PRAISE thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me,
A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee.
_Deo Optimo Maximo_
ALL else for use, One only for desire;
Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee:
Up from the best, whereof no man need tire,
Impel Thou me.
Delight is menace if Thou brood not by,
Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer.
Oft as the morn (though none of earth deny
These three are dear),
Wash me of them, that I may be renewed,
And wander free amid my freeborn joys:
Oh, close my hand upon Beatitude!
Not on her toys.
_Charista Musing_
MOVELESS, on the marge of a sunny cornfield,
Rapt in sudden revery while thou standest,
Like the sheaves, in beautiful Doric yellow
Clad to the ankle,
Oft to thee with delicate hasty footstep
So I steal, and suffer because I find thee
Inly flown, and only a fallen feather
Left of my darling.
Give me back thy wakening breath, thy ringlets
Fragrant as the vine of the bean in blossom,
And those eyes of violet dusk and daylight
Under sea-water,
Eyes too far away, and too full of longing!
Yes: and go not heavenward where I lose thee,
Go not, go not whither I cannot follow,
Being but earthly.
Willing swallow poisèd upon my finger,
Little wild-wing ever from me escaping,
For the care thou art to me, I thy lover
Love thee, and fear thee.
_The Still of the Year_
UP from the willow-root
Subduing agonies leap;
The field-mouse and the purple moth
Turn over amid their sleep;
The icicled rocks aloft
Burn amber and blue alway,
And trickling and tinkling
The snows of the drift decay.
Oh, mine is the head must hang
And share the immortal pang!
Winter or spring is fair;
Thaw's hard to bear.
Heigho! my heart's sick.
Sweet is cherry-time, sweet
A shower, a bobolink,
And trillium, fain far under
Her cloistering leaf to shrink;
But here in the vast, unborn,
Is the bitterest place to be,
Till striving and longing
Shall quicken the earth and me.
What change inscrutable
Is nigh us, we know not well;
Gone is the strength to sigh
Either to live or die.
Heigho! my heart's sick.
_A Footnote to a Famous Lyric_
TRUE love's own talisman, which here
Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach,
A steel-and-velvet Cavalier
Gave to our Saxon speech:
Chief miracle of theme and touch
That all must envy and adore:
_I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more._
No critic born since Charles was King
But sighed in smiling, as he read:
"Here's theft supreme of everything
A poet might have said!"
Young knight and wit and beau, who won
Mid war's upheaval, ladies' praise,
Was't well of you, ere you had done,
To blight our modern bays?
Oh, yet to you, whose random hand
Struck from the dark whole gems like these
(Archaic beauty, never planned
Nor reared by wan degrees,
Which leaves an artist poor, and Art
An earldom richer all her years);
To you, dead on your shield apart,
Be "_Ave!_" passed in tears.
'Twas virtue's breath inflamed your lyre:
Heroic from the heart it ran;
Nor for the shedding of such fire
Lived, since, a manlier man.
And till your strophe sweet and bold
So lovely aye, so lonely long,
Love's self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold
The parapets of Song.
_T.W.P._
_A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_
FRIEND who hast gone, and dost enrich to-day
New England brightly building far away,
And crown her liberal walk
With company more choice, and sweeter talk,
Look not on Fame, but Peace; and in a bower
Receive at last her fulness and her power:
Nor wholly, pure of heart!
Forget thy few, who would be where thou art.
_Summum Bonum_
WAITING on Him who knows us and our need,
Most need have we to dare not, nor desire,
But as He giveth, softly to suspire
Against His gift with no inglorious greed,
For this is joy, though still our joys recede;
And, as in octaves of a noble lyre,
To move our minds with His, and clearer, higher,
Sound forth our fate: for this is strength indeed.
Thanks to His love let earth and man dispense
In smoke of worship when the heart is stillest,
A praying more than prayer: "Great good have I,
Till it be greater good to lay it by;
Nor can I lose peace, power, permanence,
For these smile on me from the thing Thou willest!"
_When on the Marge of Evening_
WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken,
And winds of dreamy odour are loosened from afar,
Or when my lattice opens, before the lark hath spoken,
On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning's dying star,
I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!),
Whose greater noonday splendours the many share and see,
While sacred and for ever, some perfect law is keeping
The late, the early twilight, alone and sweet for me.
_Hylas_
(THERE'S a thrush on the under bough
Fluting evermore and now:
"_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?)
Jar in arm, they bade him rove
Through the alder's long alcove,
Where the hid spring musically
Gushes to the ample valley.
Down the woodland corridor,
Odours deepened more and more;
Blossomed dogwood in the briars
Struck her faint delicious fires;
Miles of April passed between
Crevices of closing green,
And the moth, the violet-lover,
By the wellside saw him hover.
Ah, the slippery sylvan dark!
Never after shall he mark
(On his drownèd cheek down-sinking),
Noisy ploughman drinking, drinking.
