She walks high heaven beyond the shadow there:
Whom I too veiled from all men's envious sight
With inward eyes adore and silent prayer.
{149}
_The Sangreal_
Once, when beside me in that sacred place
I saw my lady lift her lovely head,
And saw the Chalice gleam above her face
And her dear lips with life immortal red,
Then, born again beyond the mist of years,
I knelt in Heaven, and drank the wine of tears.
{150}
_Sir Hugh the Palmer_
I
He kneeled among a waste of sands
Before the Mother-Maid,
But on the far green forest-lands
His steadfast eyes were stayed,
And like a knight of stone his hands
He straightened while he prayed.
"Lady, beyond all women fair,
Beyond all saints benign,
Whose living heart through life I bear
In mystery divine,
Hear thou and grant me this my prayer,
Or grant no prayer of mine.
"The fever of my spirit's pain
Heal thou with heavenly scorn;
The dust that but of dust is fain
Leave thou in dust forlorn;
Yea! bury love to rise again
Meet for eternal morn.
{151}
"So by thy grace my inward eyes
Thy beauty still shall see,
And while our life in shadow lies
High dawn shall image thee,
Till with thy soul in Paradise
Thy servant's soul shall be."
Before the immortal Mother-Maid
Low on the sands he kneeled;
But even while the words he prayed
His lips to patience sealed,
Joy in his eyes a radiance made
Like stars in dusk revealed.
II
It was an idle company--
Ladies and lordings fine--
Idly under the wild-wood tree
Their laughter ran like wine.
Yet as they laughed a voice they heard--
A voice where none was seen,--
Singing blithe as a hidden bird
Among the forest green.
"Mark ye, mark ye, a lonely knight
Riding the green forest:
Pardì! for one so poorly dight
He lifts a haughty crest!
{152}
Azure and white is all his wear,
He hath no gold, I trow!
Wanderer, thou in the wild-wood there,
Tell us why sing ye so!"
"Noble ladies and lordings gay,
God have you all in guard:
Since ye are pleased with me to play,
My riddle it is not hard.
I sing because, of all that ride,
I am the least of worth:
I sing because, to match my pride,
Never was pride on earth.
"But, an ye ask what that may mean,
Thus do I answer then:
I bear with me the heart of a Queen--
I that am least of men:--
I bear her heart till the end of all,
Yea! by her own command
I bear the heart of a Queen royal
Unto the Holy Land."
Humbly there his crest he bent,--
Azure it waved and white,--
Haughtily there he turned and went
Singing, out of their sight.
Long, long but his voice they heard,--
A voice where none was seen,--
Singing blithe as a hidden bird,
Among the forest green.
{153}
_The Presentation_
When in the womb of Time our souls' own son
Dear Love lay sleeping till his natal hour,
Long months I knew not that sweet life begun,
Too dimly treasuring thy touch of power;
And wandering all those days
By far-off ways,
Forgot immortal seed must have immortal flower.
Only, beloved, since my beloved thou art
I do remember, now that memory's vain,
How twice or thrice beneath my beating heart
Life quickened suddenly with proudest pain.
Then dreamed I Love's increase,
Yet held my peace
Till I might render thee thy own great gift again.
For as with bodies, so with souls it is,
The greater gives, the lesser doth conceive:
That thou hast fathered Love, I tell thee this,
And by my pangs beseech thee to believe.
Look on his hope divine--
Thy hope and mine--
Pity his outstretched hands, tenderly him receive!
{154}
_The Inheritance_
While I within her secret garden walked,
The flowers, that in her presence must be dumb,
With me, their fellow-servant, softly talked,
Attending till the Flower of flowers should come.
Then, since at Court I had arrived but late,
I was by love made bold
To ask that of my lady's high estate
I might be told,
And glories of her blood, perpetuate
In histories old.
Then they, who know the chronicle of Earth,
Spoke of her loveliness, that like a flame
Far-handed down from noble birth to birth,
Gladdened the world for ages ere she came.
