On summer’s winds, light-freighted, flown;—
A child intent upon delight
The painted spheres would keep in sight—
Dissolved too soon in worlds unknown.
Lo! from the furnace mouth hath grown
Fair shapes, as frail, with jewelled zone
Clear globes which fate might read aright
In love’s disport.
O frail as fair! Though in the white
Of flameful heat with force to fight,
Art thou by careless hands cast down
Or killed—when frozen hearts disown
The children born of love of light
In love’s disport.
RONDEAU—WHAT MAKES THE WORLD
WHAT makes the world for you and I?
A space of lawn a strip of sky,
The bread and wine of fellowship,
The cup of life for love to sip,
A glass of dreams in Hope’s blue eye.
So let the days and hours still fly,
Let Fortune flout, and Fame deny,
With feathered heel shall fancy trip—
What makes the world?
The wealth that never in the grip
Of blighting greed shall heedless slip—
When bought and sold is liberty:
With worth of life and love gone by,
What makes the world?
RONDEAU—SEED-TIME
THE field is wide, broadcast the seed
Of human hope and human need,
As, to and fro, from end to end,
The furrows of the world ye wend
Its legioned hungry mouths to feed.
Though lowering o’er the landscape bend
The brows of winter, rains descend,
And tempest sowings whirlwinds breed,
The field is wide.
Sowing, ye shall reap indeed
Golden grain, or grisly weed,
Or dragon’s teeth, that in the end,
Perchance, in golden ears depend,
Sunward, as our path doth lead,
The field is wide.
RONDEAU—A SEAT FOR THREE
WRITTEN ON THE PANELS OF A SETTLE
A SEAT for three, where host and guest
May side by side pass toast or jest;
And be their number two or three
With elbow-room and liberty,
What need to wander east or west?
A book for thought, a nook for rest,
And meet for fasting or for fest,
In fair and equal parts to be
A seat for three.
Then give you pleasant company,
For youth or eld a shady tree;
A roof for council or sequest,
A corner in a homely nest,
Free, equal, and fraternally,
A seat for three.
RONDEL—WHEN TIME UPON THE WING
WHEN Time, upon the wing,
A swallow heedless flies,
Love-birds forget to sing
Beneath the lucent skies:
For now belated spring
With her last blossom hies,
When time, upon the wing,
A swallow heedless flies.
What summer hope shall bring
To wistful dreaming eyes?
What fateful forecast fling
Before life’s last surprise
When Time upon the wing,
A swallow heedless flies?
RONDEL—THIS BOOK OF HOURS
THIS Book of Hours Love wrought
With burnished letters gold,
Each page with art and thought
And colours manifold.
His calendar he taught
To youths and virgins cold—
This Book of Hours Love wrought
With letters burnished gold.
Love’s priceless book is bought
With sighs and tears untold
Of votaries who sought
His countenance of old—
This Book of Hours Love wrought
With letters burnished gold.
TRIOLET
IN the light, in the shade,
This is Time and Life’s measure;
With a heart unafraid,
In the light, in the shade,
Hope is born and not made,
And the heart finds its treasure
In the light, in the shade—
This is Time and Life’s measure.
[Illustration: SONNETS]
AT SHELLEY’S GRAVE
WRITTEN IN THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY, ROME, APRIL 11, 1872
TREAD softly! Here the heart of Shelley lies:
His grave a garden ’neath the cypress wood,
Stirred with the tongues his spirit understood,
And spake in deathless song that vivifies
Men’s souls made heavy with the sad world’s cries,
Still where the darkness hides the dragon brood
Of evil, and while yet innocent blood
Is shed, and truth and falsehood change their dyes.
Thy voice is heard above the silent tomb,
And shall be heard until the end of days,
While Freedom lives, and whatsoever things
Are good and lovely—still thy spirit sings,
And by thy grave to-day fresh violets bloom,
But on thy head imperishable bays.
THE VOICE OF SPRING
I HEARD the voice of Spring—I saw her look
Out of the naked wood, and, on the green,
Traced the frail pattern of her steps unseen,
Toward Winter’s house which he this day forsook:
There she hath turned the leaves of Time’s sad book,
Seeking the songs, well-nigh forgotten clean
By faltering birds in Winter’s dark demesne,
O’erborne by bitter winds that none may brook.
Art thou so near! And we still all unmeet
To give thee welcome? Due with service clear
From dull world’s slavery, and sordid taint,
The soil and rust of cities, spirits faint—
O fill us with new life, and give us cheer,
Whom life’s best gifts—Art, Love, and Freedom greet.
A DAY IN EARLY SPRING
THOU art the bride of Light, most glorious morn!
Issuing to meet thy lord—thy crystal gate
Flung wide by flame-winged hours—where he doth wait
Till from thy face the æthereal veil be torn:
Clothed in white splendour and thy train upborne
By silken handed airs in fluttering state,
With piping minstrels, joyful in thy fate,
And still, before thee heard, Spring’s herald horn.
Thy silver feet have touched the sparkling grass,
Where flowers are stars of light from heaven’s blue dome
Dropt in the noiseless night to pave thy floor:
So, like a splendid vision, thou dost pass
Between the pillars of the sun’s bright home,
Drawn in Time’s pageant to return no more.
A NIGHT IN MAY
FROM eve’s lit casement turns reluctant day,
A lingering lover—dreaming of delights
Unseen, unknown, with summer scents and sights
Scarce whispered through the modest green of May—
Who yet beneath the dusk would kiss and play,
With mingled softness of mysterious lights,
With hidden sweets the silent hour requites,
Ere from the west he sinks to night away.
But on the still grey eve what glory breaks!
