"_Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure!
We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure,
All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure._"
"Welcome, equal powers benign, quit of ancient madness!
Dance with me beneath the vine, not ungentle Sadness;
Link your little hand in mine soberly, my Gladness."
_Winter Boughs_
HOW tender and how slow, in sunset cheer,
Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade!
A broidery of ebon seaweed, laid
Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear.
Frost and sad light and windless atmosphere
Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made
Beauty more sweet than summer's builded shade,
Whose green domes fallen, leave this wonder here.
O ye forgetting and outliving boughs,
With not a plume, gay in the joust before,
Left for the Archer! so, in evening's eye,
So stilled, so lifted, let your lover die,
Set in the upper calm no voices rouse,
Stript, meek, withdrawn, against the heavenly door.
_W.H._
_A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_
BETWEEN the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;
Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful;
But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer,
Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.
Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit,
Safe also on our earth, begetting ever
Some one love worth the ages and the nations!
Falleth no thing that was to thee eternal.
Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining,
Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches.
_The Vigil-at-Arms_
KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting
Till morning break, and every bugle play;
Unto the One aware from everlasting
Dear are the winners: thou art more than they.
Forth from this peace on manhood's way thou goest,
Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail;
Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest,
O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail!
_A Friend's Song for Simoisius_
THE breath of dew and twilight's grace
Be on the lonely battle-place,
And to so young, so kind a face,
The long protecting grasses cling!
(Alas, alas,
That one inexorable thing!)
In rocky hollows cool and deep,
The honey-bees unrifled sleep;
The early moon from Ida steep
Comes to the empty wrestling-ring;
Upon the widowed wind recede
No echoes of the shepherd's reed;
And children without laughter lead
The war-horse to the watering;
With footstep separate and slow
The father and the mother go,
Not now upon an urn they know
To mingle tears for comforting.
Thou stranger Ajax Telamon!
What to the lovely hast thou done,
That nevermore a maid may run
With him across the flowery Spring?
The world to me has nothing dear
Beyond the namesake river here:
Oh, Simois is wild and clear!
And to his brink my heart I bring;
My heart, if only this might be,
Would stay his waters from the sea,
To cover Troy, to cover me,
To haste the hour of perishing.
(Alas, alas,
That one inexorable thing!)
_To an Ideal_
THAT I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height:
All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light!
No pleasure born of time for me,
Who in you touch eternity.
If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight.
You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine,
The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine.
More lovely here, to wakened blood,
Sparse leaf and hesitating bud,
Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine.
Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too,
Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue.
Because man's cry, by night and day,
Cried not for God, I broke away.
On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you.
_In a Ruin, after a Thunder Storm_
KEEP of the Norman, old to flood and cloud!
Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look,
That in our common menace I forsook
Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud:
Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud,
Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook
Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook,
No more than they by heaven's assassins cowed.
But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked
With the calm kisses of the light delayed,
Breathe on me better valour: to subject
My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid
Lest ere her fight's full term, the Architect
See downfall of the stronghold that He made.
_Beati Mortui_
BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead
Not passed, but perfected:
Who tower up to mystical full bloom
From self, as from a known alchemic tomb;
Who out of wrong
Run forth with laughter and a broken thong;
Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant
Of peace anticipant;
Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now,
Unbound from foot to brow,
Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful
As sun-born colours of a forest pool
Where Autumn sees
The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees.
Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost
As any chantry ghost,
How sight of these, in hermitage or mart,
Makes glad a wistful heart!
For life's apologetics read most true
In spirits risen anew,
Like larks in air
To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair,
And who from yonder parapet
Scorn every mortal fret,
And rain their sweet bewildering staves
Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves.
If thus to have trod and left the wormy way
Makes men so wondrous gay,
So stripped and free and potently alive,
Who would not his infirmity survive,
And bathe in victory, and come to be
As blithe as ye,
Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give;
Turn not away, too fugitive:
But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street,
And sit with us at meat,
And of your courtesy, on us unwise
Fix oft those purer eyes,
Till in ourselves who love them dwell
The same sure light ineffable:
Till they who walk with us in after years
Forgetting time and tears
(As we with you), shall sing all day instead:
"How blessed are the Dead!"
_Two Irish Peasant Songs_