Song offered to Queen Victoria, of blessed and glorious memory, in
celebration of her second Jubilee.
{105}
_The King of England_
(JUNE 24TH, 1902)
In that eclipse of noon when joy was hushed
Like the bird's song beneath unnatural night,
And Terror's footfall in the darkness crushed
The rose imperial of our delight,
Then, even then, though no man cried "He comes,"
And no man turned to greet him passing there,
With phantom heralds challenging renown
And silent-throbbing drums
I saw the King of England, hale and fair,
Ride out with a great train through London town.
Unarmed he rode, but in his ruddy shield
The lions bore the dint of many a lance,
And up and down his mantle's azure field
Were strewn the lilies plucked in famous France.
Before him went with banner floating wide
The yeoman breed that served his honour best,
And mixed with these his knights of noble blood;
But in the place of pride
His admirals in billowy lines abreast
Convoyed him close like galleons on the flood.
{106}
Full of a strength unbroken showed his face
And his brow calm with youth's unclouded dawn,
But round his lips were lines of tenderer grace
Such as no hand but Time's hath ever drawn.
Surely he knew his glory had no part
In dull decay, nor unto Death must bend,
Yet surely too of lengthening shadows dreamed
With sunset in his heart,
So brief his beauty now, so near the end,
And now so old and so immortal seemed.
O King among the living, these shall hail
Sons of thy dust that shall inherit thee:
O King of men that die, though we must fail
Thy life is breathed from thy triumphant sea.
O man that servest men by right of birth,
Our hearts' content thy heart shall also keep,
Thou too with us shalt one day lay thee down
In our dear native earth,
Full sure the King of England, while we sleep,
For ever rides abroad through London town.
{107}
_The Nile_
Out of the unknown South,
Through the dark lands of drouth,
Far wanders ancient Nile in slumber gliding:
Clear-mirrored in his dream
The deeds that haunt his stream
Flash out and fade like stars in midnight sliding.
Long since, before the life of man
Rose from among the lives that creep,
With Time's own tide began
That still mysterious sleep,
Only to cease when Time shall reach the eternal deep.
From out his vision vast
The early gods have passed,
They waned and perished with the faith that made them;
The long phantasmal line
Of Pharaohs crowned divine
Are dust among the dust that once obeyed them.
Their land is one mute burial mound,
Save when across the drifted years
Some chant of hollow sound,
Some triumph blent with tears,
From Memnon's lips at dawn wakens the desert meres.
{108}
O Nile, and can it be
No memory dwells with thee
Of Grecian lore and the sweet Grecian singer?
The legions' iron tramp,
The Goths' wide-wandering camp,
Had these no fame that by thy shore might linger?
Nay, then must all be lost indeed,
Lost too the swift pursuing might
That cleft with passionate speed
Aboukir's tranquil night,
And shattered in mid-swoop the great world-eagle's flight.
Yet have there been on earth
Spirits of starry birth,
Whose splendour rushed to no eternal setting:
They over all endure,
Their course through all is sure,
The dark world's light is still of their begetting.
Though the long past forgotten lies,
Nile! in thy dream remember him,
Whose like no more shall rise
Above our twilight's rim,
Until the immortal dawn shall make all glories dim.
For this man was not great
By gold or kingly state,
Or the bright sword, or knowledge of earth's wonder;
But more than all his race
He saw life face to face,
And heard the still small voice above the thunder.
{109}
O river, while thy waters roll
By yonder vast deserted tomb,
There, where so clear a soul
So shone through gathering doom,
Thou and thy land shall keep the tale of lost Khartoum.
{110}
_Sráhmandázi_
Deep embowered beside the forest river,
Where the flame of sunset only falls,
Lapped in silence lies the House of Dying,
House of them to whom the twilight calls.
There within when day was near to ending,
By her lord a woman young and strong,
By his chief a songman old and stricken
Watched together till the hour of song.
"O my songman, now the bow is broken,
Now the arrows one by one are sped,
Sing to me the song of Sráhmandázi,
Sráhmandázi, home of all the dead."
Then the songman, flinging wide his songnet,
On the last token laid his master's hand,
While he sang the song of Sráhmandázi,
None but dying men can understand.
"Yonder sun that fierce and fiery-hearted
Marches down the sky to vanish soon,
At the self-same hour in Sráhmandázi
Rises pallid like the rainy moon.
{111}
"There he sees the heroes by their river,
Where the great fish daily upward swim;
Yet they are but shadows hunting shadows,
Phantom fish in waters drear and dim.
