_The Kings_
A MAN said unto his Angel:
"My spirits are fallen low,
And I cannot carry this battle:
O brother! where might I go?
"The terrible Kings are on me
With spears that are deadly bright;
Against me so from the cradle
Do fate and my fathers fight."
Then said to the man his Angel:
"Thou wavering witless soul,
Back to the ranks! What matter
To win or to lose the whole,
"As judged by the little judges
Who hearken not well, nor see?
Not thus, by the outer issue,
The Wise shall interpret thee.
"Thy will is the sovereign measure
And only event of things:
The puniest heart, defying,
Were stronger than all these Kings.
"Though out of the past they gather,
Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain,
And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain,
"And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
And ringletted Vain Desires,
And Vice, with the spoils upon him
Of thee and thy beaten sires,--
"While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken sabre
To rise on the last redoubt;
"To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall."
_The Squall_
WHILE all was glad,
It seemed our birch-tree had,
That August hour, intelligence of death;
For warningly against the eaves she beat
Her body old, lamenting, prophesying,
And the hot breath
Of ferny hollows nestled at her feet
Spread out in startled sighing.
Across an argent sea,
Distinct unto the farthest reef and isle,
The clouds began to be.
Huge forms 'neath sombre draperies, awhile
Made slow uncertain rally;
But as their ranks conjoined, and from the north
The leader shook his lance, Oh, then how fair
Unvested, they stood forth,
In diverse armour, plumed majestically,
Each with his own esquires, a King in air!
Up moved the dark vanguard,
With insolent colours that o'erdusked the skies,
And trailed from beach to beach:
Massed orange and mould-green; vermilion barred
On bronze or mottled silver; saffron dyes
And purples migratory
Fanned each in each,
As the long column broke, athirst for glory.
Sudden, the thunder!
Upon the roofed verandas how it rolled,
Twice, thrice: a thud and flame of doom that told
New-fallen, nor far away,
Some black destruction on the innocent day.
And little Everard
Deep in the hammock under, eyes alight
With healthful fear and wonder
The brave do ne'er unlearn,
Clenched his soft hand, and breathing hard,
Smiled there against his father, like a knight
Baptized on Cressy field or Bannockburn.
A moment gone,
Into our paradise from Acheron,
With imperceptive sorcery crawled ashore
Odours unnamable: an exhalation
Of men and ships in oozy graves. (Ah, cease,
Derisive nereids! cease:
Be it enough, that even ye can pour,
From crystal flagons of your ancient peace,
So strange obscene libation.)
But with the thunder-peal
Sprang the pure winds, their thurible swung wide,
To chase that tainted tide;
Fresh from the pastures and the cedar-grove,
They rode the copper ridges of the main,
And bared a league of distance to reveal
A sail, aslant, astrain,
Impetuous for the cove;
And tossing after, panic-stricken,
Another, and a third: white spirits, fain to sicken,
Nor out of natural harm salvation gain.
The selfsame hunter winds that drave
The horror down, as faithful-hearted drew
The sad clouds from their carnage, and up-piled
Their rebel gonfalons, or jocund threw
Their cannon in the wave;
And subtly, with a parting whisper, gave
An eve most mild:
A sunset like a prayer, a world all rose and blue:
A good world, as it was,
And as it shall be: clear circumferent space,
Where punctual yet, for worship of their Cause,
The stars came thick in choir.
Sleep had our Everard in her cool embrace,
Else from his cot he hardly need have stooped
To see (and laugh to see!) the headland pine
Embossed on changing fire:
For close behind it, cooped
Within a smallest span,
In fury, to and fro and round and round,
The routed leopards of the lightning ran:
Bright, bright, inside their dungeon-bars, malign
They ran; and ran till dawn, without a sound.
_Open, Time_
OPEN, Time, and let him pass
Shortly where his feet would be!
Like a leaf at Michaelmas
Swooning from the tree,
Ere its hour the manly mind
Trembles in a sure decrease,
Nor the body now can find
Any hold on peace.
