Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.
UNFINISHED POEMS
& FRAGMENTS
_52
Summa_
THE best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribèd to
The holy Three in One.
_53_
WHAT being in rank-old nature should earlier have that
breath been
That hére pérsonal tells off these heart-song powerful
peals?--
A bush-browed, beetle-brówed bíllow is it?
With a soúth-wésterly wínd blústering, with a tide rolls
reels
Of crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seas
in; seen
Únderneath, their glassy barrel, of a fairy green.
. . . . . . . .
Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling
_54
On the Portrait of Two Beautiful
Young People
A Brother and Sister_
O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.
Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest
In one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast,
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.
And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreams
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.
She leans on him with such contentment fond
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;
His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.
But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you are
Of favoured make and mind and health and youth,
Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star?
There's none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.
There's none but good can bé good, both for you
And what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid;
None good but God--a warning wavèd to
One once that was found wanting when Good weighed.
Man lives that list, that leaning in the will
No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,
The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,
Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.
Your feast of; that most in you earnest eye
May but call on your banes to more carouse.
Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry,
To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward
boughs?
Enough: corruption was the world's first woe.
What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?
O but I bear my burning witness though
Against the wild and wanton work of men.
. . . . . . .
_55_
THE sea took pity: it interposed with doom:
'I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand:
Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb,
And she shall child them on the New-world strand.'
. . . . . . . .
_56
(Ash-boughs)_
a.
NOT of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,
Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep
Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.
Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and
furled
Fast ór they in clammyish lashtender combs creep
Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.
They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May
Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray
Of greenery: it is old earth's groping towards the steep
Heaven whom she childs us by.
(Variant from line 7.) b.
They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there
hurled],
With talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye,
But more cheer is when] May
Mells blue with snowwhite through their fringe and fray
Of greenery and old earth gropes for, grasps at steep
Heaven with it whom she childs things by.
_57_
. . . . . . . .
HOPE holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out
To take His lovely likeness more and more.
It will not well, so she would bring about
An ever brighter burnish than before
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.
Her glass is blest but she as good as blind
Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there;
Her glass drinks light, she darkles down behind,
All of her glorious gainings unaware.
. . . . . . . .
I told you that she turned her mirror dim
Betweenwhiles, but she sees herself not Him.
. . . . . . . .
_53
St. Winefred's Well
ACT I. Sc. I
_Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following._
T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me?
W. You came by Caerwys, sir?
T. I came by Caerwys.
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle.
T. Your uncle met the messenger--met me; and this the
message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night.
W. To-night, sir!
T. Soon, now: therefore
Have all things ready in his room.
W. There needs but little doing.
T. Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one com-
panion,
His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be,
But both will share one cell. This was good news,
Gwenvrewi.
W. Ah yes!
T. Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her.
_Exit Winefred._
No man has such a daughter. The fathers of the world
Call no such maiden 'mine'. The deeper grows her
dearness
And more and more times laces round and round my heart,
The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers
there,
Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains
them, strains them;
Meantime some tongue cries 'What, Teryth! what, thou
poor fond father!
How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air
so rich about thee,
Is all, all sheared away, thus!' Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet 'tis not a funeral,
Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot with
feeling that
Alive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlessly
Goes marching thro' my mind. What sense is this? It
has none.
This is too much the father; nay the mother. Fanciful!
I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.
_Enter Gwenlo._
. . . . . . . . . . .
Act II.--_Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene,
Winefred having been murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc
with a bloody sword._
C. My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my
mind?
What stroke has Caradoc's right arm dealt? what done?
Head of a rebel
Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,
In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;
Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,
On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her--
Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.
What work? what harm 's done? There is no harm done,
none yet;
Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was--mock. I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day's task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy
dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, the woeful word! Then what,
What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders,
fall,
And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank's edge; then
Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,
It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes!
In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,
Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,
In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,
No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down
But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;
Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven:
O there,
There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances
Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what
first lightning
Any instant falls means me. And I do not repent;
I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent
I have like a lion done, lionlike done,
Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,
Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth
In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,
Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor
Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!
What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering
Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home,
nature's business,
Despatches with no flinching. But will flesh, O can flesh
Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!
We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary
And in this darksome world what comfort can I find?
