ENGLISH
_Fratri Dilectissimo_[7]
W. H. B.
When we were little wandering boys,
And every hill was blue and high,
On ballad ways and martial joys
We fed our fancies, you and I.
With Bruce we crouched in bracken shade,
With Douglas charged the Paynim foes;
And oft in moorland noons I played
Colkitto to your grave Montrose.
The obliterating seasons flow—
They cannot kill our boyish game.
Though creeds may change and kings may go,
Yet burns undimmed the ancient flame.
While young men in their pride make haste
The wrong to right, the bond to free,
And plant a garden in the waste,
Still rides our Scottish chivalry.
Another end had held your dream—
To die fulfilled of hope and might,
To pass in one swift rapturous gleam
From mortal to immortal light—
But through long hours of labouring breath
You watched the world grow small and far,
And met the constant eyes of Death,
And haply knew how kind they are.
One boon the Fates relenting gave—
Not where the scented hill-wind blows
From cedar thickets lies your grave,
Nor ’mid the steep Himálayan snows.
Night calls the stragglers to the nest,
And at long last ’tis home indeed
For your far-wandering feet to rest
Forever by the crooks of Tweed.
In perfect honour, perfect truth,
And gentleness to all mankind,
You trod the golden paths of youth,
Then left the world and youth behind.
Ah no! ’Tis we who fade and fail—
And you from Time’s slow torments free
Shall pass from strength to strength and scale
The steeps of immortality.
Dear heart, in that serener air,
If blessed souls may backward gaze,
Some slender nook of memory spare
For our old happy moorland days.
I sit alone, and musing fills
My breast with pain that shall not die,
Till once again o’er greener hills
We ride together, you and I.
1912
FOOTNOTES:
[7] From “The Marquis of Montrose.”
_To Lionel Phillips_[8]
Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.
But in you, I think, the boy is not over;
So take this medley of ways and wars
As the gift of a friend and a fellow-lover
Of the fairest country under the stars.
1909
FOOTNOTES:
[8] From “Prester John.”
_To Major-General The Hon. Sir Reginald Talbot, K.C.B._[9]
I tell of old Virginian ways;
And who more fit my tale to scan
Than you, who knew in far-off days
The eager horse of Sheridan;
Who saw the sullen meads of fate,
The tattered scrub, the blood-drenched sod,
Where Lee, the greatest of the great,
Bent to the storm of God?
I tell lost tales of savage wars;
And you have known the desert sands,
The camp beneath the silver stars,
The rush at dawn of Arab bands,
The fruitless toil, the hopeless dream,
The fainting feet, the faltering breath,
While Gordon by the ancient stream
Waited at ease on death.
And now, aloof from camp and field,
You spend your sunny autumn hours
Where the green folds of Chiltern shield
The nooks of Thames amid the flowers:
You who have borne that name of pride,
In honour clean from fear or stain,
Which Talbot won by Henry’s side
In vanquished Aquitaine.
1914
FOOTNOTES:
[9] From “Salute to Adventurers.”
_From the Pentlands, Looking North and South_
Around my feet the clouds are drawn
In the cold mystery of the dawn;
No breezes cheer, no guests intrude
My mossy, mist-clad solitude;
When sudden down the steeps of sky
Flames a long, lightening wind. On high
The steel-blue arch shines clear, and far,
In the low lands where cattle are,
Towns smoke. And swift, a haze, a gleam,—
The Firth lies like a frozen stream,
Reddening with morn. Tall spires of ships,
Like thorns about the harbour’s lips,
Now shake faint canvas, now, asleep,
Their salt, uneasy slumbers keep;
While golden-grey o’er kirk and wall
Day wakes in the ancient capital.
Before me lie the lists of strife,
The caravanserai of life,
Whence from the gates the merchants go
On the world’s highways; to and fro
Sail laden ships; and in the street
The lone foot-traveller shakes his feet,
And in some corner by the fire
Tells the old tale of heart’s desire.
Thither from alien seas and skies
Comes the far-quested merchandise:—
Wrought silks of Broussa, Mocha’s ware
Brown-tinted, fragrant, and the rare
Thin perfumes that the rose’s breath
Has sought, immortal in her death:
Gold, gems, and spice, and haply still
The red rough largess of the hill
Which takes the sun and bears the vines
Among the haunted Apennines.
