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SELECTIONS FROM THE 
 POETRY OF JOHN PAYNE 
 
SELECTIONS FROM 
 THE POETRY OF 
 
 JOHN PAYNE 
 
 MADE BY TRACY & LUCY ROBINSON 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 LUCY ROBINSON ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 JOHN LANE CO., THE BODLEY HEAD 
 67 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. MCMVI 
 

 Authorized Edition 
 
 f^otes 
 
 V 
 
 Printed by Ballantvnk, Hanson &' Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 By LUCY ROBINSON 
 
 The publication of this, the first selected edition of 
 Payne's verse, is an appeal to all lovers of poetry on 
 behalf of one of its uncrowned kings — widely known, 
 it is true, as a translator, but as a poet receiving less 
 than insular recognition. 
 
 For years we have pored over his five published volumes 
 with wonder and delight ; nor have we been able to 
 understand how the English-speaking world can so long 
 have remained in comparative ignorance of their author's 
 genius. At last, upon the publication in London, by 
 the Villon Society, of two quarto volumes, bearing 
 the date 1902 and the title, "The Poetical Works of 
 John Payne," in a limited numbered edition, we have 
 asked for and have been granted permission to offer to 
 American readers such of the poems as in our opinion 
 shall awaken interest and stimulate desire for more. 
 The Villon edition embraces some five thousand lines 
 of new matter, thrown off for the most part between 
 the months of January and March 1902, during a 
 marked visitation of the muse immediately following 
 the completion of an exhaustive translation of the 
 works of the Persian poet Hafiz — a task that for nine 
 years had absorbed the powers, bodily and mental, of the 
 retired London solicitor. 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 The early poems, reproduced with but slight verbal 
 alterations and few additional lines in the "Poetical 
 Works," consisted of " The Masque of Shadows, and 
 Other Poems," 1870 ; "Intaglios," 1871 ; "Songs of 
 ■Life and Death," 1872; " Lautrec," 1878; "New 
 Poems," 1880. Among the first to feel the charm 
 of the new singer — who was born in London, August 
 23rd, 1842 — were Matthew Arnold and the aged poet 
 Home — the former highly commending his work ; the 
 latter protesting almost fiercely against the reading 
 world's apparent indiflFerence to it. Indeed, it was the 
 established men of the period — Tennyson, Browning, 
 Rossetti, above all Swinburne and Theodore Watts- 
 Dunton — who gave to John Payne the unhesitating 
 reception his first ventures deserved ; whereas, to a 
 certain extent, the men of his own generation have 
 stood aloof, as if conscious of having little in common 
 with a writer unaccustomed by nature or habit to " the 
 sweet uses of advertisement," and shrinking irresistibly 
 from the electric glare cast by cheap journalism. At 
 a period when an author's personality seems of more 
 importance than anything he may utter, we do not 
 hesitate to say that, could the poetry and personality of 
 John Payne be no less vigorously advertised than were 
 Rossetti's, the "Intaglios" and "Ballad of Isobel" 
 would become, to say the least, as familiar to readers 
 far and wide as the sonnets and "Blessed Damozel" 
 of the latter poet. 
 
 But while Mr. Payne's lack of acquaintance with 
 journalists and journalism has been such as to keep his 
 work in the background, nevertheless the leading journals 
 and critics, not only of England but of France, accorded 
 him from the first an appreciation genuine and discrimi- 
 nating as it was unstinted. The JVestminster Review^ 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 one of the most independent and self-centred of English 
 literary organs, observed at different periods : — 
 
 " Mr. Payne belongs to that small body of cultivated 
 men who will probably be the glory of Victorian 
 literature. . . . We gladly welcome Mr. Payne amongst 
 that select number of poets that already comprises such 
 names as Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris. . . . The art 
 of ballad-writing has long been lost in England, and 
 Mr. Payne may claim to be its restorer. . . . He may 
 not be popular with the blind multitude, but he is 
 sure to be so with all lovers of poetry, both to-day 
 and to-morrow. . . . Posterity will place him between 
 Tennyson and William Morris, side by side with 
 Swinburne and D. G. Rossetti." 
 
 The AthencEuyn declared : — 
 
 " There can be no question that Mr. Payne is a poet. 
 Even in these days, when the accomplishment of verse 
 is so common, the poet is just as distinguishable as he 
 ever was from the prose-writer who has ' learned the 
 trick.' The power of looking at the world through the 
 glamour that floats before the poet's eyes is not to be 
 taught, and it cannot be denied that herein Mr. Payne's 
 endowment is exceptional." 
 
 The Academy said of "New Poems": "Mr. Payne 
 has proved himself to be a master of his art. The 
 present volume is an advance in power upon its pre- 
 decessors, even as each one of them had been upon its 
 forerunner." 
 
 From The Spectator we quote : " Really beautiful 
 verse, modulated with quite exquisite skill, and adorned 
 with a marvellous wealth of the richest word-painting, 
 of varied imagery and delicate fancy. The power shown 
 in 'Salvestra' it would be difficult to exaggerate." 
 
 La Renaissance reviewed "Son2:s of Life and Death" 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 at length, declaring that, to borrow the poet's own 
 language : " II a presse son coeur comme une grappe 
 mure, et il en est coule de la poesie — de la vraie poesie." 
 Doubtless, the reviewer had in mind the despairing 
 protest in " Shadow-Soul " : — 
 
 " There ivas great love in this man s soul ! 
 Ay, bitter, crushed-out wine of love 
 Pressed out upon his every word." 
 
 In an extended review in Le National Theodore de 
 Banville exclaimed : " Mr. John Payne a public trois 
 livres delicieux," and dwelt upon the " chant magnifique 
 compose pour la France pendant I'hiver de 1870-71. 
 Quel courage il y avait alors a elever, seul, la voix pour 
 nous, seul dans I'Angleterre et peut-etre dans I'Europe." 
 The paragraph refers to seven stanzas written shortly 
 before the capitulation of Paris, and published under the 
 title of "France," in "Songs of Life and Death," but 
 in the complete edition restored to their original place, 
 as part of the long poem " Salvestra " : — 
 
 " Ah, land of roses ! France, my love of lands ! 
 How art thou fallen from thy high estate ! 
 Bending, thou writhest in the Vandals' hands, 
 And the crowned spoiler sitteth in thy gate. 
 My heart is sore for thee," 
 
 Of " Sleepers and One that Watches," Mr. Swinburne 
 wrote in " The Dark-Blue " : — 
 
 "Mr. Simeon Solomon's sketch has been translated 
 into verse of kindred strength and delicacy, in three 
 fine sonnets of high rank, among the exquisite and 
 clear-cut ' Intaglios ' of Mr. John Payne." 
 
 Mr. Watts-Dunton has somewhere written : — 
 
 "There is more imagination, more romance, and 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 more of what / call beauty in Mr. Payne's work than in 
 that of any living man, save one " — meaning, of course, 
 Swinburne. 
 
 In the field of translation, according to Richard 
 Garnett, Mr. Payne is " literally without a rival." The 
 Westminster Review asserts that "As past-master in the 
 difficult and ungrateful art of translation from widely 
 differing languages, he stands practically alone." The 
 paths of poet and translator often lie close together : 
 the poet is always, in one sense or another, and some- 
 times to an extraordinary degree, a linguist. The author 
 of the following translations, published in twenty-seven 
 volumes by the Villon Society, is a passionate linguist, 
 who has done noble work in the cause — if not in the 
 name — of comparative literature : — 
 
 " The Poems of Master Francois Villon of Paris " ; 
 "The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night," 
 nine volumes; "Tales from the Arabic," three 
 volumes ; " The Decameron or Boccaccio," three 
 volumes ; " Alaeddin and Zein ul Asnam," two stories 
 from the Arabic ; " The Novels of Matteo Bandello," 
 six volumes; "The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam"; 
 " The Poems of Hafiz," three volumes. 
 
 The Society has also in preparation : — 
 
 " The Book of Kings, from the Persian of Firdausi " ; 
 "The Pentameron of Giambattiste Basile, done into 
 English from the Neapolitan original " ; " The Life and 
 Death of Cuculain, a romance cycle from the ancient 
 Irish " ; and " Francois Rabelais and other Prose 
 Sketches." 
 
 At present the reputation of John Payne rests largely 
 upon his "Arabian Nights" and metrical translation of 
 Villon's "Greater and Lesser Testaments" and minor 
 poems. Even owners and readers of the aforesaid trans- 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 lations, who know them too well to confound their 
 author with John Howard Payne, the native of New 
 York City, who wrote the song, " Home, Sweet Home," 
 have expressed surprise on being told that the English 
 translator is the author of more than thirty thousand 
 lines of original verse. 
 
 In 1 88 1, just as Mr. Payne was putting the last 
 stroke to the first of the nine volumes of " Nights," 
 Mr. Robinson passed a delightful evening with him 
 in his solitary London quarters. He had found a rare 
 spirit. Soon after returning to America he undertook 
 to secure the publication of the poems in the United 
 States, by showing them to the late Charles Dudley 
 Warner, as well as to many others. Mr. Warner re- 
 sponded heartily ; he made repeated efforts to interest 
 publishers in the proposition, but, meeting with no 
 encouragement, was compelled reluctantly to abandon 
 it. His urgent request, in 1 897, that Mr. Payne would 
 write the Villon article for " A Library of the World's 
 Best Literature," never reached him. To a friend in 
 America he wrote : " Have had several very kind letters 
 from Mr. Warner, who has taken a great deal of trouble 
 to no purpose." With the exception of the group of 
 selections, mainly from "Thorgerda" and the sonnets, 
 given in Stedman's " Victorian Anthology," we are 
 aware of no other attempt, on this side of the water, 
 to place John Payne's original work on the footing 
 it unquestionably merits. The copious collection of 
 "Ballads and Rondeaus" by Gleeson White (Walter 
 Scott, London), includes a greater number of the more 
 sparkling lyrics than are to be found in the " Victorian 
 Anthology " ; and in William Sharp's " Sonnets of this 
 Century " we detect the glimmer of three of the 
 "Intaglios." But the English collections, owing to 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 their prescribed limits, convey no idea of the poet's 
 range as a thinker and scholar. The bent of his mind 
 was scholarly from childhood ; and though his youth 
 was passed in uncongenial pursuits amidst unlovely sur- 
 roundings, he seems ever to have been like a delicate 
 instrument played upon by the kindred harmonies of 
 poetry and music. In the latter a few violin lessons 
 in boyhood were all the instruction ever received ; yet 
 ^hey fell on such soil that, had the child been reared 
 among musical people, we are tempted to believe that 
 his passion for production would have found its outlet 
 in sonatas rather than sonnets — in symphonic poems 
 rather than sea-voyages in verse. Self-instruction on 
 the piano (not altogether unlike the solitary . methods 
 by which Mr. Payne has preferred to master more 
 than half of the languages at his command) has made 
 it possible — incredible as it may seem — for him to inter- 
 pret, not by ear, but from the piano score, the most 
 complicated orchestral works of Liszt, Berlioz and 
 Wagner. The precise effect of so persistent an absorp- 
 tion of musical ideas — which must have been carried 
 on for many years to reach a like result — may be diffi- 
 cult to determine ; but the existence of the habit or 
 need is sufficient to account for the poet's complete — 
 we had almost said unique — mastery of metrical form. 
 More than the half-century of delving into poetry 
 ancient and modern, it explains what we venture to 
 regard as the " musical content " of his admirably 
 modulated verse, embracing elements more definite than 
 mere sweetness and facility. 
 
 In literature his earliest attempt was made at school, 
 when, a boy of nine or ten, he translated into English 
 verse, no longer preserved, a number of the odes of 
 Horace. Before he was twelve he had celebrated 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Caesar's conquest of Britain in lays more or less in- 
 spired by Macaulay's. Not only were these outpourings 
 and those of succeeding years allowed to perish, but by 
 far the greater number of the various translations made 
 between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one were con- 
 demned to oblivion. Among these were a metrical 
 translation of Dante's entire work in verse ; the second 
 part of Goethe's " Faust," also his " Hermann und 
 Dorothea " ; Lessing's " Nathan der Weise," and 
 Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso." Innumerable shorter 
 poems were rendered into English from the German, 
 old and modern French, Provencal, Italian, Spanish, 
 and Portuguese ; but of the total mass only nine lyrics 
 of Goethe and Heine, given in the Villon edition, have 
 been thought worthy of preservation. Wishing to lay 
 stress upon Mr. Payne's inventive faculty, we have in- 
 cluded no translations in this volume. On the other 
 hand, we have selected, in further proof of his versa- 
 tility, as well as of his hold upon foreign tongues, 
 whether acquired in the closet or elsewhere, three 
 original effusions, two in French, the third in Italian, 
 fashioned, like nearly every stanza he has composed in 
 his native tongue, not in cold blood, but at white heat, 
 without labour and with the minimum of correction. 
 
 Acting upon a nature thus alive to the things of the 
 intellect, thus sufficient to itself, the opposite tendencies 
 of his family — of his father, in particular — could not fail 
 to add flame to fuel. The nine-year-old boy, drawn 
 to the dictionary by the witchery of word -analysis, is 
 warned that literature will never bake bread ; and the 
 omnivorous reader's allowance is withheld lest any part 
 of it should be spent for books. In winter he is for- 
 bidden to "segregate himself" for purposes of study; 
 to enforce the decree, fire and light are denied him. At 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 the age of fourteen the Mozart of letters, with the sensi- 
 tive ear and intuitive grasp of a born philologist, and 
 with all his ambitions now turned in the direction of 
 language, is taken once for all out of school, to fill 
 various positions — as printer's devil in a provincial news- 
 paper establishment, as usher in two schools, then as 
 clerk in a solicitor's office. Everywhere extreme diffi- 
 dence engenders suffering, until in those phases of the 
 law lying nearest to literature — namely, chancery and 
 conveyancing — his brain and temperament find an occu- 
 pation in which they no longer appear at a disadvantage. 
 Enabled finally, with the assistance of friends, to found 
 the well-known Villon Society, he succeeded in bringing 
 the work of his strenuous later years before a cosmo- 
 politan and keenly appreciative public. In his own 
 words, in " The Building of the Dream " : — 
 
 "And of a truth, no thing 
 Was wanting to the squire, but yet one field 
 
 Of fight, ere on his shield 
 The glorious blazon of a knight should shine — 
 
 Before the golden sign 
 Of chivalry should glance at either heel. 
 
 And the ennobling steel 
 Fall softly on his shoulder." 
 
 To take the lines literally, Mr. Payne's family name, 
 as borne by his father, Mr. Hawkins Payne, was knightly 
 enough, for the Paynes are descended from the bold 
 navigator and admiral of Elizabeth's England and 
 Kingsley's " Westward Ho ! " — Sir John Hawkins. The 
 old Devonshire family bore the name of Hawkins until 
 marriage with an heiress induced a remote ancestor to 
 add the name of Payne to Hawkins. In revolt against 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 affectation, the present generation has dropped the name 
 of Hawkins altogether. 
 
 Early and late in the heart of the minstrel the passion 
 for translation has come near superseding the poetic 
 faculty. In youth, no less than under the pressure of a 
 task like that of turning the whole of Hafiz into English, 
 it threatened to take full possession of him. It will not 
 be unpleasing to Americans to know that a minute volume 
 of the first twelve essays of Emerson, still treasured 
 among Mr. Payne's dearest books, rekindled in the 
 youth of nineteen the smouldering flame of ideality, in- 
 clining him definitely toward creative work. As a poet, 
 Emerson, like Byron, failed to make the faintest impres- 
 sion upon him. Keats and Shelley appealed to him, and 
 his liking for unsubstantial themes has brought him into 
 superficial comparison with them. But while their 
 poems afford scarcely a single domestic touch, John 
 Payne, in at least one ballad, that of " Isobel," and in at 
 least one of the " London City Poems " — " The Plague " 
 — has treated a domestic situation with the utmost 
 tenderness and felicity. The poets to whom he acknow- 
 ledges an actual debt are, first of all, the singer — 
 
 " Whose radiant brow is crowned 
 With triple coronals ineffable, 
 Attesting the assay of heaven and hell," 
 and 
 
 " The glad master standing with one foot 
 On earth and one foot in the Faery land," 
 
 of the postlude to the narrative poem " Salvestra." After 
 Dante's sway and Spenser's, he owns that of minds so 
 diverse as Drummond of Hawthornden, Henry Vaughan, 
 Landor (in the " Hellenics ") Wordsworth, Heine (whom 
 at one time he knew by heart), and Browning (in " Men 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 and Women," " Paracelsus," and the plays). Repelled 
 by Swinburne's earliest work, he came later to place him 
 next to Shakespeare. Before the publication of "The 
 Masque of Shadows," the influence of Emerson had given 
 way to that of Schopenhauer, and this in its turn led to 
 the study of the Vedantic philosophy of ancient India, 
 which eventually became the poet's chief mental and 
 moral guide. The " blood-devouring way " of the 
 sonnet to Omar Kheyyam is the vedantist's thorny 
 path "from talk to fact," of quatrains 549 and 532. 
 The " new and valued friend " of the " Epilogue to 
 the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night" 
 was Sir Richard F. Burton. The " Dead Master " of 
 the Threnody was Landor. The amico of the sonnet, 
 " With a Copy of the Divina Commedia," was the poet, 
 Arthur W. E. O'Shaughnessy. 
 
 That the coarseness of an impartial unexpurgated 
 rendering of Oriental masterpieces never found its way 
 into the poet's own songs and stories — that the hand 
 of Villon's translator has escaped being endued with 
 that it works in is clear from "The Civilian's" some- 
 what old-fashioned — but to the general reader always 
 acceptable — statement that " Songs of Life and Death " 
 might be put into any school-girl's hands, "not only 
 without danger, but with the greatest advantage." 
 
 No estimate of Mr. Payne's work, either as scholar 
 or poet, would be complete without reference to the 
 spell that the intellect and atmosphere of France — her 
 language, her scenery, her great writers and foster- 
 children, from Rabelais to Gluck, and from Gautier 
 to Auguste de Gobineau, have laid upon him. The 
 newly edited poems bear the inscription : — 
 
 "A la Memoire de mon bien cher et bien amerement 
 regrette St^phane Mallarm^, Esprit Exquis et Coeur 
 
 b 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 d'Or, je dedie I'edition definitive de ces fleurs de 
 tristesse qu'il aimait quand-meme." 
 
 In a letter to America we come upon these words : — 
 
 " Your long-delayed letter finds me out, at last, on 
 my return from the Ardennes, where I have passed my 
 summer holiday under my favourite conditions, in the 
 midst of exquisite natural and wild beauty, and without 
 seeing an English face or speaking anything but French 
 or German — living, in fact, with the natives and nature." 
 
 This spontaneous tribute is offset, in another letter, by 
 one equally glowing to his mother-tongue : — 
 
 " My life is given up now to the building up of enormous 
 monuments of English prose, like the " Nights," all that 
 I can now do for that noble English language that I love 
 with an irrepressible affection and reverence, so much 
 so that I might wish my epitaph to be Linguam Anglicam 
 dllexit (He loved the English tongue)." 
 
 In " London City Poems," the " Requiem for Our 
 Dead in South Africa," the humorous " Dopper's 
 Lament," and the sonnet "England's Hope," love of 
 country and pride of race are overwhelmingly manifest. 
 Other evidence is not lacking that the student of past ages 
 has somehow felt the time-spirit fervently as any man of 
 his period, going beyond the Germans in his instantaneous 
 recognition of Richard Wagner, both as mediasvalist and 
 musician. Perhaps the twin voices of poetry and prophecy 
 were never more happily blended than in the prelude to 
 the volume " Songs of Life and Death " : — 
 
 " Be not disheartened, O our Zoroaster, 
 O mage of our new music-world of fire — 
 
 All at thy spring shall drink and know it sweet ; 
 All the false temples shall fall down before thee, 
 Ay — and the false gods crumble at thy feet." 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 These dedicatory words were written, as Mr. Payne 
 observes, in 1867-68, "when to mention Wagner as 
 a great musician was well-nigh to incur suspicion of 
 madness." The vivid lay of "Sir Floris" also was 
 dedicated to Wagner, and there is an early sonnet 
 entitled, "Bride-Night: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde — 
 Act II., scene 2." 
 
 Like many another Londoner, engrossed until near 
 life's summit with toil more or less uncongenial, Mr. 
 Payne constantly betrays a pathetic worship of nature 
 in her every mood and manifestation ; as in " London 
 City Poems " : — 
 
 " Yet the flowers of May 
 Bloomed in the shaded woodlands of his soul. 
 
 He read ; and he was ankle-deep in grass. 
 
 He read ; and fragrance of the scented pines 
 Rose round his spirit." 
 
 So also in " Vere Novo " : — 
 
 " Out in my little garden 
 The crocus is aflame ; 
 
 The winter's woes are over : 
 
 My cats upon the wall, 
 Gruflf, Top, Shireen and Rover, 
 
 Are basking, one and all " 
 
 — lines to which is appended a bit of history : " Since 
 the writing of this poem my little angora cat, Rover, 
 has died in her tenth year, to the infinite regret of 
 all who knew her. She was the most loving and 
 engaging of creatures, far more intelligent than the 
 majority of human beings, and was less to be described 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 as a cat than as half-a-dozen pounds of affection done 
 up in tabby fluff. As Burton says, in the delightful 
 * We and our Neighbours,' — one of the series of homely 
 masterpieces by the late Mrs. Beecher Stowe, — * One's 
 pets will die, and it breaks one's heart.' " That Mr. 
 Payne has — in Schumann's elastic phrase — no kinder- 
 scenen is remarkable, in view of his intense love for 
 children and animals, which — according to a saying of 
 Charles Alston Collins, Dickens's son-in-law — borders 
 upon insanity. 
 
 In touching upon a few of the poems most salient 
 features, if we mention first their melodious sweetness 
 it is equally because, when all is said, we believe the 
 singing faculty to be a poet's chief requisite, and because, 
 in the verse under consideration, the musical element 
 already noted is, upon the whole, the most constant 
 and characteristic. 
 
 Nor would it be easy to ignore the high finish of 
 Payne's work, no less sustained in his earliest than in 
 his latest poems, and somehow conveying a sense of 
 elaboration unspoilt by conscious effort. " The Masque 
 of Shadows" is singularly free from the errors and 
 inequalities common to young writers and first ventures. 
 Mr. Payne seems always to have written with ease, and 
 to have avoided lapses like those of Wordsworth, 
 Swinburne and Rossetti into laboured and cumbrous 
 phraseology. That one or more of his critics should 
 have been misled into making the charge of artificiality 
 is matter for wonder to at least two readers, who know 
 the history of the poems, and are satisfied that however 
 methodical the scholar''s mental processes, the poet's 
 own utterances are nothing more nor less than wild- 
 flowers, whose purity and spontaneity are due to the 
 fertile soil whence they sprang. As well say of the 
 
INTRODUCTION xi'x 
 
 "mariposas" found in the foothills of California, that 
 they owe to excessive cultivation their perfection of 
 tint, their tilted grace, iridescence and butterfly down ! 
 Nor is complexity in the " butterfly tulip " of the Pacific 
 coast irreconcilable with a peculiar simplicity not 
 retained, as a rule, by the pampered guests of garden 
 and hothouse. Extreme simplicity of language, alter- 
 nating with an exuberance of description suggesting 
 and rivalling Spenser's, is equally the mark of the poems, 
 narrative or lyrical, and seems to us one of their main 
 elements of strength. The number of words of one 
 syllable is everywhere noticeable. Whole stanzas will 
 be found at random, with sometimes a single word 
 other than monosyllabic, sometimes none ; as in the 
 wonderfully well-knit " Rime of Redemption " : — 
 
 " The night is wide : they ride and ride ; 
 The lights grow bright and near ; 
 There comes a wail upon the gale, 
 And eke a descant clear. 
 
 There comes a plain of souls in pain, 
 
 And eke a high sweet song, 
 As of some fate whose grief is great, 
 
 But yet whose hope is strong." 
 
 According to the Westminster Review : — 
 
 " Mr. Payne still goes to the store-house of our elder 
 English poets for their old expressive words which we 
 have forgotten, and sets them with fresh beauty to 
 modern thought." 
 
 To quote the Saturday Review : — 
 
 " * Sir Fioris ' abounds with words of curious and 
 semi-French archaism ; but these are never dragged 
 in ; they suit the general effect, and clearly come from 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 the overflow of a memory steeped in the romance 
 literature from which they are drawn." 
 