A glowing sphere between the trembling trees,
As though the wondering world returning sees
A silvern sun a softer day that makes,
Ere this departs and his last song doth cease
With his last breath that night’s enchantment takes.
ILLUSIONS
I STOOPED to drink of Life’s enchanted stream,
From fair green meads and flowery marge of youth,
Athirst for love, for fame, and sight of truth,
And, dreaming as I drank, all life did seem
Fair as the pageant of a lover’s dream,
That hides the grim and sordid world uncouth;
Till Time and change came by that know not ruth,
And grief was left to watch Hope’s flickering beam.
So from the bitter world I turned again,
To work, to sleep; but as in sleep I lay,
Truth touched me, and Hope said to me, “Arise!”
Whom, waking, I beheld as visions vain
As dream-beguiled one looks with clouded eyes
Upon the breaking morn, nor knows it is the day.
ON THE SUPPRESSION OF FREE SPEECH AT CHICAGO
WITH stifled voice who crieth from the West,
Where sinks the ensanguined sun of Freedom, erst
That spread her stainless wings, and sheltering nurst,
From out all lands, the hunted and opprest?
America! shrink not from thy new guest;
For liberty was thine for best and worst:
How should her seed upon thy land be curst
Till her false friends as traitors stand confest?
Doth Freedom dwell where ruthless Kings of gain,
Like stealthy vampires, still on Labour feed,
Still free—to toil or starve on plenty’s plain?
Then what of Labour’s hope—the will to be
Equal, fraternal, knowing want nor greed,
Shrined in a peoples’ heart when states are free?
June, 1886.
FREEDOM IN AMERICA
WHERE is thy home, O Freedom? Have they set
Thine image up upon a rock to greet
All comers, shaking from their wandering feet
The dust of old world bondage, to forget
The tyrannies of fraud and force, nor fret,
Where men are equal, slavish chain unmeet,
Nor bitter bread of discontent to eat,
Here, where all races of the earth are met?
America, beneath thy banded flag
Of old it was thy boast that men were free
To think, to speak, to meet, to come and go.
What meaneth then the gibbet and the gag
Held up to Labour’s sons who would not see
Fair Freedom but a mask—a hollow show?
Oct. 7, 1887.
TO THE PRISONERS OF LIBERTY
JOHN BURNS AND R. B. CUNNINGHAM GRAHAM, WHO SUFFERED
FOR A BRAVE ATTEMPT TO MAINTAIN THE RIGHT OF FREE
SPEECH AND PUBLIC MEETING IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.
WHAT robe of honour doth the prison hide,
What glory lines its stony cell and bare,
That, erst its tenants, forth in triumph fare?
Bondsmen for Freedom, and the right denied
By fraud and force, in legal mask that bide,
Alike on Irish ground, or London’s square,
With violent hands on those, henceforth to bear
The crest of battle on the people’s side.
What! must ye learn the lesson still so late
That they who suffer for the common good
Stone walls confine not, and no chain doth hold,
Blind Tyranny? Whom these, like men, withstood:
Whose tenfold force flings back the iron gate,
Whose names upon the reddening morn are scrolled.
February 22, 1888.
REMINISCENT
THROUGH seas of light above the opal blue
Across the Adriatic sped our ship,
Her long wake trailing towards the ocean’s lip,
Far from the isles of Greece; in our fond view
A vision bright that all our thoughts embue;
Which from the Book of Days may never slip
But in the golden haze of memory dip,
And its fresh youth continually renew.
It was my fortune late to tread upon
The marble stairs of Athens’ sacred steep,
To see its columned gate in moonlight sleep
Beneath the shadow of the Parthenon,
Fair still in ruin, though well Time might weep
For Pallas fallen and her glory gone.
OF HELLAS DEAD
MID wrecks of Hellas dead in marble state,
Whose relics whiten still Ægean’s shore,
Gold treasuries of kings, Art’s precious ore,
Cast up by Time’s slow waves to us so late:
It reached me then these things to meditate—
How fell such pillared state, how lost its lore?
What palsy touched the hand, what ate the core
Of ancient life—why Hellas met such fate?
And so methought of nations now that sail
Upon the wings of commerce and of gold,
With new-found force electric, iron and steam,
To yoke fierce Nature’s neck; shall these avail
To save us, or our toil-wrung wealth redeem,
If Freedom fair, and justice loose their hold?
TO THE HAMMERSMITH CHOIR
SWEET voices broke my sleep on Christmas morn;
Clear through the moonlit air their anthem rung,
Of human hope and fellowship that sung,
A mass for souls not dead but yet new born,
A herald blast on Freedom’s silver horn,
At dayspring on the brooding darkness flung,
With tidings of new joy in tuneful tongue,
The marching song of workers travel-worn.
As one in dreams I heard, and wondering rose;
E’en as the shepherds’ marvelling of old
To hear the angels quiring, and my blood
Quickened to catch at last their stirring close,
And so my heart took hope and courage good
In thought of days to be in time untold.
Xmas, 1888.
RENASCENCE
ART, once an outcast in a wintry land,
Far from the sun-built house where she was born,
Did wander desolate and laughed to scorn
By eyeless men who counted gold like sand:
Nor any soul her speech would understand—
A friendless stranger in the city lorn,
Toil-grimed and blackened with the smoke upborne
Of human sacrifice of brain and hand.
Then Art, aweary, laid her down and slept
Beneath an ancient gate, and dreaming, smiled,
For Hope, like spring, came full of tidings good;
And Labour, huge and free, and Brotherhood
Led her between them like a little child
In time new born, to glad new life that leapt.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CHISWICK PRESS:—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.]