And he who treads the cobbled street
To-day in the cold North may meet,
Come month, come year, the dusky East,
And share the Caliph’s secret feast;
Or in the toil of wind and sun
Bear pilgrim-staff, forlorn, fordone,
Till o’er the steppe, athwart the sand,
Gleam the far gates of Samarkand.
The ringing quay, the weathered face,
Fair skies, dusk hands, the ocean race,
The palm-girt isle, the frosty shore,
Gales and hot suns the wide world o’er,
Grey North, red South, and burnished West,
The goals of the old tireless quest,
Leap in the smoke, immortal, free,
Where shines yon morning fringe of sea.
I turn;—how still the moorlands lie,
Sleep-locked beneath the awakening sky!
The film of morn is silver-grey
On the young heather, and away,
Dim, distant, set in ribs of hill,
Green glens are shining, stream and mill,
Clachan and kirk and garden-ground,
All silent in the hush profound
Which haunts alone the hills’ recess,
The antique home of quietness.
Nor to the folk can piper play
The tune of “Hills and Far Away,”
For they are with them. Morn can fire
No peaks of weary heart’s desire,
Nor the red sunset flame behind
Some ancient ridge of longing mind.
For Arcady is here, around,
In lilt of stream, in the clear sound
Of lark and moorbird, in the bold
Gay glamour of the evening gold.
And so the wheel of seasons moves
To kirk and market, to mild loves
And modest hates, and still the sight
Of brown kind faces, and when night
Draws dark around with age and fear
Theirs is the simple hope to cheer.—
A land of peace where lost romance
And ghostly shine of helm and lance
Still dwell by castled scarp and lea
And the lost homes of chivalry,
And the good fairy folk, my dear,
Who speak for cunning souls to hear,
In crook of glen and bower of hill
Sing of the Happy Ages still.
O Thou to whom man’s heart is known,
Grant me my morning orison.
Grant me the rover’s path—to see
The dawn arise, the daylight flee,
In the far wastes of sand and sun!
Grant me with venturous heart to run
On the old highway, where in pain
And ecstasy man strives amain,
Outstrips his fellows, or, too weak,
Finds the great rest that wanderers seek!
Grant me the joy of wind and brine,
The zest of food, the taste of wine,
The fighter’s strength, the echoing strife,
The high tumultuous lists of life—
May I ne’er lag, nor hapless fall,
Nor weary at the battle-call!...
But when the even brings surcease,
Grant me the happy moorland peace;
That in my heart’s depth ever lie
That ancient land of heath and sky,
Where the old rhymes and stories fall
In kindly, soothing pastoral.
There in the hills grave silence lies,
And Death himself wears friendly guise;
There be my lot, my twilight stage,
Dear city of my pilgrimage.
1898
_The Strong Man Armed_
“Gift me guerdon and grant me grace,”
Said the Lord of the North.
“Nothing I ask thee of gear or place
Ere I get me forth.
Gift one guerdon to mine and me
For the shade and the sheen.”
* * * * *
“Ask and it shall be given unto thee,”
Said Mary the Queen.
“May I never falter the wide world through,
But stand in the gate:
May my sword bite sharp and my steel ring true
At the ford and the strait:
Bide not on bed nor dally with song
When the strife goeth keen:
This be my boon from the Gods of the Strong!”
* * * * *
“Be it so,” said the Queen.
“May I stand in the mist and the clear and the chill,
In the cycle of wars,
In the brown of the moss and the grey of the hill
With my eyes to the stars!
Gift this guerdon and grant this grace
That I bid good e’en,
The sword in the hand and the foot to the race,
The wind in my teeth and the rain in my face!”
* * * * *
“Be it so,” said the Queen.
1895
_The Soldier of Fortune_
I have seen thy face in the foray, I have heard thy voice in the fray,
When the stars shrunk in the silence, and the wild midnights blew.
Men have worn their steel blades, seeking by night and day;
Selling their souls for the vain dreams—I have followed the true.
Frosts have dulled the scabbard, suns have furrowed the thong,
And the great winds of the north-east have steeled the vagrant eye.
So through the world I wander, haggard and fierce and strong,
Seeking the goal I see not, toiling I tell not why.