"Yea, yea," they said, "from Summer's royal sun
Comes that immortal line,
And was create not for this age alone
Nor wholly thine,
Being indeed a flower whose root is one
With Life Divine.
{155}
"To the sweet buds that of herself are part
Already she this portion hath bequeathed,
As, not less surely, into thy proud heart
Her nobleness, O poet, she hath breathed,
That her inheritance by them and thee
The world may keep alway,
When the still sunlight of her eyes shall be
Lost to the day,
And even the fragrance of her memory
Fading away."
{156}
_Amore Altiero_
Since thou and I have wandered from the highway
And found with hearts reborn
This swift and unimaginable byway
Unto the hills of morn,
Shall not our love disdain the unworthy uses
Of the old time outworn?
I'll not entreat thy half unwilling graces
With humbly folded palms,
Nor seek to shake thy proud defended places
With noise of vague alarms,
Nor ask against my fortune's grim pursuing
The refuge of thy arms.
Thou'lt not withhold for pleasure vain and cruel
That which has long been mine,
Nor overheap with briefly burning fuel
A fire of flame divine,
Nor yield the key for life's profaner voices
To brawl within the shrine.
{157}
But thou shalt tell me of thy queenly pleasure
All that I must fulfil,
And I'll receive from out my royal treasure
What golden gifts I will,
So that two realms supreme and undisputed
Shall be one kingdom still.
And our high hearts shall praise the beauty hidden
In starry-minded scorn
By the same Lord who hath His servants bidden
To seek with eyes new-born
This swift and unimaginable byway
Unto the hills of morn.
{158}
_The Pedlar's Song_
I tramped among the townward throng
A sultry summer's morn:
They mocked me loud, they mocked me long,
They laughed my pack to scorn.
But a likely pedlar holds his peace
Until the reckoning's told:--
Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold.
At weary noon I left the town,
I left the highway straight,
I climbed the silent, sunlit down
And stood by a castle gate.
Never yet was a house too high
When the pedlar's heart was bold:--
Merrily I to market went, tho' songs were all my gold.
A lady leaned from her window there
And asked my wares to see;
Her voice made rich the summer air,
Richer my soul in me.
She gave me only four little words,
Words of a language old:--
Merrily I from market came, for all my songs were sold.
{159}
_Benedick's Song_
Though I see within thine eyes
Sudden frown of cloudy skies,
Yet I bid them "merry morn"
For they tell me Love is born.
So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
For they tell me Love is born.
Storms of mocking from thy lips
Lash me still like airy whips;
But to-day thy scorn I scorn
For I know that Love is born.
So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
For I know that Love is born.
O the hail that rattles fierce
Through my hodden cloak to pierce!
What care I if rags be torn?
Love and I are beggars born!
So ha-há! with há-ha-há!
Love and I are beggars born.
{160}
_Love and Grief._
One day, when Love and Summer both were young,
Love in a garden found my lady weeping;
Whereat, when he to kiss her would have sprung,
I stayed his childish leaping.
"Forbear," said I, "she is not thine to-day;
Subdue thyself in silence to await her;
If thou dare call her from Death's side away
Thou art no Love, but traitor.
Yet did he run, and she his kiss received,
"She is twice mine," he cried, "since she is troubled;
I knew but half, and now I see her grieved
My part in her is doubled."
{161}
_Egeria's Silence_
Her thought that, like a brook beside the way,
Sang to my steps through all the wandering year,
Has ceased from melody--O Love, allay
My sudden fear!
She cannot fail--the beauty of that brow
Could never flower above a desert heart--
Somewhere beneath, the well-spring even now
Lives, though apart.
Some day, when winter has renewed her fount
With cold, white-folded snows and quiet rain,
O Love, O Love, her stream again will mount
And sing again!
{162}
_Against Oblivion_
Cities drowned in olden time
Keep, they say, a magic chime
Rolling up from far below
When the moon-led waters flow.
So within me, ocean deep,
Lies a sunken world asleep.
Lest its bells forget to ring,
Memory! set the tide a-swing!