"There he sees the kings among their headmen,
Women weaving, children playing games;
Yet they are but shadows ruling shadows,
Phantom folk with dim forgotten names.
"Bid farewell to all that most thou lovest,
Tell thy heart thy living life is done;
All the days and deeds of Sráhmandázi
Are not worth an hour of yonder sun."
Dreamily the chief from out the songnet
Drew his hand and touched the woman's head;
"Know they not, then, love in Sráhmandázi?
Has a king no bride among the dead?"
Then the songman answered, "O my master,
Love they know, but none may learn it there;
Only souls that reach that land together
Keep their troth and find the twilight fair.
"Thou art still a king, and at thy passing
By thy latest word must all abide:
If thou willest, here am I, thy songman;
If thou lovest, here is she, thy bride."
{112}
Hushed and dreamy lay the House of Dying,
Dreamily the sunlight upward failed,
Dreamily the chief on eyes that loved him
Looked with eyes the coming twilight veiled.
Then he cried, "My songman, I am passing;
Let her live, her life is but begun;
All the days and nights of Sráhmandázi
Are not worth an hour of yonder sun."
Yet, when there within the House of Dying
The last silence held the sunset air,
Not alone he came to Sráhmandázi,
Not alone she found the twilight fair:
While the songman, far beneath the forest
Sang of Srahmandazi all night through,
"Lovely be thy name, O Land of shadows,
Land of meeting, Land of all the true!"
{113}
_Outward Bound_
Dear Earth, near Earth, the clay that made us men,
The land we sowed,
The hearth that glowed--
O Mother, must we bid farewell to thee?
Fast dawns the last dawn, and what shall comfort then
The lonely hearts that roam the outer sea?
Gray wakes the daybreak, the shivering sails are set,
To misty deeps
The channel sweeps--
O Mother, think on us who think on thee!
Earth-home, birth-home, with love remember yet
The sons in exile on the eternal sea.
{114}
_Hope the Hornblower_
"Hark ye, hark to the winding horn;
Sluggards, awake, and front the morn!
Hark ye, hark to the winding horn;
The sun's on meadow and mill.
Follow me, hearts that love the chase;
Follow me, feet that keep the pace:
Stirrup to stirrup we ride, we ride,
We ride by moor and hill."
Huntsman, huntsman, whither away?
What is the quarry afoot to-day?
Huntsman, huntsman, whither away,
And what the game ye kill?
Is it the deer, that men may dine?
Is it the wolf that tears the kine?
What is the race ye ride, ye ride,
Ye ride by moor and hill?
"Ask not yet till the day be dead
What is the game that's forward fled,
Ask not yet till the day be dead
The game we follow still.
{115}
An echo it may be, floating past;
A shadow it may be, fading fast:
Shadow or echo, we ride, we ride,
We ride by moor and hill."
{116}
_O Pulchritudo_
O saint whose thousand shrines our feet have trod
And our eyes loved thy lamp's eternal beam,
Dim earthly radiance of the Unknown God,
Hope of the darkness, light of them that dream,
Far off, far off and faint, O glimmer on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.
O Word whose meaning every sense hath sought,
Voice of the teeming field and grassy mound,
Deep-whispering fountain of the wells of thought,
Will of the wind and soul of all sweet sound,
Far off, far off and faint, O murmur on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.
{117}
_The Final Mystery_
This myth, of Egyptian origin, formed part of the instruction given to
those initiated in the Orphic mysteries, and written versions of it
were buried with the dead.
Hear now, O Soul, the last command of all--
When thou hast left thine every mortal mark,
And by the road that lies beyond recall
Won through the desert of the Burning Dark,
Thou shalt behold within a garden bright
A well, beside a cypress ivory-white.
Still is that well, and in its waters cool
White, white and windless, sleeps that cypress tree:
Who drinks but once from out her shadowy pool
Shall thirst no more to all eternity.
Forgetting all, by all forgotten clean,
His soul shall be with that which hath not been.
But thou, though thou be trembling with thy dread,
And parched with thy desire more fierce than flame,
Think on the stream wherefrom thy life was fed,
And that diviner fountain whence it came.
Turn thee and cry--behold, it is not far--
Unto the hills where living waters are.
{118}
"Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth,
Yet was I fathered by the starry sky:
Thou knowest I came not of the shadows' birth,
Let me not die the death that shadows die.
Give me to drink of the sweet spring that leaps
From Memory's fount, wherein no cypress sleeps."
Then shalt thou drink, O Soul, and therewith slake
The immortal longing of thy mortal thirst,
So of thy Father's life shalt thou partake,
And be for ever that thou wert at first.