 This very supersaturation, reinforced by the judg- 
 ment of a linguist who is no pedant, explains his not 
 infrequent use of rime riche, common enough in classic 
 French but less common in English, notwithstanding 
 our mother- tongue's scant supply of rhyme-material. 
 Yet it is in the simplest rather than in more or less 
 intricate versification that Mr. Payne employs rime riche 
 — evidently for its own sake, and not from labour- 
 saving motives. Thus sea rhymes with see in the limpid 
 quatrains of "The House of Sorrow," and light is 
 linked with delight : — 
 
 " The tender ecstasy of sad delight 
 He has seen pictured there 
 Upon the canvas of the lingering light, 
 Under the evening air." 
 
 To the charge of habitual melancholy the poet him- 
 self pleads guilty in many places, as in the sonnet 
 "Ignis Fatuus" : — 
 
 " My soul is like some pale phantasmal light 
 That flickers o'er a marsh of mystery, 
 And with its baleful phosphorescency 
 Reaches long hands of blue into the night. 
 It may not give the fair world to men's sight, 
 Nor rescue back the lovely things that be 
 Out of the shrouding gloom," 
 
 Here, however, he does his own temperament such 
 scant justice that we are moved to dwell upon the 
 many long passages and entire lyrics in which the 
 minor thread is snapped or overlaid. What, for instance, 
 could be brighter, more vivacious, more spring-like in 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 quality than "Major Cadence"; the rondel, "Kiss 
 me, Sweetheart " ; the rococo, " Straight and swift the 
 swallows fly"; the carol, "Bells of Gold" in "The 
 Fountain of Youth " ; the lovely villanelle, " The air 
 is white with snowflakes," "A Birthday Song," or 
 the magnificent " Chant Royal of the God of Love " ? 
 The beautiful barcarolle, "A Bacchic of Spring," 
 "Trinitas Trinitatum," the sonnet "Indian Isle," and 
 numerous others are also wholly in the major key ; 
 so for the most part is the racy folk-tale of "Sir 
 Winfrith." In many of the very latest pieces, like 
 " Dust to Dust," " Vere Novo," and " Nocturn," is 
 a new note between exaltation and resignation, cul- 
 minating in the closing words of " Evensong " : — 
 
 " Work wrought, way wended, 
 Duty done." 
 
 Doubtless, the indefatigable inventor and interpreter 
 will never be able wholly to overcome the life-regret 
 that despite the volume and variety of his original work, 
 it has after all amounted but to flowerage in the dark, 
 unfostered by that degree of the world's sympathy 
 without which art cannot thrive, and giving that world 
 no intimation of the plant's real capacity. 
 
 Apparently the main reason for the undercurrent of 
 sadness encountered in the poems is to be found in the 
 pathetic outpouring, " The Grave of my Songs ; " but 
 there are other clues to the poet's life of mediaeval 
 seclusion and contemplation. Setting aside the question 
 of temperament, loss of health and of a beloved com- 
 panion {vide " A Christmas Vigil "), above all, the after- 
 eiFects of early repression, have cast a shadow calling 
 irresistibly to mind the bitter complaint of Deumier : — 
 " L'on meurt en plein bonheur de son malheur passe." 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 While it would be useless to deny the pessimistic 
 tendencies of verse which, like that of Matthew Arnold, 
 sums up the fermentation and discontent of a restless 
 period, yet in "The Ballad of Shameful Death," and 
 its quasi-counterpart, " Quia Multum Amavit," also in 
 " Night Watches " and in " Areopagitica " — a sermon 
 omitted with reluctance, chiefly on account of its length 
 — there is abundant evidence, not only that the recluse is 
 no misanthrope, but that in certain moods he becomes the 
 spokesman of the people. No reader, it seems to us, 
 could look below the surface of " Shadow-Soul " without 
 realising that a broad humanity is the essential element 
 underlying all the poems, and inevitably, if rarely, 
 breaking into appeal and protest : — 
 
 " Haply one day these songs of mine 
 
 Some world-worn mortal may console 
 
 With savour of the bitter wine 
 
 Of tears crushed out from a man's dole ; 
 
 And he may say, tears in his eyne, 
 
 There ivas great lo've in this man's soul ! " 
 
 To those who loved Mr. Warner, and remember 
 his passion for long walks — the last a lonely one of eight 
 miles, ending in his sudden death — it may be interesting 
 to know that in his copy of " Songs of Life and Death," 
 another stanza in the same poem was pencil-marked : — 
 
 " Sometimes, too, as I walk alone, 
 
 The mists roll up before my eyes, 
 And unto me strange lights are shown, 
 
 And many a dream of sapphire skies ; 
 The world and all its cares are gone : 
 
 I walk awhile in Paradise." 
 
 The main divisions of the new " Poetical Works " 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 consist of a first volume beginning with "The Romaunt 
 of Sir Floris " and containing only the longer narratives, 
 new and old, like " The Fountain of Youth," an early 
 American subject ; " Lautrec," dealing with vampires, 
 a theme fascinating to the antiquary ; and " Salvestra," 
 founded upon a brief passage in the " Decameron." 
 The second volume, beginning with " London City 
 Poems " and closing with a few translations, contains 
 a group of " Ballads and Romances " covering all 
 the shorter narratives, and followed by " Sonnets," 
 " Exotica," and " Songs of Life and Death." Among 
 the " Exotica " two amusing ballades in the French 
 language are addressed to Villon and to Mr. Payne's 
 critics, the latter having the refrain : — 
 
 " J'ai mes fideles de Paris." 
 
 The ballades would have preceded and followed the 
 complete translation of Villon's poems, had not one 
 composed and contributed by Theodore de Banville 
 unexpectedly filled their place. Among the "Songs" 
 are many new ones not written before 1902. Indeed, 
 it is difficult for the editorial pen to keep pace with the 
 poet's — driven even at this writing, in 1903, by a 
 pressure not unlike the love-impulse in his own " Aloe 
 Blossom " : — 
 
 " But as I waited, suddenly there came 
 Within me as the flowering of a flame, 
 And like the mystic bud that bursts to meet 
 Its hundredth spring with thunder and acclaim, 
 Love flowered upon me terrible and sweet." 
 
 In any case, the complete edition could hardly be 
 regarded definitive after the appearance, in 1902, of the 
 slender sad-coloured pamphlet, " The Descent of the 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 Dove, and Other Poems ; being a Supplement to the 
 Poetical Works of John Payne"; and still later, in 
 1903, the slender volume "Vigil and Vision," thrown 
 off at white heat and containing remarkable verse — 
 several examples of which are to be found in this 
 edition. 
 
 Lamenting limits that compel us to exclude "The 
 Masque of Shadows"" (with a motif recalling an in- 
 tensely modern piece of music, — the gruesome " Dance 
 Macabre " of Saint-Saens, but with a consummation old 
 as the " Symposium " of Plato) ; likewise " Hymn to 
 the Night," "Vocation Song," "Dust to Dust," 
 " Nocturn," " In Memoriam, Oliver Madox Brown," 
 "A Last Lullaby," "Bird-Peep," and "A Song of 
 Roses," we would suggest to the reader such communion 
 with the poems here given as an American enjoyed in 
 a French garden-close : — 
 
 "We went to Aix-les-Bains for six vast weeks, and 
 stayed at the most charming little quiet Hotel d'ltalie, 
 that had a big lovely garden at the back, all arbours 
 and shade-trees and flowers, shut in by high walls, and 
 hushed as any churchyard. Our medical director for 
 the baths was Dr. Casalis, who had a very interesting 
 English wife. One day I asked him if he had any 
 English books. He replied that he had a few, among 
 them a volume of the poetry of John Payne, whom he 
 knew ; and then went on to give me some account 
 of him. As I had never before heard of Mr. Payne, 
 all this added to the curiosity with which I borrowed 
 his 'Songs of Life and Death,' and retired to the 
 garden to read it. There, stretched upon a com- 
 fortable divan, in the shade of a grape-vine arbour, 
 where purpling clusters hung temptingly above, I read it 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 through and through before I laid it down. It was a 
 revelation. I became at once a lover of Mr. Payne, 
 full constant and not as one — 
 
 *' ' That loves and loves not in one short hour's span.' " 
 
 It is no doubt in some such spirit that the poems of 
 John Payne must be approached to be appreciated. 
 Like their author, they make slow headway against the 
 hurry and discord of modern existence. In communion 
 less intimate they are hardly of a kind to yield up their 
 true aroma. 
 
 LUCY ROBINSON. 
 
 (Lucy Catlin Bull.) 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION .... 
 
 Dedication to Richard Wagner 
 
 Sir Erwin's Questing 
 
 The Fountain of Youth 
 
 From "Aspect and Prospect" . 
 
 From "The Plague" 
 
 Quia Multum Amavit 
 
 The Ballad of Shameful Death 
 
 The Rime of Redemption . 
 
 Into the Enchanted Land 
 
 From " In Armida's Garden " . 
 
 From "The Pact of the Twin Gods" 
 
 Chant Royal of the God of Love 
 
 Rondel ...... 
 
 Madrigal Gai ..... 
 
 Madrigal Triste .... 
 
 The King's Sleep .... 
 
 The Dead Master .... 
 
 A Funeral Song for Th^ophile Gautier 
 Prelude to Hafiz .... 
 
 Epilogue to the Book of the Thousand 
 and One Night .... 
 
 The Ballad of Isobel 
 
 Barcarolle ..... 
 
 Rondeau Redouble .... 
 
 Ni 
 
 PAGE 
 -XXV 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 1 1 
 
 43 
 45 
 47 
 54 
 6 1 
 
 77 
 86 
 89 
 94 
 
 97 
 98 
 
 99 
 
 lOI 
 
 108 
 
 115 
 
 118 
 
 121 
 123 
 
 137 
 141 
 
XXVlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Rococo 
 
 A Birthday Song 
 
 VlLLANELLE 
 
 Rondeau 
 
 Rondeau 
 
 Bassarid's Horn . 
 
 From "Requiem for our Dead in South Africa' 
 
 The Marsh-King's Daughter 
 
 The Westward Sailing .... 
 
 From "Cadences" Major .... 
 
 Pantoum ....... 
 
 The Ballad of the King's Daughter 
 
 The Ballad of May Margaret . 
 
 The House of Sorrow .... 
 
 Shadow-Soul ...... 
 
 Double Ballad of the Singers of the Time 
 The Grave of My Songs .... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 142 
 
 143 
 145 
 
 147 
 148 
 149 
 150 
 153 
 
 156 
 
 162 
 
 163 
 
 167 
 
 171 
 
 17s 
 181 
 
 190 
 192 
 
 SONNETS— 
 
 J. B. Corot (Died 22nd February 1875). . 199 
 A St^phane Mallarme .... 200 
 
 Hyde Park ....... 201 
 
 Sarvarthasiddha-Buddha . . . 202-5 
 
 Con UN Esemplare della Divina Commedia . 206 
 Translation of the Foregoing, with a Copy 
 
 of the Divina Commedia . . . 207 
 
 Omar Kheyyam ...... 208 
 
 Ad Dantem . .... 209 
 
 With a Copy of Henry Vaughan's Sacred 
 
 Poems . . . . . .210 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xxix 
 
 SONNETS— (continued) 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Beatrice ...... 
 
 21 I 
 
 Indian Summer ..... 212-15 
 
 Tropic Flower ..... 
 
 2X6 
 
 Evocation (second sonnet) . 
 
 217 
 
 Femme Fellah de Landelle 
 
 2X8 
 
 Indian Isle ...... 
 
 219 
 
 Life Unlived ..... 
 
 220 
 
 England's Hope: Kitchener of Khartoum 
 
 221 
 
 Angel Death 
 
 222 
 
 Ad ZoIlos ...... 
 
 223 
 
 Exit 
 
 224 
 
DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 OF THE VOLUME " SONGS OF LIFE AND DEATH " 
 
 February 1872. 
 
 Master and chief of all for whom the singers 
 Strain with full bosoms and ecstatic throats, 
 
 For whom the strings beneath the flying fingers, 
 The sackbuts and the clarions, yield their notes, — 
 
 Lord over all for whom the tymbals thunder. 
 For whom the harps throb like the distant sea, 
 
 For whom the shrill sweet flutings cleave in sunder 
 The surges of the strings that meet and flee, — 
 
 O strong sweet soul, whose life is as a mountain 
 Hymned round about with stress of spirit-choirs. 
 
 Whose mighty song leaps sunward like a fountain. 
 Reaching for lightnings from celestial fires, — 
 
 burning heart and tender, highest, mildest, 
 Nightingale-throated, with the eagle's wing, — 
 
 This sheaf of songs, culled where the ways are wildest 
 And the shade deepest, to thy feet I bring. 
 
 1 hail thee as from many hearts that cherish, 
 
 Serve and keep white thy thought within their shrines. 
 Where the flame fades not, though its lustre perish. 
 Midmost the lurid and the stormy signs. 
 
 A 
 
2 DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 I greet thee as from those great mates departed 
 Who first taught Song to know the ways of Soul, 
 
 Fit harbingers of thee, the eagle-hearted. 
 Saw in the art the new sun-planets roll. 
 
 I greet thee with a promise and a cheering, — 
 I, that have loved thee many weary years, 
 
 I, that, with eyes strained for the dawn's appearing, 
 Have clung to thee for hope and healing tears ; 
 
 I, that am nought, whose weakling voice has in it 
 The shrill sole sadness of one wailing note ; 
 
 No nightingale I, but a sad-voiced linnet. 
 Piping thin ditties from a bleeding throat ; 
 
 I — since the masters lift no voice to-thee-ward 
 To stay thy battle in the weary time — 
 
 Send forth for thee these weak-winged songs to seaward. 
 To bear to thee their freight of idle rhyme. 
 
 Ah, how weak-voiced and little worth, my master ! 
 
 Yet haply, as a lark-song on the breeze. 
 That, winging through the air, black with disaster, 
 
 Heartens some exile pacing by the seas. 
 
 So even mine, my weak and unskilled singing 
 May smite thine ear with no unpleasing notes. 
 
 What time the shrill sounds of the fight are ringing 
 About thee and the clamour of dull throats. 
 
 And peradventure (for least love is grateful) 
 The humble song may, for a little while. 
 
 Smooth from thy brow the sadness high and fateful, 
 Call to thy lips the rare and tender smile. 
 
DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 3 
 
 My harmonies are harmonies of sadness, 
 My light is but as starlight on the wane : 
 
 Far nobler bards shall cheer thee with their gladness ; 
 I bring thee but the song-pulse of my pain. 
 
 Be not disheartened, O our Zoroaster, 
 O mage of our new music- world of fire ! 
 
 Thou art not all unfriended, O my master ! 
 Let not the great heart fail thee for desire. 
 
 What matter though the storm-wind round thee rages. 
 Though men judge weakly with imperfect sight ? 
 
 O master-singer of the heroic ages, 
 
 Each dawn is brighter with the appointed light. 
 
 Hate's echoes on the inconstant air but languish, 
 Win not within the world's true heart to be, — 
 
 Faint wails for us of far-ofF souls in anguish. 
 That chide their own sick selves in all they see. 
 
 Thine is the Future — hardly theirs the Present, 
 The flowerless days that put forth leaf and die — 
 
 Theirs that lie steeped in idle days and pleasant, 
 Letting the pageant of the years pass by. 
 
 For the days hasten when shall all adore thee. 
 All at thy spring shall drink and know it sweet ; 
 
 All the false temples shall fall down before thee. 
 Ay, and the false gods crumble at thy feet. 
 
 Then shall men set thee in their holy places. 
 Hymn thee with anthems of remembering ; 
 
 Faiths shall spring up and blossom in thy traces. 
 Thick as the violets cluster round the Spring. 
 
4 DEDICATION TO RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 And then, perchance, when, in the brighter ages, 
 Men shall awake and know the god they scorned 
 
 And mad with grief, grave upon marble pages 
 (That therewithal the Future may be warned) 
 
 The tale of their remorse and shame undying, 
 
 They, coming where thy name has kept these sweet, 
 
 — These idle songs of mine, — shall set with sighing 
 My name upon the marble at thy feet ; 
 
 For that, when all made mock of and denied thee, 
 Seeing not the portent and the fiery sword, 
 
 I, from my dream, in the mid-heaven descried thee, 
 Saw and confessed thee, knew and named thee Lord. 
 
SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 
 
 " Oh, whither, whither ridest thou, Sir Erwin ? 
 The glitter of the dawn is in the sky ; 
 
 And I hear the laverock singing, 
 
 Where the silken corn is springing 
 And the green-and-gold of summer's on the rye." 
 
 " O lady fair, I ride toward the setting ; 
 For the glamour of the West is on my heart, 
 And I hear a dream-voice callinp; 
 To the land where dews are falling 
 And the blossoms of the springtide ne'er depart." 
 
 " Oh, what, oh, what thing seekest thou. Sir Erwin ? 
 Is life no longer pleasant to thy soul ? 
 
 Am I no more heart's dearest. 
 
 Though the summer skies are clearest 
 And the gold of June is fresh on copse and knoll ? "" 
 
 " O sweet, I seek the land where love is holy 
 And the bloom of youth is ever on the flowers ; 
 
 The land where joy is painless 
 
 And the eyes' delight is stainless 
 And the break of hope faints never in the weary 
 noontide hours." 
 
SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 
 
 " Oh, rest awhile, oh, rest awhile. Sir Erwin ! 
 The hills are yet ungilded by the sun. 
 
 Oh, tarry till the morning 
 
 Have chased the mists of dawning 
 And the weariness of noon be past and done ! " 
 
 " O lady fair, I may not tarry longer ! 
 The sun is climbing fast above the grey 
 
 And I hear the trumpets blowing, 
 
 Where the eastern clouds are glowing 
 And the mists of night are breaking from the city 
 of the day." 
 
 Far out into the greenwood rides Sir Erwin, 
 Oh, far into the wild wood rideth he ! 
 
 And there meet him sisters seven, 
 
 When the sun is high in heaven 
 And the gold of noon is bright on flower and tree. 
 
 Oh, wonder-lovely maidens were the seven. 
 With mantles of the crimson and the green. 
 
 With red-gold rings and girdles 
 
 And sea-blue shoes and kirtles. 
 And eyes that shone like cornflowers in their locks' 
 corn-golden sheen. 
 
 " Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's 
 
 dearest ! 
 And we will sing thee wonder-lovely songs, 
 
 And we will strew with roses 
 
 The place where thy repose is 
 And teach thee all the rapture that unto love belongs." 
 
SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 7 
 
 " Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's 
 
 dearest I 
 We have full many a secret of delight : 
 Thy day shall be one sweetness 
 Of love in its completeness 
 And the nightingale shall sing to thee the whole 
 enchanted night." 
 
 " Oh, woe is me ! I may not stay, fair maidens ; 
 My quest is for a country far and wild ; 
 
 The land where springs the Iris,i 
 
 Where the end of all desire is 
 And the thought of love lives ever undefiled." 
 
 " Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's 
 
 dearest ! 
 Thou wilt wear thy youth to eld in such a quest : 
 
 For it lies beyond the setting. 
 
 In the land of the Forgetting, 
 In the bosom of the everlasting rest ! " 
 
 Far on into the greenwood rides Sir Erwin, 
 Oh, far into the wild wood rideth he ! 
 
 And he sees a fair wife sitting. 
 
 At the hour when light is flitting 
 And the gold of sunset gathers on the sea. 
 
 Oh, very fair and stately was her seeming 
 And very sweet and dreamful were her eyes ! 
 
 And as she sat a-weaving 
 
 She sang a song of grieving. 
 Full low and sweet to anguish, mixt with sighs. 
 
 * There is a legend that the more distant-seeming end of the 
 rainbow begins in Fairyland. 
 
SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 
 
 " Oh, tell me what thou weavest there, fair lady, 
 I prithee tell me quickly what thou art ! " 
 "I am more fair than seeming, 
 And I weave the webs of dreaming 
 For the solace of the world-awearied heart." 
 
 " Oh, prithee tell me, tell to me, fair lady. 
 What song is that thou singest and so sweet ? ■' 
 
 " I sing the songs of sorrow 
 
 That is golden on the morrow. 
 And I charm with them the sad hours' leaden feet. 
 
 " Oh, light thee down and dwell with me, heart's 
 
 dearest ! 
 Thou hast wandered till thy face is furrowed deep ; 
 
 But I will charm earth's cumbers 
 
 From the rose-leaves of thy slumbers 
 And will fold thee in the lotus-leaves of sleep." 
 
 " Oh, woe is me ! oh, woe is me, fair lady ! 
 A hand of magic draws me on my quest 
 
 Toward the land of story. 
 
 Where glows the sunset-glory 
 And the light of love fades never from the West." 
 
 " Oh, light thee down and dwell with me, heart"'s 
 
 dearest ! 
 Thine eyes will lose their lustre by the way ; 
 
 For it lies far out to yonder. 
 
 Where the setting sun dips under 
 And the funeral pyres are burning for the day." 
 
 '% 
 
SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 9 
 
 Oh, far thorough the greenwood rides Sir Erwin, 
 
 Oh, far out of the wild wood rideth he ! 
 And he comes where waves are plashing 
 And the wild white crests are dashing 
 
 On the pebbles of a grey and stormy sea. 
 
 Far down toward the tide-flow rides Sir Erwin, 
 Oh, far adown the shingle rideth he ! 
 
 And he sees a shallop rocking 
 
 Upon the wild waves' flocking. 
 And an ancient steersman sitting in the lee. 
 
 Oh, very weird and gruesome was that steersman. 
 With hair that mocked for white the driven snow ! 
 
 The light of some strange madness 
 
 Was in his eyes' grey sadness 
 And he showed like some pale ghost of long ago. 
 
 "Oh, sail with me I oh, sail with me, Sir Erwin ! 
 Thou hast wandered in thy questing far enough. 
 
 I will bring thee where Love's ease is 
 
 For ever, though the breezes 
 Blow rudely and the broad green way be rough." 
 
 " Reach hand to me, reach hand to me, old steersman ! 
 I will sail with thee for questing o'er the main. 
 
 Although thine eyes look coldly, 
 
 I will dare the venture boldly ; 
 For I weary for an ending of my pain." 
 
 Oh, long they rode on billows, in the glory 
 Of the gold and crimson standards of the West ! 
 
 So came they, in the setting,; 
 
 To the land of the Forgetting, 
 Where the weary and the woeful arc at rest. 
 
lo SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING 
 
 " Oh, what can be this land that is so peaceful, 
 That lies beyond the setting of the sun ? 
 
 I hear a dream-bell ringing 
 
 And I hear a strange sweet singing 
 And the tender gold of twilight's on the dun. 
 
 " Oh, what are these fair forms that float toward me 
 And what are these that hold me by the hand, 
 
 As if they long had sought me ? 
 
 And what art thou hast brought me 
 O'er the ocean to this dream-enchanted strand ? " 
 
 " Fair knight, this is the land of the Hereafter, 
 And the name that men do know me by is Death : 
 
 For the love from life that's flying. 
 
 Lives ever for the dying 
 And the stains of it are purged with 'scape of breath." 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 A ROMANCE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Suggested by a passage in 
 Antonio de Herrera's Historia 
 General de las Indias Occiden- 
 tales. 
 
 We sailed from Cadiz, Perez, Bias and I, 
 Bound westward for the golden Indian seas, 
 One Christmas morning in the thirtieth year 
 Since Colon furrowed first the Western main. 
 Three old sea-dogs we were, well tried and tanned 
 In battle and hard weather ; they had sailed 
 With the great Admiral in his first emprise 
 And I with stout de Leon, when he flung 
 The banner of the kingdoms to the breeze 
 Upon the sunny shores of Florida. 
 We had in our adventurings amassed 
 Some store of gold, enough for our require, 
 By stress of toilful days and careful nights 
 And dint of dogged labour and hard knocks ; 
 And now the whitening harvest of our heads 
 Might well have monished us to slacken sail 
 And turn our thoughts toward the port of death. 
 Leaving the furtherance of our emprise 
 Unto the fresher hands of younger men. 
 But he, who long has used to ride the deep 
 And scent the briny breezes of the main. 
 
12 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Inhales a second nature with the breath 
 Of that unresting element and it, 
 With all its spells of reckless venturousness, 
 Grows subtly blended with his inmost soul 
 And will not let him rest upon the land. 
 And so we three, grey-bearded, ancient men, 
 Furrowed with years, but yet with hearts as stout 
 And sinews as well strung as many a youth 
 In whom the hot blood rages, launched again 
 Into the olden course and bent our sails 
 Once more toward the setting. Not that we 
 Were bitten by that fierce and senseless craze 
 And hunger for red gold, that drove the folk 
 By myriads to the fruitful Western shores 
 And made the happy valleys ring with war. 
 Plains waste with fire and red with seas of blood : 
 A nobler, if a more unreal aim 
 Allured our hopes toward the Occident, 
 And thawed the frost of age within our veins. 
 
