Are holden, while we go sadly and say
“We hoped it had been He, and now to-day
Is the third day, and hope within us dies,”
Bear with us, O our Master, Thou art wise
And knowest our foolishness; we do not pray
“Declare Thyself, since weary grows the way
And faith’s new burden hard upon us lies.”
Nay, choose Thy time; but ah! whoe’er Thou art
Leave us not; where have we heard any voice
Like Thine? Our hearts burn in us as we go;
Stay with us; break our bread; so, for our part
Ere darkness falls haply we may rejoice,
Haply when day has been far spent may know.
X. A FAREWELL
Thou movest from us; we shall see Thy face
No more. Ah, look below these troubled eyes,
This woman’s heart in us that faints and dies,
Trust not our faltering lips, our sad amaze;
Glance some time downward from Thy golden place,
And know how we rejoice. It is meet, is wise;
High tasks are Thine, surrenders, victories,
Communings pure, mysterious works and ways.
Leave us: how should we keep Thee in these blown
Grey fields, or soil with earth a Master’s feet?
Nor deem us comfortless: have we not known
Thee once, for ever. Friend, the pain is sweet
Seeing Thy completeness to have grown complete,
Thy gift it is that we can walk alone.
XI. DELIVERANCE
I prayed to be delivered, O true God,
Not from the foes that compass us about,--
Them I might combat; not from any doubt
That wrings the soul; not from Thy bitter rod
Smiting the conscience; not from plagues abroad,
Nor my strong inward lusts; nor from the rout
Of worldly men, the scourge, the spit, the flout,
And the whole dolorous way the Master trod.
All these would rouse the life that lurks within,
Would save or slay; these things might be defied
Or strenuously endured; yea, pressed by sin
The soul is stung with sudden, visiting gleams;
Leave these, if Thou but scatter, Lord, I cried,
The counterfeiting shadows and vain dreams.
XII. PARADISE LOST
O would you read that Hebrew legend true
Look deep into the little children’s eyes,
Who walk with naked souls in Paradise,
And know not shame; who, with miraculous dew
To keep the garden ever fair and new,
Want not our sobbing rains in their blue skies.
Among the trees God moves, and o’er them rise
All night in deeper heavens great stars to view.
Ah, how we wept when through the gate we came!
What boots it to look back? The world is ours,
Come, we will fare, my brothers, boldly forth;
Let that dread Angel wave the sword of flame
Forever idly round relinquished bowers--
Leave Eden there; we will subdue the earth.
THE RESTING PLACE
How all things transitory, all things vain
Desert me! Whither am I sinking slow
On the prone wing, to what predestined home,
What peace beyond all peace, what ultimate joy?
Nay, cease from questioning, care not to know,
Let bliss dissolve each thought, all function cease,
Fold close the wing, let the soft-flowing light
Permeate, and merely once uplift drooped lids
To mark the world remote, the abandoned shore,
Fretted with much vain pleasure, futile pain,
Far, far.
The deepening peace! a dawn of essences
Awful and incommunicably dear!
Grace opening into grace, joy quenching joy!
Thy waves and billows have gone over me
Blissful and calm, and still the dreams drop off,
And true things grow more true, and larger orbs
The strong salvation which has seized my soul.
The stream of the attraction draws me on
Toward some centre; all will quickly end,
All be attained. The sweetness of repose
And this swift motion slay the consciousness
Of being, and bind up the will in sleep.
Silence and light accept my soul--I touch....
Is it death’s centre or the breast of God?
NEW HYMNS FOR SOLITUDE
I
I come to Thee not asking aught; I crave
No gift of Thine, no grace;
Yet where the suppliants enter let me have
Within Thy courts a place.
My hands, my heart contain no offering;
Thy name I would not bless
With lips untouched by altar-fire; I bring
Only my weariness.
These are the children, frequent in Thy home;
Grant, Lord, to each his share;
Then turn, and merely gaze on me, who come
To lay my spirit bare.
