The hues of life and death in red and white—
A fair device for any knightly shield,
Nor needing motto to proclaim its might.
Henceforth I bear it on my battle crest,
Till in thine arms from life’s alarms I rest.
III
THE SOLACE OF LOVE
IN my heart’s chamber cold in day’s white glare,
Sate Love disconsolate with tatter’d wings,
And brooding on the memory of lost things
That erst made glad those walls, so wan and bare.
Came Hope then unto him and bade him look
Upon the brightness of the cloudless hours,
And on the buds of yet unopened flowers;
But Love, being blind, all blank was nature’s book.
Sleep came to him, and would have brought him peace,
But dreams awoke Desire whose torturing flame
Made worse his case and left him agony:
Till one, with wreathèd brows, for his release,
Unto his fingers gave a stringèd frame,
And then Love wept, and sang his pain to thee.
IV
PASSION MUSIC
THE air grows faint within the shrine of Love,
And from his altar rose-leaves fall away,
As smoke of incense dims the dying day
That crimsons on the golden roof above:
But, slowly stealing, soon the organ plains,
With quiring voices in a tender song,
Which shakes my soul as with a tempest strong,
Still as the music rolleth on refrains.
Now lifted light upon melodious wave,
My spirit rises on each beating wing,
That near unto the gates of bliss me bring;
Full soon cast down, and bowed by thunder-tones,
He falls upon the ground, and weeps and moans—
Such madness doth Love’s votaries enslave.
V
LOVE’S ANCHORITE
LOVE’S anchorite, within my lonely cell,
His breviary I learn you every day,
And Aves to my sainted Mary say,
As all my rosary I careful tell:
While on thy picture sweet my fond eyes dwell,
Or rapt upon thy treasured story pore,
Which, ending, leaves me yet to hunger more,
And still athirst to seek again the well.
Yet all Love’s calendar I follow through,
And each fair day, where memory shows thy sign,
Keep holy unto thee in prayer and song;
So every season brings to thee its due;
But, while thy table’s set with corn and wine,
Fasting I keep Love’s Lenten-tide so long.
VI
LOVE’S GARDEN
IN my heart’s garden, winter dark and bare,
Love sought for flowers to make a wreath for thee,
Which, since the sun was gone, he scarce might see
In all the waste, and Time was gardener there,
Who yet a little bloom will hardly spare,
But with remorseless hand still prunes away,
And still his scythe he sharpeneth every day;
So Love was left with empty hands to fare.
Till Hope had led him to a little well
That in this desert kept a joyful spot,
Made sapphire with the eyes of flowers Love knew,
As though from heavenly seed their harvest grew,
That soon into his reaping fingers fell
Which bring you these—sweet, sweet FORGET-ME-NOT.
VII
LOVE’S SOLITUDE
FILLED with the breath of Love, my soul knows change
Throughout its troubled region, day by day,
Still as the breaking fire upclimbs its way
From scarlet dawn, through fervent noon to range;
Until the fainting eve, grown wan and pale,
Swoons in the arms of close embracing night
That putteth forth her spells of dreamful might,
And sweet enchantments, till the starry veil
Is cloven by the gleaming shafts of morn,
Ascending new with all his glittering train
To bring me peace, or strange tempestuous pain;
Or soft winds singing in the sacred grove
That keeps thy shrine, and where I talk with Love,
Watching the far-off sea whence hope is born.
VIII
LOVE’S HOPE
JOY, like the flashes of a fitful sun,
Falls on my storm-worn heart, and kindling, dies
In wandering gleams about the changeful skies,
Cloud-built with tempest towers, and wind-undone:
For winds make desolate the day begun
Wild on my path that climbs a bleak green hill,
Among the writhen thorns, oft traversed, chill
With the breath of March, until the ridge is won:
Wherefrom I think to gain some hopeful sign,
As range mine eyes the saddened landscape round,
That keeps my soul’s white house, whence I return,
With thoughts that may not utterly repine,
But hearing even in the strong wind’s sound
The shout of coming spring which makes me burn.