 I had with Leon companied, when he 
 Sought vainly for the Isle of Bimini, 
 And heard the Indians of the Cuban coast 
 Tell how, some fifty years agone, a tribe 
 Had sallied thence to seek that golden strand, 
 Where springs the Fountain of Eternal Youth, 
 And, finding it, had lost the memory 
 Of all their native ties and lingered there, 
 Lapt in an endless dream of Paradise. 
 
 Oft had the wondrous legend filled my sense 
 To intermittent longing, though, what time 
 The fire of youth was fresh within my veins, 
 I gave scant heed to it ; but when my head 
 Grew white with winter's snows, the ancient fire 
 Flamed up again within me and my soul 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 13 
 
 Yearned unappeasably toward the West, 
 
 Where welled the wondrous chrism. At my heat 
 
 These two my comrades kindled to like warmth 
 
 And with like aim we fitted out a ship 
 
 And turned her head toward the setting sun, 
 
 Holding it well to let none know our thought. 
 
 But giving out we sought the general goal 
 
 And went to work the mines of Paria. 
 
 The Christmas bells rang cheerily, as we loosed 
 
 Our carvel from its moorings, and the sky 
 
 Shone blue with blithest omen. So we stood 
 
 Adown the harbour, and with favouring winds 
 
 Came speedily to Ferro, where we took 
 
 New store of meat and drink, and, sailing on. 
 
 Had not long lost from sight the topmost peak 
 
 When some enchantment seemed to fall upon 
 
 And paralyse the water and the air ; 
 
 And glad winds dropped, the sea fell down to glass 
 
 And the gold sun flamed stirless in the sky. 
 
 For some score days we felt no breath of air 
 
 And heard no break of ripples, but we lay 
 
 And sweltered in the grip of that fierce heat. 
 
 And so we drifted, in the weary calm, 
 
 A slow foot forward and a slow foot back, 
 
 Upon the long low folded slopes of sea. 
 
 Until, when all left hope and looked for death, 
 
 A swift sweet breeze sprang up and drove us on, 
 
 Across foam-spangled ripples, through a waste 
 
 Of wet weed-tangle ; and anon the air 
 
 Grew faint with balmy flower-breaths ; a white bird 
 
 Lit like a dream upon our sea-browned sail 
 
 And brought with it the promise of the land. 
 
 Softer and balmier grew the breeze, and thick 
 
 And thicker came the signs of ncaring shores ; 
 
14 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 And so, one morning, from the early mists 
 
 A green-coned island rose up in our way 
 
 And our glad hearts were conscious of the land. 
 
 Landing, we met with Spaniards armed and clothed. 
 
 Who brought us to the chief town of the isle. 
 
 That lay snow-white within a blaze of green. 
 
 It was New Spain, and having there refreshed 
 
 Our weary bodies with a grateful rest 
 
 Among the pleasant places of the isle. 
 
 We trimmed our sails anew toward the West 
 
 And steered into the distance with stout hearts. 
 
 Through many a winding maze of wooded aits 
 And channels where the lush boughs canopied 
 The lucent waters in their sanded bed, 
 We passed and smelt sweet savours of strange flowers, 
 That filled the forests with a blaze of bloom. 
 This coasting Cuba, and the last land passed. 
 Where the white headland rushed into the deep 
 And strove in vain to reach some kindred land, 
 Lost in the infinite distance, fields of green 
 Glittered and broke to surges, far and wide. 
 Until the eye lost vision. Nothing feared. 
 We bade farewell to all the terraced slopes 
 And fragrant woodlands and with fluttering sails. 
 Stretched out into the undiscovered seas. 
 Fair winds soon drove us out of sight of land 
 And in a sweet, bright glory of June warmth. 
 Attempered by lithe breezes, did we cleave. 
 For many days, the slow and pearled surge, 
 Fair heaven o'er us of a wildflower's blue. 
 With now and then a trail of golden cloud. 
 Feathered with silver, sloping o'er its bell 
 Of windless azure, and a jasper sea. 
 Full of all glints and plays of jewelled light. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 15 
 
 Fishes of diamond and seaweed trails, 
 Ruby and emerald, that bore wide blooms 
 Of white and purple. Some enchanted land 
 Lay for our sight beneath that crystal dome 
 Of hyaline inverted toward the sky, 
 Drinking the soft light with so whole a bliss 
 That some new radiance ever woke in it. 
 
 So journeyed we for many a golden day 
 And many a night enchanted, till, at last. 
 One night, the sunset lay across the West, 
 In one great sheet of bright and awful gold. 
 And would not fade for twilight. Through the air 
 The hours fled past toward midnight ; but the sun 
 Was stayed by some new Joshua and the West 
 Still seemed the land of the Apocalypse, 
 Emblazoning the future of our hopes. 
 We all did marvel at the miracle, 
 And some began to quake for very fear ; 
 But Perez lifted up his voice and said, 
 " Friends, this is e'en the very sign of God, 
 To show us, of His mercy, we shall see 
 And come to what we long for, ere we die." 
 And as he spoke, a fresher breeze fell down 
 Upon the gold-stained canvas of the sails. 
 So that we, driving fast toward the West 
 And its miraculous splendours, saw gold towers 
 And spires of burning emerald glance and grow 
 Against the golden background. Then great awe 
 And wondrous comfort fell upon us all 
 And from our lips, " The City of the Lord ! " 
 Came with a reverent triumph, for it seemed 
 Indeed the town of pearl and golden gates 
 And angels walking in the beryl streets ; 
 And as we ever ran toward the place 
 
i6 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 The joy of Mary did possess our hearts, 
 And, kneeling down together on the deck. 
 We all linked hands and offered thanks to God. 
 
 The hours went by and lengthened out to days, 
 And yet no darkness curtained that fair fire. 
 No sign of dawning glimmered in the East ; 
 But still that glory flamed across the West 
 And still into the setting fled our bark. 
 So, as we counted it by lapse of time. 
 Bereft of natural signs of dark and light. 
 Seven days had passed, and on the seventh day. 
 At fall of eventide, or what is wont 
 To be that time in this our world that knows 
 No miracles, the, splendours gathered up 
 And running all together like a scroll. 
 Were bound into a single blazing globe. 
 That gradually did shrink upon itself. 
 Until it was but as a greater star 
 And hung in heaven, a splendid lucent pearl. 
 Flooding the purple twilight with soft fire. 
 And as the flaming curtain passed away 
 And left the Westward empty, from the span 
 Of ocean full before us rose a slope 
 Of pleasant shores and smiling terraces. 
 Crowned with a tender glory of fair green. 
 
 Our hearts leapt up within us ; something spoke 
 To us of the fulfilment of our hopes ; 
 And as we drew yet nearer, snow-white sands. 
 Gemmed with bright shells and coloured wonderments 
 Of stones and seaweed, sparkled on the rim 
 Of the glad blue, and what seemed palaces 
 Of dreamlike beauty shimmered afar off. 
 Like agates, through the mazes of the woods. 
 We ran the carvel through a wooded reach 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 17 
 
 Of shelving water, clear and musical 
 With fret of breaking ripples on the stones, 
 And drove the keel into the yielding sand. 
 Where, with a gracious curve, the silver shore 
 Sloped down and held the ocean in its arms. 
 Landing, we entered, through a portico 
 Of columned palms, a forest fair and wide. 
 Wherein long glades ran stretching in the calm 
 And rayed out through the leafage on all hands ; 
 And as our feet trod grass, the tropic night 
 Was wasted and the cool sweet early day 
 Was born in the blue heavens. On all sides. 
 The fruitful earth was mad with joy of Spring, 
 Not, as in our cold West, the painful lands 
 Flower with a thin spare stint of meagre blooms. 
 But with a blaze of heaven's own splendrousness 
 Moulded to blossom ; in the lavish land 
 There was not room enough for the blithe blooms 
 To spread to fulness their luxuriance ; 
 And, so they ran and revelled up the trunks 
 And, seizing all the interspace of air, 
 Shut out the sky with frolic flowerage. 
 And as we went, the cloisters of the woods 
 Rang with the golden choirings of the birds, 
 God's poets, that did give Him praise for Spring, 
 And all the tender twilight of the woods 
 Was brimmed with ripples of their minstrelsy. 
 
 Some hours we journeyed slowly through the aisles 
 Of emerald, hung with flower-trails wild and sweet. 
 Whose scent usurped the waftings of the breeze 
 And lapt our senses in a golden dream, — 
 Slowly, I say ; for wonder held our feet. 
 And we were often fain to halt and feed 
 Our dazed eyes on the exquisite fair peace 
 
 B 
 
i8 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Of all things' perfect beauty and delight. 
 
 At last we came to where the cloistered glades 
 
 Grew wider and we heard a noise of bells 
 
 And glad wide horn-notes floating through the trees 
 
 And waning lingeringly along the aisles ; 
 
 And a far voice of some most lovely sound 
 
 Held all the air with one enchanted note. 
 
 As 'twere the cadence of the angels' song, 
 
 When in the dawn the gates of heaven unfold, 
 
 Had floated down and lit upon the earth. 
 
 And then the forest ceased and in the noon, 
 
 Now that the sun rode high in the blue steeps, 
 
 We saw a fair white city in the plain. 
 
 Rounded with blossomed flowers and singing rills 
 
 And fringed with tender grace of nestling trees. 
 
 The gates stood open for our welcoming 
 
 And in we passed, but saw none in the ways 
 
 And wandered slowly onward through the streets, 
 
 Misdoubting us the whole might be a dream 
 
 And loath to speak, lest something break the charm. 
 
 Full lovely and most pleasant was the place, 
 Builded with palaces of purest white 
 And columns graven in all gracious shapes 
 Of lovely things, that harbour in the world 
 Or in the poet's fancy. All the walls 
 Were laced with golden tracery and set 
 With precious marbles, cunningly y-wrought 
 To delicate frail fretwork. Argent spires 
 Rose, pistil-like, toward the heavens serene. 
 From out moon-petalled flower-domes and the roofs 
 Seemed, in the noontide, one great graven prayer. 
 For the aspiring of their minarets. 
 Fair courtyards caught the quiet from the air 
 And hoarded up the shadow in their hearts. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 19 
 
 Making the stillness musical with pearls 
 And silver of their fountains' gurgling plash. 
 A city of the pleasaunce of the gods 
 It seemed, embowered in a flower-soft calm, 
 Soiled by no breath of clamour or desire. 
 So did we wander up that silver street. 
 As one who, in the lapses of a dream, 
 Goes like a god, for lack of wonderment. 
 And came to where a sudden water welled 
 Among moss-feathered pebbles and was turned 
 Into the middle way, wherein it ran 
 Along the agate stones, rejoicingly. 
 And marged itself with bands of vivid bloom. 
 It was so clear and sang so sweet a song 
 Of cool fresh quiet that we all were fain 
 To halt and lave our hands and feet in it. 
 So haply virtue might be had from it 
 Of its untroubled blitheness. This being done, 
 We wandered on again by that fair flood. 
 That seemed to us a rippled silver clue, 
 Unwinded by some river-deity, 
 Friendly to man, and leading, step by step. 
 To some far seat of exquisite idlesse. 
 So came we where the long slow quiet way 
 Was done and lost itself in one wide space. 
 Where columns stood in fair and measured ranks. 
 Arched with a running frieze of graven work. 
 Stately and tall they were, cornelian-plinthed. 
 With stems of jasper and chalcedony, 
 And ran in goodly order round the place. 
 Circling a wide bright curtilage of clear 
 And polished marble, veined with branching gold 
 And jacinth woven in its cloudless grain. 
 In the mid-square a cistern, lipped with pearl 
 
20 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 And hollowed from the marble of the floor, 
 Was clear with crystal water, through whose lymph 
 One saw the bottom paved with cunning shapes 
 Of ancient legends, beasts and birds and flowers. 
 Fashioned in yellow gold on milk-white stone. 
 
 Into the cistern emptied all its rills 
 The laughing stream that ran beside our feet, 
 And filling all the cool still flood with gleams 
 And rippled swirls and eddies of its own 
 Mercurial silver, passed out o'er a slope 
 Of jasper from the cistern's farther side 
 And gurgled through a channel in the floor, 
 Wherefrom it drew that sweet and murmurous noise 
 Of soft accords suspended, that had swelled 
 Upon us in the opening of the wood. 
 Until its silver blended with the green 
 Of a cool woodland shadow and its chirp 
 Of laughing ripples in the cloistered calm 
 Of arching trunks was silent. Following 
 The blithe stream's way, we stood upon the brink 
 Of that cool crystal and gazed down through it 
 Upon the inlaid figures in the bed. 
 That flashed and wavered so with that unrest 
 Of ceaseless currents, that they seemed to us 
 To have again a strange half-life in them 
 And nod and sign to us. We dipped our hands 
 For idlesse in the lappings of the stream. 
 That curled and glistered on the marble's brim. 
 And wondered idly what these things might be 
 That were so fairly pictured on the stone. 
 And if the place were void of living soul 
 To use its dainty brightness. So we might 
 Have stood and gazed and dreamed away the day. 
 So fair a spell of quiet held the air ; 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 21 
 
 But, as we listened, suddenly a sound 
 
 Of various music smote upon our ears. 
 
 And we were ware of some enchanted throb 
 
 Of very lovely singing, that for aye 
 
 Drew nearer, as it were the singers came 
 
 Toward us, in the near vicinity. 
 
 And as it grew, the air was all a-flower 
 
 With intermingling antiphons of sound ; 
 
 The passionate pulse of harp-strings, smitten soft 
 
 To wait upon the cadenced swell and wane 
 
 Of the alternate voices, throbbed and stirred 
 
 In the cool peace of that sweet reverend place : 
 
 High steeples rained bell-silver on the roofs 
 
 And the clear gold of clarions floated up 
 
 And echoed through the columned solitudes. 
 
 Before us rose a high and stately wall, 
 Painted with cunning past the skill of men, — 
 It seemed to us, — with shapes of olden time. 
 Presenting, in deep colours, like the flush 
 Of flowers that diapers the fields in June, 
 All things that have been celebrate of old. 
 Shapes of high kings, of heathen men and dames, 
 Ladies and knights in dalliance of love 
 Or ranged in rank of feast or tournament. 
 (I do remember once I saw the like. 
 But in a meaner fashion and less fair. 
 At Naples, when our army held the realm 
 Against the French.) Surpassing fair they were, 
 Gods in the aspect and most worshipful, 
 Clad in bright raiment, gold and purpurine. 
 So goodly was their seeming and withal 
 So wonder-lively fashioned, that we looked 
 To see them leave their places on the wall 
 And walk among us and have speech of us. 
 
22 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Between two columns in the midst, a space 
 Was set apart, whereon no living thing 
 Was limned, but the stone was subtly wrought 
 With graven silver, arabesqued and chased 
 In interwoven patterns, very bright 
 And strange, wherein we wondered much to see 
 That ever sphere did twine with sphere, nor was 
 There any angled figure in the woof. 
 Except one great gold cross, that broke the play 
 Of circles in the centre of the space. 
 In this a wide door opened, that had been 
 So closely fitted to the joining wall 
 That our eyes had no cognizance of it, 
 And folding back itself on either side. 
 Gave passage to our sight into an aisle 
 Of cloistered fretwork, at whose farthest end 
 Shone glint of mystic gold and blazonry. 
 
 It was not clear for distance, at the first. 
 What was it moved and glittered in the haze ; 
 But, as we gazed, a train of stately men. 
 Vestured in flowing garments, swept along 
 The heart of that cool stillness and did come 
 Majestically toward us with slow steps. 
 And as they grew into our clearer sight, 
 We saw they were full goodly to behold. 
 Gracious in carriage and with port assured 
 In simple nobleness. It seemed to us 
 That we had known such figures in some dream 
 Of bygone days, so strangely bright they were 
 Of aspect and serene in kindly peace, 
 Resembling nothing earthly we had seen. 
 Their vesture was no less unknown to us, 
 Being of some fair white fabric, soft as silk 
 And looped with broad rich gold and broidery 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 23 
 
 Of banded silver, and their flowing hair 
 
 Was knitted with the plumes of strange bright birds, 
 
 That flashed and sparkled gem-like in the sun, 
 
 Emerald and gold and turquoise. At their head 
 
 Came one whose visage wore a special air 
 
 Of reverence and simplicity, uncrossed 
 
 By any furrow of ignoble care. 
 
 Adown his breast a fair white beard did flow 
 
 And foam-white was the flowerage of his head ; 
 
 But else of sad wan eld was little trace 
 
 Upon his mien, except for venerance. 
 
 It seemed as if his youth had held so dear 
 
 The sojourn of life's spring-time, it had chosen 
 
 Rather to consort with the drifts of age 
 
 Than spread sad wings toward a fresher haven. 
 
 Upon his front a band of woven gold. 
 
 Graven with symbols, added evidence 
 
 Unneeded to his brow's regality, 
 
 And in his hand a silver wand he bore. 
 
 Whereon a golden falcon spread its wings 
 
 And poised itself as if for imminent flight. 
 
 We all bowed heads, as conscious of some might 
 Of soul and station far above our own ; 
 And that mild ancient, casting on us all 
 His eyes' benignness, gave us welcoming, 
 In speech so clear and universal-toned. 
 We could not choose but apprehend his words 
 And the fair meaning of them, when he said, 
 " Be welcome to the City of the Day, 
 O seekers for the Isle of Bimini ! " 
 And knew that here at last our quest was won. 
 
 Then did he speak to those that followed him, 
 And the fair youths, that were his chamberlains, 
 Laid gentle hands on us and led us all 
 
24 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Into the inner palace, where we soothed 
 Our weary h"mbs with soft and fragrant baths 
 And girt us in new garments of fair white, 
 Made rich with bands of silken broidery. 
 This done, our weariness and our fatigues 
 Fell from us with our travel-stained weeds 
 And we were as new men in heart and limb. 
 
 Then joyously we followed those our guides, 
 Through many an aisle of fair and lucent stone, 
 Into a wide and lofted banquet-hall. 
 Where the pierced walls showed through the azure sky 
 And shaped the light that won across the chinks 
 Into a dainty fretted lace of gold. 
 High up into the shadow curved the roof 
 And treasured up, in many a tender gloom 
 Of amethyst and purple, cchoings 
 Of woodland songs and cool of forest shades 
 And soft sweet breezes straying in the flowers. 
 For bearing of its bell of latticed blue 
 Were columns of majestic linden-trees. 
 Whose blossom scented all the luminous air ; 
 And in the boughs gold-feathered birds did make 
 Rare music for the pleasance of the folk 
 That lay below in many a goodly rank. 
 Reclined among sweet scents and lavish flowers. 
 There could no shaft of sun be wearisome 
 Nor airless ardour of the heavy noon, 
 For green of shading boughs and silver plash 
 Of ceaseless fountains in the hollow coigns. 
 
 Here was a goodly banquet furnished forth ; 
 And as we entered, he that ruled the feast 
 Did set us near himself and talked with us 
 And showed and told us many goodly things 
 And marvels that had usance in the place. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 25 
 
 Then did we ask him of that fabled stream 
 That had such puissance for defeat of age ; 
 Whereat his visage grew, meseemed, a thought 
 O'ershadowed ; but anon he smiled on us 
 And made fair answer that, ourselves refreshed 
 With needful rest and slumber, he himself 
 Would on the morrow further our desire 
 Toward the fount miraculous ; and turned 
 The talk to other things and bade us leave 
 Our past fatigues and eat and drink new life. 
 
 Great joyance had we in the pleasant things 
 That were presented to our every sense. 
 And great refreshing for our weary souls. 
 Jaded with age and unrelenting toil. 
 Nor, in the progress of the glad repast, 
 Did cheer sink down to grossness ; for we ate 
 Of fruits and meats (and drank of wines the while, 
 Costly and rich) that were so delicate 
 And noble in their essence, and did hear 
 And see and scent such high and lovely things, 
 That all that was most godlike in ourselves 
 Did cast off imperfection for the nonce 
 And was made pure by that most sweet converse. 
 
 The banquet ended, minstrels took their harps 
 And sang the praises of the blossom-time 
 And high delights of bright and puissant love : 
 How May is sweet with amorous effects 
 And all things in its season know but one 
 And flower and sing and are most fair for one 
 And one alone most tender, holiest Love : 
 How life in love has ever deathless spring, 
 And all the early glory of the year 
 Is but the travail of the earth with love. 
 That is told forth in bloom of painted flowers 
 
26 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 And silver speech of many-choiring birds. 
 
 And these strains ended with applause of all 
 And to the great enhancement of our peace, 
 Another smote the soft complaining strings 
 To notes of graver sw^eetness, and did sing 
 A quaint sad song of Autumn and of Death, 
 Made very sw^eet w^ith joining cadences 
 Of silver harp-notes. Thus, methinks, it ran : — 
 
 LET others praise the May for bright and clear 
 And Love J that in the flower-time thrives amain : 
 
 For me^ my songs shall hymn the dying year 
 And deathy that is the salve of mortal pain. 
 For what is autumn but the grateful wane 
 
 Of weary summer to the sleep of snows ? 
 
 And what is winter hut the earth's repose^ 
 And death the cold sweet close of some new springy 
 That folds to slumber every tired thing? 
 
 Let others walk to hear the roundelay 
 Of song-birds quiring to the risen year : 
 
 For mey I love the quiet throstle's lay^ 
 When in the woods the shredded leaves are sere 
 And the faint heavens are watchet in the mere. 
 
 The autumn! s pale calm grey of sober peace 
 
 Is lovelier to me than the swift increase 
 Of colour in the spring-tide' s restless air ; 
 For my heart flowers when the boughs are hare. 
 
 If love he May^ then love is nought to me ; 
 For in my thought his sweets are sweeter far 
 
 When in the deepening twilight shadows flee. 
 When all delights but half unfolded are 
 And waste fulfilment comes not to unbar 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 27 
 
 The gates of weariness. Faint flowers are sweet 
 And murmured music daintily doth greet 
 
 My senses more than holder scent or song: 
 
 I will my joys not fierce to be^ but long. 
 
 Sweet death, if men do fear thy tender touch. 
 It is because they know thee not for fair. 
 
 Since that their eyes are dazzled over-much 
 By fierce delights of life and blinding glare 
 Of unenduring bliss, that throws despair 
 
 Behind it as its shadow, when the sun 
 
 Slopes through the evening and the hills are dun. 
 They would not call thee dark and wan and cold, 
 Had their faint eyes but shunned the noon's full gold. 
 
 For lo ! thou art not black to loving eyes, 
 But tender grey, not unillumed by rose 
 
 Or that pale feathery gold that on the skies 
 Of autumn such a sad sweet glory throws. 
 Though in thy shades no glare of sunlight glows, 
 
 Tet through thy dusk a tender moon of hope 
 
 Is clear, nor lacks there in the misted slope 
 Of thy long vistas many a helpful light, 
 
 Death, for very piteous is thy might ! 
 
 Let those that love them sing of Love and May ; 
 
 1 give to Love full sweet another name 
 
 And with soft sighs and singings to Him pray. 
 And not with trumpets'* silver-strong acclaim 
 Blazon to men his wonder-working fame : 
 For my Love's name is Death, and I am fain 
 To love the long sad years and life's kind wane ; 
 For what is autumn but a later spring 
 And what is Death but lifers revesturing ? 
 
28 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Thus blithely sped the golden-footed hours 
 Athwart the sloping sunlight of the space 
 'Twixt noon and dusk, in various delight 
 Of song and converse, till the purple w^ebs 
 Of night began to flutter o'er the gold 
 Of sunset, and the air of that bright place 
 Was strewn with pearls of moonlight. Then men brought 
 Great golden-fleeced webs of silk-soft wool 
 And furs of white and sable-coated beasts 
 And laid them on the floor and thereon strewed 
 Fair green of moss and rainbow plumages 
 Of exquisite strange birds, whereon the folk, 
 Won with light labour to fatigue as light 
 And easeful, soon addressed themselves to rest. 
 
 But those fair youths, to whom we were in charge, 
 Unbidden, brought us to a place apart, 
 Wherein fair chambers, golden-ceiled and hung 
 With grey and purple arras, lay beside 
 An aisle of columned marble, stretching down. 
 With casements clear and quaintly-carven roofs, 
 Through many a tender vista of soft shade 
 And trellised leafage : there did we bestow 
 Our weary limbs and heard the nightingale. 
 All night among the windless myrtle-groves 
 Without, entreating all the tremulous air 
 To passion with the splendour of her song, 
 Woven with flower-scents inextricably. 
 The night was fair for us with happy dreams, 
 And in the morning, ere the sun had drawn 
 The early mists from off the blushing day, 
 There came to us the king of that fair land 
 And did entreat us rise and harness us ; 
 For that the place we sought was from the town 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 29 
 
 Distant a long day's journey, and the time 
 Was gracious, in the freshness of the dawn, 
 To break the earlier hardness of the way. 
 Then did we all take horse, and riding forth 
 By the fair guiding silver of the brook, 
 That ran toward the northward of the town. 
 We passed through many a leafy forest glade 
 And saw the fresh flowers wet with the night dew 
 And listened to the newly-wakened birds. 
 That sang their clearest for the fair young day. 
 Right goodly was the aspect of the earth, 
 Clad with glad blooms and flushed with joy of 
 
 spring. 
 As on we wended in the early morn. 
 Before the grossness of the noon fell down : 
 And as we went, a goodly company, 
 The minstrels lifted up their voice and sang. 
 As birds that could not choose but music make, 
 For very joyance of the pleasant time. 
 And one right well I marked, who made the birds 
 From every sunny knoll and budded copse 
 Give back blithe antiphons of melody 
 To every phrase and cadence of his song. 
 Comely and young he was, and passing skilled 
 In making lays and rondels for the lute : — 
 And this, among a crowd of sweeter songs, 
 If memory serve me rightly, did he sing. 
 