II
Yet one more step--no flight
The weary soul can bear--
Into a whiter light,
Into a hush more rare.
Take me, I am all Thine,
Thine now, not seeking Thee,--
Hid in the secret shrine,
Lost in the shoreless sea.
Grant to the prostrate soul
Prostration new and sweet,
Make weak the weak, control
Thy creature at Thy feet.
Passive I lie: shine down,
Pierce through the will with straight
Swift beams, one after one,
Divide, disintegrate,
Free me from self,--resume
My place, and be Thou there;
Yet also keep me. Come
Thou Saviour and Thou Slayer!
III
Nothing remains to say to Thee, O Lord,
I am confessed,
All my lips’ empty crying Thou hast heard,
My unrest, my rest.
Why wait I any longer? Thou dost stay,
And therefore, Lord, I would not go away.
Let me be at Thy feet a little space,
Forget me here;
I will not touch Thy hand, nor seek Thy face,
Only be near,
And this hour let Thy nearness feed the heart,
And when Thou goest I also will depart.
Then when Thou seekest Thy way, and I, mine
Let the World be
Not wide and cold after this cherishing shrine
Illum’d by Thee,
Nay, but worth worship, fair, a radiant star,
Tender and strong as Thy chief angels are.
Yet bid me not go forth: I cannot now
Take hold on joy,
Nor sing the swift, glad song, nor bind my brow;
Her wise employ
Be mine, the silent woman at Thy knee
In the low room in little Bethany.
IV
Ah, that sharp thrill through all my frame!
And yet once more! Withstand
I can no longer; in Thy name
I yield me to Thy hand.
Such pangs were in the soul unborn,
The fear, the joy were such,
When first it felt in that keen morn
A dread, creating touch.
Maker of man, Thy pressure sure
This grosser stuff must quell;
The spirit faints, yet will endure,
Subdue, control, compel.
The Potter’s finger shaping me....
Praise, praise! the clay curves up
Not for dishonour, though it be
God’s least adornèd cup.
V
Sins grew a heavy load and cold,
And pressed me to the dust;
“Whither,” I cried, “can this be rolled
Ere I behold the Just?”
But now I claim them for my own;
Thy face I needs must find;
Lo! thus I wrought, yea, I alone,
Not weak, beguiled, or blind.
See my full arms, my heaped-up shame,
An evil load I bring:
Thou, God, art a consuming flame,
Accept the hateful thing.
Pronounce the dread condemning word,
I stand in blessed fear;
Dear is Thy cleansing wrath, O Lord,
The fire that burns is dear.
VI
I found Thee in my heart, O Lord,
As in some secret shrine;
I knelt, I waited for Thy word,
I joyed to name Thee mine.
I feared to give myself away
To that or this; beside
Thy altar on my face I lay,
And in strong need I cried.
Those hours are past. Thou art not mine,
And therefore I rejoice,
I wait within no holy shrine,
I faint not for the voice.
In Thee we live; and every wind
Of heaven is Thine; blown free
To west, to east, the God unshrined
Is still discovering me.
IN THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE
In the Dean’s porch a nest of clay
With five small tenants may be seen,
Five solemn faces, each as wise
As though its owner were a Dean;
Five downy fledglings in a row,
Packed close, as in the antique pew
The school-girls are whose foreheads clear
At the _Venite_ shine on you.
Day after day the swallows sit
With scarce a stir, with scarce a sound,
But dreaming and digesting much
They grow thus wise and soft and round.
They watch the Canons come to dine,
And hear the mullion-bars across,
Over the fragrant fruit and wine
Deep talk of rood-screen and reredos.
Her hands with field-flowers drench’d, a child
Leaps past in wind-blown dress and hair,
The swallows turn their heads askew--
Five judges deem that she is fair.
Prelusive touches sound within,
Straightway they recognize the sign,
And, blandly nodding, they approve
The minuet of Rubinstein.
They mark the cousins’ schoolboy talk,
(Male birds flown wide from minster bell),
And blink at each broad term of art,
Binomial or bicycle.