IX
LOVE’S DOUBT
DOUBT, Hope, and Fear, all day within my breast
Have clanged in cruel war where none prevail,
Though their fierce cries have rent the sacred veil,
When in Love’s sanctuary I sought to rest.
Since brazen morn awoke this wild alarm
So have they striven long with clashing swords
Of two edged thought—since fell the words
Upon my soul from herald lips of harm;
Whose message strange a fiery hand imprest
In charact’ry that burns my mazèd sight:
Yet loud with iron hands they tear and smite,
But through the cloud of strife I see Hope’s crest
Rise loftier, and his voice above the rest
Grows calm and clearer with the falling night.
X
LOVE’S GARLAND
YOUNG Love with rosy wings came through a mead,
Whereon before the feet of spring had gone,
Along a slender brook that wound and shone
By stems made bright with blooms of fruitful deed.
He gathered as he went of such fair seed
As Spring upon her grassy ways had sown,
And in his fingers wove a garland crown
That faded not, or drooped or died for need.
Full soon the stream had brought him to a space
Of orchard green, where maidens sweet were met
With Time’s frail gifts around his dial stone;
And, these among, thou sat’st in such sweet grace,
That, seeing thee, Love on thy dear head set
His magic wreath and crowned thee on my throne.
XI
LOVE’S ARROWS
I SAW young Love make trial of his bow,
In May’s green garden where he shot his dart,
Nor recked if any nigh beheld his art,
But other eyes did mark him as I know;
For my sweet lady sate anear his throw,
And I with her, and joinèd heart to heart,
So that we might not feel the bitter smart
Love leaveth there when time doth force us go.
We heard Love’s arrows falling in the grass,
Or watched them quiver in the targe below;
Yet few to us came nigh, nor might they pass
Beyond our feet, which trembled when they came,
Whose hearts were not the quarry for his aim,
That in Love’s chase fell stricken long ago.
XII
LOVE’S HARVEST
I STAND to gaze across the years’ long fields
That have the tinge of Autumn, and their gold
Gathered by careful hours on lea and wold;
Rich spoils of time that he to Love upyields
Who yet amid fair corn his sickle wields,
Though harvest’s done, and summer groweth old:
Well-storèd barns, and orchards he doth hold
Whose wealth against the steely winter shields.
Unto my feet the days, like full-eared sheaves,
Have fallen, one by one, time-bound and borne
To be the bread of Love through barren days;
E’en such dear heritage the sweet year leaves,
And life to live again Love’s night and morn
Whose light thou art, whose glory is their praise.
·PART·II·
·LATER·POEMS·
[Illustration]
[Illustration: ·A·HERALD·OF·SPRING]
SWEET bird, what makes thee glad?
Beneath this sky so wan and sad,
And leafless poplars, thin and grey,
Bowed down before the wintry sway.
What tuneful thought of days gone by
Doth make thee sing? Or knowest thou why
Thy soul is lifted up, sweet bird?
Or dost thou hear Spring’s voice, unheard
Of earth that sleeps, nor, dreaming, minds
The herald blast of trumpet winds
That make old Winter’s fortress quail,
And force him cast his coat of mail.
What secret bower thy shape doth keep?
Close hidden by the buds that sleep;
Thy voice—the firstling bloom that blows—
Breaks joyful through the wintry boughs,
That bear thy song of promise, meet
For happy hours when lovers greet,
When every leaf-lorn tree shall bear
Flower, fruit, and song upon the air,
And summer’s choir is full, and gay
The soft winds on the sun’s feast-day.
Sweet bird, as thou dost sing, my soul
Doth partly catch the speechless whole
Of joyful pain that lifts the wings
Of thy sequestered music—things
Remembered half, and half forgot,
Of sight, or sound, or sense begot,
Confused in love’s ambrosial streams,
And hidden in the house of dreams;
As frail sweet scent of flowers that hold
Past time and days in some book’s fold,
Which, when the leaves are turned again,
Doth warm, like wine, the wintry brain.