Down this darksome world cómfort whére can I find
When 'ts light I quenched; its rose, time's one rich rose,
my hand,
By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleecèd bloom,
Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering
With no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her most
That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,
To hunger and not have, yét hope ón for, to storm and
strive and
Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper dis-
appointed,
The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,
Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,
Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;
I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,
Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,
Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,
Life's quick, this kínd, this kéen self-feeling,
With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,
Must all day long taste murder. What do nów then?
Do? Nay,
Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps
all doing. What do? Not yield,
Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out,
Brave all, and take what comes--as here this rabble is come,
Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers
Than sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes.
Come!
_Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno._
. . . . . . . . . . .
_After Winefred's raising from the dead and the breaking
out of the fountain._
BEUNO. O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from
fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing.
While blind men's eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts
of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that's lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-
dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief, in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist
and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night
delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, every-
where,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
. . . . . . . . . . .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on
crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome cáme
hither!
Not now to náme even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
. . . . . . . . . . .
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,
Amongst come-back-again things, thíngs with a revival,
things with a recovery,
Thy name . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
_59_
WHAT shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?--
Be under her banner and live for her honour:
Under her banner I'll live for her honour.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,
But country and flag, the flag I am under--
There is the shilling that finds me willing
To follow a banner and fight for honour.
CH. We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.
Call me England's fame's fond lover,
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,
But under her banner I live for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we march for her honour.
Where is the field I must play the man on?
O welcome there their steel or cannon.
Immortal beauty is death with duty,
If under her banner I fall for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we fall for her honour.
_60_
THE times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man's distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one--
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.
Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal . . .
_61
Cheery Beggar_
BEYOND Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called
there the Plain,
In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
. . . . . . . .
The motion of that man's heart is fine
Whom want could not make píne, píne
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer
him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.
. . . . . . . .
_62_
DENIS, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit
Caps occasion with an intellectual fit.
Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber'll hit
The bald and bóld blínking gold when áll's dóne
Right rooting in the bare butt's wincing navel in the sight
of the sun.
. . . . . . . .
_63_
THE furl of fresh-leaved dogrose down
His cheeks the forth-and-flaunting sun
Had swarthed about with lion-brown
Before the Spring was done.
His locks like all a ravel-rope's-end,
With hempen strands in spray--
Fallow, foam-fallow, hanks--fall'n off their ranks,
Swung down at a disarray.
Or like a juicy and jostling shock
Of bluebells sheaved in May
Or wind-long fleeces on the flock
A day off shearing day.
Then over his turnèd temples--here--
Was a rose, or, failing that,
Rough-Robin or five-lipped campion clear
For a beauty-bow to his hat,
And the sunlight sidled, like dewdrops, like dandled
diamonds
Through the sieve of the straw of the plait.
. . . . . . . .
_64
The Woodlark_
_TEEVO cheetio cheevio chee:_
O where, what can thát be?
_Weedio-weedio:_ there again!
So tiny a trickle of sóng-strain;
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or gréen ground
Before or behind or far or at hand
Either left either right
Anywhere in the súnlight.
Well, after all! Ah but hark--
'I am the little woodlark.
. . . . . . .
To-day the sky is two and two
With white strokes and strains of the blue
. . . . . . .
Round a ring, around a ring
And while I sail (must listen) I sing
. . . . . . .
The skylark is my cousin and he
Is known to men more than me
. . . . . . .
. . . when the cry within
Says Go on then I go on
Till the longing is less and the good gone
But down drop, if it says Stop,
To the all-a-leaf of the tréetop
And after that off the bough
. . . . . . .
I ám so véry, O só very glad
That I dó thínk there is not to be had . . .
. . . . . . .
The blue wheat-acre is underneath
And the braided ear breaks out of the sheath,
The ear in milk, lush the sash,
And crush-silk poppies aflash,
The blood-gush blade-gash
Flame-rash rudred
Bud shelling or broad-shed
Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled
Dandy-hung dainty head.
. . . . . . .
And down ... the furrow dry
Sunspurge and oxeye
And laced-leaved lovely
Foam-tuft fumitory
. . . . . . .
Through the velvety wind V-winged
To the nest's nook I balance and buoy
With a sweet joy of a sweet joy,
Sweet, of a sweet, of a sweet joy
Of a sweet--a sweet--sweet--joy.'