Ah! downy young ones, soft and warm,
Doth such a stillness mask from sight
Such swiftness? can such peace conceal
Passion and ecstasy of flight?
Yet somewhere ’mid your Eastern suns,
Under a white Greek architrave
At morn, or when the shaft of fire
Lies large upon the Indian wave,
A sense of something dear gone-by
Will stir, strange longings thrill the heart
For a small world embowered and close,
Of which ye some time were a part.
The dew-drench’d flowers, the child’s glad eyes
Your joy unhuman shall control,
And in your wings a light and wind
Shall move from the Maestro’s soul.
FIRST LOVE
My long first year of perfect love,
My deep new dream of joy;
She was a little chubby girl,
I was a chubby boy.
I wore a crimson frock, white drawers,
A belt, a crown was on it;
She wore some angel’s kind of dress
And such a tiny bonnet,
Old-fashioned, but the soft brown hair
Would never keep its place;
A little maid with violet eyes,
And sunshine in her face.
O my child-queen, in those lost days
How sweet was daily living!
How humble and how proud I grew,
How rich by merely giving!
She went to school, the parlour-maid
Slow stepping to her trot;
That parlour-maid, ah, did she feel
How lofty was her lot!
Across the road I saw her lift
My Queen, and with a sigh
I envied Raleigh; my new coat
Was hung a peg too high.
A hoard of never-given gifts
I cherished,--priceless pelf;
’Twas two whole days ere I devour’d
That peppermint myself.
In Church I only prayed for her--
“O God bless Lucy Hill;”
Child, may His angels keep their arms
Ever around you still.
But when the hymn came round, with heart
That feared some heart’s surprising
Its secret sweet, I climb’d the seat
’Mid rustling and uprising;
And there against her mother’s arm
The sleeping child was leaning,
While far away the hymn went on,
The music and the meaning.
Oh I have loved with more of pain
Since then, with more of passion,
Loved with the aching in my love
After our grown-up fashion;
Yet could I almost be content
To lose here at your feet
A year or two, you murmuring elm,
To dream a dream so sweet.
THE SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE: AN ODE
(_By a Western Spinning Dervish_)
I spin, I spin, around, around,
And close my eyes,
And let the bile arise
From the sacred region of the soul’s Profound;
Then gaze upon the world; how strange! how new!
The earth and heaven are one,
The horizon-line is gone,
The sky how green! the land how fair and blue!
Perplexing items fade from my large view,
And thought which vexed me with its false and true
Is swallowed up in Intuition; this,
This is the sole true mode
Of reaching God,
And gaining the universal synthesis
Which makes All--One; while fools with peering eyes
Dissect, divide, and vainly analyse.
So round, and round, and round again!
How the whole globe swells within my brain,
The stars inside my lids appear,
The murmur of the spheres I hear
Throbbing and beating in each ear;
Right in my navel I can feel
The centre of the world’s great wheel.
Ah peace divine, bliss dear and deep,
No stay, no stop,
Like any top
Whirling with swiftest speed, I sleep.
O ye devout ones round me coming,
Listen! I think that I am humming;
No utterance of the servile mind
With poor chop-logic rules agreeing
Here shall ye find,
But inarticulate burr of man’s unsundered being.
Ah, could we but devise some plan,
Some patent jack by which a man
Might hold himself ever in harmony
With the great Whole, and spin perpetually,
As all things spin
Without, within,
As Time spins off into Eternity,
And Space into the inane Immensity,
And the Finite into God’s Infinity,
Spin, spin, spin, spin.
BEAU RIVAGE HOTEL
SATURDAY EVENING
Below there’s a brumming and strumming
And twiddling and fiddling amain,
And sweeping of muslins and laughter,
And pattering of luminous rain.
Fair England, resplendent Columbia,
Gaul, Teuton,--how precious a smother!
But the happiest is brisk little Polly
To galop with only her brother.
And up to the fourth étage landing,
Come the violins’ passionate cries,
Where the pale femme-de-chambre is sitting
With sleep in her beautiful eyes.