{163}
_Fond Counsel_
O youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain,
In sight and hearing of thy father's cot,
These and the morning woods, the lonely mountain,
These are thy peace, although thou know'st it not.
Wander not yet where noon's unpitying glare
Beats down the toilers in the city bare;
Forsake not yet, not yet, the homely plot,
O Youth, beside thy silver-springing fountain.
{164}
_Youth_
His song of dawn outsoars the joyful bird,
Swift on the weary road his footfall comes;
The dusty air that by his stride is stirred
Beats with a buoyant march of fairy drums.
"Awake, O Earth! thine ancient slumber break;
To the new day, O slumbrous Earth, awake!"
Yet long ago that merry march began,
His feet are older than the path they tread;
His music is the morning-song of man,
His stride the stride of all the valiant dead;
His youngest hopes are memories, and his eyes
Deep with the old, old dream that never dies.
{165}
_The Wanderer_
To Youth there comes a whisper out of the west:
"O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee
A life to build, a love therein to nest,
And a man's work, serving the age to be."
Peace, peace awhile! Before his tireless feet
Hill beyond hill the road in sunlight goes;
He breathes the breath of morning, clear and sweet,
And his eyes love the high eternal snows.
{166}
_The Adventurers_
Over the downs in sunlight clear
Forth we went in the spring of the year:
Plunder of April's gold we sought,
Little of April's anger thought.
Caught in a copse without defence
Low we crouched to the rain-squall dense:
Sure, if misery man can vex,
There it beat on our bended necks.
Yet when again we wander on
Suddenly all that gloom is gone:
Under and over through the wood,
Life is astir, and life is good.
Violets purple, violets white,
Delicate windflowers dancing light,
Primrose, mercury, moscatel,
Shimmer in diamonds round the dell.
Squirrel is climbing swift and lithe,
Chiff-chaff whetting his airy scythe,
Woodpecker whirrs his rattling rap,
Ringdove flies with a sudden clap.
{167}
Rook is summoning rook to build,
Dunnock his beak with moss has filled,
Robin is bowing in coat-tails brown,
Tomtit chattering upside down.
Well is it seen that every one
Laughs at the rain and loves the sun;
We too laughed with the wildwood crew,
Laughed till the sky once more was blue.
Homeward over the downs we went
Soaked to the heart with sweet content;
April's anger is swift to fall,
April's wonder is worth it all.
{168}
_To Clare_
(WITH A VOLUME OF STORIES FROM FROISSART)
My Clare,--
These tales were told, you know,
In French, five hundred years ago,
By old Sir John, whose heart's delight
Was lady sweet and valiant knight.
A hundred years went by, and then
A great lord told the tales again,
When bluff King Hal desired his folk
To read them in the tongue they spoke.
Last, I myself among them took
What I loved best and made this book.
Great, lesser, less--these writers three
Worked for the days they could not see,
And certes, in their work they knew
Nothing at all, dear child, of you.
Yet is this book your own in truth,
Because 'tis made for noble youth,
And every word that's living there
Must die when Clares are no more Clare.
{169}
_The Return of Summer: An Eclogue_
Scene: ASHDOWN FOREST IN MAY
Persons: H.--A POET; C.--HIS DAUGHTER
H. Here then, if you insist, my daughter: still,
I must confess that I preferred the hill.
The warm scent of the pinewood seemed to me
The first true breath of summer; did you see
The waxen hurt-bells with their promised fruit
Already purple at the blossom's root,
And thick among the rusty bracken strown
Sunburnt anemones long overblown?
Summer is come at last!
C. And that is why
Mine is a better place than yours to lie.
This dark old yew tree casts a fuller shade
Than any pine; the stream is simply made
For keeping bottles cool; and when we've dined
I could just wade a bit while you . . . reclined.
H. Empty the basket then, without more words . . .
But I still wish we had not left the birds.
{170}
C. Father! you are perverse! Since when, I beg,
Have forest birds been tethered by the leg?
They're everywhere! What more can you desire?
