The Palmer's Song.
I will fling ambition away
Like a vain and glittering toy;
With tristful weeping will I pray
And wash my sin's alloy.
I will wear the palmer's weed
And walk in the sandal shoon.
I will walk in the sun by day
And sleep beneath the moon.
I will set forth as the bells toll
And travel to the East,
Because of a sin upon my soul
And the chiding of a priest.
The Song of the Old Men.
We are the old, old men,
Once fierce and high-hearted in frolics,
But now we are three score and ten
Or upwards--mere relics
Of the fine strong pageant of youth,
Which time in his spite and unruth
Has taken.
We are dim and palsied and shaken,
Ah! me--forsaken.
Where are the fair white maids
With flower faces and carriage
Straight as new-smithied blades,
Ripe, ready for marriage?
Now all are withered and grey,
Their beauty has passed away,
Ah! madness--
They are bent like hoops with sadness
And the world's badness.
Our voices are hoarse and drear,
As we sit and mumble together,
We have no good tidings to hear
We had sooner have never
(So we grumble together) been born,
That are so sick and forlorn;
Just shadows--
But once bright fishers of shallows,
Swift hunters of meadows.
We are the old, old men,
We have seen and endured much trouble;
It has turned us children again,
And bent us double.
Now we sit like a circle of stones,
And hear in each others' moans
Ill token.
For our sweetest thoughts were broken
Or else unspoken.
The Song of Snorro.
"Oh! who can drink at the world's brink,
Or reach the twilight star?
It's a long sail where the winds wail,
And the great waters are.
"Or who can say at the parting day
That he will see once more
His children's faces in happy places,
His true wife at the door?"
Snorro the Viking, his thigh striking,
Laughed in his big red beard.
"Some are bound by sight and sound.
While some have wished and feared.
"Their days dream as a droning stream
Or moonlight in a wood.
Now who can sate his love or hate,
And the tumult of his blood?
"Then cast the die for the open sky
When the great sun beats abroad,
For the foam-fleck and the narrow deck,
The life of oar and sword.
"Life and limb for the wind's hymn,
And all the fears that be,
The ghost-races with ghastly faces,
The phantoms of the sea.
"Mine is the morrow," shouted Snorro,
"I longed and have not feared."
And his great laughter followed after
And rumbled in his beard.
The Island.
Once (was it long ago, dear?
Oh! hark to the sighing seas.)
We sailed to a wonderful Island
In the golden Antipodes,
Where the waves wore an azure mantle,
The winds were ever at rest,
For we'd left the Old World behind us
A thousand leagues to the West.
We came to that wonderful Island;
Girt by a ring of foam
It lay in the sea like a jewel
Under an azure dome.
The cliffs were all gold in the sunlight,
The strand was a floor of gold,
So we knew we'd come to the Island
We'd read of in tales of old.
Was it long we stayed in our Island?
(Dear, I can never say)
I know we walked on the mountains
Which looked far over the bay.
I know that we laughed for pleasure
(Were we wise or a couple of fools?)
As we gazed at the painted fishes
Which swam in the shallow pools.
And night drew over our Island
The purple pall of the skies,
The air was heavy with fragrance
And soft with the breath of sighs,
And voices out of the forest,
Voices out of the sea,
Told the eternal secret....
Told it to you and me.
And the stars came down from the heavens,
And the magical tropic moon,
To dance a measure together
Over the still lagoon;
And the whisper of distant forests,
The noise of the surf in our ears,
Seemed like the song of the ages
Sung by the passing years.
But we said "farewell" to our Island
Which we had discovered alone....
The sand ... and the palms ... and the headland....
The westering wind ... and the sun.
We said "farewell" to our Island
(Oh! hark to the sullen rain!)
... And I knew as it fell behind us
We should not see it again.
For only a few may go there
And they but once may go,
With glamour of stars above them
And the swinging seas below.
But I still hear its forests whisper,
The noise of the surf on the shore,
In that far-off wonderful Island
Which I shall see no more.
Fair Filamelle.
Fair Filamelle is my distress
With all her cruel backwardness.
She will not listen to my pain,
But turneth from me in disdain.
That fair Filamelle,
Her disdain is now my hell.
She hath bewitched me with her eyes,
As Circe did the sailor wise,
Or Egypt did the Roman Prince,
Two thousand years agone.
I've little else but weeping since,
My heart is like a stone.
If you like laughter's silver sound
Why have you dealt me such a wound,
If youth and beauty look askance
At glum and heavy countenance,
Why is it coy and cruel,
Adding to my fire more fuel?
Alas! Alas! it has no care,
Free as the birds which flit in air,
Nor heedfulness has any,
Else were its kindness not so rare,
Its victims then so many.
Ah! fair Filamelle, have pity on my moan,
Else must I die alone,
My heart is like a stone.
The Song of Kisses.
I have no skill in Love's soft war,
Nor am I bold to woo
In the same sort that conquerors are
When they are lovers too.
Tho' passion thunders in my brain
Like ocean on a beach,
My tongue is bounden with a chain
And manacled my speech.
Yet, could I let one word go free
To touch your chords with fire,
Become the wind upon the sea
The plectrum of the lyre,
Then, my Althea, should we be
Two lovers without shame,
All things in their epitome,
The Universe our name.
Then should we bow to Love's command
As the waves kiss the shore
And the rain falls upon the land
That it may thirst no more.
Then should we kiss, with time at bay
As in the Ajalon valley,
A score--two score--two hundred--nay
We would not keep the tally--
A hundred thousand in one bout,
Ten myriads ere we slumbered,
And the stars winked and all went out
To find themselves out-numbered.
The Song of Odysseus.
Out of the dark I return--
The abode of the shades;
The words which they said
Were the strengthless words of the Dead,
Meaningless, nothing importing.
Out of the dark I return
And the House of the Dead;
The endless regions of gloom
Deep sepulchred in the womb
Of Earth, the mother of all things.
Out of the dark I return,
From the stream of the Dead;
I slew a goat on the brink
And they pressed around me to drink
Their shadowy twittering legions.
Out of the dark I return,
From the speech of the Dead;
I asked them for counsel and word,
They twittered like bats when they heard
And wailed for the warm blood flowing.
Out of the dark I return;
(Ye are baffled, Oh! Dead);
Lost hopes, lost hearts, lost loves,
Hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked are your droves,
I drew my sword and ye vanished.
Out of the dark I return
And the dust of desire;
My ears are still filled with the shrieks
Of the pitiful Dead and my cheeks
Still pale with the paleness of Hades.
Out of the dark I return
For the day, for the deed;
And now to Apollo, the slayer,
I stand and utter a prayer
Humbly, first making obeisance.