IN A JUNE NIGHT
(_A Study in the manner of Robert Browning_)
I
See, the door opens of this alcove,
Here we are now in the cool night air
Out of the heat and smother; above
The stars are a wonder, alive and fair,
It is a perfect night,--your hand,--
Down these steps and we reach the garden,
An odorous, dim, enchanted land,
With the dusk stone-god for only warden.
II
Was I not right to bring you here?
We might have seen slip the hours within
Till God’s new day in the East were clear,
And His silence abashed the dancers’ din,
Then each have gone away, the pain
And longing greatened, not satisfied,
By a hand’s slight touch or a glance’s gain,--
And now we are standing side by side!
III
Come to the garden’s end,--not so,
Not by the grass, it would drench your feet;
See, here is a path where the trees o’ergrow
And the fireflies flicker; but, my sweet,
Lean on me now, for one cannot see
Here where the great leaves lie unfurled
To take the whole soul and the mystery
Of a summer night poured out for the world.
IV
Into the open air once more!
Yonder’s the edge of the garden-wall
Where we may sit and talk,--deplore
This half-hour lost from so bright a ball,
Or praise my partner with the eyes
And the raven hair, or the other one
With her flaxen curls, and slow replies
As near asleep in the Tuscan sun.
V
Hush! do you hear on the beach’s cirque
Just below, though the lake is dim,
How the little ripples do their work,
Fall and faint on the pebbled rim,
So they say what they want, and then
Break at the marge’s feet and die;
It is so different with us men
Who never can once speak perfectly.
VI
Yet hear me,--trust that they mean indeed
Oh, so much more than the words will say
Or shall it be ’twixt us two agreed
That all we might spend a night and day
In striving to put in a word or thought,
Which were then from ourselves a thing apart,
Shall be just believed and quite forgot,
When my heart is felt against your heart.
VII
Ah, but that will not tell you all,
How I am yours not thus alone,
To find how your pulses rise and fall,
And winning you wholly be your own,
But yours to be humble, could you grow
The Queen that you are, remote and proud,
And I with only a life to throw
Where the others’ flowers for your feet were strowed.
VIII
Well, you have faults too! I can blame
If you choose: this hand is not so white
Or round as a little one that came
On my shoulder once or twice to-night
Like a soft white dove. Envy her now!
And when you talked to that padded thing
And I passed you leisurely by, your brow
Was cold, not a flush nor fluttering.
IX
Such foolish talk! while that one star still
Dwells o’er the mountain’s margin-line
Till the dawn takes all; one may drink one’s fill
Of such quiet; there’s a whisper fine
In the leaves a-tremble, and now ’tis dumb;
We have lived long years, love, you and I,
And the heart grows faint; your lips, then: come,--
It were not so very hard to die.
FROM APRIL TO OCTOBER
I. BEAUTY
The beauty of the world, the loveliness
Of woodland pools, which doves have coo’d to sleep,
Dreaming the noontide through beneath the deep
Of heaven; the radiant blue’s benign caress
When April clouds are rifted; buds that bless
Each little nook and bower, where the leaves keep
Dew and light shadow, and quick lizards peep
For sunshine,--these, and the ancient stars no less,
And the sea’s mystery of dusk and bright
Are but the curious characters that lie,
Priestess of Beauty, in thy robe of light.
Ah, where, divine One, is thy veiled retreat,
That I may creep to it and clasp thy feet,
And gaze in thy pure face though I should die?
II. TWO INFINITIES
A lonely way, and as I went my eyes
Could not unfasten from the Spring’s sweet things,
Lush-sprouted grass, and all that climbs and clings
In loose, deep hedges, where the primrose lies
In her own fairness, buried blooms surprise
The plunderer bee and stop his murmurings,
And the glad flutter of a finch’s wings
Outstartle small blue-speckled butterflies.
Blissfully did one speedwell plot beguile
My whole heart long; I loved each separate flower,
Kneeling. I looked up suddenly--Dear God!