 BELLS of gold where the sun has been. 
 
 Azure cups in the woven green^ 
 
 Who in the night has been with you 
 
 And painted you golden and jewel-blue 
 
 And brimmed your flower-cups with diamond dew ? 
 
30 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Lo ! in the evening Spring was dead 
 And the flowers had lost their maidenhead 
 Under the burning kiss of the sun : 
 Tell mej who was the shining one 
 That came by night when the sky was dun 
 
 And the pale thin mists were over the moon^ 
 And brimmed your hearts with the wine of noon ? 
 Who was it breathed on the painted May^ 
 Under the screen of the shadow play^ 
 And gave it life for another day ? 
 
 I watched at the setting to see him ride. 
 
 But only saw the day that diedy 
 
 The faint-eyed flowerets shrink and fail 
 
 Into their shrouding petals' veil 
 
 And all things under the moon turn pale. 
 
 I watched in the nighty but saw no thing. 
 
 I heard in the midnight the grey bird sing 
 And ran to look for the shape of power ^ 
 But saw no thing in the silence flower. 
 Save moon-mists over forest and bower. 
 
 GoldcupSy it could not have been the May, 
 For dead in the twilight the springtime lay. 
 Under the arch of the setting sun. 
 Ere in the gloaming the day was done 
 And the masque of the shadows had begun. 
 
 But lo ! in the early scented morn 
 
 A new delight in the air was born ; 
 Brighter than ever bloomed the spring. 
 The glad flowers blew and the birds did sing 
 And blithe was every living thing. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 31 
 
 Merles, that flute in the linden-hall^ 
 Larks, if ye would, ye could tell me all ; 
 
 Te that were waking at break of day. 
 
 Did ye see no one pass away. 
 
 With ripple of song and pinion-play ? 
 
 Ah ! I am sure that ye know him well. 
 
 Although ye are false and will not tell ! 
 Haply, natheless, I shall he near 
 And hear you praise him loudly and clear, 
 Some day when ye wit not I can hear. 
 
 So wended we with mirth and minstrelsy 
 Throughout the morning hours, and presently 
 Emerging from the pleasant wood, we rode 
 By many a long stretch of level plains. 
 Waved fields of rainbow grasses and wide moors 
 Bejewelled thick with white and azure bells. 
 And saw rich flower-cups, all ablaze with gold 
 And purple, lie and swelter in the sun, 
 And others, blue as is the sky at noon 
 Unclouded, trail and crawl along the grass 
 And star the green with sudden sapphire blooms. 
 And then we came to where the frolic brook 
 Swelled into manhood and it's silver thread 
 Was woven out into a river's stretch 
 Of broad unruffled crystal. Here a boat. 
 Wide bowed and long, lay rocking on the stream, 
 Among great lazy lilies, white and red 
 And regal purple, lolling in the sun. 
 
 Dismounting here, we floated up the tide. 
 Propelled by one that stood upon the prow 
 And spurned the sanded bottom with his pole, 
 Along wide sunny lapses of the stream. 
 
32 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Now breasting rushes, purple as the tips 
 
 Of fair Aurora's fingers, when she parts 
 
 The veils of daybreak, now embowered in green 
 
 And blue of floating iris. Though long rifts 
 
 Of wooded cliffs we passed, where here and there 
 
 The naked rock showed white as a swan's breast. 
 
 Riven through and through by veins of virgin gold, 
 
 Or haply cleft with gaping crevices. 
 
 Wherethrough the jewelled riches of its heart 
 
 Did force themselves from out their treasury 
 
 And staunched the cloven wound with precious 
 
 salve 
 Of living diamond. Here the water showed, 
 Through its clear lymph, great crystals in the bed 
 And nuggets of bright metal, water-worn 
 To strange fantastic shapes ; and now and then, 
 As we did paddle idly with our hands. 
 Letting the clear stream ripple through the chinks 
 Of our obstructing fingers, with a sound 
 Of soft melodious plaining for the check, 
 A great gold-armoured fish, with scales of pearl 
 And martlets of wine-red upon his back, 
 Rose slowly to the surface, waving all 
 The pennons of his fins, and gazed at us 
 With fearless eyes. And there the wrinkled bed 
 Shelved suddenly into a deep clear pool. 
 Whose brink was fringed with waving water-bells ; 
 And at the bottom lay gold-coloured shells 
 And silver pearls embedded in brown sand, 
 And many a fish and harmless water-snake 
 Floated and crawled along the river-weeds. 
 
 But nothing harmful seemed to us to dwell 
 Within that fair clear water ; — pike nor coil 
 Of deadly worm, nor on the verging banks 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 33 
 
 In field or copse, as far as eye could see, 
 
 Was any lynx or wolf or brindled beast, 
 
 To stir the lovely stillness of the land 
 
 With whisper of disquiet. As we went. 
 
 Much wondering at the goodly peace that reigned 
 
 In all and at the marvellous fair things 
 
 That glided by us, Perez took a lute 
 
 (Full featly could he turn a stately song), 
 
 And praised the place and its serene delights. 
 
 " O HAPPT pleasaunce of the gods ! " he sang, 
 ** TVhere all is fair and there is harm in nought ^ 
 Where never lightnings break nor thunder-clang,^ 
 Nor ever summer air with storm is fraught^ 
 Nor by the hurtling hail is ruin wrought^ 
 But kindly nature is at peace with man 
 And all things sweetly fill their given span ! 
 
 " O pleasant landy where winter never blinds 
 The bare waste ways with snow-drift^ nor the frost 
 With wrinkled ice the sad wan waters binds^ 
 Nor spring-tide joy by winter thoughts is crosty 
 Where never hope for weariness is lost, 
 But life is warm, though woods be cold and grey. 
 And never in the flower-hearts dies the May ! 
 
 " Where never skies are dully nor tempest scowlsy 
 Nor monster riots in the river's glasSy 
 Where never in the woods the fierce beast prowlsy 
 But in the fields the harmless snake does pasSy 
 A living jew ely through the flowered grasSy 
 Where sun burns noty nor breaths of winter freexey 
 Nor thunder-blasts shrill dr early through the trees ! 
 
 C 
 
34 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 " Tet is there nothing here that in the air 
 Should breathe such potency of healing halm 
 As might compel the unkindly blast to spare 
 Or birds to sing a never-ending psalm^ 
 Or meadows glitter with the summer calm^ 
 Or purge the terror from the winter grim : 
 But men love God and put their trust in Him ! 
 
 " Jnd so all things of His do they hold dear 
 And see in all His handiwork a friend^ 
 And not a foe^ — and therefore skies are clear 
 And flowers are sweety because mens souls intend 
 The essence of well-beings and so bend 
 The kindred life of wood and field and fell 
 To that fair peace that in themselves does dwell ! 
 
 " For man it is that makes his circumstance, 
 Honouring all and loving all things goody 
 Bethinking him how he may best advance 
 The harvesting of nature^ s kindly moody 
 By helping her in that relief she would 
 Be ever working for his cheer and stay : 
 So doth he love and joy in her alway. 
 
 *' happy folk that dwell in such a land ! 
 O happy land that hast such habitants, 
 That know to walk with nature hand in hand 
 And find new cheer in every change and chancey 
 Not thinking, when the long grey days advance 
 And summer s gold is dyingy hope is less ; 
 But proving lightly all things' goodliness."" 
 
 So swung we slowly up that lazy flood, 
 Rejoicing in the gladness of the time, 
 Until its course did leave the open plains 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 35 
 
 And turned into a forest, intertwined 
 
 So closely o'er our heads with knitted boughs 
 
 And charm of woven leaves, that we could see 
 
 No glimpse of sun nor glitter of the clear 
 
 Sweet firmament, nor any moving thing, 
 
 But only heard dim splashes in the flood 
 
 Of water-rat or duck and distant chirp 
 
 Of birds that far above our heads climbed up 
 
 To hymn the mounting chariot of the sun. 
 
 In that dim emerald shadow, some strange peace 
 And spell of haunting quiet seemed to brood 
 And soften all the voices of the wood 
 And rustle of the leafage to repose. 
 Above us rose the high steep flowered banks. 
 Heavy with fragrances from unseen bells 
 Exhaled of sweet and drowsy-scented flowers. 
 And all around the columns of the trees 
 Stretched dimly in the twilight, like the aisles 
 Of some immense cathedral, where the voice 
 Of praise and joy is hushed to reverent prayer. 
 And there no bird or beast did seem to dwell 
 Nor breeze to creep and sigh among the trees ; 
 But in its own mysterious sanctity 
 The forest lay and waited for the voice 
 Of some high champion that should break the charm 
 And win the secret of those mystic deeps. 
 
 The air grew darker, and a fresher breeze 
 Sprang up and told us of the waning day ; 
 And then the oarsman laid aside his blade 
 And loosed the wide sail from the tapering mast. 
 Wherein the glad air gathered did so swell 
 And struggle, that the boat leapt swiftly on 
 Between the shelving woodways. And anon 
 The gold of sunset flamed in through the mask 
 
36 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Of thinning trees, and then the prow was free 
 From that dark pass of overhanging wood, 
 And the day's light was large on us again. 
 
 The river lapsed, through fringing marish plants 
 And ranks of rustling reeds, into the glass 
 Of a clear lakelet, where the white discs lay, 
 Gold-hearted, in the quiet, and our stem 
 Cut through the fronded lake-weeds grudgingly, 
 And won slow way toward the other shore. 
 Where, with a hollow roar, the river leapt 
 And fell into a dark and shaded cave. 
 
 There landed we and moored the barge with ropes, 
 And, following our guides, made shift to win. 
 Athwart a rocky passage, to a screen 
 Of netted boughs and bushes that shut out 
 For us the blue horizon's golden marge. 
 Some time we struggled through the arduous growth 
 Of underwood and brambles, intertwined 
 With scarlet-blossomed creepers, till at length 
 The last boughs closed behind us and we stood 
 Upon the lower slope of a tall hill 
 And gazed into the sunset with rapt eyes. 
 
 A wide deep champaign stretched before our view, 
 Encircled with a sapphire chain of hills. 
 On whose high crests the crown of sunset lay, 
 Hallowing the landscape with a blaze of gold. 
 
 Fair and most awful was the majesty 
 Of that day's death upon the guardian hills. 
 Wrapt in the visible glory of the Lord ; 
 And with one impulse, as the budded flames 
 Of imminent heaven lay on us, we all 
 Fell down upon our knees and worshipped, 
 As knowing the great God was surely there. 
 
 So knelt we all in silence, till the sun 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 37 
 
 Had faded from the westward, and the grey, 
 
 Washed with pale gold, that fills the interspace 
 
 'Twixt ended day and night, held all the air 
 
 With its mild tender afterglow. Then he 
 
 Whose brow was kingly with the banded gold 
 
 Arose and went a little way aside 
 
 Within some trees, that stood apart from us 
 
 About the casting of an arbalest, 
 
 And made as if he sought for something there ; 
 
 And coming, in a little, back to us. 
 
 He took my hand, and signing to the rest 
 
 To follow, led us all into a nook. 
 
 Wherein tall oak-trees circled round a rock 
 
 Of moss-veined marble. Therein entering, 
 
 A fitful radiance, as it were the play 
 
 Of glancing diamonds, glittered in our eyes, 
 
 And looking round, we saw where from the stone 
 
 A fair clear water trickled, drop by drop. 
 
 Between lush webs of golden-threaded moss, 
 
 And fell in jewelled sprays of liquid light 
 
 Upon the crystal pebbles. Very pure 
 
 And clear it was, and so unearthly bright 
 
 In the dim twilight of that shadowy place. 
 
 We doubted not but here our quest was filled 
 
 And this was e'en that fountain where our flesh. 
 
 Being laved, should put off sad and weary age 
 
 And clothe itself anew with goodly youth. 
 
 Then he who led us signed to us to drink, 
 For this was that same water we had sought 
 And wearied for so long by sea and land. 
 
 Albeit, for a space we could not stir 
 For wonderment, commingled with strange awe 
 And ravishment of our fulfilled desires. 
 That was nigh pain for very mightiness. 
 
38 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 And then Bias stepped toward that trickling thread 
 Of crystal, and did stoop him down to drink ; 
 And ere his knees touched earth, I, following. 
 Bent down my hand into the rippled pool, 
 That lay beneath the downfall of the rill. 
 And drawing back an instant for surprise 
 At the most deathly coldness of the stream. 
 Made shift to gather water for a draught 
 Within the hollowed middle of my palm. 
 
 It scattered into diamonds through the chinks 
 Of my unnerved fingers and did leave 
 So scant a pool of fluid in my hand. 
 That I was fain to stoop and fill again. 
 With more attent precaution, ere I wet 
 My lips with it. I filled my two joined palms, 
 And was about to raise them to my mouth, 
 Nay, almost steeped my lips, when suddenly, 
 Reflected in the streamlet, I was ware 
 Of some strange light that was made visible 
 From out the dusk above, and, looking up, 
 I spied a mooned wonder in the air. 
 Full of strange lights and mystic harmonies 
 Of blending colour ; and as I did gaze, 
 I saw a great white cross, that grew and burnt 
 In its fair middle. Wonder and great awe 
 Unclasped my hands and brought them to my face. 
 To hide from my weak sight that awful light. 
 Whereby the unwilling water once again 
 Did have its liberty and showered down. 
 Like broken jewels, back into the pool. 
 And as I knelt, with awed and hidden eyes, 
 I heard a voice that spake from out the bell 
 Of that miraculous flower, most reverend 
 And awful, as it were the living God ; 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 39 
 
 And these words smote my hearing : " Foolish merty 
 
 That thought God like another of yourselves^ 
 
 That make a work and set it up for good 
 
 And after look again and know it ill 
 
 And straightway raze and build it up aneWy 
 
 Repenting of the framework of your handsy — 
 
 Know that the Lord of all cannot repent 
 
 Nor turn again His ordered harmonies 
 
 Of life and death and nature^ saying noty 
 
 * 1 have not wrought it seemly — / repent ! ' 
 
 Nor can His hands undo what He has done. 
 
 " O fools and hard of heart I in all these years 
 Have ye then never read eartKs parable 
 Of day and night alternatCy seed and fruity 
 That tells you dusk must be ere light can come ? 
 Loy in the fields the summer's lavish bloom 
 Is spent and wasted by the autumn s breath 
 And dies with winter, to revive with spring ; 
 And all things fill their order, birds and beasts 
 And all that unto earthly weal pertains. 
 Nor will the spheric working change its course 
 Nor slacken for the prayers of foolish men. 
 That lift fond voice for what their baby eyes 
 Deem good and all-sufficient in desire. 
 Seeing only, in their circumscribed scope, 
 A segment of the circle of God's love. 
 
 " So may not the renewing of lost youth 
 Be won but through the natural way of death. 
 And man must, — like an ear of corn, that droops 
 And withers in the ground before it stir 
 And sprout again with gay and goodly bloom, — 
 Yield up his wayworn flesh and weary soul 
 Unto the soothing rest of friendly death y 
 Ere a new fire shall stir the curdled blood 
 
40 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Of age to a new ardour and the soul 
 Be clad afresh with robes of lusty youth. 
 
 " Wherefore know ye that^ of a certainty^ 
 None shall have Itfe^ excepting first he die. 
 And therefore is this water cold as death ,• 
 For through its death is life the quicklier won. 
 Wherefore, if ye repent of your desire 
 And will to wear in weariness of eld 
 The sad remainder of your lagging years.. 
 Rather than dare the icy plunge of death. 
 Depart and purge your hearts of foolish hope." 
 
 With that it ceased : and we, for wonderment 
 And awe, awhile could neither move nor speak ; 
 But still that splendour hung upon the air. 
 And still we veiled our eyes for reverence. 
 
 Then Perez rose, and, coming to the brink 
 Of that miraculous water, knelt and said : 
 
 " Lord, I have haste for youth and fear not death. 
 For joy of that great hope that is beyond." 
 
 So lightly he addressed himself to drink 
 Of that clear stream ; and we, that watched him do, 
 When as the water touched him, saw his face, 
 As 'twere an angel's, with heroic love 
 And faith transfigured for a moment's space ; 
 And then such glory broke from that high cross 
 And shone athwart his visage, that we fell 
 Aswoon upon the grass for fear and awe. 
 And had no further sense of what befell. 
 
 When life again returned into my brain. 
 The night was wasted, and the early dawn 
 Was golden in the Orient. As my eyes 
 Grew once more open to the light of day, 
 I found myself outstretched upon the sand 
 Of that fair shore, where we had landed first, 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 41 
 
 Hard by our place of entry in the wood. 
 
 Around me were my comrades ; some, like me, 
 Awaking from the trance of that strange sleep. 
 And others working on the caravel. 
 That lay high up upon the waveless strand. 
 Striving to push her down to meet the tide 
 That crawled up slowly from the outer sea. 
 
 But every sign of our adventurings 
 In that fair city, with those goodly men, 
 And of that wondrous fountain of the hills. 
 Was vanished. In the tangles of the wood. 
 The fair white dwellings we had seen with eyes, 
 When first the sunset led us to the place. 
 Had disappeared, nor in the forest's close 
 Green front of woven boughs, that stood opposed 
 Toward the ocean, was there visible 
 A single opening, wherethrough we might chance 
 Again upon the cloistered woodland way. 
 That led us to the wonder-lovely town. 
 Nor was there any sign or any trace 
 Of habitance of men or mortal use 
 Therein : but all was as no human foot, 
 Save ours, had trodden on the silver sand. 
 
 At this we marvelled greatly and most like 
 Would have misdoubted all to be a dream, 
 But that there lay beside us on the strand 
 Our comrade, Perez, not — as first it seemed 
 To us — asleep, but — as we soon knew — dead. 
 And still his visage wore the wondrous smile 
 Of deathless ravishment it had put on 
 With the clear draught of that miraculous fount. 
 
 And so we knew that it had been no dream. 
 But that our eyes had seen our hearts' desire, 
 And God himself had surely talked with us. 
 
42 THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH 
 
 Long with persistent hope we searched the shore 
 Around the h'ttle harbour on all sides, 
 So haply we might once more light upon 
 The woodway leading to the inland plain 
 And its blithe wonders : but the silent trees 
 Were secret and would show no trace of it. 
 
 And so with heavy hearts we left our search 
 And made a grave for burial of the dead, 
 And laid him there with a sad reverence, 
 With wail and music of a funeral song ; 
 For very dear the man had been to us, 
 Being of a noble nature and approved 
 In all renown of worth and steadfastness. 
 
 Then sadly from a little smooth-stemmed tree 
 We rove a branch and hewing it in twain. 
 Made shift to fashion of the peeled white wood 
 The rude resemblance of the blessed Rood 
 And planted it for memory on the grave. 
 And as we did this thing, the forest air 
 Was voiceful with the carol of a bird, 
 That piped and piped as though he ne'er should die. 
 So joyous was his song and full of hope, 
 It seemed as if the angel of the dead 
 Had entered in the semblance of a fowl 
 And sang to give us lightening of our grief. 
 
 And so it came to pass that with the song 
 Our hearts were comforted and some did deem 
 They saw himself that stood upon the strand 
 And beckoned to us not to tarry there 
 Nor strive against the given will of God, 
 But turn our prow from off that hallowed shore. 
 
 We waited not for bidding, but launched out 
 And made the swift keel whistle through the surge. 
 
FROM "ASPECT AND PROSPECT" 
 
 No gods have we to trust to, new or olden ; 
 
 The blue of heaven knows their thrones no more : 
 The races of the gods in death are holden : 
 
 Their pale ghosts haunt the icy river's shore. 
 
 Availeth not our beating at their door : 
 There is no presence in their halls beholden ; 
 The silence fills their jewelled thrones and golden ; 
 
 The shadow lies along their palace-floor. 
 
 And lo ! if any set his heart to singing, 
 
 Thinking to witch the world with love and light. 
 Strains of old memories set the stern chords ringing ; 
 
 The morning answers with the songs of night. 
 
 For who shall sing of pleasance and delight. 
 When all the sadness of the world is clinging 
 About his heart-strings and each breeze is bringing 
 
 Its burden of despairing and despite ? 
 
 Help is there none : night covers us down-lying 
 To sleep that comes uneath with devious dreams : 
 
 The morning brings us sadness but and sighing : 
 We gather sorrow from the noontide beams : 
 And if a man set eyes on aught that seems 
 
 An oasis of peace, he finds, on nighing. 
 
 Its promise false, and, sad almost to dying. 
 
 Turns from the mirage and its treacherous streams. 
 
44 FROM "ASPECT AND PROSPECT" 
 
 II 
 
 And yet one hope by well-nigh all is cherished, — 
 
 Albeit many hold it unconfest, — 
 The dream of days that, when this life has perished 
 
 And all its strife and turmoil are at rest. 
 
 Shall rise for men out of some mystic West, — 
 A paradise of peace, where death comes never 
 And life flows calmly as some dreamy river 
 
 That wanders through the Islands of the Blest ; 
 
 A dream of love-lorn hearts made whole of sorrow. 
 
 Of all life's doubts and puzzles fleeted by. 
 Of severed lives reknit in one to-morrow 
 
 Of endless bliss beneath the cloudless sky ; 
 
 A dream of lands where hope shall never die. 
 But in the fair clear fields, browbound with moly 
 Our dead desires shall wander, healed and holy, 
 
 And over all a mystic peace shall lie ; 
 
 A peace that shall be woven of old sadness 
 
 And bitter memories grown honey-sweet, 
 Where our lost hopes shall live again in gladness, 
 
 Chaining the summer to their happy feet ; 
 
 Where never fulness with desire shall meet 
 Nor the sweet earth divide from the clear heaven, 
 Nor mortal grossness shall avail to leaven 
 
 The ecstasy of that supernal seat. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
FROM "THE PLAGUE" 
 
 Three rooms they had, poor, but yet not without 
 
 Some touch of grace and comfort to conceal 
 
 Their poverty. The place was bright and warm 
 
 With gorgeous shells and corals, red and gold, 
 
 Rose-pink and pearly, that the husband's care 
 
 And father's thought had brought as memories 
 
 Of cruises in the wondrous southern seas ; 
 
 And spangled foreign birds, that once had hopped 
 
 And chirrupped 'mid the palm and banian boughs. 
 
 In the clear air of golden-stranded isles. 
 
 Under the blue of rainbow-flowered skies. 
 
 With their emblazoned plumage, emerald 
 
 And gold and purple, lighted up the place 
 
 With an unreal unfamiliar air 
 
 Of foreign splendour. Very dear to them, 
 
 For whom long use had sanctified its walls 
 
 And love had lent its very poverty 
 
 A beauty of its own, the dwelling was, — 
 
 To them, who never in their lives, perhaps. 
 
 Had seen a field of cowslips all in bloom 
 
 Nor gathered violets in the early spring ; 
 
 Meantime, the money he had left with them, 
 To fend them from privation and avert 
 The grim necessity of ceaseless toil 
 
 45 
 
46 FROM "THE PLAGUE" 
 
 For scanty bread, though hoarded with close care, 
 
 Was all expended, and the stern, hard times 
 
 Exacted labour far beyond their wont. 
 
 One after one the little luxuries 
 
 And fanciful adornments, that the lost 
 
 Had gathered with such loving care for them 
 
 Were bartered for bare food, and naked walls 
 
 Joined with wan looks to make the place look drear, 
 
 That erst had worn so homely bright an air. 
 
 Frotn "London City Poems." 
 
QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 
 
 [At an inquest held at the Whitehorse Tavern, before Mr. Cooper, 
 Coroner for the Western district, on the body of Eliza Farrell, unfortunate 
 female, found drowned below Waterloo Bridge on Monday last, Rose 
 Farrell said, " Deceased was my sister. She was an unfortunate. She was 
 unmarried. She had worked as a seamstress till trade was so bad last 
 year that she could not earn a living at the prices paid by the sweaters, 
 and she then went upon the streets." Witness believed she would never 
 have done so but for her two illegitimate children, of whom she was 
 passionately fond. Witness had no doubt that deceased's mind had been 
 affected by their death. They died of neglect and starvation, owing to a 
 woman, whom deceased paid to take care of them, having spent the 
 money in drink. She paid the woman every penny she could scrape 
 together, and witness had known her sell the dress off her back to make 
 up the weekly money. Deceased came to her on Saturday night, after 
 having been to see the children, and told her she had found they were 
 dead and had been already buried by the parish. She seemed quite dis- 
 tracted, and rushed out of the house like a mad thing, and witness had 
 never seen her again. The photograph produced (found on deceased) was 
 that of the children. After a few remarks from the coroner, the jury 
 returned a verdict of ' ' Suicide in a state of temporary insanity." — Extract 
 from daily paper. ^ 
 
 Just a drowned woman, with death-draggled hair 
 
 And wan eyes, all a-stare ; 
 The weary limbs composed in ghastly rest, 
 
 The hands together prest, 
 Tight holding something that the flood has spared, 
 
 Nor even the rough workhouse folk have dared 
 
 To separate from her wholly, but untied 
 Gently the knotted hands and laid it by her side. 
 
 A piteous sight, — yet not without some sign 
 
 Of handiwork divine ; 
 Some faint, mysterious traces of content 
 
 About the brows, unbent 
 
 47 
 
48 QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 
 
 At last from toil and misery, — some mark 
 Of child-like, tired composure in the stark, 
 Wan features, on whose calm there is imprest 
 At last the seal of rest. 
 
 See, she was fair, — and now she's rid of strife, 
 
 She's comelier than in life ; 
 For death has smoothed the tresses of her hair 
 
 And stroked the lines of care. 
 With no ungentle hand, from off her brow. 
 She seems at peace at last, — no matter how. 
 Death has been angel-sweet to her tired soul ; 
 
 She has no need of dole. 
 
 You know her story ? Just the sad, old tale, 
 
 Whose victims never fail ! 
 Common enough and mean, but yet not quite 
 
 Without its gleam of light ; 
 Not all devoid of some redeeming spark 
 Of nobleness to lighten its grim dark. 
 You turn away. You've heard of many such ? 
 "She was so wicked ! " But she loved so much. 
 
 I tell you, this poor woman you despise. 
 
 From whom you turn your eyes. 
 Loved with an ardour, side by side with which 
 
 Our lives, so seeming rich 
 In virtues and in grandeurs, fade away 
 Into the dusk, as night before the day. 
 Yet of her life you fear to hear me tell. 
 " She was so wicked ! " But she loved so well. 
 
QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 49 
 
 You saw the portrait taken from her grasp, 
 
 Stiffened in Death's cold clasp ? 
 Two little children, poorly clad and plain, 
 
 Sun-scorched and worn with pain. 
 Wan with mean cares, too early for their years, 
 Their child-eyes eager with unchildish fears 
 And sordid, bitter yearnings. " But a smutch ! " 
 You say. " And after all it's nought to me 
 What was her life and what her hopes might be. 
 She was so wicked ! " Oh, she loved so much ! 
 
 True, a mere daub, whereon the beneficent sun 
 
 Has written, in faint, dun, 
 Unbeauteous lines, a hard and narrow life, 
 
 Wherein dull care was rife 
 And little thought of beauty or delight 
 Relieved the level blackness of the night : 
 And yet I would not change those pictured two 
 For all the cherubs Raphael ever drew. 
 
 Two little faces, plain enough to you, 
 
 Nothing of bright or new ; 
 Such faces as one meets amongst each crowd, 
 
 Sharp-visaged and low-browed ; 
 And yet to her, her picture-books of heaven, 
 The treasuries from which the scanty leaven. 
 Wherewith she stirred her poor mean life to joy, 
 Was drawn, — pure gold from her without alloy. 
 
 They were her all, and by no sacred tie, 
 
 No pure maternity. 
 To her the name of wife had been denied. 
 
 In sin she lived and died. 
 
 D 
 
50 QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 
 
 She was an outlaw from the pale of right, 
 And yet there was that in her had such might, 
 That she would not have shamed our dear Lord Christ. 
 She loved, and that sufficed. 
 
 They were her shame and pride, her hope and fear, 
 
 To her how dreadly dear 
 We scarce can feel. You happy, virtuous wives. 
 
 Whose quiet, peaceful lives 
 Flow on, unstirred by misery or crime, 
 Can have no thought how high these souls can climb 
 For love ; with what a weird, unearthly flame 
 These wretched mothers love their babes of shame ; 
 How they can suffer for them, dull and mean 
 As they may seem, and sell their souls to screen 
 Their darlings, dealing out their hearts' best blood, 
 Drop after drop, to buy them daily food. 
 
 And so for years she toiled for them, as none 
 
 Could ever toil save one 
 Who had nought else to care for, night and day, 
 
 Until her hair grew grey 
 With labour such as souls in Dante's hell 
 Might have been bound to, and with fiends as fell 
 To act as her taskmasters and compel 
 The poor, thin fingers ; — yet was honest still 
 For many a weary day and night, until 
 She found, with aching heart and pain-crazed head. 
 Her toil could not suffice to earn her children bread. 
 
 They were her all ; and she, ground down by want, 
 
 With hollow eyes and gaunt, 
 Saw but their misery, small beside her own, 
 
 Heard but their hungry moan. 
 
QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 51 
 
 Could not endure their piteous looks, and sold 
 Herself to infamy, to warm their cold. 
 To feed their hunger and assuage their thirst, 
 Not hers. And yet, folk say, she is accurst ! 
 
 Cruel as fate was, there was yet in store 
 
 More pain for her and more 
 Fierce anguish. Famine and the plague combined, 
 
 In league with her own kind, 
 To steal from her her one source of content, 
 The one faint gleam of higher things, that blent 
 Its glimmer with her life's unbroken grey ; 
 The one pale star, that turned her night to day, 
 Sank in the chill of death's delivering wave. 
 
 Extinguished in the grave. 
 
 Not even the omnipotence of Love 
 
 Had power to rise above 
 The sullen stern unpitying sweep of Fate, 
 
 That left her desolate. 
 O wretched mother ! Wretched time of ours ! 
 When all enlightenment's much-vaunted powers 
 To save this Magdalen's all could only fail, 
 
 When Love has no avail ! 
 
 Starved even to death ! For this she'd sold her soul ; 
 
 This was her striving's goal ! 
 Life had no longer aught that might suffice 
 To hallow all its dreary want and vice. 
 Nothing but death remained to her, the crown 
 Of all whose lives are hopeless. So fell down 
 Her star of life into the dusk of night. 
 
 And she gave up the fight. 
 
52 QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 
 
 So calm and peaceful seemed the dark grey flood, 
 
 Foul with much human blood. 
 God help her ! Death was kinder than the world. 
 
 The sullen waters whirled 
 A moment o'er a circling plash, and then 
 She was forgotten from the world of men 
 And it was nought to her what folk might say. 
 
 Quiet at last she lay. 
 
 I know not if this poor soul's martyrdom 
 
 For you be wholly dumb. 
 To me, I own, her sin seems holier far 
 
 Than half our virtues are ; 
 For hers was of that ore which, purged of dross. 
 Yields gold that might have gilded Christ's own cross 
 And He have smiled. And yet you fear her touch ? 
 
 " She was so wicked ! " But she loved so much. 
 
 And of her common, mean and awful fate 
 
 Our righteous ones will prate, — 
 A fruitful text for homily ! — until 
 
 Another come to fill 
 Her vacant place. And yet none sees the bloom 
 Of love, that opened in her life's blank gloom 
 And made it angel-bright. Folk turn aside 
 And know not how a martyr lived and died. 
 
 " Accursed," say they, " is the suicide. 
 
 In sin she lived and died. 
 We have in her, and she in us, no part. 
 
 Our lives, thank heaven ! dispart. 
 At least we're holier than she." Alas ! 
 My brethren, when reflected in God's glass, 
 
QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT 53 
 
 I doubt me much if many of our lives 
 Will, when the day of reckoning arrives, 
 Or all our virtues, with her sin compare 
 Or as her life be fair. 
 
 Even grim Death was pitiful to her ; 
 
 Her rest he did not stir. 
 Shall we be, who with her drew common breath. 
 
 Less pitiful than Death ? 
 We, who have heard how Christ once lived and died, 
 With whom His love is fabled to abide, 
 Shall we avoid a poor dead sinner's touch ? 
 So wicked, say we ? Oh, she loved so much ! 
 
 For me, I cannot hold her life"'s long pain 
 
 To have been all in vain. 
 I cannot think that God will let her go. 
 
 After this life of woe ; 
 Cannot believe that He, whose deathless love 
 She aped so well, will look on from above 
 With careless righteousness, while she sinks down 
 Into hell's depths, and with a pious frown, 
 Leave her to struggle in the devil's clutch. 
 True, she was wicked ; — but she loved so much. 
 
 From " London City Poems." 
 
THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 
 
 " Le regard calme et haul 
 Qui damne tout un peuple autour d'un ^chafaud." 
 
 Baudelaire. 
 
 I GO to an evil death, to lie in a shameful grave, 
 
 And I know^ there is never a hope and never a God that 
 
 can save ; 
 Yet I smile, for I know^ that the end of my toil and my 
 
 striving is come ; 
 I shall sleep in the bosom of death, where the voice of 
 
 the scorners is dumb. 
 
 I go in the felons' cart, with my hands bound fast with 
 
 the cord. 
 And nothing of brave or bright in the death that I ride 
 
 toward : 
 The people clamour and jeer, with a fierce and an evil 
 
 glee, 
 And the mothers and maids that pass do shudder to look 
 
 on me. 
 
 For the deed that I did for men, the life that I crown 
 
 with death, 
 Was a crime in the sight of all, a flame of the pest- wind's 
 
 breath ; 
 And the good and the gentle pass with a sad and a 
 
 drooping head. 
 As I go to my punished crime, to lie with the felon dead. 
 
THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 55 
 
 But lo ! I am joyful and proud, as one that is newly 
 
 crowned : 
 I heed not the gibes and the sneers and the hates that 
 
 compass me round ; 
 I come not, with drooping head, to the death that a 
 
 felon dies ; 
 I come as a king to the feast, with a deathless light in 
 
 mine eyes. 
 
 I ride with a dream in mine eyes and the sound of a 
 
 dream in mine ears, 
 And my spirit wanders again in the lapse of the bygone 
 
 years ; 
 I smile with the bygone hope and I weep for the bygone 
 
 grief. 
 And I weave me the olden plans for the world's and the 
 
 folk's relief. 
 
 I build me over again the time of my yearning youth. 
 
 When my heart was sick for men's grief, and my glad- 
 ness failed me for ruth ; 
 
 For I saw that their lives were weary and maddened 
 with bitter toil, 
 
 And there came no helper to heal, no prophet to purge 
 the soil. 
 
 I mind me how all the joys a man, in his manhood's 
 
 prime. 
 May have in the new sweet world and the strength of 
 
 his blossom-time. 
 Were saddened and turned to gall by the cry of the 
 
 world's lament. 
 That withered the roses' bloom and poisoned the violets' 
 
 scent. 
 
56 THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 
 
 My heart is full of the thoughts that gathered within 
 
 my soul 
 And the anguish that held my life at the sight of my 
 
 fellows' dole ; 
 I mind me how, day by day, the passion grew in my 
 
 breast. 
 The voices cried in my sleep, and hindered my heart 
 
 of rest. 
 
 It rises before me now, in its fragrance ever the 
 
 same, 
 The time when my soul found peace and my yearning 
 
 soared like a flame. 
 The day when my shapeless thought took spirit and 
 
 speech and form. 
 The hour when I swore alone to front the fire and the 
 
 storm. 
 
 It rises before me now, the little lane by the wood. 
 With the golden-harvested fields, where the corn in its 
 
 armies stood. 
 The berries brown in the hedge, the eddying leaves en 
 
 the breeze. 
 And the spirits that seemed to speak in the wind that 
 
 sighed through the trees. 
 
 The path where I went alone, in the midst of the 
 
 swaying sheaves. 
 Through the landscape glowing with gold and crimson 
 
 of autumn leaves ; 
 The place where my full resolve rose out of my tears 
 
 and sighs. 
 Where my life was builded for me and my way lay clear 
 
 in mine eyes. 
 
THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 57 
 
 I mind me the words I spoke, the deeds that I did to 
 
 save, 
 The life that I lived to rescue the world from its living 
 
 grave ; 
 I mind me the blows I smote at the throned falsehood 
 
 and blame. 
 The comfort I spoke for the lost, the love that I gave 
 
 to shame. 
 
 I mind me of all the hates that gathered about my 
 
 strife, 
 The gibes that poisoned my speech, the lies that 
 
 blackened my life, 
 The fears that maddened the folk, the folly that shrank 
 
 with dread 
 From the love I spoke for the live, the hope I held for 
 
 the dead. 
 
 For the folk, with their purblind souls, chose rather to 
 
 live and die 
 In the olden anguishful slough, to weary and groan and 
 
 sigh 
 In the old familiar toil and the old unvarying hate, 
 Than rise to a joy unknown, a love to free them from 
 
 fate. 
 
 And the words that I spoke for love, the deeds that I 
 
 did for hope. 
 The future I showed for life in the new sweet credence''s 
 
 scope. 
 They deemed them a tempting of hell, a blasphemy and 
 
 a crime ; 
 They thought the angel a fiend, that called them out of 
 
 their slime. 
 
58 THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 
 
 The yearning that cried in their breasts, that met mine 
 
 own like a flood, 
 They thought to quench it with fire, to stay its passion 
 
 with blood. 
 To deaden my voice with death, (their own should be 
 
 silent then ;) 
 And so I come to atone for the love that I bore to men. 
 
 My enemies laugh in their glee, as the people jeer at 
 
 my fate ; 
 They know not the seed of love that lies at the heart of 
 
 hate : 
 They give me hatred for love and death for the life I 
 
 brought ; 
 But I smile, for I know that love shall come at the last, 
 
 unsought. 
 
 I look far on in the years, and see the blood that I 
 
 shed 
 Crying a cry in men's ears, crying the cry of the 
 
 dead ; 
 I see my thought and my hope fulfilling my work for 
 
 men 
 In the folk that jeer at me now, the lips that spat at me 
 
 then. 
 
 I know that for many a year my life shall be veiled with 
 
 shame. 
 That many an age shall hate me and make a mock of 
 
 my name ; 
 I know that the fathers shall teach their children many 
 
 a year 
 To hold my hope for a dread and know my creed for 
 
 a fear 
 
THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 59 
 
 But I know that my work shall grow in the darkness 
 
 ever the same ; 
 Its seed shall stir in the earth in the shade of my evil 
 
 fame ; 
 My thought shall conquer and live, when the sound of 
 
 my doom is fled 
 And my name and my crime are buried, to lie with 
 
 the unknown dead. 
 
 Wherefore I smile as I go, and the joy at my heart is 
 
 strong. 
 And I gaze with a peace and a hope on the cruel glee 
 
 of the throng ; 
 I live in my thought and my love, I conquer Time with 
 
 my faith. 
 And I ride with a deathless hope to crown my living 
 
 with death. 
 
 I loved thee, beautiful Death, in the fresh sweet time 
 
 of the spring. 
 And I will not fail from my troth in the wind of the 
 
 axe's swing ; 
 I come to thy bridal bed, O Death my beloved, I come ! 
 I shall sleep in thine arms at the last, when the voice of 
 
 the scoffers is dumb. 
 
 O friends that are faithful yet, if your love shall bear me 
 
 in mind 
 With a graven stone on the tomb where I sleep with 
 
 my felon kind. 
 Write me as one that fell in the way of a punished 
 
 crime, 
 " Hated of men he died, in the heart of the evil 
 
 time ! " 
 
6o THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH 
 
 And yet I would not be thought to glose o'er my full 
 
 stern fate 
 Or leave weak words of complaint for the ages that lie 
 
 in wait. 
 Rase out the final words ; I will rest with the first 
 
 content ; 
 " Hated of men he died " shall stand for my monument. 
 
 I was never in love with the praise nor afraid of the 
 
 censure of fools : 
 Mean they as well as they may, they were ever the 
 
 dastard's tools. 
 Strike out the words of complaint ; I will stand by the 
 
 rest alone : 
 " Hated of men " shall pass for the roll of my virtues on 
 
 stone. 
 
 And yonder on in the years, some few of the wise, 
 peradventure, 
 
 Shall read in the things laid bare the truth of my life- 
 long venture, 
 
 Shall see my life like a star in the shrouding mist of the 
 ages, 
 
 And set my name for a light and a patriot's name in 
 their pages. 
 
 And then shall the clearer sight and the tenderer thought 
 
 fulfil 
 The things that I left unsaid, the words that are lacking 
 
 still : 
 A poet shall set my name in the gold of his noble rhyme ; 
 " Hated of men he died, in the heart of the evil time." 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 " Traditur etiam nonnuUos vi pervincente 
 amoris ipsum contra sumtnum Domini judicium 
 pr3ewa.\uisse."—Eused. de Fid. rebus Epist. 
 
 The ways are white in the moon's light, 
 
 Under the leafless trees ; 
 Strange shadows go across the snow, 
 
 Before the tossing breeze. 
 
 The night, meseems, is full of dreams. 
 
 Ghosts of the bygone time : 
 Full many a sprite doth walk to-night 
 
 Over the soundless rime. 
 
 The burg stands grim upon the rim 
 
 Of the steep wooded height ; 
 In the great hall, the casements tall 
 
 Flame with the fireside light. 
 
 From the hearth's womb, athwart the gloom, 
 
 Rays out the firelight red : 
 Sir Loibich there before the flare 
 
 Sits in a dream of dread. 
 
 The tower-light glows across the snows, 
 
 In the black night defined : 
 The cresset-fire flares high and higher, 
 
 Tossed by the raging wind. 
 
62 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 The knight sits bent, with eyes intent 
 
 Upon the dying fire ; 
 Sad dreams and strange in sooth do range 
 
 Before the troubled sire. 
 
 He sees the maid the past years laid 
 
 Upon his breast to sleep, 
 Long dead in sin, laid low within 
 
 The grave unblest and deep. 
 
 He sees her tears, her sobs he hears. 
 Borne on the shrieking wind ; 
 
 He sees her hair, so golden-fair, 
 Stream out her form behind. 
 
 He hears her wail, with lips that fail, 
 
 To him to save her soul ; 
 He sees her laid, unhouseled, 
 Under the crossless knoll. 
 
 His heart is wrung, his soul is stung 
 
 To death with memories : 
 His face grows white as the moon's light 
 
 And all his words are sighs. 
 
 " Ah would, dear Christ, my tears sufficed 
 To ransom her ! " he cries : 
 
 " Sweet heaven, to win her back from sin, 
 I would renounce the skies. 
 
 " Might I but bring her suffering 
 
 To pardon and to peace, 
 I for mine own sin would atone, 
 
 Where never pain doth cease : 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 63 
 
 " I for my part would gnaw my heart, 
 
 Chained in the flames of hell ; 
 I would abide, unterrified, 
 
 More than a man shall tell." 
 
 The flame burns red ; he bows his head 
 
 Upon his joining hands ; 
 The wraiths of old are shown and told 
 
 Upon the dying brands. 
 
 A hoarse scream tears athwart his ears, 
 
 Strange howls are in the air ; 
 The wolves do stray in search of prey 
 
 Across the moorlands bare. 
 
 Red eyes flame forth from south to north. 
 
 The beasts are all a-chase ; 
 God help the wight that goes to-night 
 
 Among the wild wood-ways ! 
 
 The moon is pale, the night-winds wail. 
 
 Weird whispers fill the night : 
 " Dear heart, what word was that I heard 
 
 Ring out in the moonlight ? 
 
 " Methought there came to me my name. 
 
 Cried with a wail of woe ; 
 A voice whose tone my heart had known 
 
 In the days long ago." 
 
 'Twas but the blast that hurried past. 
 
 Shrieking among the pines ; 
 The souls that wail upon the gale, 
 
 When the dim starlight shines. 
 
64 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 Great God ! The name ! Once more it came 
 
 Ringing across the dark ! 
 " Loibich ! " it cried. The night is wide, 
 
 The dim pines stand and hark. 
 
 The lead-grey heaven by the blast is riven ; 
 
 God ! How the torn trees shriek ! 
 The wild wind soughs among the boughs, 
 
 As though the dead did speak. 
 
 " Loibich ! Loibich ! My soul is sick 
 
 With hungering for thee ! 
 The night fades fast, the hours fly past ; 
 
 Stay not, come forth to me ! " 
 
 Great Heaven ! The doubt is faded out ; 
 
 It was her voice that spake ; 
 He made one stride and open wide 
 
 The casement tall he strake. 
 
 The cloudwrack grey did break away ; 
 
 Out shone the ghostly moon ; 
 Off slid the haze from all the ways. 
 
 Before her silver shoon. 
 
 Pale silver-rayed, out shone the glade. 
 
 Before the castle wall. 
 And on the lea the knight could see 
 
 A maid both fair and tall. 
 
 Gold was her hair, her face was fair, 
 
 As fair as fair can be. 
 But through the night the blue corpse-light 
 
 About her could he see. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 65 
 
 She raised her face toward the place 
 
 Where Loibich stood adread ; 
 There was a sheen in her two een, 
 
 As one that long is dead. 
 
 She looked at him in the light dim 
 
 And beckoned with her hand: 
 "Sir Knight," she said, " thy prayer hath sped 
 
 Unto the heavenly land. 
 
 " Come forth with me : the night is free 
 
 For us to work the thing 
 That is to do, before we two 
 
 Shall hear the dawn-bird sing." 
 
 He took his brand within his hand. 
 
 His dirk upon his thigh : 
 And he hath come, through dusk and gloom. 
 
 Where wide the portals lie. 
 
 " Saddle thy steed. Sir Knight, with speed. 
 
 Thy faithfullest," quoth she, 
 " For many a tide we twain must ride 
 
 Before the end shall be." 
 
 The steed is girt, black Dagobert, 
 
 Swift-footed as the wind ; 
 The knight leapt up upon his croup, 
 
 The maid sprang up behind. 
 
 A stately pair the steed doth bear 
 
 Upon his back to-night : 
 The sweatdrops rain from flank and mane. 
 
 His eyes start out for fright. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 Her weight did lack upon his back ; 
 
 He trembled as he stood ; 
 It seemed as 'twere a death-cold air 
 
 Did freeze the courser's blood. 
 
 She threw the charms of her white arms 
 
 About Sir Loibich's neck : 
 It seemed as if 't had been a drift 
 
 Of snow on him did break. 
 
 The spurs are dyed deep in the side 
 
 Of the destrere amain ; 
 The leaves do chase behind his race 
 
 And far out streams his mane. 
 
 The wind screams past ; they ride so fast,— 
 
 Like troops of souls in pain 
 The snowdrifts spin, but none may win 
 
 To rest upon the twain. 
 
 So fast they ride, the blasts divide 
 
 To let them hurry on ; 
 The wandering ghosts troop past in hosts 
 
 Across the moonlight wan. 
 
 Then fly across the frozen floss. 
 Across the frost-starred mead : 
 
 Hill, wood and plain they cross amain ; 
 Hill, plain and wood succeed. 
 
 The wild wind drops, the snow-whirl stops, 
 Frost fades from grass and brere ; 
 
 The dim clouds die from out the sky 
 And forth the moon shines clear. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 67 
 
 A sudden hush, and then a rush 
 
 Of magic melodies ; 
 A summer wood, with moon-pearls strewed 
 
 And jasmine-girdled trees. 
 
 The lady laid her hand of shade 
 
 Upon the hurrying horse, 
 And suddenly, upon the lea, 
 
 He halted in his course. 
 
 To them there came a fragrant flame, 
 
 A light of elfinry : 
 The haggard night poured forth delight 
 
 And flowers of Faiirie. 
 
 A wondrous song did wind along 
 
 The moon-besilvered glades, — 
 And all the things the elf-night brings 
 
 Did glitter from the shades. 
 
 " Light down. Sir Knight, in the moonlight ; 
 
 Light down and loose my hand ; 
 I must be gone ; but thou hast won 
 
 Unto the Faery land." 
 
 " By Christ His troth I " he swore an oath, 
 
 " No Faery land for me, 
 Except thou light thee down to-night. 
 
 Therein with me to be." 
 
 " Alas, Sir Knight, I must this night 
 
 Harbour me far away ; 
 Far be't from thee to rest with me 
 
 Where I must dwell for aye." 
 
