidings it brings to the wife and the bride,
But never a word to me.”
Then, of lovers, another came wooing the maid,
But she answered him nay and nay,
The manfullest man and her servant true,
“Give me thy hand and thou shalt not rue,”
She murmured, “Alack, the day.”
Her father arose in his pride and his wrath,
He was last of his race and name,
“Because that a daughter will peak and will pine
Must I never have child of my child to my line,
But die in my childless shame?”
They bore her a bride to the kirkyard gate,
It was a pitiful sight to see,
Her body they decked in their jewels and gold,
But the heart in her bosom sate silent and cold,
And she murmured “Ah, woe is me.”
[Sidenote: HALL CAINE]
III.
They had not been wedded a year, a year,
A year but barely two,
When the good wife close to the hearth-stone crept
And rocked her babe while the good man slept
And the wind in the chimney blew.
Loud was the sea and fierce was the night,
Gloomy and wild and dour;
From a flying cloud came a lightning flash,
A pane of the window fell in with a crash,
And something rang on the floor.
O, was it a stone from the waste sea-beach?
O, was it an earthly thing?
She stirred the peat and stooped to the ground,
And there in the red, red light she found
The half of a broken ring.
She rose upright in a terror of fright
As one that hath sinned a sin,
And out of the dark and the wind and rain,
Through the jagged gap of the broken pane,
A man’s white face looked in.
“Oh, why didst thou stay so long, Juan?
Five years I waited for thee.”
“I vowed by our troth, that living or dead
I should come back yet to thine arms and thy bed,
And my vow I have kept, my chree.”
“But I have been false to my troth, Juan;
Falsely I swore me away.”
“I have silks and satins and lace and gold,
I have treasure as deep as my ship will hold;
And my barque lies out in the bay.”
“But I have a husband that loves me dear;
I promised him never to part.”
“Through the salt sea’s foam and the earth’s hot breath,
Through the grapplings of hell and the gates of death
I have come for thee, Joney, my heart.”
“But I have a child of my body so sweet--
Little Jannie that sleeps in the cot.”
“By the glimpse of the moon, at the top of the tide,
Ere the crow of the cock our vessel must ride,
Or what will befall us, God wot.”
“Now, ever alack, thou must kiss and go back;
My love, I am never for thee.”
“As sure as yon ship to the billows that roll,
By the plight of our troth, both body and soul
You belong to me, graih my chree.”
She followed him forth like to one in a sleep;
It was a woeful and wonderous sight.
The moon on his face from a rift in a cloud
Showed it white and wan as a face in a shroud,
And his ship on the sea gleamed white.
IV.
“Now weigh and away, my merry men all.”
The crew laughed loud in their glee.
“With the rich man’s pride and his sweet daughter,
In the spite of wind and the wild water--
To the banks of Italy!”
The anchor was weighed, the canvas was spread,
All in the storm and the dark,
With never a reef in a stitch of sail,
But standing about to burst the gale
Merrily sped the barque.
[Sidenote: HALL CAINE]
The first night out there was fear on the ship,
For the lady lay in a swoon;
The second night out she woke from her trance,
And the skipper did laugh and his men would dance,
But she made a piteous moan.
“O, where is my home and my sweet baby--
My Jannie I nursed on my knee?
He will wake in his cot by the cold hearth-stone
And cry for his mother who left him alone;
My Jannie, I’m wae for thee.”
The skipper he shouted for music and song,
And his crew they answered his call.
He clothed her in silk and satin and lace,
But still through the rout and riot her face
Showed fit for a funeral.
And ever at night they sailed by the moon,
Through the wild white foam so fleet,
And ever again at the coming of day,
When the sun rose out of the sea they lay
In a mist like a winding sheet.
And still the skipper he kissed her and cried,
“Be merry and let-a-be.”
And still to soothe her he sat through the nights
With his hand in her hand, till they opened the lights
By the banks of Italy.
Then his face shone green as with ghostly sheen,
And the moon began to dip.
“O, think not you, I am the lover ye knew;
I am a ghostly man with a ghostly crew,
And this is a ghostly ship.”
Then he rose upright to a fearsome height,
And stamped his foot on the deck;
He smote the mast at the topsail yards,
And the rigging fell like a house of cards,
And the hulk was a splitting wreck.
O, then as she sank in the water’s womb,
In the churn of the choking sea,
She knew that his arms were about her breast,
As close as his arms might be.
And he cried o’er the tramp of the champing tide
On the banks of Italy,
“By the plight of our troth, by the power of our bond,
If not in this world in the world beyond,
Thou art mine, O graih my chree.”
VI
CONTEMPORARY ANGLO-CELTIC POETS
(Cornish)
The Splendid Spur.
[Sidenote: A. T. QUILLER COUCH]
Not on the neck of prince or hound,
Nor on a woman’s finger twin’d,
May gold from the deriding ground
Keep sacred that we sacred bind:
Only the heel
Of splendid steel
Shall stand secure on sliding fate,
When golden navies weep their freight.
The scarlet hat, the laurell’d stave
Are measures, not the springs of worth;
In a wife’s lap, as in a grave,
Man’s airy notions mix with earth.
Seek other spur
Bravely to stir
The dust in this loud world, and tread
Alp-high among the whisp’ring dead.
=Trust in thyself=,--then spur amain:
So shall Charybdis wear a grace,
Grim Ætna laugh, the Libyan plain
Take roses to her shrivell’d face.
This orb--this round
Of sight and sound--
Count it the lists that God hath built
For haughty hearts to ride a-tilt.
The White Moth.
[Sidenote: A. T. QUILLER COUCH]
_If a leaf rustled, she would start:
And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart
To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
Those little feet, in so much night?_
The light above the poet’s head
Streamed on the page and on the cloth,
And twice and thrice there buffeted
On the black pane a white-wing’d moth:
’Twas Annie’s soul that beat outside,
And “Open, open, open!” cried:
“I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned--
I was bewilder’d and I turned.
“O, it was easy then! I knew
Your window and no star beside.
Look up and take me back to you!”
He rose and thrust the window wide.
’Twas but because his brain was hot
With rhyming; for he heard her not.
But poets polishing a phrase
Show anger over trivial things:
And as she blundered in the blaze
Towards him, on ecstatic wings,
He raised a hand and smote her dead;
Then wrote, “=That I had died instead=.”
Featherstone’s Doom.[31]
[Sidenote: STEPHEN HAWKER]
I.
Twist thou and twine! in light and gloom
A spell is on thine hand;
The wind shall be thy changeful loom,
Thy web, the shifting sand.
II.
Twine from this hour, in ceaseless toil,
On Blackrock’s sullen shore;
Till cordage of the hand shall coil
Where crested surges roar.
III.
’Tis for that hour, when, from the wave,
Near voices wildly cried;
When thy stern hand no succour gave,
The cable at thy side.
IV.
Twist thou and twine! in light and gloom
The spell is on thine hand;
The wind shall be thy changeful loom,
Thy web, the shifting sand.