They lie at peace, the darkness fills
The hollow of their empty gaze.
The dust falls in their ears and stills
The echo of our fruitless days;
The earth takes back their baser part;
The brain no longer bounds the dream;
The broken vial of the heart
Lets out its passion in a stream.
And in this silence that they have
One inner vision grows more bright;
The Dead remember in the grave
As I remember here to-night.
(_1890._)
_Sonnet._
Since childhood have I dragged my life along
The dusty purlieus and approach of Death,
Hoping the years would bring me easier breath,
And turn my painful sighing to a song;
But, ah, the years have done me cruel wrong,
For they have robbed me of that happy faith;
Still in the world of men I move a wraith,
Who to the shadow-world not yet belong.
Too long, indeed, I linger here and take
The room of others but to droop and sigh;
Wherefore, O spinning sisters, for my sake,
No more the little tangled knots untie;
But all the skein, I do beseech you, break,
And spin a stronger thread more perfectly.
[Illustration]
_Song._
Oh for the wings of a dove,
To fly far away from my own soul,
Reach and be merged in the vast whole
Heaven of infinite Love!
Oh that I were as the rain,
To fall and be lost in the great sea,
One with the waves, till the drowned Me
Might not be severed again!
Infinite arms of the air,
Surrounding the stars and without strife
Blending our life with their large life,
Lift me and carry me there!
[Illustration]
_A Classic Landscape._
[Illustration]
This wood might be some Grecian heritage
Of the antique world, this hoary ilex wood;
So broad the shade, so deep the solitude,
So grey the air where Oread fancies brood.
Beyond, the fields are tall with purple sage;
The sky bends downward like a purple sheet—
A purple wind-filled sail—i’ the noonday heat;
And past the river shine the fields of wheat.
O tender wheat, O starry saxifrage,
O deep-red tulips, how the fields are fair!
Far off the mountains pierce the quivering air,
Ash-coloured, mystical, remote, and bare.
How far they look, the Mountains of Mirage
Or northern Hills of Heaven, how far away!
In front the long paulonia-blossoms sway
From leafless boughs across that dreamy grey.
O world, how worthy of a golden age!
How might Theocritus have sung and found
The Oreads here, the Naiads gathering round,
Their pallid locks still dripping to the ground!
For me, O world, thou art how mere a stage,
Whereon the human soul must act alone,
In a dead language, with the plot unknown,
Nor learn what happens when the play is done.
_Old Songs._
This song I wrote—ah me, how long ago!
When up the stair of Heaven and down again
(For even then I did not long remain),
With happy feet I used to come and go.
This ode I sang beneath a laurel-bough
Where I had sought for Truth among the dead;
This little verse (and still the page is red),
To soothe some easier pang forgotten now.
I took the dew of lilies grown apart;
The scanty wine of Amphoras; and, bright
And clear, the blood that flows from trivial scars;
But with the bitter ink of mine own heart
I have not written and I must not write,
Let rust and acid dim the eternal stars.
[Illustration]
_Versailles._
“_Le monde est l’œuvre d’un grand Architecte qui est mort avant de
l’avoir achevé._”