Quit of serving is that wild
Absent and bewitchèd child,
Unto action, age, and danger
Thrice a thousand years a stranger.
Fathoms low, the naiads sing,
In a birthday welcoming;
Water-white their breasts, and o'er him,
Water-grey, their eyes adore him.
(There's a thrush on the under bough
Fluting evermore and now:
"_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?)
_Nocturne_
THE sun that hurt his lovers from on high
Is fallen; she more merciful is nigh,
The blessèd one whose beauty's even glow
Gave never wound to any shepherd's eye.
Above our lonely boat in shallows drifting,
Alone her plaintive form ascends the sky.
Oh, sing! the water-golds are deepening now,
Almost a hush is on the aspen bough;
Her light caresseth thine, as saint to saint
Sweet interchanged adorings may allow:
Sing, Eunoë, that lily throat uplifting:
They are so like, the holy Moon and thou!
_To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey_
YOUNG father-poet! much in you I praise
Adventure high, romantic, vehement,
All with inviolate honour sealed and blent
To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier bays;
Your friendships too, your follies, whims, and frays;
And most, that verse of strict imperious bent
Heard sweetly as from some old harper's tent,
And clanging in the listener's brain for days.
At Framlingham to-night if there should be
No guest beyond a sea-born wind that sighs,
No guard save moonlight's crossed and trailing spears,
And I, your pilgrim, call you, Oh, let me
In at the gate! and smile into the eyes
That sought you, Surrey, down three hundred years.
_Planting the Poplar_
BECAUSE thou'rt not an oak
To breast the thunder-stroke,
Or flamy-fruited yew
Darker than Time, how few
Of birds or men or kine
Will love this throne of thine,
Scant Poplar, without shade
Inhospitably made!
Yet, branches never parted
From their straight secret bole,
Yet, sap too single-hearted!
Prosper as my soul.
In loneliness, in quaint
Perpetual constraint,
In gallant poverty,
A girt and hooded tree,
See if against the gale
Our leafage can avail:
Lithe, equal, naked, true,
Rise up as spirits do,
And be a spirit crying
Before the folk that dream!
My slender early-dying
Poplar, by the stream.
_To One who would not Spare Himself_
A CENSER playing from a heart all fire,
A flushing, racing, singing mountain stream
Thou art; and dear to us of dull desire
In thy far-going dream.
Full to the grave be thy too fleeting way,
And full thereafter: few that know thee best
Will grudge it so, for neither thou nor they
Can mate thy soul with rest.
God put thee from the laws of Time adrift.
Lo, He who moves without delay or haste,
Far less may love the sheaves of ghostly thrift,
Than some diviner waste.
Be mine to ride in joy, ere thou art gone,
The flame, the torrent, which is one with thee!
Saint, from this pool of dying sweep us on
Where Life must long to be.
_Winter Peace_
APRIL seemed a restless pain,
June a phantom in the rain;
Weary Autumn without grain
Turned her home, full of tears.
O my year, the most in vain
Of the years!
While the furrowed field was red,
While the roses rioted,
While a leaf was left to shed,
There was storm in the air.
Now that troubled heart is dead,
All is fair.
'Neath a glow of copper-grey
Spreads the stubble far away,
And the hilltop cedars play
Interludes in accord,
And the sun adorns the day
Like a sword.
Even, usual, and slow,
Blue enchanted breakers go
Over carmine reefs in snow,
With a sail in the lee:
There's the godhead that we know
On the sea.
Ah, let be a promise vast
So mysteriously downcast!
I will love this year that passed
To her grave in the wild,
And is clear of stain at last
As a child.
_Sleep_
O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide
On whose mysterious breast my head hath lain,
Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain
Through holy hours, be yet unsatisfied,
Loose me betimes: for in my soul abide
Urgings of memory, and exile's pain
Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain
May throb for the old strife wherein he died.
Often and evermore, across the sea
Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of Day,
Oh, speed me: as that outworn King erewhile
By kind Phæacians borne ashore, so me,
Thy loving healèd ward, fail not to lay
Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle.
_Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_
HOW life hath cheapen'd, and how blank
The Worlde is! like a fen
Where long ago unstainèd sank
The starrie gentlemen:
Since Marston Moor and Newbury drank
King Charles his gentlemen.
If Fate in any air accords
What Fate deny'd, Oh, then
I ask to be among your Swordes,
My joyous gentlemen;
Towards Honour's heaven to goe, and towards
King Charles his gentlemen!
_In a February Garden_
ONE rose till after snowtime
O'erlooked the sodden grass;
Now crocuses are twenty
With spear and torch a plenty,
To keep our Candlemas.
So thin that winter greyness,
So light that sleep forlorn,
No seventh week uncloses
Between the martyr roses
And crocus newly born.