Lost in remembered loves, yet thou more thou
With them shalt reign in never-ending Now.
{119}
_Il Santo_
Alas! alas! what impious hands are these?
They have cut down my dark mysterious trees,
Defied the brooding spell
That sealed my sacred well,
Broken my fathers' fixed and ancient bars,
And on the mouldering shade
Wherein my dead were laid
Let in the cold clear aspect of the stars.
Slumber hath held the grove for years untold:
Is there no reverence for a peace so old?
Is there no seemly awe
For bronze-engraven law,
For dust beatified and saintly name?
When they shall see the shrine
Princes have held divine,
Will they not bow before the eternal flame?
Vain! vain! the wind of heaven for ages long
Hath whispered manhood, "Let thine arm be strong!
Hew down and fling away
The growth that veils decay,
{120}
Shatter the shrine that chokes the living spring.
Scorn hatred, scorn regret,
Dig deep and deeper yet,
Leave not the quest for word of saint or king.
"Dig deeper yet! though the world brand thee now,
The faithful labour of an impious brow
May for thy race redeem
The source of that lost stream
Once given the thirst of all the earth to slake.
Nay, thou too ere the end
Thy weary knee mayst bend
And in thy trembling hands that water take."
{121}
_In July_
His beauty bore no token,
No sign our gladness shook;
With tender strength unbroken
The hand of Life he took:
But the summer flowers were falling,
Falling and fading away,
And mother birds were calling,
Crying and calling
For their loves that would not stay.
He knew not Autumn's chillness,
Nor Winter's wind nor Spring's;
He lived with Summer's stillness
And sun and sunlit things:
But when the dusk was falling
He went the shadowy way,
And one more heart is calling,
Crying and calling
For the love that would not stay.
{122}
_From Generation to Generation_
O son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
Between a gravestone and a cradle's head--
Between the love whose name is loss unending
And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,--
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.
{123}
_When I Remember_
When I remember that the day will come
For this our love to quit his land of birth,
And bid farewell to all the ways of earth
With lips that must for evermore be dumb,
Then creep I silent from the stirring hum,
And shut away the music and the mirth,
And reckon up what may be left of worth
When hearts are cold and love's own body numb.
Something there must be that I know not here,
Or know too dimly through the symbol dear;
Some touch, some beauty, only guessed by this--
If He that made us loves, it shall replace,
Beloved, even the vision of thy face
And deep communion of thine inmost kiss.
{124}
_Mors Janua_
Pilgrim, no shrine is here, no prison, no inn:
Thy fear and thy belief alike are fond:
Death is a gate, and holds no room within:
Pass--to the road beyond.
{125}
_Rondel_*
Though I wander far-off ways,
Dearest, never doubt thou me:
Mine is not the love that strays,
Though I wander far-off ways:
Faithfully for all my days
I have vowed myself to thee:
Though I wander far-off ways,
Dearest, never doubt thou me.
* This and the two following pieces are from the French of Wenceslas,
Duke of Brabant and Luxembourg, who died in 1384.
{126}
_Rondel_
Long ago to thee I gave
Body, soul, and all I have--
Nothing in the world I keep:
All that in return I crave
Is that thou accept the slave
Long ago to thee I gave--
Body, soul, and all I have.
Had I more to share or save,
I would give as give the brave,
Stooping not to part the heap;
Long ago to thee I gave
Body, soul, and all I have--
Nothing in the world I keep.
{127}
_Balade_
I cannot tell, of twain beneath this bond,
Which one in grief the other goes beyond,--
Narcissus, who to end the pain he bore
Died of the love that could not help him more;
Or I, that pine because I cannot see
The lady who is queen and love to me.
Nay--for Narcissus, in the forest pond
Seeing his image, made entreaty fond,
"Beloved, comfort on my longing pour":
So for a while he soothed his passion sore;
So cannot I, for all too far is she--
The lady who is queen and love to me.
But since that I have Love's true colours donned,
I in his service will not now despond,
For in extremes Love yet can all restore:
So till her beauty walks the world no more
All day remembered in my hope shall be
The lady who is queen and love to me.
{128}
_The Last Word_
Before the April night was late
A rider came to the castle gate;
A rider breathing human breath,
But the words he spoke were the words of Death.
"Greet you well from the King our lord,
He marches hot for the eastward ford;
Living or dying, all or one,
Ye must keep the ford till the race be run."
Sir Alain rose with lips that smiled,
He kissed his wife, he kissed his child:
Before the April night was late
Sir Alain rode from the castle gate.
He called his men-at-arms by name,
But one there was uncalled that came:
He bade his troop behind him ride,
But there was one that rode beside.