Take him, weak and overworn;
Fold about his dying dream
Boyhood, and the April morn,
And the rolling stream:
Weather on a sunny ridge,
Showery weather, far from here;
Under some deep-ivied bridge,
Water rushing clear:
Water quick to cross and part
(Golden light on silver sound),
Weather that was next his heart
All the world around!
Soon upon his vision break
These, in their remembered blue;
He shall toil no more, but wake
Young, in air he knew.
He hath done with roofs and men.
Open, Time, and let him pass,
Vague and innocent again,
Into country grass.
_The Knight Errant_
(_Donatello's Saint George_)
SPIRITS of old that bore me,
And set me, meek of mind,
Between great dreams before me,
And deeds as great behind,
Knowing humanity my star
As first abroad I ride,
Shall help me wear with every scar
Honour at eventide.
Let claws of lightning clutch me
From summer's groaning cloud,
Or ever malice touch me,
And glory make me proud.
Oh, give my youth, my faith, my sword,
Choice of the heart's desire:
A short life in the saddle, Lord!
Not long life by the fire.
Forethought and recollection
Rivet mine armour gay!
The passion for perfection
Redeem my failing way!
The arrows of the upper slope
From sudden ambush cast,
Rain quick and true, with one to ope
My Paradise at last!
I fear no breathing bowman,
But only, east and west,
The awful other foeman
Impowered in my breast.
The outer fray in the sun shall be,
The inner beneath the moon;
And may Our Lady lend to me
Sight of the Dragon soon!
_To a Dog's Memory_
THE gusty morns are here,
When all the reeds ride low with level spear;
And on such nights as lured us far of yore,
Down rocky alleys yet, and through the pine,
The Hound-star and the pagan Hunter shine:
But I and thou, ah, field-fellow of mine,
Together roam no more.
Soft showers go laden now
With odours of the sappy orchard-bough,
And brooks begin to brawl along the march;
Steams the late frost from hollow sedges high;
The finch is come, the flame-blue dragonfly,
The marsh-born marigold that children spy,
The plume upon the larch.
There is a music fills
The oaks of Belmont and the Wayland hills
Southward to Dewing's little bubbly stream,--
The heavenly weather's call! Oh, who alive
Hastes not to start, delays not to arrive,
Having free feet that never felt a gyve
Weigh, even in a dream?
But thou, instead, hast found
The sunless April uplands underground,
And still, wherever thou art, I must be.
My beautiful! arise in might and mirth,
(For we were tameless travellers from our birth);
Arise against thy narrow door of earth,
And keep the watch for me.
_Memorial Day_
O DAY of roses and regret,
Kissing the old graves of our own!
Not to the slain love's lovely debt
Alone.
But jealous hearts that live and ache,
Remember; and while drums are mute,
Beneath your banners' bright outbreak,
Salute:
And say for us to lessening ranks
That keep the memory and the pride,
On whose thinned hair our tears and thanks
Abide,
Who from their saved Republic pass,
Glad with the Prince of Peace to dwell:
_Hail, dearest few! and soon, alas,
Farewell_.
_Romans in Dorset_
_A.D. MDCCCXCV_
A STUPOR on the heath,
And wrath along the sky;
Space everywhere; beneath
A flat and treeless wold for us, and darkest noon on high.
Sullen quiet below,
But storm in upper air!
A wind from long ago,
In mouldy chambers of the cloud had ripped an arras there,
And singed the triple gloom,
And let through, in a flame,
Crowned faces of old Rome:
Regnant o'er Rome's abandoned ground, processional they came.
Uprisen as any sun
Through vistas hollow grey,
Aloft, and one by one,
In brazen casques the Emperors loomed large, and sank away.
In ovals of wan light
Each warrior eye and mouth:
A pageant brutal bright
As if once over loudly passed Jove's laughter in the south;
And dimmer, these among,
Some cameo'd head aloof,
With ringlets heavy-hung,
Like yellow stonecrop comely grown around a castle roof.