I have loved all good things, song and woman and wine,
The hearth’s red glow in the even, the gladsome face of a friend,
The suns and snows of the hill land, the sting of the winter’s brine,
Dawn and noon and the twilight, day and the daylight’s end.
I have ridden the old path, ridden it fierce and strong,
By camp and city and moorland and the grey face of the sea.
Wrath abides on my forehead but at my heart a song,
The ancient wayfaring ballad, the royal chant of the free.
For ever in cloud or in maytide Thy voice has been in my ear,
In the quivering mists of battle Thy face has shone like a star.
Never the steel ranks broke when the Lord sent forth His fear
But Thy hand has held my bridle and girt my soul for war.
I am broken and houseless, lost my clan and my name;
A stranger treads on my homelands, no heart remembereth me.—
But be Thou my portion, Lady of dew and flame!
Little I ask of the red gold, having the winds and thee.
1899
_The Singer_
Cold blows the drift on the hill,
Sere is the heather,
High goes the wind and shrill,
Mirk is the weather.
Stout be the front I show,
Come what the gods send!
Plaided and girt I go
Forth to the world’s end.
My brain is the stithy of years,
My heart the red gold
Which the gods with sharp anguish and tears
Have wrought from of old.
In the shining first dawn o’ the world,
I was old as the sky—
The morning dew on the field
Is no younger than I.
I am the magician of life,
The hero of runes;
The sorrows of eld and old strife
Ring clear in my tunes.
The sea lends her minstrel voice,
The storm-cloud its grey;
And ladies have wept at my notes,
Fair ladies and gay.
My home is the rim of the mist,
The ring of the spray.
The hart has his corrie, the hawk has her nest,
But I—the Lost Way.
Come dawning or noontide, come winter or spring,
Come leisure, come war,
I tarry not, I, but my burden I sing
Beyond and afar.
I sing of lost hopes and old kings
And the maids of the past;
Ye shiver adread at my strings
But ye heed them at last.
I sing of cold death and the grave—
Fools tremble afraid:
I sing of hot life, and the brave
Go forth undismayed.
I sleep by the well-head of joy
And the fountain of pain.
Man lives, loves, and fights, and then is not—
I only remain.
Ye mock me and hold me to scorn—
I seek not your grace;
Ye gird me with terror—forlorn,
I laugh in your face.
1898
_Processional_[10]
In the ancient orderly places, with a blank and orderly mind,
We sit in our green walled gardens and our corn and oil increase;
Sunset nor dawn can wake us, for the face of the heavens is kind;
We light our taper at even and call our comfort peace.
Peaceful our clear horizon; calm as our sheltered days
Are the lilied meadows we dwell in, the decent highways we tread.
Duly we make our offerings, but we know not the God we praise,
For He is the God of the living, and we, His children, are dead.
I will arise and get me beyond this country of dreams,
Where all is ancient and ordered and hoar with the frost of years,
To the land where loftier mountains cradle their wilder streams,
And the fruitful earth is blessed with more bountiful smiles
and tears:—
There in the home of the lightnings, where the fear of the Lord
is set free,
Where the thunderous midnights fade to the turquoise magic of morn,
The days of man are a vapour, blown from a shoreless sea,
A little cloud before sunrise, a cry in the void forlorn.
I am weary of men and cities and the service of little things,
Where the flame-like glories of life are shrunk to a candle’s ray.
Smite me, my God, with Thy presence, blind my eyes with Thy wings,
In the heart of Thy virgin earth show me Thy secret way!
1906
FOOTNOTES:
[10] From “A Lodge in the Wilderness.”
_Avignon_
1759
_Hearts to break but nane to sell,
Gear to tine but nane to hain;—
We maun dree a weary spell
Ere our lad comes back again._
I walk abroad on winter days,
When storms have stripped the wide champaign,
For northern winds have norland ways,
And scents of Badenoch haunt the rain.
And by the lipping river path,
When in the fog the Rhone runs grey,
I see the heather of the strath,
And watch the salmon leap in Spey.
The hills are feathered with young trees,—
I set them for my children’s boys.
I made a garden deep in ease,
A pleasance for my lady’s joys.
Strangers have heired them. Long ago
She died,—kind fortune thus to die;
And my one son by Beauly flow
Gave up the soul that could not lie.
Old, elbow-worn, and pinched I bide
The final toll the gods may take.