_"Why will you spur so fast to die?
Be wiser ere the night go by.
A message late is a message lost;
For all your haste the foe had crossed."_
{129}
_"Are men such small unmeaning things
To strew the board of smiling Kings?
With life and death they play their game,
And life or death, the end's the same."_
Softly the April air above
Rustled the woodland homes of love:
Softly the April air below
Carried the dream of buds that blow.
_"Is he that bears a warrior's fame
To shun the pointless stroke of shame?
Will he that propped a trembling throne
Not stand for right when right's his own?_
_"Your oath on the four gospels sworn?
What oath can bind resolves unborn?
You lose that far eternal life?
Is it yours to lose? Is it child and wife?_
But now beyond the pathway's bend,
Sir Alain saw the forest end,
And winding wide beneath the hill,
The glassy river lone and still.
And now he saw with lifted eyes
The East like a great chancel rise,
And deep through all his senses drawn,
Received the sacred wine of dawn.
{130}
He set his face to the stream below,
He drew his axe from the saddle bow:
"Farewell, Messire, the night is sped;
There lies the ford, when all is said."
{131}
_The Viking's Song_
When I thy lover first
Shook out my canvas free
And like a pirate burst
Into that dreaming sea,
The land knew no such thirst
As then tormented me.
Now when at eve returned
I near that shore divine,
Where once but watch-fires burned
I see thy beacon shine,
And know the land hath learned
Desire that welcomes mine.
{132}
_The Sufi in the City_
I.
When late I watched the arrows of the sleet
Against the windows of the Tavern beat,
I heard a Rose that murmured from her Pot:
"Why trudge thy fellows yonder in the Street?
II.
"Before the phantom of False Morning dies,
Choked in the bitter Net that binds the skies,
Their feet, bemired with Yesterday, set out
For the dark alleys where To-morrow lies.
III.
"Think you, when all their petals they have bruised,
And all the fragrances of Life confused,
That Night with sweeter rest will comfort these
Than us, who still within the Garden mused?
{133}
IV.
"Think you the Gold they fight for all day long
Is worth the frugal Peace their clamours wrong?
Their Titles, and the Name they toil to build--
Will they outlast the echoes of our Song?"
V.
O Sons of Omar, what shall be the close
Seek not to know, for no man living knows:
But while within your hands the Wine is set
Drink ye--to Omar and the Dreaming Rose!
{134}
_To Edward Fitzgerald_
(MARCH 31ST, 1909)
'Tis a sad fate
To watch the world fighting,
All that is most fair
Ruthlessly blighting,
Blighting, ah! blighting.
When such a thought cometh
Let us not pine,
But gather old friends
Round the red wine--
Oh! pour the red wine!
And there we'll talk
And warm our wits
With Eastern fallacies
Out of old Fitz!
British old Fitz!
See him, half statesman--
Philosopher too--
Half ancient mariner
In baggy blue--
Such baggy blue!
{135}
Whimsical, wistful,
Haughty, forsooth:
Indolent always, yet
Ardent in truth,
But indolent, indolent!
There at the table
With us sits he,
Charming us subtly
To reverie,
Magic reverie.
"How sweet is summer's breath,
How sure and swift is death;
Nought wise on earth, save
What the wine whispereth,
Dreamily whispereth.
"At Naíshapúr beneath the sun,
Or here in misty Babylon,
Drink! for the rose leaves while you linger
Are falling, ever falling, one by one."
Ah! poet's soul, once more with us conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Once more with us to-night, old Fitz, once more
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire!
{136}
_Yattendon_
Among the woods and tillage
That fringe the topmost downs,
All lonely lies the village,
Far off from seas and towns.
Yet when her own folk slumbered
I heard within her street
Murmur of men unnumbered
And march of myriad feet.
For all she lies so lonely,
Far off from towns and seas,
The village holds not only
The roofs beneath her trees:
While Life is sweet and tragic
And Death is veiled and dumb,
Hither, by singer's magic,
The pilgrim world must come.
{137}
_Devon_
Deep-wooded combes, clear-mounded hills of morn,
Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall,
High lonely barrows where the curlews call,
Far moors that echo to the ringing horn,--
Devon! thou spirit of all these beauties born,
All these are thine, but thou art more than all:
Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall
Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn.
Yet, yet, O noble land, forbid us not
Even now to join our faint memorial chime
To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot
Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime;
Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps forgot
With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time.
{138}
_Among the Tombs_
She is a lady fair and wise,
Her heart her counsel keeps,
And well she knows of time that flies
And tide that onward sweeps;
But still she sits with restless eyes
Where Memory sleeps--
Where Memory sleeps.