O bird, thy heart doth sing in me,
I hear what thou dost hear—I see
Upon a high green land, untrod
Of men, upon the flower-wrought sod
The feet of Spring, and her bright throng
Break from the woods with shout and song;
Soft piping winds with pleasant cheer
Before her go, her path to clear,
Sweet maids come with her, and behind,
Light-footed as the lifting wind:
Some bear her canopy on high,
And warm gleams gild it from the sky;
Some strew with flowers the flower-strewn ground,
Some bind them garlands, some are bound,
And still, with all the happy rout,
Fleet little loves wind in and out;
Some hide in maiden’s fluttering weed,
And ply their pretty arts, nor heed,
While wilful gusts make sport, like them,
With mantle’s fold, and garment’s hem;
Or some, more bold, soft vengeance wreak
On lifting hair, and glowing cheek.
But, scarce the wood hath set them free,
Some forceful sprite in winter’s fee
To snatch Spring’s garland would make bold,
Whom shrill the shrinking maids do scold,
Until the sun, their champion bright,
Doth drive aback the wintry knight,
Whose wild assault being overthrown,
Far in the woodland makes he moan,
And gentle Spring with all her train
Doth hold high court on earth again.
[Illustration: ·THOUGHTS·IN·A·HAMMOCK]
ROCKED as in some fairy boat,
By swift fancy set afloat,
’Twixt the oceans, blue and green,
Of grass beneath, and sky serene,
Where the streams of dusk and day
Meet and mingle, far away,
On the universal tide,
Still with time and life to glide.
Boat, that, pendent ’mid the trees,
Swingeth moored, yet sails the seas,
Stem and stern from east to west,
Bound upon an unknown quest,
Past the marge of night and day,
Blanched or strewn with starry spray;
By the oar-strokes of the blood,
Glides the shallop of my mood,
On the windings of the flood,
Shadowed by the summer wood,
Dusk with dreams yon leaves that play
With the falling blooms of May.
Like the web the Fates do spin
Helpless man to cradle in—
Hung, with life, upon a thread,
Here I swing, and, o’er my head,
Maze of apples, boughs and leaves,
Meshed wherein, my thought enweaves
Tapestry, phantasmic, strange,
Shot with shifting dyes of change:
So my shallow bark and frail
Spreads a rich emblazoned sail,
Filled, as now the summer breeze
Fans my brain and stirs the trees,
Where, a hidden heart of fire,
Strives the moon in her desire
Still to pierce the leafy fret
Her celestial seat to get.
Cynthia’s self that silver shape,
Boskage dark, she doth escape,
Long her gleaming body hid
Forth from its embraces slid,
Doth naked, glorious, emerge
Upon the lucent starry verge.
Let me linger in the wood,
Hear the sound of pipings rude,
Watch the shapes of nymph and fawn,
Centaurs fleet across the lawn,
Satyrs brown, in rhythmic dance,
By the stream great Pan, perchance,
Hidden in the vocal reed—
All the happy antique breed.
I would turn again the book,
Yet again to steal a look,
Back to where Time’s firstling ran—
Arboreal ancestral man:
Wooing shy his dusky mate,
Wild-eyed, half articulate:
In his rude canoe, askance,
See him poise his flint-tipped lance,
Flashing in the ardent noon
O’er the sedgy broad lagoon,
When Thames reeds the river-horse
Crushed in his unconscious force.
Swinging on the pendent bough
Had he sweet content enow?
Basking in the primal sun
Recked he how his race should run?
How, for forest night of trees,
Cities spreading, dense as these,
Where the shade of gilded pride,
Starved and savage men, should hide
Human vampires, hawks and flies,
Gliding snakes and lustrous eyes,
Dainty beauty, plumaged fair,
Hollow masks for smiling care,
Hopeless toil that smileth not,
Misery, untold, forgot—
Where the throng of fashion flaunts,
Where, in dark unwholesome haunts,
Lurks a darker race, to prowl
Desert streets when night doth scowl,
Desert stoney streets, and bare,
’Neath a strange electric glare,
Fiery eyed to track them down,
Homeless on the heartless town.
Ah! could early man, or late,
Set his ways, or Nature’s, straight,
Who life’s stream doth careless pour,
Lets the cup brim o’er and o’er,
Who will drink, or, drinking, dream,
With the chosen skim the cream,
Struggle with the ravening swine,
For residue, or helpless whine,
Lazarus at Dives’ gate,
Dives at his feast of state,
Rising with a hungry heart,
As, one by one, life’s guests depart.