There stretched the shining plain for many a mile,
The mountains rose with what invincible power!
And how the sky was fathomless and broad!
III. THE DAWN
The Dawn,--O silence and wise mystery!
Was it a dream, the murmurous room, the glitter,
The tinkling songs, the dance, and that fair sitter
I talk’d æsthetics to so rapturously?
Sweet Heaven, thy silentness and purity,
Thy sister-words of blame, not railings bitter,
With these great quiet leaves, and the light twitter
Of small birds wakening in the greenery,
And one stream stepping quickly on its way
So well it knows the glad work it must do,
Reclaim a wayward heart scarce answering true
To that sweet strain of hours that closes May;
How the pale marge quickens with pulsings new,
O welcome to thy world thou fair, great day!
IV. THE SKYLARK
There drops our lark into his secret nest!
All is felt silence and the broad blue sky;
Come, the incessant rain of melody
Is over; now earth’s quietudes invest,
In cool and shadowy limit, that wild breast
Which trembled forth the sudden ecstasy
Till raptures came too swift, and song must die
Since midmost deeps of heaven grew manifest.
My poet of the garden-walk last night
Sang in rich leisure, ceased and sang again,
Of pleasure in green leaves, of odours given
By flowers at dusk, and many a dim delight;
The finer joy was thine keen-edged with pain,
Soarer! alone with thy own heart and heaven.
V. THE MILL-RACE
“Only a mill-race,” said they, and went by,
But we were wiser, spoke no word, and stayed;
It was a place to make the heart afraid
With so much beauty, lest the after sigh,
When one had drunk its sweetness utterly,
Should leave the spirit faint; a living shade
From beechen branches o’er the water played
To unweave that spell through which the conquering sky
Subdues the sweet will of each summer stream;
So this ran freshlier through the swaying weeds.
I gazed until the whole was as a dream,
Nor should have waked or wondered had I seen
Some smooth-limbed wood-nymph glance across the green,
Or Naiad lift a head amongst the reeds.
VI. IN THE WOOD
A place where Una might have fallen asleep
Assured of quiet dreams, a place to make
Sad eyes bright with strange tears; a little lake
In the green heart of a wood; the crystal deep
Of heaven so wide if there should chance to stray
Into that stainless field some thin cloud-flake,
When not a breeze the trance of noon dare break,
About the middle it must melt away.
Lilies upon the water in their leaves,
Stirr’d by faint ripples that go curving on
To little reedy coves; a stream that grieves
To the fine grasses and wild flowers around;
And we two in a golden silence bound,
Not a line read of rich _Endymion_.
VII. THE PAUSE OF EVENING
Nightward on dimmest wing in Twilight’s train
The grey hours floated smoothly, lingeringly;
A solemn wonder was the western sky
Rich with the slow forsaking sunset-stain,
Barred by long violet cloud; hillside and plain
The feet of Night had touched; a wind’s low sigh
Told of whole pleasure lapsed,--then rustled by
With soft subsidence in the rippling grain.
Why in dark dews, unready to depart,
Did Evening pause and ponder, nor perceive
Star follow star into the central blue?
What secret was the burden of her heart?
What grave, sweet memory grew she loath to leave?
What finer sense, no morrow may renew?
VIII. IN JULY
Why do I make no poems? Good my friend
Now is there silence through the summer woods,
In whose green depths and lawny solitudes
The light is dreaming; voicings clear ascend
Now from no hollow where glad rivulets wend,
But murmurings low of inarticulate moods,
Softer than stir of unfledged cushat broods,
Breathe, till o’erdrowsed the heavy flower-heads bend.
Now sleep the crystal and heart-charmèd waves
Round white, sunstricken rocks the noontide long,
Or ’mid the coolness of dim lighted caves
Sway in a trance of vague deliciousness;
And I,--I am too deep in joy’s excess
For the imperfect impulse of a song.
IX. IN SEPTEMBER
Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,
No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon
In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon
Finds motionless white mists out on the leas.