The laggard years have quenched my pride;
They cannot kill the ache, the ache.
Weep not the dead, for they have sleep
Who lie at home; but ah, for me
In the deep grave my heart will weep
With longing for my lost countrie.
_Hearts to break but nane to sell,
Gear to tine but nane to hain;—
We maun dree a weary spell
Ere our lad comes back again._
1911
_The Gipsy’s Song to the Lady Cassilis_
“Whereupon the Faas, coming down from the Gates of Galloway, did so
bewitch my lady that she forgat husband and kin, and followed the
tinkler’s piping.”—Chap-book of the _Raid of Cassilis_.
The door is open to the wall,
The air is bright and free;
Adown the stair, across the hall,
And then—the world and me;
The bare grey bent, the running stream,
The fire beside the shore;
And we will bid the hearth farewell,
And never seek it more,
My love,
And never seek it more.
And you shall wear no silken gown,
No maid shall bind your hair;
The yellow broom shall be your gem,
Your braid the heather rare.
Athwart the moor, adown the hill,
Across the world away;
The path is long for happy hearts
That sing to greet the day,
My love,
That sing to greet the day.
When morning cleaves the eastern grey,
And the lone hills are red;
When sunsets light the evening way
And birds are quieted;
In autumn noon and springtide dawn,
By hill and dale and sea,
The world shall sing its ancient song
Of hope and joy for thee,
My love,
Of hope and joy for thee.
And at the last no solemn stole
Shall on thy breast be laid;
No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul,
No charnel vault thee shade.
But by the shadowed hazel copse,
Aneath the greenwood tree,
Where airs are soft and waters sing,
Thou’lt ever sleep by me,
My love,
Thou’lt ever sleep by me.
1898
_Wood Magic_
(9th Century)
I will walk warily in the wise woods on the fringes of eventide,
For the covert is full of noises and the stir of nameless things.
I have seen in the dusk of the beeches the shapes of the lords that ride,
And down in the marish hollow I have heard the lady who sings.
And once in an April gloaming I met a maid on the sward,
All marble-white and gleaming and tender and wild of eye;—
I, Jehan the hunter, who speak am a grown man, middling hard,
But I dreamt a month of the maid, and wept I knew not why.
Down by the edge of the firs, in a coppice of heath and vine,
Is an old moss-grown altar, shaded by briar and bloom,
Denys, the priest, hath told me ’twas the lord Apollo’s shrine
In the days ere Christ came down from God to the Virgin’s womb.
I never go past but I doff my cap and avert my eyes—
(Were Denys to catch me I trow I’d do penance for half a year.)—
For once I saw a flame there and the smoke of a sacrifice,
And a voice spake out of the thicket that froze my soul with fear.
Wherefore to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
Mary the Blessed Mother, and the kindly Saints as well,
I will give glory and praise, and them I cherish the most,
For they have the keys of Heaven, and save the soul from Hell.
But likewise I will spare for the lord Apollo a grace,
And a bow for the lady Venus—as a friend but not as a thrall.
’Tis true they are out of Heaven, but some day they may win the place;
For gods are kittle cattle, and a wise man honours them all.
1911
_The Song of the Sea Captain_
Diego d’Alboquerque, brother of the great Affonso, a knight of the
Portuguese Order of Jesus Christ, having landed on the coast north
of Zanzibar, wandered to the Abyssinian highlands, where he saw
and loved Prester John’s daughter, Melissa, a cousin of the Lady
of Tripoli (_la princesse lointaine_). He was slain off Goa in the
great fight with the Sultan of Muscat.
I sail a lone sea captain
Around the southern seas;
Worn as my cheek, the flag of Christ
Floats o’er me on the breeze.
By green isle and by desert,
By little white-walled town,
To west wind and to east wind
I lead my galleons down.
I know the black south-easter,
I know the drowsy calms
When the slow tide creeps shoreward
To lave the idle palms.
Of many a stark sea battle
The Muslim foe can tell,
When their dark dhows I sent to crabs
And their dark souls to hell.
Small reck have I of Muslim,
Small reck of winds and seas,
The waters are my pathway
To bring me to my ease.
The dawns that burn above me
Are torches set to light
My footsteps to a garden
Of roses red and white.
* * * * *
Five months we stood from Lagos,
While, scant of food and sleep,
We tracked da Gama’s highroad
Across the Guinea deep.