All doubt is hushed for ever,
Confuted without sound,
All ruin featly ended,
When bulbs begin their splendid
Gay muster overground;
And mid the golden heralds
That ride the icy breeze,
Man, too, divinely vernal,
Storms into life eternal
Victoriously with these.
O Beauty, O Persistence
Ineffable and strong!
Would we had borne with Sorrow
In her unlasting morrow:
And Death was not for long.
_A Valediction_
_R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_
WHEN from the vista of the Book I shrink,
From lauded pens that earn ignoble wage
Begetting nothing joyous, nothing sage,
Nor keep with Shakespeare's use one golden link;
When heavily my sanguine spirits sink
To read too plain on each impostor page
Only of kings the broken lineage,--
Well for my peace if then on thee I think,
Louis, our priest of letters, and our knight
With whose familiar baldric Hope is girt,
From whose young hands she bears the Grail away.
All glad, all great! Truer because thou wert,
I am and must be; and in thy known light
Go down to dust, content with this my day.
_A Footpath Morality_
ALONG the Hills, height unto height
Tosses the dappled light,
Rills in a torrent flow,
And cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow.
Young winds nothing can quell
Scale the wild-chestnut citadel,
Again to make
Its thousand faëry white pagodas shake.
Up many a lane
The blue vervain
A coverlid hath featly spread
For the bees' bed,
That those tired sylvan thieves
May lie most soft on the sweet and scalloped leaves.
And by to-morrow morn
Bright agrimony, in the thickets born,
Will high uphold
Each cinquefoil of plain gold;
Dogwood in white will hood herself apace,
And betony flaunt a varied gypsy mace,
And copper pimpernel, true as a clock,
On some waste common, by a rock
Her small dark-centred wheel draw in
Long, long ere dusk begin.
This day
Of infinite May
Is far more fitly yours than ours,
O spirit-bodied flowers!
What heart disordered sore
Comes through the greenwood door,
Shall for your sake
Find sap and soil and dew, and shall not break;
And hearts beneath no ban
Will in your sight some penance do for man,
Poor lagging man, content to be
Sick with the impact of eternity,
Who might keep step with you in the low grass,
Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass!
Not ye, not ye, the privilege disown
To flourish fair and fall fair, and be strewn
Deep in that Will of God, where blend
The origin of beauty and the end.
_The Light of the House_
BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;
You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive;
You linger on the stair: Love's lonely pulses leap!
The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.
Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still;
The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will,
Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored;
And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.
To every inmate heart, confirmed in cheer you brought,
Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought,
And to a wonted guest (not awestruck heretofore),
The sunshine that was you floods all the open door.
_An Outdoor Litany_
_Donec misereatur nostri._
THE spur is red upon the briar,
The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore;
The wind shakes out the coloured fire
From lamps a-row on the sycamore;
The bluebird with his flitting note
Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat;
The mink is busy; herds again
Go hillward in the honeyed rain;
The midges meet. I cry to Thee
Whose heart
Remembers each of these: Thou art
My God who hast forgotten me!
Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound,
The lined gulls in the offing ride;
Along an edge of marshy ground
The shad-bush enters like a bride.
Yon little clouds are washed of care
That climb the blue New England air,
And almost merrily withal
The hyla tunes at evenfall
His oboe in a mossy tree.
So too,
Am I not Thine? Arise, undo
This fear Thou hast forgotten me.
Happy the vernal rout that come
To their due offices to-day,
And strange, if in Thy mercy's sum,
Excluded man alone decay.
I ask no triumph, ask no joy,
Save leave to live, in law's employ.
As to a weed, to me but give
Thy sap! lest aye inoperative
Here in the Pit my strength shall be:
And still
Help me endure the Pit, until
Thou wilt not have forgotten me.
_Of Joan's Youth_
I WOULD unto my fair restore
A simple thing:
The flushing cheek she had before!
Out-velveting
No more, no more,
On our sad shore,
The carmine grape, the moth's auroral wing.
Ah, say how winds in flooding grass
Unmoor the rose;
Or guileful ways the salmon pass
To sea, disclose:
For so, alas,
With Love, alas,
With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes.
_In a Brecon Valley_
_Patulis ubi vallibus errans
Subjacet aëriis montibus Isca pater._
H.V. _Ad Posteros._
I
I FOLLOWED thee, wild stream of Paradise,
White Usk, for ever showering the sunned bee
In the pink chestnut and the hawthorn tree;
And all along had magical surmise
Of mountains fluctuant in those vesper skies,
As unto mermen, caverned in mid-sea,
Far up the vast green reaches, soundlessly
The giant breakers form, and fall, and rise.
Above thy poet's dust, by yonder yew,
Ere distance perished, ere a star began,
His clear monastic measure, heard of few,
Through lonelier glens of mine own being ran;
And thou to me wert dear, because I knew
The God who made thee gracious, and the man.