The cuckoo shouts as though he'd never tire,
The nuthatch, knowing that of noise you're fond,
Keeps chucking stones along a frozen pond,
And busy gold-crest, somewhere out of sight,
Works at his saw with all his tiny might.
I do not count the ring-doves or the rooks,
We hear so much about them in the books
They're hardly real; but from where I sit
I see two chaffinches, a long-tailed tit,
A missel-thrush, a yaffle----
H. That will do:
I may have overlooked a bird or two.
Where are the biscuits? Are you getting cramp
Down by the water there--it must be damp?
C. I'm only watching till your bottle's cool:
It lies so snug beneath this glassy pool,
Like a sunk battleship; and overhead
The water-boatmen get their daily bread
By rowing all day long, and far below
Two little eels go winding, winding slow . . .
Oh! there's a shark!
H. A what?
C. A miller's thumb.
Don't move, I'll tempt him with a tiny crumb.
H. Be quick about it, please, and don't forget
I am at least as dry as he is wet.
C. Oh, very well then, here's your drink.
{171}
H. That's good!
I feel much better now.
C. I thought you would (_exit quietly_).
H. How beautiful the world is when it breathes
The news of summer!--when the bronzy sheathes
Still hang about the beech-leaf, and the oaks
Are wearing still their dainty tasselled cloaks,
While on the hillside every hawthorn pale
Has taken now her balmy bridal veil,
And, down below, the drowsy murmuring stream
Lulls the warm noonday in an endless dream.
O little brook, far more thou art to me
Than all the pageantry of field and tree:
_Es singen wohl die Nixen_--ah! 'tis truth--
_Tief unten ihren Reih'n_--but only Youth
Can hear them joyfully, as once I lay
And heard them singing of the world's highway,
Of wandering ended, and the maiden found,
And golden bread by magic mill-wheel ground.
Lost is the magic now, the wheel is still,
And long ago the maiden left the mill:
Yet once a year, one day, when summer dawns,
The old, old murmur haunts the river-lawns,
The fairies wake, the fairy song is sung,
And for an hour the wanderer's feet are young (_he dozes_).
C. (returning) Father! I called you twice.
H. I did not know:
Where have you been?
C. Oh, down the stream.
{172}
H. Just so:
Well, I went _up_.
C. I wish you'd been with me.
H. When East is West, my daughter, that may be.
{173}
_Dream-Market_
A MASQUE PRESENTED AT WILTON HOUSE,
JULY 28, 1909
_Scene_. A LAWN IN THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA
_Enter FLORA, Lady of Summer, with her maidens, PHYLLIS
and AMARYLLIS. She takes her seat upon a bank,
playing with a basket of freshly gathered flowers, one
of which she presently holds up in her hand._
FLORA. Ah! how I love a rose! But come, my girls,
Here's for your task: to-day you, Amaryllis,
Shall take the white, and, Phyllis, you the red.
Hold out your kirtles for them. White, red, white,
Red, red, and white again. . . .
Wonder you not
How the same sun can breed such different beauties?
[_She divides all her roses between them._
Well, take them all, and go--scatter them wide
In gardens where men love me, and be sure
{174}
Where even one flower falls, or one soft petal,
Next year shall see a hundred.
[_As they turn to go, enter LUCIA in hunting dress,
with bow in hand and a hound by her side. FLORA
rises to meet her, and recalls her maidens._]
Stay! attend me.
LUCIA. Greeting, fair ladies; you, I think, must be
Daughters of this green Earth, and one of you
The sweet Dame Flora.
FLORA. Your true servant, madam.
But if my memory be not newly withered
I have not known the pleasure. . . .
LUCIA. Yes, you have seen me--
At least, you might have seen me; I am Lucia,
Lady of Moonlight, and I often hunt
These downs of yours with all my nightly pack
Of questing beams and velvet-footed shadows.
FLORA. I fear at night. . . .
LUCIA. Oh, yes! at night you are sleeping!
And I by day am always rather faint;
So we don't meet; but sometimes your good folk
Have torn my nets by raking in the water;
And though their neighbours laughed, there are worse ways
Of spending time, and far worse things to rake for
Than silver lights upon a crystal stream.