Dear chance it were in some rough wood-god’s lair
A month hence, gazing on the last bright field,
To sink o’er-drowsed, and dream that wild-flowers blew
Around my head and feet silently there,
Till Spring’s glad choir adown the valley pealed,
And violets trembled in the morning dew.
X. IN THE WINDOW
A still grey evening: Autumn in the sky,
And Autumn on the hills and the sad wold;
No congregated towers of pearl and gold
In the vaporous West, no fiend limned duskily,
No angel whose reared trump must soon be loud,
Nor mountains which some pale green lake enfold
Nor islands in an ocean glacial-cold;
Hardly indeed a noticeable cloud.
Yet here I lingered, all my will asleep,
Gazing an hour with neither joy nor pain,
No noonday trance in midsummer more deep;
And wake with a vague yearning in the dim,
Blind room, my heart scarce able to restrain
The idle tears that tremble to the brim.
XI. AN AUTUMN MORNING
O what a morn is this for us who knew
The large, blue, summer mornings, heaven let down
Upon the earth for men to drink, the crown
Of perfect human living, when we grew
Great-hearted like the Gods! Come, we will strew
White ashes on our hair, nor strive to drown
In faint hymn to the year’s fulfilled renown
The sterile grief which is the season’s due.
Lightly above the vine-rows of rich hills
Where the brown peasant girls move amid grapes
The swallow glances; let him cry for glee!
But yon pale mist diffused ’twixt paler shapes,--
Once sovereign trees,--my spirit also fills,
And an east-wind comes moaning from the sea.
SEA VOICES
Was it a lullaby the Sea went singing
About my feet, some old-world monotone,
Filled full of secret memories, and bringing
Not hope to sting the heart, but peace alone,
Sleep and the certitude of sleep to be
Wiser henceforth than all philosophy?
Truth! did we seek for truth with eye and brain
Through days so many and wasted with desire?
Listen, the same long gulfing voice again:
Tired limbs lie slack as sands are, eyes that tire
Close gently, close forever, twilight grey
Receives you, tenderer than the glaring day.
[_He sleeps, and after an interval awakes._]
Ah terror, ah delight! A sudden cry,
Anguish, or hope, or triumph. Awake, arise,--
The winds awake! Is ocean’s lullaby
This clarion-call? Her kiss, the spray that flies
Salt to the lip and cheek? Her motion light
Of nursing breasts, this swift pursuit and flight?
O wild sea-voices! Victory and defeat,
But ever deathless passion and unrest,
White wings upon the wind and flying feet,
Disdain and wrath, a reared and hissing crest,
The imperious urge, and last, a whole life spent
In bliss of one supreme abandonment.
ABOARD THE “SEA-SWALLOW”
The gloom of the sea-fronting cliffs
Lay on the water, violet-dark,
The pennon drooped, the sail fell in,
And slowly moved our bark.
A golden day; the summer dreamed
In heaven and on the whispering sea,
Within our hearts the summer dreamed;
The hours had ceased to be.
Then rose the girls with bonnets loosed,
And shining tresses lightly blown,
Alice and Adela, and sang
A song of Mendelssohn.
O sweet, and sad, and wildly clear,
Through summer air it sinks and swells,
Wild with a measureless desire,
And sad with all farewells.
SEA-SIGHING
This is the burden of the Sea,
Loss, failure, sorrows manifold;
Yet something though the voice sound free
Remains untold.
Listen! that secret sigh again
Kept very low, a whole heart’s waste;
What means this inwardness of pain?
This sob repressed?
Some ancient sin, some supreme wrong,
Some huge attempt God brought to nought,
All over while the world was young,
And ne’er forgot?
Those lips, which open wide and cry,
Weak as pale flowers or trembling birds,
Are proud, and fixed immutably
Against such words.
Confession from that burdened soul
No ghostly counsellor may win;
Could such as we receive its whole
Passion and sin?
In this high presence priest or king,
Prophet or singer of the earth,
With yon cast sea-weed were a thing
Of equal worth.
IN THE MOUNTAINS