Could we chain those monsters up
That on human lives do sup—
Shameless lust of rule and gold,
Lawless greed grown overbold,
Vice and drink with palsied hand
Riding down the joyless land—
Then, if humanity could be
From these, and other tyrants, free
To win its bread—to win, I wot,
Vine, and fig, and breathing plot,
Joy in work, and joy in leisure,
Love and art to fill life’s measure,
Force and fraud might vainly rage
To see, new born, the golden age.
Sailing thus, as thought doth steer,
With the moon through cloud and clear,
Fancy flutt’ring at the prow,
Sirens singing soft and low,
From the opal shores and streams,
Where they dye the cloth of dreams—
From the present and the past
Have I touched the land at last!
Voyaging the world around
Yet anchored still to English ground.
June, 1884.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: ·THE·SIRENS·THREE]
[Illustration]
THE SIRENS THREE
DEDICATORY SONNET
TO
WILLIAM MORRIS
THE Mage of Naishapur in English tongue
Beside the northern sea, I, wandering, read,
With chaunt of breaking waves each verse was said,
Till, storm-possessed, my heart in answer sung;
And to the winds my ship of thoughts I flung,
And drifted wide upon the ocean dread
Of space and time, ere thought and life were bred,
Till Hope did cast the anchor, and I clung.
The Book of Omar saw I limned in gold,
And decked with vine and rose and pictured pause,
Enwrought by hands of one well skilled and bold
In art and poesy and Freedom’s cause—
Hope of humanity and equal laws—
To him and to this hope be mine enscrolled.
[Illustration: ·THE·SIRENS·THREE]
I
LOST on a sleepless sea, without avail
My soul’s ship drifted wide, with idle sail
And slow pulsating oars, that night’s blue gulf
Beat noiselessly to Time’s recurring tale.
II
The rolling hours like waves broke, one by one,
Upon the tide of thought time’s sands outrun,
And cloudy visions hovered o’er my bed,
Piled to the stars, full soon like cloud undone:
III
As, like the wan moon through her fleecy sea,
My spirit clove their rack unceasingly,
And struck at last upon an unknown ground,
More still than sleep, more strange than dreamlands be.
IV
The echoes of lost thoughts wild music made,
Like Sirens, heard above the winds that played,
Above the rhythmic waves’ tumultuous tone,
Upon the hollows of that coast decayed.
V
Yea, on the strand they stood, the Sirens three—
No More, and golden Now, and dark To be,
Whose vocal harps are love, and hope, and grief;
To these they sang, and waved their hands to me.
VI
Who thence, unto the shore, escaping, clung,
As from the dread insatiate ocean’s tongue
That lapped the barren sand, and evermore,
Above its vain recoil, the Sisters sung.
* * * * *
VII
Prone on that unknown land, outcast, forlorn,
My soul lay; watching for the eyes of morn;
As from a dying universe adrift,
A naked life—to what dim world new born?
VIII
All former things had passed, the sea’s salt tears
From Youths’ frail ship had washed false hopes and fears,
And relics, treasured once, bestrewed the sand,
Wrapped in the clinging weed the seamaid wears.
IX
The bodies of lost Faith and Love, outcast,
Spurned by the waves, and clinging to the mast,
Were flung upon the shore, mid drift and wreck,—
Time’s fragile shells, which frailer lives outlast.
X
As at the world’s end left, the last of men,
Or ere the first was sphered, beyond his ken,
Was I, mid tumbled kosmic fragments cast—
A babe at play within a mammoth’s den:
XI
Mid bones of power extinct, and its lost prey,
With shreds and shards of unknown primal day—
The formless Future, and the Past forgot,
The broken statue, and the sculptor’s clay.
XII
The blue-breast bird of space his fan outspread,
And shook the starry splendour o’er my head—
A wood of eyes that wonder at the world,
Glassed in the world’s eyes’ wonder, scanned and read:
XIII
Each burning orb that did the sky emblaze
Upon my spirit lone cast piercing gaze;
World beyond world enringed, and suns aflame
Shot from night’s spangled cloud their storm of rays.