But come! My royal Sire, the Man in the Moon--
_He_ has been here?
FLORA. So many kings come here,
I can't be sure; I've heard the Man in the Moon
{175}
Did once come down and ask his way to Norwich.
But that was years agone--hundreds of years--
It may not be the same--I do not know
You royal father's age. . . .
LUCIA. His age? Oh surely!
He never _can_ be more than one month old.
FLORA. Yet he's your father!
LUCIA. Well, he is and is not;
[_Proudly_] I am the daughter of a million moons.
They month by month and year by circling year,
From their celestial palace looking down
On your day-wearied Earth, have soothed her sleep,
And rocked her tides, and made a magic world
For all her lovers and her nightingales.
You owe them much, my ancestors. No doubt,
At times they suffered under clouds; at times
They were eclipsed; yet in their brighter hours
They were illustrious!
FLORA. And may I hope
Your present Sire, his present Serene Highness,
Is in his brighter hours to-day?
LUCIA. Ah! no.
Be sure he is not--else I had not left
My cool, sweet garden of unfading stars
For the rank meadows of this sun-worn mould.
FLORA. What _is_ your trouble, then?
LUCIA. Although my father
Has been but ten days reigning, he is sad
With all the sadness of a phantom realm,
And all the sorrows of ten thousand years.
{176}
We in our Moonland have no life like yours,
No birth, no death: we live but in our dreams:
And when they are grown old--these mortal visions
Of an immortal sleep--we seem to lose them.
They are too strong for us, too self-sufficient
To live for us; they go their ways and leave us,
Like shadows grown substantial.
FLORA. I have heard
Something on earth not unlike this complaint,
But can I help you?
LUCIA. Lady, if you cannot,
No one can help. In Moonland there is famine,
We are losing all our dreams, and I come hither
To buy a new one for my father's house.
FLORA. To buy a dream?
LUCIA. Some little darling dream
That will be always with us, night and day,
Loving and teasing, sailing light of heart
Over our darkest deeps, reminding us
Of our lost childhood, playing our old games,
Singing our old songs, asking our old riddles,
Building our old hopes, and with our old gusto
Rehearsing for us in one endless act
The world past and the world to be.
FLORA. Oh! now
I see your meaning. Yes, I have indeed
Plenty of such sweet dreams: _we_ call them children.
They are _our_ dreams too, and though they are born of us,
Truly in them we live. But, dearest lady,
We do not sell them.
{177}
LUCIA. Do you mean you will not?
Not one? Could you not _lend_ me one--just one?
FLORA. Ah! but to lend what cannot be returned
Is merely giving--who can bring again
Into the empty nest those wingèd years?
Still, there are children here well worth your hopes,
And you shall venture: if there be among them
One that your heart desires, and she consent,
Take her and welcome--for the will of Love
Is the wind's will, and none may guess his going.
LUCIA. O dearest Lady Flora!
FLORA. Stay! they are here,
Mad as a dance of May-flies.
[_The children run in dancing and singing._
Shall we sit
And watch these children?
Phyllis, bid them play,
And let them heed us no more than the trees
That girdle this green lawn with whispering beauty.
[_The children play and sing at their games, till at a
convenient moment the LADY FLORA holds up her hand._]
FLORA. Now, Amaryllis, stay the rushing stream,
The meadows for this time have drunk enough.
[_To LUCIA._] And you, what think you, lady, of these maids?
Has their sweet foolish singing moved your heart
To choose among them?
LUCIA. I have heard them gladly,
And if I could, would turn them all to elves,
That if they cannot live with me, at least
{178}
I might look down when our great galleon sails
Close over earth, and see them always here
Dancing upon the moonlit shores of night.
But how to choose!--and though they are young and fair
Their every grace foretells the fatal change,
The swift short bloom of girlhood, like a flower
Passing away, for ever passing away.
Have you not one with petals tenderer yet,
More deeply folded, further from the hour
When the bud dies into the mortal rose?