An instant: gusts again,
Then heaven's impacted wall,
The hot insistent rain,
The thunder-shock; and of the Past mirage no more at all,
No more the alien dream
Pursuing, as we went,
With glory's cursèd gleam:
Nor sin of Cæsar's ruined line engulfed us, innocent.
The vision great and dread
Corroded; sole in view
Was empty Egdon spread,
Her crimson summer weeds ashake in tempest: but we knew
What Tacitus had borne
In that wrecked world we saw;
And what, thine heart uptorn,
My Juvenal! distraught with love of violated Law.
_Horologion_
THE frost may form apace,
The roses pine away:
Nomæa! if I see thy face,
Then is the summer day.
A word of thine, a breath,
And lo! my joy shall seem
To peer far down where life and death
Stir like a forded stream;
Or else shall misery sound
And travel in that hour
All utmost things in their shut round,
As a bee feels his flower.
Thought lags and cries Alas,
Love ranges quick and free.
Oh, figured clock and sanded glass,
They mark no term for me.
And since I can but rue
The calendar gone wrong,
And dials never telling true
If dreams be short or long,
Dear, from these arts that fail
To thee I will repair.
Till the last eve dance down the gale
With no star in her hair,
Be thou my solar chime,
Be thou my wheel of night,
Be thy bright heart, not ashen Time,
My measure, law, and light.
_His Angel to his Mother_
WHAT would you do for your fairest one,
Wild as the wind and free as the sun,
Born a fugitive, sure to slip
Soon from secular ownership?
Men in search of the heart's desire,
Wearily trampling flood and fire,
Rove betimes into some abyss
Darker far than eternity's.
(Ah, the hazard! it awes one so!)
_And shall it be thus with the boy, or no?
Sweet, if you love him, let him go._
Happy the Frontier to have gained
Undetaining and undetained,
Quick and clean, like a solar ray
Shot through spindrift across the bay!
Men would follow a long vain quest,
Feed on ashes and forfeit rest,
Bleed with battle and flag with toil,
Only to stifle in desert soil.
(Ah, the failure! it stings one so!)
_And shall it be thus with the boy, or no?
Sweet, if you love him, let him go._
Vats fill up, and the sheaves are in:
Never a blessing is left to win
Save for the myrtle coronal
Round the urn at the end of all.
Men will clutch, as they clutched of old,
Souring honey or dimming gold,
Not the treasure-trove of the land
Here shut fast in a roseleaf hand.
(Ah, the folly! it irks one so!)
_And shall it be thus with the boy, or no?
Sweet, if you love him, let him go._
_Autumn Magic_
SOON as divine September, flushing from sea to sea,
Peers from the whole wide upland into eternity,
Soft as an exhalation, ghosts of the thistle start:
Never a poet saw them but ached in his baffled heart.
Gossamer armies rising thicker than snowflakes fall,
Waken in blood and marrow, aware of the unheard call.
Oh, what a nameless urging through avenues laid in air,
Hints of escape, unbodied, intricate, everywhere,
Sense of a feared denial, or access hard to be won;
Gleams of a dubious gesture for guesses to feed upon!
Flame goes flying in heaven, the down on the cool hillside:
Earth is a bride-veil glory to show and conceal the Bride.
_Five Carols for Christmastide_
I
THE OX he openeth wide the Doore,
And from the Snowe he calls her inne,
And he hath seen her Smile therefor,
Our Ladye without Sinne.
Now soone from Sleep
A Starre shall leap,
And soone arrive both King and Hinde:
_Amen, Amen_:
But O, the Place co'd I but finde!
The Ox hath hush'd his voyce and bent
Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow,
And on his lovelie Neck, forspent,
The Blessed layes her Browe.
Around her feet
Full Warme and Sweete
His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell:
_Amen, Amen_:
But sore am I with Vaine Travèl!
The Ox is host in Judah stall
And Host of more than onelie one,
For close she gathereth withal
Our Lorde her littel Sonne.
Glad Hinde and King
Their Gyfte may bring,
But wo'd to-night my Teares were there,
_Amen, Amen_:
Between her Bosom and His hayre!