_65
Moonrise_
I AWOKE in the Midsummer not to call night, |in the
white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe | of a
finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit, | lovely in waning but
lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, | of
dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, | en-
tangled him, not quit utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, | unsought, pre-
sented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, | eyelid and eyelid of
slumber.
_66_
REPEAT that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delight-
fully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground,
hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
_67
On a piece of music_
How all's to one thing wrought!
_See facsimile, after p. 92_.
(Transcriber's note: The facsimile of the handwritten poem
is omitted from this text version. It is freely available
online from the Internet Archive.)
_68_
'The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
'The child is father to the man.'
No; what the poet did write ran,
'The man is father to the child.'
'The child is father to the man!'
How _can_ he be? The words are wild.
_69_
THE shepherd's brow fronting forked lightning, owns
The horror and the havoc and the glory
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven--a story
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.
But man--we, scaffold of score brittle bones;
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary
Age gasp; whose breath is our _memento mori_--
What bass is _our_ viol for tragic tones?
He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;
And, blazoned in however bold the name,
Man Jack the man is, just; his mate a hussy.
And I that die these deaths, that feed this flame,
That ... in smooth spoons spy life's masque mirrored:
tame
My tempests there, my fire and fever fussy.
_70
To his Watch_
MORTAL my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time's some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die--
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.
Field-flown the departed day no morning brings
Saying 'This was yours' with her, but new one, worse.
And then that last and shortest . . .
_71_
STRIKE, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail
May's beauty massacre and wispèd wild clouds grow
Out on the giant air; tell Summer No,
Bid joy back, have at the harvest, keep Hope pale.
_72
Epithalamion_
HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where
a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and water-
blowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer's sovereign good.
By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies hud-
dling out,
Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by
turn and turn about.
This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast
Into such a sudden zest
Of summertime joys
That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best
There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;
Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild
wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood
By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels
there,
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with--
down he dings
His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:
Careless these in coloured wisp
All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks
Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp
Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots
Fast he opens, last he offwrings
Till walk the world he can with bare his feet
And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks
Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks
And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy
quicksilvery shivès and shoots
And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,
Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will
the fleet
Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs
Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about
him, laughs, swims.
Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean
I should be wronging longer leaving it to float
Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note--
What is ... the delightful dene?
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends
Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns
Rankèd round the bower
. . . . . . . . . .
EDITOR'S NOTES
PREFACE TO NOTES
AN editor of posthumous work is bounden to give some account
of the authority for his text; and it is the purpose of the follow-
ing notes to satisfy inquiry concerning matters whereof the
present editor has the advantage of first-hand or particular
knowledge.
_Sources_ The sources are four, and will be distinguished as
A, B, D, and H, as here described.
_A_ is my own collection, a MS. book made up of
Autographs--by which word I denote poems in the author's hand-
Writing--pasted into it as they were received from him, and also
of contemporary copies of other poems. These autographs and
copies date from '67 to '89, the year of his death. Additions
made by copying after that date are not reckoned or used. The
first two items of the facsimiles at page 70 are cuttings from A.
_B_ is a MS. book, into which, in '83, I copied from _A_ certain
poems of which the author had kept no copy. He was remiss in
making fair copies of his work, and his autograph of The Deutsch-
land having been (seemingly) lost, I copied that poem and others
from _A_ at his request. After that date he entered more poems
in this book as he completed them, and he also made both
corrections of copy and emendations of the poems which had
been copied into it by me. Thus, if a poem occur in both _A_ and
_B_, then _B_ is the later and, except for overlooked errors of
copyist, the better authority. The last entry written by G. M. H.
into this book is of the date 1887.
_D_ is a collection of the author's letters to Canon Dixon, the
only other friend who ever read his poems, with but few exceptions
whether of persons or of poems. These letters are in my keep-
ing; they contain autographs of a few poems with late corrections.
_H_ is the bundle of posthumous papers that came into my
hands at the author's death. These were at the time examined,
sorted, and indexed; and the more important pieces of which
copies were taken were inserted into a scrap-book. That col-
lection is the source of a series of his most mature sonnets, and
of almost all the unfinished poems and fragments. Among these
papers were also some early drafts. The facsimile after p. 92 is
from _H_.