FLORA [_pointing._] _There_ is my youngest blossom and my fairest,
But my most wilful too--you'll pluck her not
Without some aid of magic.
LUCIA. Time has been
When I have known even your forest trees
Sway to a song of moonland. I will try it.
[_She sings and dances a witching measure._]
SONG
(_To an air by HENRY LAWES, published in 1652_)
The flowers that in thy garden rise,
Fade and are gone when Summer flies,
And as their sweets by time decay,
So shall thy hopes be cast away.
The Sun that gilds the creeping moss
Stayeth not Earth's eternal loss:
He is the lord of all that live,
Yet there is life he cannot give.
{179}
The stir of Morning's eager breath--
Beautiful Eve's impassioned death--
Thou lovest these, thou lovest well,
Yet of the Night thou canst not tell.
In every land thy feet may tread,
Time like a veil is round thy head:
Only the land thou seek'st with me
Never hath been nor yet shall be.
It is not far, it is not near,
Name it hath none that Earth can hear;
But there thy Soul shall build again
Memories long destroyed of men,
And Joy thereby shall like a river
Wander from deep to deep for ever.
[_When she has finished the child runs into her arms._]
FLORA. Your spell has won her, and I marvel not:
She was but half our own.
[_To the Child_] Farewell, dear child,
'Tis time to part, you with this lovely lady
To dance in silver halls, and gather stars
And be the dream you are: while we return
To the old toil and harvest of the Earth.
Farewell! and farewell all!
ALL. Farewell! farewell!
[_Exeunt omnes._
{180}
_The Cicalas: An Idyll_
_Scene_: AN ENGLISH GARDEN BY STARLIGHT
_Persons_: A LADY AND A POET
THE POET
Dimly I see your face: I hear your breath
Sigh faintly, as a flower might sigh in death
And when you whisper, you but stir the air
With a soft hush like summer's own despair.
THE LADY (_aloud_)
O Night divine, O Darkness ever blest,
Give to our old sad Earth eternal rest.
Since from her heart all beauty ebbs away,
Let her no more endure the shame of day.
THE POET
A thousand ages have not made less bright
The stars that in this fountain shine to-night:
Your eyes in shadow still betray the gleam
That every son of man desires in dream.
{181}
THE LADY
Yes, hearts will burn when all the stars are cold;
And Beauty lingers--but her tale is told:
Mankind has left her for a game of toys,
And fleets the golden hour with speed and noise.
THE POET
Think you the human heart no longer feels
Because it loves the swift delight of wheels?
And is not Change our one true guide on earth,
The surest hand that leads us from our birth?
THE LADY
Change were not always loss, if we could keep
Beneath all change a clear and windless deep:
But more and more the tides that through us roll
Disturb the very sea-bed of the soul.
THE POET
The foam of transient passions cannot fret
The sea-bed of the race, profounder yet:
And there, where Greece and her foundations are,
Lies Beauty, built below the tide of war.
THE LADY
So--to the desert, once in fifty years--
Some poor mad poet sings, and no one hears:
But what belated race, in what far clime,
Keeps even a legend of Arcadian time?
{182}
THE POET
Not ours perhaps: a nation still so young,
So late in Rome's deserted orchard sprung,
Bears not as yet, but strikes a hopeful root
Till the soil yield its old Hesperian fruit.
THE LADY
Is not the hour gone by? The mystic strain,
Degenerate once, may never spring again.
What long-forsaken gods shall we invoke
To grant such increase to our common oak?
THE POET
Yet may the ilex, of more ancient birth,
More deeply planted in that genial earth,
From her Italian wildwood even now
Revert, and bear once more the golden bough.
THE LADY
A poet's dream was never yet less great
Because it issued through the ivory gate!
Show me one leaf from that old wood divine,
And all your ardour, all your hopes are mine.
THE POET
May Venus bend me to no harder task!
For--Pan be praised!--I hold the gift you ask.
The leaf, the legend, that your wish fulfils,
To-day he brought me from the Umbrian hills.
{183}
THE LADY