All spent we were with watching
When, ghostly as a dream,
The Bona Esperanza cape
Rose dark upon the beam.
Then by the low green inlets
We groped our passage forth,
Outside the shallow surf-bars
We headed for the north.
Sofala gave us victual,
Inyaka ease and rest,
But of the wayside harbours
I loved Melinda best.
’Twas on a day in April,
The Feast of Rosaly,
We beached our weary vessels,
Cried farewell to the sea,
And with ten stout companions
And hearts with youth made bold
We sought the inland mountains
Of which our fathers told.
No chart had we or counsel
To guide our weary feet,
To north and west we wandered
In drought and dust and heat,
Till o’er the steaming tree-tops
We saw the far-off dome
Of mystic icy mountains,
And knew the Prester’s home.
Nine days we clomb the foothills,
Nine days the mountain wall,
Sheer cliff and ancient forest
And fretted waterfall;
And on the tenth we entered
A meadow cool and deep,
And in the Prester’s garden
We laid us down to sleep.
Long time we fared like princes
In palaces of stone,
For never guest goes cheerless
Who meets with Prester John;
Where woodlands mount to gardens
And gardens climb to snows
And wells of living water
Sing rondels to the rose.
And there among the roses,
More white and red than they,
There walked the gleaming lady,
The princess far away.
Dearer her golden tresses
Than the high pomp of wars,
And deep and still her eyes as lakes
That brood beneath the stars.
There walked we and there spoke we
Of things that may not cease,
Of life and death and God’s dear love
And the eternal peace.
For in that shadowed garden
The world had grown so small
That one white girl in one white hand
Could clasp and hold it all.
I craved the Prester’s blessing,
I kissed his kingly hand:
“Too soon has come the parting
From this fair mountain land.
But shame it were for Christian knight
To take his leisure here
When o’er the broad and goodly earth
The Muslim sends his fear.
“I go to gird my sword on,
To drive my fleets afar,
To court the wrath of tempests,
The dusty toils of war.
But when my vows are ended,
Then, joyous from the fray,
I come to claim my lady,
The princess far away.”
* * * * *
I sail a lone sea captain
Across the southern seas;
Worn as my cheek, the flag of Christ
Still flaunts upon the breeze.
By green isle and by desert,
By little white-walled town,
To west wind and to east wind
I lead my galleons down.
But in the starkest tempest,
And in the drowsy heats,
Where on the shattered coral
The far-drawn breaker beats:
In seas of dreaming water,
And in the wind-swept spray,
I see my snow-white lady,
The princess far away.
Sometimes in inland places
We march for weary days,
Where thorns parch in the noontide
Or fens are dark with haze;—
For me ’tis but a march of dreams,
For ever, clear and low,
I hear cool waters falling
In the garden of the snow.
Small reck have I of Muslim,
Small reck of sands or seas;
The wide world is my pathway
To lead me to my ease.
The dawns that burn above me
Are torches set to light
My footsteps to a garden
Of rose red and white.
1905
_Antiphilus of Byzantium_
_Anth. Pal._ ix. 546.
Give me a mat on the deck,
When the awnings sound to the blows of the spray,
And the hearthstones crack with the flames a-back
And the pot goes bubbling away.
Give me a boy to cook my broth;
For table a ship’s plank lacking a cloth,
And never a fork or knife;
And, after a game with a rusty pack,
The bo’sun’s whistle to pipe us back—
That’s the fortune fit for a king,
For Oh! I love common life!
1895
_An Echo of Meleager_
Scorn not my love, proud child. The summers wane.
Long ere the topmost mountain snows have gone
The Spring is fleeting; ’neath the April rain
For one brief day flowers laugh on Helicon.
The breeze that fans thy honeyed cheek this noon
To-morrow will be blasts that scourge the main,
And youth and joy and laughter fleet too soon.—
Scorn not my love, proud child. The summers wane.
To-day the rose blooms by the garden plot,
The swallows twitter ’neath the Parian dome;
But soon the roses fall and lie forgot,
And soon the swallows will be turning home.
Tempt not the arrows of the Cyprian’s eye,
Vex not the god that will not brook disdain;—
Love is the port to which the wise barks fly.
Scorn not my love, proud child. The summers wane.
1910