Ye that have heard the whispering dead
In every wind that creeps,
Or felt the stir that strains the lead
Beneath the mounded heaps,
Tread softly, ah! more softly tread
Where Memory sleeps--
Where Memory sleeps.
{139}
_Gold_
(AFTER GIOVANNI PASCOLI)
At bedtime, when the sunset fire was red
One cypress turned to gold beneath its touch.
"Sleep now, my little son," the mother said;
"In God's high garden all the trees are such."
Then did the child in his bright dream behold
Branches of gold, trees, forests all of gold.
{140}
_A Sower_
With sanguine looks
And rolling walk
Among the rooks
He loved to stalk,
While on the land
With gusty laugh
From a full hand
He scattered chaff.
Now that within
His spirit sleeps
A harvest thin
The sickle reaps;
But the dumb fields
Desire his tread,
And no earth yields
A wheat more red.
{141}
_The Mossrose_
Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,
Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady,
And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour--
The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour--
Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement,
Laughing at first and then amazed at my amazement,
That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished,
And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished.
But I--I saw that garden, with its one treasure
The tiny mossrose, tiny even by childhood's measure,
And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel,
And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel.
She wept for her one little bud: but he, outreaching
The hand of brotherly right, would take it for all her beseeching:
{142}
And she flung her arms about him, and gave like a sister,
And laughed at her own tears, and wept again when he kissed her.
So the rose is mine long since, and whenever I find it
And drink again the sharp sweet scent of the moss behind it,
I remember the tears of a child, and her love and her laughter,
And the morning shadows of youth and the night that fell thereafter.
{143}
_Ave, Soror_
I left behind the ways of care,
The crowded hurrying hours,
I breathed again the woodland air,
I plucked the woodland flowers:
Bluebells as yet but half awake,
Primroses pale and cool,
Anemones like stars that shake
In a green twilight pool--
On these still lay the enchanted shade,
The magic April sun;
With my own child a child I strayed
And thought the years were one.
As through the copse she went and came
My senses lost their truth;
I called her by the dear dead name
That sweetened all my youth.
{144}
_To a River in the South_
Call me no more, O gentle stream,
To wander through thy sunny dream,
No more to lean at twilight cool
Above thy weir and glimmering pool.
Surely I know thy hoary dawns,
The silver crisp on all thy lawns,
The softly swirling undersong
That rocks thy reeds the winter long.
Surely I know the joys that ring
Through the green deeps of leafy spring;
I know the elfin cups and domes
That are their small and secret homes.
Yet is the light for ever lost
That daily once thy meadows crossed,
The voice no more by thee is heard
That matched the song of stream and bird.
Call me no more!--thy waters roll
Here, in the world that is my soul,
And here, though Earth be drowned in night,
Old love shall dwell with old delight.
{145}
_On the Death of a Noble Lady_
Time, when thou shalt bring again
Pallas from the Trojan plain,
Portia from the Roman's hall,
Brynhild from the fiery wall,
Eleanor, whose fearless breath
Drew the venom'd fangs of Death,
And Philippa doubly brave
Or to conquer or to save--
When thou shalt on one bestow
All their grace and all their glow,
All their strength and all their state,
All their passion pure and great,
Some far age may honour then
Such another queen of men.
{146}
_Midway_
Turn back, my Soul, no longer set
Thy peace upon the years to come
Turn back, the land of thy regret
Holds nothing doubtful, nothing dumb.
There are the voices, there the scenes
That make thy life in living truth
A tale of heroes and of queens,
Fairer than all the hopes of youth.
{147}
_Ad Matrem Dolorosam_
Think not thy little fountain's rain
That in the sunlight rose and flashed,
From the bright sky has fallen again,
To cold and shadowy silence dashed.
The Joy that in her radiance leapt
From everlasting hath not slept.
The hand that to thy hand was dear,
The untroubled eyes that mirrored thine,
The voice that gave thy soul to hear
A whisper of the Love Divine--
What though the gold was mixed with dust?
The gold is thine and cannot rust.
Nor fear, because thy darling's heart
No longer beats with mortal life,
That she has missed the ennobling part
Of human growth and human strife.
Only she has the eternal peace
Wherein to reap the soul's increase.
{148}
_Vrais Amants_
(FOURTEENTH CENTURY)
"Time mocks thy opening music with a close;
What now he gives long since he gave away.
Thou deemst thy sun hath risen, but ere it rose
It was eclipsed, and dusk shall be thy day."