68 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 He smote his breast : " By Christ His rest, 
 
 No Faery land will I ! 
 Rather in hell with thee to dwell 
 
 Than lonely in the sky ! " 
 
 The thunder broke, the lightning-stroke 
 Fell down and tore the earth ; 
 
 The firm ground shook, as though there took 
 The world the throes of birth. 
 
 The elf-song died, the moon did hide 
 
 Her face behind the haze, 
 And once again they ride amain 
 
 Across the wild wide ways. 
 
 The night grew black ; the grey cloudwrack 
 
 Whirled fast across the skies ; 
 What lights are those the white snow throws 
 
 Reflected in their eyes ? 
 
 What flames are those the blackness shows, 
 
 Rising like rosy flowers 
 Up to the lift ? What ruddy rift 
 
 Shines out in the night hours ? 
 
 The night is wide : they ride and ride. 
 The lights grow bright and near ; 
 
 There comes a wail upon the gale 
 And eke a descant clear. 
 
 There comes a plain of souls in pain 
 
 And eke a high sweet song. 
 As of some fate whose grief is great. 
 
 But yet whose hope is strong. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 69 
 
 Aye louder grow the sounds of woe, 
 
 But the song sweeter still, 
 Until the steed doth slacken speed 
 
 At foot of a high hill. 
 
 The hazes grey before their way 
 
 Divided are in two ; 
 A wondrous sight midmost the night 
 
 Lies open to their view. 
 
 The hill is strewn beneath the moon 
 
 With strange and singing fires ; 
 In every flame a soul from shame 
 
 And soil of sin aspires. 
 
 From every fire, higher and higher, 
 
 The song of hope doth rise : 
 These are the sprites that God delights 
 
 To fit for Paradise. 
 
 " Light down. Sir Knight ; I pray, alight ; 
 
 This is the purging-place ; 
 Here shalt thou win to cast off sin 
 
 And come to Christ His grace." 
 
 " By Christ His troth ! " he swore an oath, 
 
 " That will I not," quoth he, 
 " Unless thou too, my lover true. 
 
 Therein shalt purged be." 
 
 " Would God," she said, " the lot were laid 
 
 For me to enter here ! 
 Alack ! my stead is with the dead. 
 
 All in the place of fear. 
 
70 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 " But thou light down ; the gate is thrown 
 
 Wide open in the ward ; 
 See where they stand on either hand, 
 
 Angels with downdropt sword." 
 
 " By Christ His rest ! " he smote his breast ; 
 
 " No grace of God will I ! 
 Rather with thee damned to be 
 
 Than lonely in the sky ! " 
 
 The night closed round, there came a sound 
 
 Of trumpets in the air ; 
 The steed leapt on, the fires were gone, 
 
 And on the twain did fare. 
 
 Through storm and night again their flight 
 They urge o'er hill and plain : 
 
 What sounds smite clear upon the ear 
 Through dusk and wind and rain ? 
 
 "Meseems I heard as if there stirred 
 
 A sound of golden lyres ; 
 Methought there came a sweet acclaim 
 
 Of trumpets and of choirs. 
 
 "So sing the saints, where never faints 
 The sunlight from the skies ; 
 
 So pulse the lyres among the choirs 
 Of God in Paradise." 
 
 A singing light did cleave the night ; 
 
 High up a hill rode they ; 
 The veils of heaven for them were riven 
 
 And all the skies poured day. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 71 
 
 The golden gate did stand await, 
 
 The golden town did lie 
 Before their sight, the realms of light 
 
 God-builded in the sky. 
 
 The steed did wait before the gate ; 
 
 Sheer up the street looked they ; 
 They saw the bliss in heaven that is, 
 
 They saw the saints'* array. 
 
 They saw the hosts upon the coasts 
 
 Of the clear crystal sea ; 
 They saw the blest, that in the rest 
 
 Of Christ forever be. 
 
 The choirs of God pulsed full and broad 
 
 Upon the ravished twain ; 
 The angels' feet upon the street 
 
 Rang out like golden rain. 
 
 They felt the sea of ecstasy 
 
 That flows about the throne ; 
 The bliss of heaven to them was given 
 
 Awhile to look upon. 
 
 Then said the maid, " Be not afraid ; 
 
 God giveth heaven to thee ; 
 Light down and rest with Christ His blest, 
 
 And think no more of me 1 " 
 
 Sir Loibich gazed as one amazed, 
 
 Awhile upon the place ; 
 Then, with a sigh, he turned his eye 
 
 Upon the maiden's face. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 " By Christ His troth ! " he swore an oath, 
 
 "No heaven for me shall be, 
 Except God give that thou shalt live 
 
 Therein for aye with me." 
 
 "Ah, curst am I ! " the maid did cry ; 
 
 " My place thou knowest well ; 
 I must begone before the dawn. 
 
 To harbour me in hell." 
 
 " By Christ His rest ! " he beat his breast, 
 
 " Then be it even so ; 
 With thee in hell I choose to dwell. 
 
 And share with thee thy woe. 
 
 "Thy sin was mine. By Christ His wine. 
 
 Mine too shall be thy doom ; 
 What part have I within the sky, 
 
 And thou in hell's red gloom ? " 
 
 The vision broke, as thus he spoke, 
 
 The city waned away : 
 O'er hill and brake, o'er wood and lake 
 
 Once more the darkness lay. 
 
 O'er hill and plain they ride again. 
 
 Under the night's black spell. 
 Until there rise against the skies 
 
 The lurid lights of hell. 
 
 The night is wide : they ride and ride ; 
 
 The air with smoke grows crost. 
 And through the dark their ears may hark 
 
 The roaring of the lost. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 73 
 
 The dreadful cries they rend the skies, 
 
 The plain is ceiled with fire : 
 The flames burst out, around, about ; 
 
 The heats of hell draw nigher. 
 
 Unfeared they ride ; against the side 
 
 Of the red flameful sky 
 Grim forms are shown, strange shades upthrown 
 
 From out hell's treasury : 
 
 Black grisly shapes of demon apes, 
 
 Grim human-headed snakes, 
 Red creeping things with scaly wings. 
 
 Born of the sulphur lakes. 
 
 The flames swell up out of the cup 
 
 Of endless agony, 
 And with the wind there comes entwined 
 
 An awful psalmody ; 
 
 The hymning sound of fiends around, 
 
 Rejoicing in their doom. 
 The fearsome glee of things that be 
 
 Glad in their native gloom. 
 
 Fast rode the twain across the plain. 
 
 With hearts all undismayed, 
 Until they came where all a-flame 
 
 Hell's gates were open laid. 
 
 The awful stead gaped wide and red. 
 
 To gulph them in its womb : 
 There could they see the fiery sea 
 
 And all the souls in doom. 
 
74 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 There came a breath, like living death, 
 
 Out of the gated way : 
 It scorched his face with its embrace, 
 
 It turned his hair to grey. 
 
 Then said the maid, " Art not dismayed ? 
 
 Here is our course fulfilled : 
 Wilt thou not turn, nor rest to burn 
 
 With me, as God hath willed ? " 
 
 " By Christ His troth ! " he swore an oath, 
 " Thy doom with thee I'll share. 
 
 Here will we dwell, hand-linked in hell, 
 Unseparate for e'er." 
 
 He spurred his steed ; the gates of dread 
 
 Gaped open for his course : 
 Sudden outrang a trumpet's clang 
 
 And backward fell the horse. 
 
 The ghostly maid did wane and fade, 
 
 The lights of hell did flee ; 
 Alone in night the mazed wight 
 
 Stood on the frozen lea. 
 
 Out shone the moon ; the mists did swoon 
 
 Away before his sight. 
 And through the dark he saw a spark, 
 
 A welcoming of light. 
 
 Thither he fared, with falchion bared. 
 
 Toward the friendly shine ; 
 Eftsoon he came to where a flame 
 
 Did burn within a shrine. 
 
THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 A candle stood before the Rood, 
 
 Christ carven on the tree : 
 Except the shrine, there was no sign 
 
 Of man that he could see. 
 
 Down on his knee low louted he 
 
 Before the cross of wood, 
 And for her sprite he saw that night 
 
 Long prayed he to the Rood. 
 
 And as he prayed, with heart down-weighed, 
 
 A wondrous thing befell : 
 The air waxed white and through the night 
 
 There rang a silver bell. 
 
 The earth-mists drew before his view ; 
 
 He saw God's golden town ; 
 He saw the street, he saw the seat 
 
 From whence God looketh down. 
 
 He saw the gate transfigurate, 
 
 He saw the street of pearl. 
 And in the throng, the saints among, 
 
 He saw a gold-haired girl. 
 
 He saw a girl as white as pearl. 
 
 With hair as red as gold : 
 He saw her stand among the band 
 
 Of angels manifold. 
 
 He heard her smite the harp's delight,' 
 
 Singing most joyfully. 
 And knew his love prevailed above 
 
 Judgment and destiny. 
 
76 THE RIME OF REDEMPTION 
 
 Gone IS the night ; the morn breaks white 
 
 Across the eastward hill ; 
 The knightly sire by the dead fire 
 
 Sits in the dawning chill. 
 
 By the hearth white, there sits the knight, 
 
 Dead as the sunken fire ; 
 But on his face is writ the grace 
 
 Of his fulfilled desire. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 
 
 When the end of the enchantment of the summer is at 
 
 hand 
 In the month that closes 
 The blue midsummer weather, 
 When the passionate red roses 
 Faint for the heat 
 And the lilies fold together 
 Their petals pale and sweet,— 
 In the burning noontide hazes 
 And the golden glory of the flowers that blazes 
 Over the happy valleys and the wold, 
 There swells to me a breeze ofttimes 
 Out of the dreams of old. 
 And in the breeze the murmur of old rhymes 
 Rises and falls, 
 
 Like some enchanted singing, 
 And my tired brow is fanned 
 By odours from the halls 
 
 Of dreamland, such as in the moonlight white 
 Float round a wandering knight. 
 When through the country of the elves he fares 
 And marvels at the dances. 
 
 That glitter through the moon-glow, and the ringing 
 Of elfin bells ; 
 
 And through the fluttering of the frolic airs, 
 In all the song there swells 
 
78 INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 
 
 A voice well known to me of bygone days, 
 
 That calls me to forsake 
 
 The weary worldly ways 
 
 And as of olden times my way to take 
 
 Into the dreamland of the old romances, 
 
 Into the enchanted land. 
 
 Down falls the evening on the weary plains, 
 And I, I stand and wait 
 Where, at the verge 
 Of the green fields, the stains 
 Of sunlight fade upon the trees that surge 
 Out of the falling night, 
 Dim as the dreamland's gate. 
 And so there comes to me a flash of light 
 Across the shadow and my faint eyes know 
 The robe of her I love 
 And the bright crown of tresses aureoled. 
 Star-glorious, above 
 Her face's rosy snow, 
 Spangling the shades with gold. 
 " Sweet love, sweet welcome ! I had need of thee, 
 Sore, sorest need ! " 
 Still doth she grow 
 
 Nearer and lovelier till my arms may press 
 Almost her charms and all my soul may feed 
 Upon her loveliness. 
 But lo ! I clasp the wind 
 And in mine arms entwined 
 Is nothing but a fair and painted dream, 
 " Dear love, why dost thou seem 
 And torture me with hope in vain ? " 
 And the fair shape doth weep 
 And comforteth my pain 
 
INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 79 
 
 With lovely looks and words of amity ; 
 
 And so my yearnings sleep 
 
 And there is peace once more for me. 
 
 " Come, love," she saith, " the dream-gates gape 
 for thee. 
 The hour of glamorous delight 
 Is come for thee and me. 
 Under the silver night 
 We shall w^alk hand in hand 
 In the enchanted land 
 
 And see the moon-flowers blossom to the sound 
 Of the sweet elfin tune, 
 As in the days gone by. 
 
 Dost thou not hear the horns of Faerie wound 
 Among the elfland bowers 
 And all the rush of splendid song that floods 
 The silver winds that lie 
 And idle in the pearl-work of the moon, 
 Woven about the woods ? 
 Come, love ! the day is dead. 
 With all its weary hours. 
 And ours is newly born. 
 
 Thou shalt have easance of thy woes this night. 
 Amid the glory of the flowers that swoon 
 With magical delight. 
 Ere in the sky creeps up the weary morn 
 And the pale East grows red."" 
 
 So, in the pale faint flush of the twilight, 
 
 Softly I ope the door 
 
 And hand in hand, 
 
 Across the fields we go, before 
 
 The day is parted from the night, 
 
8o INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 
 
 Among the cloisters where the tall trees stand 
 
 White in the woodland ways, 
 
 Under the moonlight, till a wall of mist 
 
 Rises before us in the evening haze, 
 
 Silver and amethyst. 
 
 Then doth my love loose hands 
 
 And in the spangled green 
 
 Of the thick moss she stands 
 
 Within the wood-verge, where the sun has been 
 
 And is not faded quite ; 
 
 And to the hovering night 
 
 Sweet mystic lays 
 
 And songs she singeth, very pure and high, 
 
 Until there answereth 
 
 From out the heart-green of the woodbine maze 
 
 A magic singing, as it were 
 
 A woven music of the scents that lie 
 
 In all the night-flowers' breath ; 
 
 And with the song upon the fragrant air 
 
 Strange mystic memories do swell and die 
 
 Of Love and Life and Death. 
 
 The gate of dreamland opens to the singing 
 And hand in hand we go, 
 My love and I, 
 
 Along the woodways with the elf-songs ringing, 
 Under the silver night ; 
 And down the vistas of the trees, that lie 
 And bathe in the moonlight. 
 There swells to us a murmur sweet and low, 
 As of some magic river, 
 
 That glitters through its ranks of waving reeds 
 And makes the flower-bells quiver 
 With haunting: melodies ; 
 
INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 8i 
 
 And from its ferny nest 
 
 The runnel of a brooklet sings and speeds 
 
 Across the pearlW network of the grass, 
 
 Murmuring its loveliest, 
 
 Songs of a heart at ease. 
 
 That in its joy doth pass 
 
 Into a tune ; and lo ! 
 
 Upon the diamond ripples to our feet 
 
 A little shallop floats, 
 
 Out of a rush-work woven all and wrought 
 
 With pearls and ivory. 
 
 Then in the skiff do we 
 
 Embark and down the silver stream we fleet, 
 
 Under the thronging notes 
 
 Of the night-birds ; 
 
 And as we go. 
 
 The air is all astir with lovely things ; 
 
 Sweet music, twinned and fair with magic words. 
 
 Rises from elfin throats, 
 
 And in the leaves we see the rush and glow 
 
 Of jewelled wings. 
 
 There lies all glamour in the arching banks. 
 Through which our river runs : 
 Over us wing the dreams 
 And in the pale sweet trances of the moon. 
 Along the stretching glades, 
 The silver fawns of Faerie do pass. 
 White in the sweet white beams ; 
 And now and then the tune 
 Of horns is clear 
 
 And the elf-hunt sweeps by, with glittering ranks. 
 Across the velvet grass : 
 The king's tall knightly sons 
 
 F 
 
82 INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 
 
 Ride through the aisles, with many a doufepere ; 
 
 And now there comes a throng 
 
 Of snow-white maids, 
 
 Gold-haired, 
 
 That with sweet song 
 
 And pleasance wander in the fragrant maze 
 
 Of cool woodland ways, 
 
 Sweet one with sweet one paired. 
 
 All through the summer night, 
 
 And win the enchanted air 
 
 Unto melodious trances with the ring 
 
 Of their flute-voices and the rare delight 
 
 Of their gold-rippled hair. 
 
 Soft as the songs they sing. 
 
 The high trees bend above us lovingly. 
 As on the stream we go, 
 Mingling their boughs above 
 Into a flower-starred roof 
 Of lovely greenery ; 
 And through the night 
 The fireflies glow 
 And glitter, as it were 
 The stars had left their places for delight 
 And through the woodland air 
 Sped, singing. 
 
 The stream makes music to the cleaving prow, 
 Answering the birds' descant 
 And the soft ringing 
 Of bindweed bells. 
 The night is filled with spells 
 Of old delight ; 
 
 The summer air is hazed and jubilant 
 With ripples of the glory of song-gold 
 
INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 83 
 
 And elfin blisses ; 
 
 And in the lovely light, 
 
 A maiden more than earthly fair to see, 
 
 With moon-webs aureoled, 
 
 My lady sits by me. 
 
 Answering my thought with kisses. 
 
 The river shallows through the grass and flowers, 
 Athwart the waning night ; 
 And now the boat is gone 
 From underneath our feet ; 
 And eke the stream has faded 
 Into the ripple of the white moonlight. 
 So, in the midwood bowers 
 I stand alone 
 
 In the still time and sweet 
 
 Before the hour when night and morning meet. 
 Sweet sooth, the moon has braided 
 The air with pearl 
 And down the haunted glades 
 The shadows dance and whirl 
 Among the sheeny hosts of the grass-blades, 
 In the cool glitter of the time : 
 
 And lo 1 my thought takes rhythm from their dances 
 And to my lips comes rhyme 
 And many a lovely tune, 
 Such as the minstrels of the old romances 
 Sang to the moon. 
 
 My singing echoes through the elfland aisles, 
 Waking the silver bells. 
 That lie and dream in the flower-sleep. 
 Deep in the mossy dells ; 
 And as I sing, 
 
84 INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 
 
 The timid rabbits creep 
 
 From all their soft warm nests among the fern ; 
 
 And in the wood-deeps, gold and silver strewn, 
 
 The fawns stand listening. 
 
 Then down the columned way, 
 
 Through which the moonlight smiles. 
 
 There rings the trample of a horse's feet. 
 
 Nearer it grows along the ripple-play, 
 
 Beside the tinkling burn. 
 
 Until the silver armour of a knight 
 
 Shines in the moon 
 
 And a clear voice trolls songs of war and love. 
 
 Ditties of strange and mystical delight, 
 
 That through the trees do rove. 
 
 Telling of Day and Night, 
 
 Of Love and Life and Death, 
 
 With strains as bright and sweet 
 
 As is the linnet's breath. 
 
 My weak song ceases as I look on him : 
 " Fair knight. 
 
 Fair minstrel, teach me all thy might. 
 I know thee as of old : 
 
 Clear through the twilight of the legends dim, 
 Thy name like gold 
 Doth shine 
 
 And the fair nobleness of thy white life 
 Sweetens the lips of men, 
 O Percivale, Christ's knight ! " 
 And then he gazes on me with mild eyes, 
 And the clear rapture floods me like a wine 
 Of some old Orient tale. 
 Purging my heart from sighs 
 And memories of strife. 
 
INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND 85 
 
 And so he rides into the gloaming pale, 
 
 Scattering on every hand 
 
 Sweet singings, till they die upon the ear. 
 
 Then, looking round again, 
 
 I see the night has ceased 
 
 And in the dawning drear 
 
 My dream fades from me, as the skies are spanned 
 
 By the red bars of morn 
 
 And in the East 
 
 The cold grey day is born. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
FROM "IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN" 
 
 Gluck's "Armide," 
 Act II., Scene 3 : Introduction and Aria. 
 
 This is the land of dreams : these waving woods 
 And the dim sunht haze that hangs on all 
 And the clear jewels of the murmuring stream ; 
 These flowered nooks through which the bird-notes fall, 
 Like silver spring-showers, — here sweet silence broods, 
 And here I dream. 
 
 Prone in the shadow of the flowers I lie 
 And watch the lizards glitter through the grass 
 And listen to the tinkle of the stream : 
 Unmindful of the weary hours that pass. 
 Here do I lie and let the years go by : 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 Life and the world forsake me in the calm 
 Of these enchanted woodways, green and still. 
 Wherein the very sunlight''s wavering gleam 
 Sleeps on the lazy ripples of the rill. 
 And in the mist of the droopt flowers' faint balm 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 There is no future in these glades of ours. 
 Nor any whisper of the stern to-morrow ; 
 Life is a woven thing of a sunbeam : 
 Nor in the grass is any snake of sorrow, 
 Nor comes remorse anigh where 'mid the flowers 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 86 
 
"IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN" 87 
 
 Here are the bird-songs neither glad nor sad : 
 Sleep drones in every note of their delight ; 
 Not even throstles with the olden theme 
 Of tender grieving sadden the pale night ; 
 But veiled is all their song, as "'twere they had 
 Dream within dream. 
 
 Here are no roses of the sharp sweet scent, 
 Nor the sad violets' enchanted breath, 
 Nor jasmines cluster by the slumbering stream ; 
 But the drowsed hyacinths with umbels bent 
 And the gold-hearted lilies of sweet death. 
 Flowers of a dream. 
 
 I know not if life is with me or how 
 I come to lie and sleep away the years : 
 I only know, but yesterday did seem 
 Sad life amid a swarm of sordid fears 
 And hopes. Then came the god of Sleep — and now 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 There swell faint breaths to me of earthly jar, 
 As 'twere a wild bee humming in the thyme, 
 And the dim sounds of what pale mortals deem 
 The aims of life come back like olden rhyme 
 Upon mine ears, whilst, from the world afar, 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 I hear the sweep of pinions in the air 
 And see dim glories glitter through the skies. 
 As ir some angel from the blue extreme 
 Of heaven strewed gold and balm of memories 
 Upon the woods and the dim flowers that bear 
 Spells of a dream. 
 
88 "IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN" 
 
 There hover faces o'er me oftentimes 
 Of lovely w^ornen that I knevi^ of old, 
 Set like a jew^el in a golden stream 
 Of fairest locks ; and from the aureoled 
 Sweet lips there sw^ell faint echoes of old rhymes ; 
 (/ dream and I dream). 
 
 And sw^eet v^^hite arms enclose me as I lie, 
 (Still do I lie and fold me in a sleep) ; 
 Yea, and faint-fluttering tresses, all a-gleam, 
 Fall dow^n about my brow full tenderly 
 And wind me in a glamour soft and deep. 
 (/ dream and I dream.) 
 
 Yet is there nothing that therein is rife 
 That for the world forsaken makes me sigh. 
 More than the empty motes of a sunbeam. 
 Unheeding them, in the dim dream I lie ; 
 Far from the flutter of the wings of Life, 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 When wraiths of pleasure are so true and leal. 
 Why should I seek for flesh and blood to love me ? 
 Who shall tell what things are and what things seem ? 
 I am content, unquestioning, to feel 
 The folding of the shadow-arms above me. 
 / dream and I dream. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
FROM "THE PACT OF THE 
 TWIN GODS" 
 
 So was there endless strife, 
 By land and sea, 
 
 'Twixt the gods Death and Life ; 
 And unto neither fell the mastery. 
 
 Then, on this wise, 
 After a resting-while, 
 Unto the frosty sire 
 Spake, with a dawn-sky's smile, 
 The great god Life, 
 Saying, " My brother. 
 What boots it that so long 
 We have done hurt unto each other 
 And to the world. 
 
 And have so often and so sore wrought wrong 
 To the sad race of men, — that we have hurled 
 The fair sky-orders from their base with fight. 
 So I, a god, of thee, another god 
 As great, might have the mastery ? 
 Now, of a truth, I see 
 That we are surely equal in our might 
 And all these years have trod 
 The battle all in vain ; 
 
90 "THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 
 
 For Death and Life must be 
 
 And may not change or wane, 
 
 Nor the one have domain 
 
 Over the other's fee. 
 
 Wherefore I pray of thee that we do take 
 
 Joined hands once more, 
 
 And make 
 
 A thing that shall be for a covenant 
 
 Betwixt us against war 
 
 And lawless strife ; 
 
 A thing that shall of both our souls partake 
 
 And all our attributes 
 
 Shall share, 
 
 As a fair tree that, by the gardener's knife 
 
 Graffed to a plant of various kind, doth bear 
 
 Twy-natured fruits ; 
 
 A thing that shall be sad as violets' breath 
 
 And blithesome as the breeze 
 
 That in the spring, 
 
 Among the blossomed trees, 
 
 Doth float and sing ; 
 
 That shall be sadder and more sweet than Death 
 
 And gladder and more sweet than Life, 
 
 That as a king betwixt us twain shall sit 
 
 And with flower-bands 
 
 Linking our hands. 
 
 Shall lead us forth upon our various way, 
 
 As two fair twins that play 
 
 With joined hearts and lives together knit 
 
 And have no thought of harm." 
 
 And so the pact was sworn between the two. 
 
 That they should work to do 
 
 This charm ; 
 
 And Life and Death clasped hands on it. 
 
"THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 91 
 
 Then Life brought flowers and breezes and sun-gold 
 
 And juices of the vine ; 
 And Death brought silver of the moonlight cold 
 
 And the pale sad w^oodbine. 
 
 Life brought clear honey of the buxom bees 
 
 And fruits of autumn-time ; 
 And Death brought amber from the murmuring seas 
 
 And fretw^ork of the rime. 
 