XIV
As doth the glass to one bright point intense
Draw the sun’s fervour to our shrinking sense;
So, on my soul, the concentrated fire
Of countless suns that moment did condense.
XV
My brain, an instant’s Atlas, seemed to bear
The Universe immense, and all its care;
For thought’s frail arms intolerable weight,
Since Nature’s triumph still is Man’s despair.
XVI
Untilled, unknown, the trackless regions spread
Which Thought, belated wanderer, doth tread,
Where, like river flashing through the night,
The milky way its myriad star-foam shed.
XVII
Cast from what vital source—what teeming brain?
By blind persistent force—from fiery rain?
Suns, moons, and stars, transmuted, globed, and hung—
The dew of Space upon its blue campaign:
XVIII
Trod by the feet of Time, as he doth go,
A labourer night and morn to reap and sow—
Who counts the glittering drops—the spheres that fall,
Or marvels they should hold such weight of woe?
XIX
Each drop a desert, or a battle-ground
Of life in its arena ringed around,
Where without quarter wears the endless war,
Till Death the hunter slips his famished hound.
XX
Here, circling with the horses of the sun,
Man’s fateful race from day to day is run;
Bound in this narrow ring—his crown, his grave
Still as the world for each is lost or won.
* * * * *
XXI
Then, like a homeless one, my spirit turned
For shelter ’neath the roofless void, and—spurned
From the star-desert to the stony one—
Scanned the dark waste where yet no hearth fire burned:
XXII
But through the veil of night, around me there,
Rose towering shapes clothed in the voiceless air,
Like kings enthroned amid their powers’ decay—
Statue, and ruined shrine, and temple bare:
XXIII
Dolmen, and sphinx, and Greek or Gothic fane,
The shattered caskets of man’s winged brain,
Whose flight hath left them empty, desolate,
Sublime in ruin on the crumbling plain.
XXIV
The perished bodies frail that once did house
His restless soul, and heard his sacred vows
To his own likeness, dressed in speech or stone,
Ere he forswore them for some fairer spouse.
XXV
He sought for Truth, and cried, “Where dost thou dwell?”
Ten thousand tongues replied, but none could tell:
They held their peace, and then the stones did cry—
“Lo! Truth sits naked by the wayside well.”
XXVI
She sitteth naked since they drove her out
From Babel of the Creeds to wastes of Doubt;
There hath she wandered long in dens and caves,
Through Custom’s winter, and through Reason’s drought.
XXVII
They would have cloaked her as a shameful thing;
Force brought her chains, and Fraud a marriage ring,
But Truth, affrighted, fled the market place
Where lies were coined in gold, and Craft was king.
XXVIII
And still she flies from sacred fount, and school,
When man defiles, or doth his kind befool;
And still they wait, the halt, the lame, the blind,
Though Truth, the angel, troubleth not the pool.
XXIX
A wandering spirit in this street of tombs,
I sought her yet who still to travel dooms,
From hostel unto hostel o’er the waste,
Her votaries the fitful lamp illumes.
XXX
But ere the dawn stood trembling at night’s gate,
Dark as the night, I reached a portal great,
Wide to the homeless wind, defaced and bare,
While yet it spake of power, and antique state,
XXXI
Of pillared hall and chambers large and fair,
Which Thought and Art had carven and made rare,
As life by life was laid with stone on stone,
Or flowed through marble veins the beams to bear;
XXXII
And flowered aloft in capital and frieze,
As roof and wall high rose with years’ increase;
Withal did slow decay still gild and stain,
Or like a stealthy robber climbed to seize.
XXXIII
Strange lights from windows glared, and stranger sound
Of mingled mourners’ grief and revel round—
Sad discords from a world’s disorder wrung—
With music broke upon the desert bound.
XXXIV
A fountain in the forecourt sullen slept,
One wintry tree beside it, wind beswept,
And shorn of its last leaves, which strewed the stone,
Like one above the water, drooped and wept.