 God Life did rob the jasmine of its balm, 
 
 Death the pale lily's bells ; 
 Life brought a handful of the summer-calm, 
 
 Death of the vi^ind that swells 
 
 And sighs about the winter-wearied hills ; 
 
 Life the spring heaven's blue, 
 Death brought the grey, that in the autumn fills 
 
 The skies with its sad hue. 
 
 And with these things of mingling life and death 
 
 Did the twin gods upbuild 
 A golden shape, which drew the goodliest breath 
 
 That ever bosom filled : 
 
 For it was lovesome as the risen sun 
 
 And pale as ended night. 
 Glad as the glance of an immortal one 
 
 And mild as the moon's light. 
 
 The form of it was white as is the snow 
 
 When the pale winter reigns, 
 And rosy-tinted as the even-glow 
 
 After the April rains. 
 
92 "THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 
 
 The charm of day was in its violet eyes 
 
 And eke the spells of night ; 
 Therein one read of the gold Orient skies 
 
 And the faint spring's delight. 
 
 And for a voice Life lent it all the tune 
 That from lark-throats doth rise ; 
 
 And pale Death added to it, for a boon, 
 The sad sw^eet night-bird's sighs. 
 
 Its hands were warm as life and soft as death. 
 
 Rosy as flowers and white 
 As the pale lucent stone that covereth 
 
 The graves in the moon's sight. 
 
 Its hair was golden as the sheer sun's shine. 
 
 When the hot June rides far, 
 And tender-coloured as the hyaline 
 
 Of the pale midnight star. 
 
 Red was its mouth as is the damask rose 
 
 And purple as night-shade. 
 Most glad and sad, fulfilled of lovesome woes 
 
 And joys that never fade. 
 
 Swift were its rosy golden-sandalled feet. 
 
 Yet lingering as the night, 
 And the soft wings that on the air did beat 
 
 Were of the windflower's white. 
 
 And on its head they set a double crown, 
 
 Golden and silver wrought. 
 Wherein sweet emeralds for hope were sown 
 
 And amethysts for thought. 
 
"THE PACT OF THE TWIN GODS" 93 
 
 Thus did the two gods make this lovesome thing, 
 
 To stand betwixt them twain ; 
 And therewithal they crowned the fair shape king 
 
 O'er them and suzerain. 
 
 And from that time there hath no more been strife 
 
 'Twixt these two gods of might ; 
 For evermore betwixten Death and Life 
 
 That creature of deh'ght 
 
 Hath gone about the weary worldly ways, 
 
 Holding them hand in hand. 
 So that Death never on a mortal lays 
 
 His finger, but there stand 
 
 Beside him Life and that sweet shape which they 
 
 Have for their master made ; 
 And on like guise, when dawn hath lit the day. 
 
 Death walketh in the shade. 
 
 Hard by the sun and all the gauds of life : 
 
 And by them, without cease. 
 The winged shape goes and orders all their strife 
 
 To harmony and peace. 
 
 And if one ask which god he cherisheth 
 
 His brother god above, 
 Methinks his heart beats franklier for Death ; 
 
 For lo ! his name is Love. 
 
CHANT ROYAL OF THE 
 GOD OF LOVE 
 
 O MOST fair God ! O Love both new and old, 
 That wast before the flowers of morning blew, 
 Before the glad sun in his mail of gold 
 Leapt into light across the first day's dew, 
 That art the first and last of our delight, 
 That in the blue day and the purple night 
 Holdest the heart of servant and of king. 
 Lord of liesse, sovran of sorrowing. 
 That in thy hand hast heaven's golden key 
 And hell beneath the shadow of thy wing, 
 Thou art my Lord to who?n I bend the knee ! 
 
 What thing rejects thine empery ? Who so bold 
 
 But at thine altars in the dusk they sue ? 
 
 Even the strait pale Goddess, silver-stoled, 
 
 That kissed Endymion when the spring was new. 
 
 To thee did homage in her own despite. 
 
 When, in the shadow of her wings of white, 
 
 She slid down trembling from her mooned ring 
 
 To where the Latmian youth lay slumbering, 
 
 And in that kiss put off cold chastity. 
 
 Who but acclaim, with voice and pipe and string. 
 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ? 
 
CHANT ROYAL OF THE GOD OF LOVE 95 
 
 Master of men and gods, in every fold 
 
 Of thy wide vans, the sorceries that renew 
 
 The labouring earth tranced with the winter's 
 
 cold 
 Lie hid, the quintessential charms that woo 
 The souls of flowers, slain with the sullen might 
 Of the dead year, and draw them to the light. 
 Balsam and blessing to thy garments cling : 
 Skyward and seaward, whilst thy white palms 
 
 fling 
 Their spells of healing over land and sea. 
 One shout of homage makes the welkin ring. 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 
 
 I see thee throned aloft : thy fair hands hold 
 
 Myrtles for joy and euphrasy and rue : 
 
 Laurels and roses round thy white brows rolled, 
 
 And in thine eyes the royal heaven's hue : 
 
 But in thy lip's clear colour, ruddy bright. 
 
 The heart's blood burns of many a hapless wight. 
 
 Thou art not only fair and sweet as spring : 
 
 Terror and beauty, fear and wondering, 
 
 Meet on thy front, amazing all who see. 
 
 All men do praise thee, ay, and every thing : 
 
 Thou art ?ny Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 
 
 I fear thee, though I love. Who shall behold 
 The sheer sun blazing in the orbed blue. 
 What while the noontide over hill and wold 
 Flames like a fire, except his mazed view 
 Wither and tremble ? So thy splendid sight 
 Fills me with mingled gladness and affright. 
 
96 CHANT ROYAL OF THE GOD OF LOVE 
 
 Thy visage haunts me in the wavering 
 Of dreams, and in the daw^n, awakening, 
 I feel thy splendour streaming full on me. 
 Both joy and fear unto thy feet I bring : 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee ! 
 
 ENVOI 
 
 God above gods, high and eternal king ! 
 Whose praise the symphonies of heaven sing, 
 I find no whither from thy power to flee 
 Save in thy pinions' vast o'ershadowing : 
 Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee / 
 
 From *' Exotica." 
 
RONDEL 
 
 Kiss me, sweetheart ; the spring is here 
 
 And love is lord of you and me. 
 
 The bluebells beckon each passing bee ; 
 The wild wood laughs to the flowered year : 
 There is no bird in brake or brere 
 
 But to his little mate sings he, 
 " Kiss me, sweetheart ; the spring is here 
 
 And love is lord of you and me." 
 
 The blue sky laughs out sweet and clear ; 
 The missel-thrush upon the tree 
 Pipes for sheer gladness loud and free ; 
 And I go singing to my dear, 
 " Kiss me, sweetheart ; the spring is here 
 And love is lord of you and me." 
 
 From " Exotica." 
 
 97 
 
MADRIGAL GAI 
 
 The summer-sunshine comes and goes ; 
 The bee hums in the heart of the rose : 
 Heart of my hope, the year is sweet ; 
 The lilies lighten about thy feet. 
 
 A new light glitters on land and sea ; 
 The turtles couple on every tree. 
 Light of my life, the fields are fair ; 
 Gossamers tangle thy golden hair. 
 
 The air with kisses is blithe and gay ; 
 Love is so sweet in the middle May. 
 Sweet of my soul, the brook is blue ; 
 Thine eyes with heaven have pierced it through. 
 
 Now is the time for kisses, now 
 When bird-songs babble from every bough. 
 Sweetest, my soul is a bird that sips 
 Honey of heaven from out thy lips. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
 98 
 
MADRIGAL TRISTE 
 
 If we should meet 
 You and I, 
 My sweet, 
 In some fair land where under the blue sky 
 The scents of the fresh violets never die 
 And spring is deathless under deathless feet, 
 Should we clasp hands and kiss. 
 My sweet. 
 With the old bliss ? 
 Would our eyes meet 
 With the same passionate frankness as of old, 
 When the fresh spring was in the summer's gold ? 
 Ah, no ! my dear. 
 Woe's me ! our kisses are but frore ; 
 The blossoms of our early love are sere 
 And will be fresh no more. 
 
 If we should stand, 
 You and I, 
 My sweet, 
 On that bright strand 
 Where day fades never and the golden street 
 Rings to the music of the angels' feet. 
 Would our rent hearts find solace in the sky ? 
 
loo MADRIGAL TRISTE 
 
 Should we lose heed, 
 
 My dear, 
 Of the sad years ? 
 Would our souls cease to bleed 
 For the past anguish and our eyes grow clear. 
 In heaven, from all the furrows of the tears ? 
 Ah, no ! my dear. 
 Needs must we sigh and stand aloof. 
 
 Once riven, 
 God could not heal our love. 
 Even in heaven. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
THE KING'S SLEEP 
 
 "Bury me deep," said the king, 
 " Deep in the mountain's womb ; 
 For I am weary of strife. 
 Hollow me out a tomb, 
 So that the golden sun 
 Pierce not the blackness dun 
 Where I shall lie and sleep ; 
 Lest haply the light should bring 
 Again the stirring of life. 
 Or ever the time be come 
 To waken. Bury me deep. 
 
 " Let not the silver moon 
 Search out the graven stone 
 That lieth above my head. 
 In the tomb where I sleep alone. 
 Nor any ray of a star 
 Come in the night to unbar 
 The gates of my prison-sleep. 
 I shall awake too soon 
 From the quiet sleep of the dead, 
 When the trumps of the Lord are blown. 
 If you love me, bury me deep. 
 
102 THE KING'S SLEEP 
 
 "I feel in my heart of hearts 
 There cometh a time for me, 
 Far in the future's gloom, 
 When there no more may be 
 Rest for my weary head, 
 When over my stony bed 
 The wind of the Lord shall sweep 
 And scatter the tomb in parts 
 And the voice of the angel of doom 
 Shall thrill through and waken me 
 Out of my stirless sleep. 
 
 " For a king that has been a king, 
 That has loved the people he swayed, 
 Has bound not his brows in vain 
 With the gold and the jewelled braid ; 
 Has held not in his right hand 
 The symbol that rules the land, 
 The sceptre of God for nought. 
 He may not escape the thing 
 He compassed : in death again 
 His sleep is troubled and weighed 
 By wraiths of the deeds he wrought. 
 
 " And if he has evil done, 
 There may he lie and rest 
 Under the storied stone, 
 Slumber, uneasy, opprest 
 By the ghosts of his evil deeds. 
 Till Death with his pallid steeds 
 Have smitten the world with doom : 
 And the moon and the stars and the sun 
 Will leave him to sleep alone, 
 Fearing to shine on him, lest 
 The wicked arise from the tomb ! 
 
THE KING'S SLEEP 103 
 
 "But if the ruler be wise, 
 Have wrought for his people's good 
 Sadly and like a god ; 
 Whenever the plague-mists brood 
 Over the kingless land, 
 When fire and famine and brand 
 Are loose and the people weep, 
 They cry to the king to rise ; 
 And under the down-pressed sod, 
 He hears their pitiful cries 
 And stirs in his dreamful sleep. 
 
 " And the sun and the stars and the moon 
 Look down through the creviced tomb 
 And rend with their arrows of light 
 The sepulchre's friendly gloom, 
 Stirring the life again 
 In pulse and muscle and vein ; 
 And the winds, that murmur and sweep 
 Over his resting-place, croon 
 And wail in his ear : 'The night 
 Is past and the day is come ; 
 O king, arise from thy sleep ! ' 
 
 " The sleeper murmurs and sighs, — 
 Rest is so short and sweet, 
 Life is so long and sad, — 
 And he throws off his winding-sheet : 
 The gates of the tomb unclose 
 And out in the world he goes, 
 Weary and careful, to reap 
 The harvest, or hero-wise 
 To garner the good, and the bad 
 To burn, ere the Ruler shall mete 
 Him yet a portion of sleep. 
 
I04 THE KING'S SLEEP 
 
 " Great is the Master of Life 
 And I bow my head to His will ! 
 When He needs me, the Lord will call 
 And I shall arise and fill 
 The span of duty once more. 
 But now I am weary and sore 
 With travail and need of sleep ; 
 And I fear lest the clangour and strife 
 Upon me again should fall, 
 Ere sleep shall have healed my ill. 
 I pray you, bury me deep ! " 
 
 So the good king was dead. 
 And the people wrought him a grave 
 Deep in the mountain's womb. 
 In a place where the night-winds rave 
 And the centuries come and go, 
 Unheard of the dead below ; 
 Where never a ray might creep ; 
 In the rocks where the rubies red 
 And the diamonds grow in the gloom, 
 They hollowed the king a tomb, 
 Low and vaulted and deep. 
 
 And there they brought him to lie : 
 With wailing and many a tear, 
 The people bore to the place 
 The good king's corpse on the bier. 
 They perfumed his funeral glooms 
 With lily and amaranth blooms, 
 In a silence sweet and deep ; 
 They piled up the rocks on high 
 And there, with a smile on his face, 
 In doubt and sadness and fear, 
 They left the monarch to sleep. 
 
THE KING'S SLEEP 105 
 
 Onward the centuries rolled 
 And the king slept safely and sound 
 In the heart of the faithful earth, 
 In the still death-slumbers bound : 
 And the sun and the moon and the stars 
 Looked wistfully down on the bars 
 Of the sepulchre quiet and deep, 
 Where he lay, while the world grew old 
 And death succeeded to birth, 
 And heard not an earthly sound 
 And saw not a sight in his sleep. 
 
 And it came to pass that the Wind 
 Spake once, and said to the Sun : 
 " Oh giver of summer-life ! 
 Is not the time fordone 
 And the measure of God fulfilled. 
 Wherein He, the Lord, hath willed 
 The king should arise from sleep ? 
 I go in the night, and I find 
 The folk are weary of strife, 
 And joyless is every one 
 And many an eye doth weep ! " 
 
 But the Sun said, shaking his hair, 
 His glorious tresses of gold : 
 " Brother, the grave is deep ; 
 And the rocks so closely do fold 
 The king, that we may not win 
 A place where to enter in 
 And trouble his slumber deep. 
 And the Wind said : "Where I fare. 
 The rays of the Sun can creep. 
 Through the thin worm-holes in the mould. 
 And rouse the king from his sleep ! "*' 
 
io6 THE KING'S SLEEP 
 
 The Moon and the Stars and the Sun 
 Arose and shone on the grave, 
 And it was as the Wind had said : 
 Yea, up from the vaulted cave 
 The w^orms had crept in the night 
 And opened a w^ay for the light 
 And the vs^inds of the air to creep. 
 And they entered, one by one ; 
 Yea, down to the house of the dead, 
 Through cranny and rock they clave. 
 To wake the king from his sleep. 
 
 And the king turned round in his dream. 
 As he felt the terrible rays 
 Creeping down through the mould 
 In the track of the false worms' ways ; 
 And he quaked as the light drew near 
 And he called to the earth for fear. 
 To aid him his rest to keep ; 
 For the time he had slept did seem 
 But an hour, nor the wheels of gold 
 Had circled the span of days 
 When he should arise from sleep. 
 
 But the mother all faithful heard 
 The dreaming call of the king. 
 And she seized on the wandering rays 
 And of each one she made a thing 
 Of jewelries, such as grow 
 In the dim earth-caves below. 
 From the light kept long and deep ; 
 For she loved the man and she feared 
 Lest the fateful glitter and blaze 
 Of the light too early should bring 
 The dead from his goodly sleep. 
 
THE KING'S SLEEP 107 
 
 She moulded pearls of the moon 
 And diamonds of the sun ; 
 Rubies and sapphires she made 
 Of the star-rays, every one. 
 There was never an one might 'scape 
 Some luminous jewel-shape 
 Of all the rays that did creep 
 Down through the earth, too soon 
 To rend the sepulchre's shade ; 
 But she seized on them all, and none 
 Might trouble the dead man's sleep. 
 
 Then did she mould him a crown 
 Of silver and cymophane 
 And in it the gems she set, 
 For a sign that never again. 
 Till God should beckon to him. 
 On the silence quiet and dim 
 Of the sepulchre low and deep 
 Should the rays of the stars look down 
 To trouble his rest. And yet 
 The centuries wax and wane 
 And the king is still in his sleep. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
THE DEAD MASTER 
 
 A Threnody 
 
 Quis desideiio sit pudor aut modus 
 Tam cari capitis? 
 
 Wast thou not with us, when the night departed, 
 O strong sweet singer that art ours no more ! 
 Was not the harping thine that first gave o'er 
 
 The song of wailing, when the daybreak parted 
 
 And the glad heavens broke open, shore from shore, 
 Sun-crowned and iris-hearted ? 
 
 Didst thou not smite the strings to jubilation, 
 Hymning the grand sweet scope of the To-be ? 
 Did not our midnight dole and doubting flee 
 
 From thy glad strength and all our lamentation 
 Swell with thy song into an ecstasy 
 Of aspiration ? 
 
 No more we wept and wailed for Life''s undoing. 
 Following the golden notes that brake from thee, 
 Riding star-crowned upon that sudden sea 
 
 Which from thy soul poured forth for our renewing 
 Oceans of hope and jubilance, that we 
 Drank of, ensuing. 
 
 ^ Walter Savage Landor. 
 io8 
 
THE DEAD MASTER 109 
 
 Didst thou not rend for us the gloom descending, 
 Scatter the veils of doubting from our sight, 
 Bring to our lives again the flov^^er-delight, 
 
 Bird-songs and field-scents in thy verses blending ? 
 Didst thou not save our spirits from the night 
 Stern and impending ? 
 
 Lo ! and the night has bound thee, O our master ! 
 
 Lo ! and the shadow^s gather round thy place ! 
 
 Shall we then no more look upon thy face ? 
 Surely the shades will fold to night the faster, 
 
 Surely Death's torches quicklier replace 
 Life's lamp of alabaster. 
 
 Shall we then no more see thee, O our singer, 
 Passing the love of women to our souls ? 
 Shall then our lives be darkened and our goals 
 
 Deep in the grey dim distance fade and linger, 
 Since that no more thy voice our steps controls. 
 No more thy finger 
 
 Points and is clear along the hills that darken, 
 Clear with the distant glimmer of the day ? 
 Will then the clifF-walls never roll away, 
 
 That thy song's sweetness hide from us that hearken. 
 Us that are weary in Life's mazed way, 
 Weary of mists that starken ? 
 
 Have we then heard thy singing for the last time 
 Shape us the glories of the olden days ? 
 Have we a last time listened to the lays 
 
 Wherein thou scaledst the ancient heavens for pastime 
 And in the future's iridescent haze 
 Buildedst the past-time ? 
 
no THE DEAD MASTER 
 
 Can we forget thee, high sweet soul and faithful, 
 Homer and Pindar of our modern time, 
 Lord of our thought and leader of our rhyme. 
 
 Thou that didst clear the air that was so deathful, 
 Filled it anew with scents of rose and thyme. 
 Made it bird-breathful ? 
 
 Thou that for us wast some sublime Silenus, 
 Full to the lips of wise and lovely words, 
 Shaping to song the speech of flowers and birds, 
 
 Wast as a god on whose strength we might lean us, 
 And, our Apollo, piped to us thy herds 
 Songs of Camoenus ! 
 
 What doth it irk us if we never saw thee, 
 
 Knew but thy presence as a god's afar. 
 
 Heard but thy song as music of a star ? 
 Were we not with thee, part in thee and of thee ? 
 
 Were not our souls akin to thine and are ? 
 Did we not love thee ? 
 
 With thee we lived in some enchanted Arden, 
 Glad with the echo of the wood-nymphs'* feet, 
 Bright with old memories, very strange and sweet. 
 
 That in the shade of that Armida's garden 
 
 Did from our cold pale daylight hide and fleet, 
 Where all things harden. 
 
 Thou wast no wailer, no sweet-voiced unmanner. 
 That for weak men within an idle clime 
 Builded vain dreams to sweet and idle rhyme : 
 
 Thou hast built souls after the antique manner. 
 
 Souls that shall march through many a lapse of time. 
 Bearing thy banner. 
 
THE DEAD MASTER iii 
 
 Thy standard with its burden high and golden, 
 Daring to love and loving, knovv^ no shame, 
 Wit to reject the let of age-old blame, 
 
 Faith to rekindle altar-ashes olden. 
 
 Fan the old love of Nature to full flame. 
 Long unbeholden. 
 
 Friend, we have mourned and longed for thee with 
 mourning ; 
 Poet, our ears are sad with listening. 
 Straining for songs no breeze shall ever bring ; 
 Master, thy lapse has dulled with dusk Life's morning, 
 Dimmed with black death each bright and lovely thing. 
 That in the adorning 
 
 Of thy high verse had erst been wont to sparkle, 
 Glitter and glow with glories of the past ; 
 Spirit of song and flame of faith, the blast 
 
 Of thine eclipse has reft from us, anarchal, 
 
 Robbed us with thee of all the things thou wast, 
 Bard patriarchal ! 
 
 Master, in vain we listen for thy singing. 
 Listen and long and languish for desire ! 
 Unto our ears no echoes of thy lyre 
 
 Pulse from the darkness, no glad breeze comes bringing 
 Voices, no sparkles of the ancient fire 
 Reach us, wide-winging. 
 
 Will then thy song no more translate our yearning. 
 Mould our harsh cries to music of the spheres ? 
 Will thy verse glitter no more with our tears ? 
 
 Has then the sun of thy bright soul, whose burning 
 Lightened so oft the midnight of our fears. 
 Set, unreturning ? 
 
112 THE DEAD MASTER 
 
 Or hast thou found thy dream in plains supernal, 
 Shapes of fair women, forms of noble men, 
 That, at the magic summons of thy pen. 
 
 Did, from the snows and solitudes hybernal, 
 Where they so long had slept, seek out again 
 The meadows vernal ? 
 
 Do the long lapses of the ghost-land, lying 
 Stretched out beyond the portals of the grave, 
 Teem with fresh fruits and flowers for thee and wave 
 
 With the clear shapes of thine old dreams undying ? 
 Has the dark flood been powerful to lave 
 From thy soul sighing. 
 
 Grief and the very memory of grieving, 
 Hope and the very thought of wearying 
 After the glow and glory thou didst sing ? 
 
 Hast in the air such unimagined giving. 
 Splendour and flush of every godlike thing, 
 Wherefor thy living 
 
 Struggled and wearied in the bitter days ? 
 Dost thou live out thy phantasies of gold 
 Under Greek skies and Attic woods of old. 
 
 Walk, crowned with myrtle, in the Dorian ways. 
 Peopled with all the dreams that did unfold 
 In thy high lays ? 
 
 Surely, this thing alone could hold thee speechless, 
 
 Surely, in this alone couldst thou forget 
 
 Us that are left to struggle in the net 
 Of the sad world, to feel the days grow each less 
 
 Sweet to our souls, to weary with the fret, 
 Dumb and beseechless. 
 
THE DEAD MASTER 113 
 
 Surely, thy soul would yearn to us with longing : 
 Surely, no grave could keep thy voice from us. 
 Were not this so. The silence dolorous 
 
 Surely is voiceful of the years prolonging 
 
 Long bliss for thee and us to come, that thus 
 Unto the thronging, 
 
 Unto the cry and clamour of our yearning, 
 Still is the air and stirless is the light, 
 That from the grey grim bosom of the night 
 
 Comes back no sign or voice of thy returning. 
 Echoes no memory of the old delight. 
 Weariness spurning ! 
 
 Well, be it so ; mayhap, some day, unknowing. 
 We too shall rest and come to where thou art. 
 Press thee again full-raptured to our heart, 
 
 Gaze in thine eyes with eyes no less fire-glowing 
 And in like bliss forget the olden smart, 
 The weary going 
 
 Friendless and dumb about the ways of being. 
 Cast off the memory of the years we sighed 
 After thy song and presence sunny-eyed. 
 
 In the new splendour of thy lays, the seeing 
 All the old hopes fulfilled and sanctified. 
 No longer fleeing 
 
 Mirage-like from us through the earthly hazes ; 
 Haply we too shall leave our olden pains 
 Off with our life and all its weary stains, 
 
 Put on like joy amid the light that blazes 
 
 There, the glad day that floods those golden plains. 
 Those songful mazes ! 
 
 H 
 
114 THE DEAD MASTER 
 
 Till then, farewell ! The joy shall be the greater 
 When we clasp hands and hearts to part no more 
 For that the long lone life has been so sore, 
 
 For that no sign of thee to death played traitor. 
 Sharper shall be the bliss for us in store, 
 Sweeter if later. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
A FUNERAL SONG FOR THEOPHILE 
 GAUTIER 
 
 What shall our song be for the mighty dead, 
 
 For this our master that is ours no more ? 
 