XXXV
And at the threshold, on the shattered stair,
In raiment sad one sate as cloaked in care;
There, too, her sister shape in vernal green,
The lintel old did hang with garlands fair.
XXXVI
“Who,” then I would have cried, “art thou that weep?
And why with mourning festal garlands heap?
Why thus, though kindred, are your hearts in twain!
O Sisters weird this magic house who keep?
XXXVII
“This magic house, so fair, so disarrayed,
What god, what demon first its foundings laid?
Who thus its treasure to Oblivion casts,
Still hungering at the gate but never stayed?”
XXXVIII
And I was answered ere my thought found tongue,
As pealing from the gate their voices rung,
Like wailing harp and voice together heard;
With ear intent upon their speech I hung.
XXXIX
“Let no man ask, but he who doth not shrink
To stand at gaze upon thought’s giddy brink,
Where breaks the endless sea, and ebbs and flows
The tides of life and death that Time doth drink.
XL
“Time’s very house is this, his daughters we,
Ruin and Renovation, thou dost see,
That sweep or garnish, and its chambers fit
For grief or joy, or whatso guests may be.
XLI
“Pillared and roofed it is with nights and days,
And windows gemmed in gold, or azure space,
Its table spread, with earth’s, for fast or feast,
Between Birth’s gate and Death’s where all find place.
XLII
“Close curtained both with mystery and pain,
O’erwrought with costly tears, and heart-hued stain,
And Love the windows dim hath painted o’er
With dreams of dear delight, that wax and wane
XLIII
“From morn to eve, as through the glowing glass
His vital sun transfigures, as they pass,
Those visionary joys, and hopes, and fears
That mask Life’s face—a dream itself, alas!”
XLIV
But ere they ceased a fairer one forth came,
With cup of welcome and with torch aflame,
In floating raiment soft, and radiant hair,
And thus she sang, each captive sense to claim:—
XLV
“Dream on, O soul, or sleep and take thy rest,
The feast is spread however late the guest;
Let passion drug the cup with secret fire,
Till torturing thought be slain on pleasure’s breast.
XLVI
“Where all are masked thy mask shall be thy face,
Call for the best life gives, and take thy place
At Time’s long hostel board; cast off thy care,
And rest you merry in dame Fortune’s grace.
XLVII
“Vex not thy soul until the reckoning day,
Though life be but the least thou hast to pay;
Stand not too late on pleasure’s foaming brink,
Nor yet, with sightless eld, outsit the play.
XLVIII
“Time is thine host, and, ere the day grows old,
To thee his story strange he shall unfold,
Writ in a half-obliterated scroll,
But pictured fair, and graven deep—behold!”
* * * * *
XLIX
As though a new Pandora raised the lid,
And let life’s mystery escape unbid,
Broke sudden on my sight a wonder show,
As through the portal dark I gazed, close hid:
L
E’en like as one who sits expectant, dumb,
At gaze before some world’s proscenium,
When rolls the curtain from the painted stage,
To see life’s play,—Past, Present, and To Come;
LI
The drama of the earth before me rolled,
The war of good and evil, new and old,
The fight for very life, for space, for air,
The sum and cost of Being, still untold.
LII
Since when Time’s brooding bird did patient sit
Upon her spherèd egg—the world, to wit,
Potent with life, in ocean, earth, and air,
Ere ever faun or flower did people it:
LIII
Since when from countless germs life’s tree did grow
From writhing worms about its roots below,
From dragon-shapes that clasp its fossil stem,
To bear love’s fruit, and human flowers arow.
LIV
Where Thought’s winged kind among its branches dwell,
Still fertilized by Beauty’s potent spell;
Cast and re-cast in Nature’s supple mould,
Through death and change, and birth’s transforming cell.
LV
’Twas pictured here—with boughs outspread thro’ space,
Blossomed with stars upon the sky’s swart face,
With globing worlds for fruit, that cool or glow
As night and day, like leaves their shadows chase.
LVI
Out of the dream of ages, sleeping fast,
Out of the dim and unrecorded past,
Out of the caverns of uncounted time,
In life’s dark house Man saw the sun at last.
LVII