 Lo ! for the dead was none of those that wore 
 The laurel lightly on a heedless head, 
 Chanting a song of idle lustihead 
 
 Among the sun-kissed roses on the shore : 
 
 This our beloved, that is gone before, 
 Was of the race of heroes battle-bred 
 That, from the dawn-white to the sunset-red, 
 Fought in the front of war. 
 
 Lo ! this was he that in the weary time, 
 In many a devious and darkling way, 
 Through dusk or doubt and thunder of dismay. 
 
 Held our hearts hopeful with his resonant rhyme. 
 
 Lifting our lives above the smoke and slime 
 Into some splendid summer far away. 
 Where the sun brimmed the chalice of the day 
 
 With gold of heaven and the accordant chime 
 
 Of woods and waters to the calm sublime 
 Carolled in roundelay. 
 
 This was our poet in the front of faith ; 
 Our singer gone to his most sweet repose. 
 Sped to his summer from our time of snows 
 
 And winter winding all the world with death. 
 
ii6 A FUNERAL SONG 
 
 Who shall make moan or utter mournful breath 
 That this our noblest one no longer knows 
 Our evil place of toil and many woes, 
 
 Lying at the last where no voice entereth ? 
 
 Who shall weave for him other than a wreath 
 Of laurel and of rose ? 
 
 Hence with the cypress and the funeral song ! 
 Let not the shrill sound of our mourning mar 
 His triumph that upon the Immortals' car 
 
 Passes, star-crowned ; but from the laurelled throng, 
 
 That stands await, let every voice prolong 
 A noise of jubilance that from afar 
 Shall hail in heaven the new majestic star 
 
 That rises with a radiance calm and strong, 
 
 To burn for ever unobscured among 
 
 The courts where the gods are. 
 
 Ay, let the hautboys and the clarions blow. 
 The air rain roses and the sky resound 
 With harpings of his peers that stand around. 
 
 What while the splendours of the triumph go 
 
 Alo^g the streets and through the portico. 
 
 I, too, who loved the dead, as from the ground 
 
 The glow-worm loves the star, will stand, browbound 
 
 With winter roses, in the sunset-glow. 
 
 And make thin music, fluting soft and low 
 Above his funeral mound. 
 
 I, too, who loved him, from beyond the sea. 
 Add my weak note to that sublime acclaim 
 That, soaring with the silver of his name. 
 
 Shall shake the heavens with splendid harmony, 
 
A FUNERAL SONG 117 
 
 Till all who listen bend in awe the knee, 
 
 Seeing a giant's spirit, like a flame, 
 
 Remounting to that heaven from which it came. 
 And many weep for very shame to see 
 The majesty they knew not till 'twas free 
 From earthly praise or blame. 
 
 Hail, O our master ! From the hastening hours 
 This one we set above its grey-veiled peers, 
 Armed with thy name against the night that nears. 
 
 We crown it with the glory of the flowers. 
 
 We wind it with all magic that is ours 
 
 Of song and hope and jewel-coloured tears ; 
 We charm it with our love from taint of fears ; 
 
 We set it high against the sky that lowers, 
 
 To burn, a love-sign, from the topmost towers, 
 Through glad and sorry years. 
 
 From "Songs of Life and Death." 
 
PRELUDE TO HAFIZ 
 
 Hither, hither, O ye weary, O ye sons of wail and woe, 
 Ye, who've proved the hollow shimmer of this world of 
 
 fleeting show. 
 Ye, whoVe seen your hearts' hopes vanish, like the first- 
 lings of the snow ; 
 
 Ye, who scorn the brutal bondage of this world of 
 
 misbelief. 
 Ye, who bear the royal blazon of the heart afire with 
 
 grief, 
 Hearken, hearken to my calling ; for I proffer you relief. 
 
 I am he whom men call teller of the things that none 
 
 may see. 
 Tongue of speech of the Unspoken, I am he that holds 
 
 the key 
 Of the treasuries of vision and the mines of mystery. 
 
 I am he that knows the secrets of the lands beyond the 
 
 goal, 
 I am he that solves the puzzles of the sorrow-smitten soul, 
 I am he that giveth gladness from the wine-enlightened 
 
 bowl ; 
 
 I am he that heals the wounded and the weary of their 
 
 scars, 
 I am Hafiz, son of Shiraz, in the pleasant land of Fars, 
 Where I flung my flouting verses in the faces of the stars. 
 
PRELUDE TO HAFIZ 119 
 
 See, my hands are full of jewels from the worlds beyond 
 the tomb : 
 
 Here be pearls of perfect passion from the middle dream- 
 land's womb ; 
 
 Here be amethysts of solace, for the purging of your 
 gloom : 
 
 Here be rubies red and radiant, of the colour of the 
 
 heart, 
 Here be topazes sun-golden, such as rend the dusk 
 
 apart. 
 Here be sapphires steeped in heaven, for the salving of 
 
 your smart. 
 
 If your souls are sick with sorrow, here is that which 
 
 shall appease ; 
 If your lips are pale with passion, here is that which 
 
 hath the keys 
 To the sanctuaries of solace and the halidomcs of ease. 
 
 Let the bigot tend his idols, let the trader buy and 
 
 sell ; 
 Ears are theirs that cannot hearken to the tale I have 
 
 to tell, 
 Eyes that cannot see the treasures which are open to 
 
 my spell. 
 
 Where is he that's heavy-laden ? Lo, [my hand shall 
 
 give him peace. 
 Where are they that dwell in darkness ? I am he that 
 
 can release. 
 Where is he that's world-bewildered ? I will give his 
 
 cares surcease. 
 
I20 PRELUDE TO HAFIZ 
 
 Hither, hither with your burdens ! I have that shall 
 
 make them light. 
 I have salves shall purge the earth-mists from the 
 
 fountains of your sight ; 
 I have spells shall raise the morning in the middest of 
 
 your night. 
 
 Come, O doubt-distracted brother ! Come, O heavy- 
 
 burthened one ! 
 Come to me and I will teach you how the goal of rest 
 
 is won ; 
 Come, and I will cleave your darkness with the splendours 
 
 of the sun. 
 
 Leave your striving never-ending ; let the weary world 
 
 go by; 
 Let its bondmen hug their fetters, let its traders sell and 
 
 buy; 
 With the roses in the garden we will sojourn, you and L 
 
 Since the gladness and the sadness of the world alike are 
 
 nought, 
 I will give you wine to drink of from the ancient wells 
 
 of thought. 
 Where it"'s lain for ages ripening, whilst the traders sold 
 
 and bought. 
 
 What is heaven, that we should seek it ? Wherefore 
 
 question How or Why ? 
 See, the roses are in blossom ; see, the sun is in the sky ; 
 See, the land is lit with summer ; let us live before we 
 
 die. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 TO THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS 
 AND ONE NIGHT 
 
 Twelve years this day, — a day of winter, dreary 
 
 With drifting snows, when all the world seemed dead 
 
 To spring and hope, — it is since, worn and weary 
 Of doubt within and strife without, I fled 
 
 From the mean workday miseries of existence, 
 From spites that slander and from hates that lie, 
 
 Into the dreamland of the Orient distance. 
 Under the splendours of the Syrian sky. 
 
 And in the enchanted realms of Eastern story. 
 Far from the lovelessness of modern times. 
 
 Garnered the rainbow-remnants of old glory 
 That linger yet in those ancestral climes. 
 
 And now, the long task done, the journey over, 
 From that far home of immemorial calms. 
 
 Where, as a mirage, on the sky-marge hover 
 The desert and its oases of palms. 
 
 Lingering, I turn me back, with eyes reverted, 
 
 To this stepmother world of daily life. 
 As one by some long pleasant dream deserted. 
 
 That wakes anew to dull unlovely strife. 
 
122 EPILOGUE 
 
 Yet, if none other weal the quest have brought me, 
 
 The long beloved labour now^ at end. 
 This gift of gifts the untravelled East hath brought me, 
 
 The knowledge of a new and valued friend. 
 
 February 5, 1889. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 The day is dead, the night draws on, 
 
 The shadows gather fast : 
 'Tis many an hour yet to the dawn, 
 
 Till Hallow-tide be past. 
 
 Till Hallow-tide be past and sped, 
 
 The night is full of fear ; 
 For then, they say, the restless dead 
 
 Unto the live draw near. 
 
 Between the Saints' day and the Souls' 
 The dead wake in the mould ; 
 
 The poor dead, in their grassy knolls 
 They lie and are a-cold. 
 
 They think upon the live that sit 
 
 And drink the Hallow-ale, 
 Whilst they lie stark within the pit. 
 
 Nailed down with many a nail. 
 
 And sore they wonder if the thought 
 
 Live in them of the dead ; 
 
 And sore with wish they are distraught 
 
 To feel the firelight red. 
 123 
 
124 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 Betwixt the day and yet the day 
 The Saints and Souls divide, 
 
 The dead folk rise out of the clay 
 And wander far and wide. 
 
 They wander o''er the sheeted snow, 
 Chill with the frore of death, 
 
 Until they see the windows glow 
 With the fire's ruddy breath. 
 
 And if the cottage door be fast 
 And but the light win out, 
 
 All night, until their hour is past. 
 The dead walk thereabout. 
 
 And all night long, the live folk hear 
 Their windy song of sighs 
 
 And waken all for very fear, 
 Until the white day rise. 
 
 But if the folk be piteous 
 
 And pity the poor dead 
 That weary in the narrow house 
 
 Upon the cold earth's bed, 
 
 They pile the peats upon the fire 
 And leave the door ajar. 
 
 That so the rosy flame aspire 
 To where the grey ghosts are. 
 
 And syne they sweep the cottage floor 
 And set the hearthside chair : 
 
 The sad sprites watch beside the door 
 Till midnight still the air. 
 
THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 125 
 
 And then toward the friendly glow 
 
 Come trooping in the dead ; 
 Until the cocks for morning crow, 
 
 They sit by the fire red. 
 
 II 
 
 " Oh, I have wearied long enough ! 
 
 I'll weary me no more ; 
 But I will watch for my dead love 
 
 Till Hallow-tide be o'er." 
 
 He set the door across the sill ; 
 
 The moonlight fluttered in ; 
 The sad snow covered heath and hill, 
 
 As far as eye could win. 
 
 The thin frost feathered in the air ; 
 
 All dumb the white world lay ; 
 Night sat on it as cold and fair 
 
 As death upon a may. 
 
 He turned him back into the room 
 
 And sat him by the fire : 
 Night darkened round him in the gloom 
 
 The shadowtide rose higher. 
 
 He rose and looked out o'er the hill 
 To where the grey kirk lay ; 
 
 The midnight quiet was so still. 
 He heard the bell-chimes play. 
 
126 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 Twelve times he heard the sweet bell chime ; 
 
 No whit he stirred or spoke ; 
 But his eyes fixed, as if on Time 
 
 The hour of judgment broke. 
 
 And as the last stroke fell and died, 
 
 Over the kirkyard grey 
 Himseemed he saw a blue flame glide. 
 
 Among the graves at play. 
 
 A flutter waved upon the breeze. 
 
 As of a spirit's wings : 
 A wind went by him through the trees, 
 
 That spoke of heavenly things. 
 
 Himseemed he heard a sound of feet 
 
 Upon the silver snow : 
 A rush of robes by him did fleet, 
 
 A sighing soft and low. 
 
 He turned and sat him down again ; 
 
 The midnight filled the place : 
 The tears ran down like silent rain 
 
 Upon his weary face. 
 
 " She will not come to me," he said ; 
 
 " The death-swoon is too strong : 
 She hath forgot me with the dead. 
 
 Me that she loved so long. 
 
 " She will not come : she sleeps too sweet 
 
 Within the quiet ground. 
 What worth is love, when life is fleet 
 
 And sleep in death so sound ? 
 
THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 127 
 
 "She will not come ! " — A soft cold air 
 
 Upon his forehead fell : 
 He turned him to the empty chair ; 
 
 And there sat Isobel. 
 
 His dead love sat him side by side, 
 
 His minnie white and wan : 
 Within the tomb she could not hide, 
 
 Whilst he sat weeping on. 
 
 Ah, wasted, wasted was her face, 
 
 And sore her cheek was white ; 
 But in her eyes the ancient grace 
 
 Burnt with a feeble light. 
 
 Upon her breast the grave-wede grey 
 
 Fell to her little feet ; 
 But still the golden tresses lay 
 
 About her bosom sweet. 
 
 " Ah, how is't with ye, Isobel ? 
 
 How pale ye look, and cold ! 
 Ah, sore it is to think ye dwell 
 
 Alone beneath the mould ! 
 
 " Is't weary for our love yeVe grown 
 
 From dwelling with the dead. 
 Or shivering from the cold grave-stone 
 
 To find the firelight red ? " 
 
 " Oh, 'tis not that I'm lorn of love 
 
 Or that a-cold I lie : 
 I trust in God that is above 
 
 To bring you by-and-by. 
 
128 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 " I feel your kisses on my face, 
 Your kisses sweet and warm : 
 
 Your love is in the burial-place ; 
 I feel nor cold nor worm. 
 
 "I feel the love within your heart 
 
 That beats for me alone : 
 I fear not change upon your part 
 
 Nor crave for the unknown. 
 
 "For to the dead no faint fears cling : 
 
 All certainty have they : 
 They know (and smile at sorrowing) 
 
 Love never dies away. 
 
 "No harm can reach me in Death's deep 
 
 It hath no fear for me : 
 God sweetens it to lie and sleep, 
 
 Until his face I see : 
 
 " He makes it sweet to lie and wait, 
 
 Till we together meet 
 And hand-in-hand athwart the gate 
 
 Pass up the golden street. 
 
 " But where's the babe that at my side 
 
 Slept sweetly long ago ? 
 So sore to me to-night it cried, 
 
 I could not choose but go. 
 
 " I heard its voice so full of wail. 
 
 It woke me in the grave : 
 Its sighs came to me on the gale, 
 
 Across the wintry wave. 
 
THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 129 
 
 " For though death lap her wide and mild, 
 
 A'mother cannot rest, 
 Except her little sucking child 
 
 Be sleeping at her breast." 
 
 " Ah, know'st thou not, my love ? " he said : 
 
 " Methought the dead knew all, 
 When in that night of doom and dread 
 
 The moving waters' wall 
 
 " Smote on our ship and drove it down 
 
 Beneath the raging sea. 
 All of our company did drown, 
 
 Alas ! save only me. 
 
 " And me the cruel billows cast 
 
 Aswoon upon the strand ; 
 Thou dead within mine arms held fast, 
 
 Hand locked in other's hand. 
 
 " The ocean never to this day 
 
 Gave up our baby dead : 
 Ah, woe is me that life should stay 
 
 When all its sweet is fled ! " 
 
 " Go down," said she, " to the seashore : 
 
 God taketh ruth on thee : 
 Search well ; and I will come once more 
 
 Ere yet the midnight be." 
 
 She bent her sweet pale mouth to his : 
 
 The snowdrift from the sky 
 Falls not so cold as did that kiss : 
 
 He shook as he should die. 
 
I30 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 She looked on him with yearning eyes 
 And vanished from his sight : 
 
 He heard the matin cock crow thrice ; 
 The morning glimmered white. 
 
 Then from his place he rose and sought 
 
 The shore beside the sea : 
 And there all day he searched ; but nought 
 
 Until the eve found he. 
 
 At last a pale star glittered through 
 
 The growing dusk of night 
 And fell upon the waste of blue, 
 
 A trembling wand of light. 
 
 And lo ! a wondrous thing befell : 
 As though the small star's ray 
 
 Availed to break some year-old spell 
 That on the water lay, 
 
 A white form rose out of the deep, 
 
 Where it so long had lain. 
 Cradled within the cold death-sleep : 
 
 He knew his babe again. 
 
 It floated softly to his feet ; 
 
 White as a flower it lay : 
 Christ's love had kept its body sweet 
 
 Unravished of decay. 
 
 He thanked God weeping for His grace ; 
 
 And many a tear he shed 
 And many a kiss upon its face 
 
 That smiled as do the dead. 
 
THE BALLAD OF TSOBEL 131 
 
 Then to the kirkyard where the maid 
 
 Slept cold in clay he hied ; 
 And with a loving hand he laid 
 
 The baby by her side. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The dark fell down upon the earth ; 
 
 Night held the quiet air : 
 He sat before the glowing hearth, 
 
 Beside the empty chair. 
 
 Twelve times at last for middle night 
 Rang out the kirkyard bell : 
 
 Ere yet the twelfth was silent quite, 
 By him sat Isobel. 
 
 Within her arms their little child 
 Lay pillowed on her breast : 
 
 Death seemed to it as soft and mild 
 As heaven to the blest. 
 
 Ah, no more wasted was her face. 
 Nor white her cheek and wan ! 
 
 The splendour of a heavenly grace 
 Upon her forehead shone. 
 
 She seemed again the golden girl 
 Of the long-vanished years : 
 
 Her face shone as a great sweet pearl. 
 Washed and made white in tears. 
 
132 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 The light of heaven filled her eyes 
 With soft and splendid flame ; 
 
 Out of the heart of Paradise 
 It seemed as if she came. 
 
 He looked upon her beauty bright ; 
 
 And sore, sore sorrowed he, 
 To think how many a day and night 
 
 Between them yet must be. 
 
 He looked at her with many a sigh ; 
 
 For sick he was with pain. 
 To think how many a year must fly 
 
 Ere they two met again. 
 
 She looked on him : no sadness lay 
 
 Upon her tender mouth ; 
 And syne she smiled, a smile as gay 
 
 And glad as in her youth. 
 
 " Be of good cheer, dear heart," said she 
 
 " Yet but a little year 
 Ere thou and I together see 
 
 The end of doubt and fear. 
 
 " Come once again the saints' night ring 
 
 Unto the spirits' feet. 
 Glad with the end of sorrowing. 
 
 Once more we three shall meet ; 
 
 " We three shall meet no more to part 
 
 For all eternity : 
 'Gin I come not to thee, sweetheart. 
 
 Do thou come then to me." 
 
THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 133 
 
 IV 
 
 Another year is past and gone : 
 Once more the lingering h'ght 
 
 Fades from the sky and dusk falls down 
 Upon the Holy Night. 
 
 The hearth is clear ; the fire burns red ; 
 
 The door stands open wide : 
 He waits for the beloved dead 
 
 To come with Hallow-tide. 
 
 The midnight rings out loud and slow 
 
 Across the frosty air : 
 He sits before the firelight-glow, 
 
 Beside the waiting chair. 
 
 The last chime dies into the night : 
 
 The stillness grows apace : 
 And yet there comes no lady bright 
 
 To fill the empty place. 
 
 No soft hand falls upon his hair ; 
 
 No light breath fans his brow : 
 The night is empty everywhere ; 
 
 The birds sleep on the bough. 
 
 " Ah woe to me ! the night fades fast ; 
 
 Her promise is forgot : 
 Alas ! " he said, " the hours fly past. 
 
 And still she cometh not ! 
 
134 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 *' So sweet she sleeps and sleeps with her 
 
 The baby at her breast, 
 No thought of earthly love can stir 
 
 Their undesireful rest. 
 
 " Ah, who can tell but Time may lay 
 
 Betwixt us such a space 
 That haply at the Judgment Day 
 
 She will forget my face." 
 
 The still night quivered as he spoke j 
 
 He felt the midnight air 
 Throb and a little breeze awoke 
 
 Across the heather bare. 
 
 And in the wind himseemed he heard 
 His true love's voice once more : 
 
 Afar it came, and but one word, 
 " Come ! " unto him it bore. 
 
 A faint hope flickered in his breast : 
 
 He rose and took his way 
 Where underneath the brown hill's crest 
 
 The quiet kirkyard lay. 
 
 He pushed the lychgate to the wall : 
 
 Against the moonless sky 
 The grey kirk towered dusk and tall : 
 
 Heaven seemed on it to lie. 
 
 Dead darkness held the holy ground ; 
 
 His feet went in and out 
 And stumbled at each grassy mound, 
 
 As one that is in doubt. 
 
THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 135 
 
 Then suddenly the sky grew white ; 
 
 The moon thrust through the gloom : 
 The tall tower's shade against her light 
 
 Fell on his minnie's tomb. 
 
 Full on her grave its shadow fell, 
 
 As 'twere a giant's hand, 
 That motionless the way doth tell 
 
 Unto the heavenly land. 
 
 He fell upon his knees thereby 
 
 And kissed the holy earth, 
 Wherein the only twain did lie 
 
 That made life living-worth. 
 
 He knelt ; no longer did he weep ; 
 
 Great peace was on his soul : 
 Sleep sank on him, a wondrous sleep, 
 
 Assaining death and dole. 
 
 And in the sleep himseemed he stood 
 
 Before a high gold door. 
 Upon whose midst the blessed Rood 
 
 Burnt like an opaPs core. 
 
 Christ shining on the cross to see 
 
 Was there for all device : 
 Within he saw the almond-tree 
 
 That grows in Paradise. 
 
 He knew the fallen almond-flowers 
 
 That drop without the gate, 
 So with their scent the tardy hours 
 
 Be cheered for those that wait. 
 
136 THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL 
 
 And as he looked, a glimmering light 
 Shone through the blazoned bars : 
 
 The wide tall gate grew blue and bright 
 As heaven with the stars. 
 
 A postern opened in his face ; 
 
 Sweet savours breathed about ; 
 And through the little open space 
 
 A fair white hand came out : 
 
 A hand as white as ermolin, 
 
 A hand he knew full well, 
 Beckoned to him to enter in — 
 
 The hand of Isobel. 
 
 Lord Christ, Thy morning tarrieth long : 
 The shadows come and go : 
 
 These three have heard the angels' song ; 
 Still many wait below. 
 
 These three on heaven's honey feed 
 
 And milk of Paradise : 
 How long before for us indeed 
 
 The hills of heaven rise ? 
 
 How long before, joined hand-in-hand 
 With all the dear-loved dead, 
 
 We pass along the heavenly land 
 And hear the angels' tread ? 
 
 The night is long : the way is drear : 
 Our hearts faint for the light : 
 
 Vouchsafe, dear Lord, the day draw near. 
 The morning of Thy sight ! 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
BARCAROLLE 
 
 Out sails to the fresh breeze ! 
 
 My heart 
 
 Pines for the open seas. 
 
 The soft moon flowers, like a dream-delight, 
 
 Over the full tide-flow. 
 
 Shake out the sails 1 Sweetheart, we will depart, 
 
 We will depart and sail the seas to-night. 
 
 Whilst on the foam that flees 
 
 The blithe breeze flutters and the weed floats slow, 
 
 The moon above us and the tide below. 
 
 Where shall we steer to-night ? 
 
 The moon 
 
 Lies like a lane of white. 
 
 Far out beyond our vision in the West, 
 
 Over the dreaming sea, 
 
 As if some goddess walked with silver shoon 
 
 Over the dimples of each white-winged crest. 
 
 Sweetheart, the way is bright : 
 
 Shall we trim sails and follow it till we 
 
 Win to some shimmering world of fantasy ? 
 
 Folk hold we chase a dream : 
 They say 
 
 That the bright worlds, which beam 
 Beyond the setting and the dying day, 
 
138 BARCAROLLE 
 
 Are shows begotten of the air and light, 
 Delusions distance-woven for the sight, 
 Mere mirages, that seem 
 And flee before us with unceasing flight : 
 We lose our lives, they tell us, following 
 A vain, unreal thing. 
 
 'Twere better far to bide 
 
 On shore, 
 
 To delve the round earth's side 
 
 For diamonds and golden glittering store 
 
 And in the strife for wealth and worldly praise 
 
 Join, heaping up the treasure of the days 
 
 With great and goodly store 
 
 Of what men follow in the mortal ways ; 
 
 Since, as they say, these only real are 
 
 And all things else unreal as a star. 
 
 What matter what they say ? 
 
 We know 
 
 That which on dullards' way 
 
 They prate but of, as idiots do, who go, 
 
 Strange spells and magic words without comprise 
 
 Reciting, which, if spoken wizard-wise. 
 
 Would overthrow 
 
 The world and rend with ruin earth and skies : 
 
 We soar, whilst here below they herd like sheep ; 
 
 We waken, whilst they sleep. 
 
 For them, dull life once o'er, 
 
 They lie 
 
 And rot for evermore ; 
 
 There is no part of them but all must die. 
 
BARCAROLLE 139 
 
 Since all their thoughts are earthy as their dust, 
 Their spirits as their bodies rust in rust ; 
 No hope have they, on high 
 To raise them, but for ever perish must : 
 What shall avail to lift them from the grave 
 Of all that here they crave ? 
 
 With them what shall they bear 
 
 Away, 
 
 Into the nether air, 
 
 Of all the goods they garner night and day ? 
 
 Shall they regild death's darkness with their gold ? 
 
 Shall their wealth warm them in the utter cold ? 
 
 Their honour cleave the clay ? 
 
 Will the worm do them worship in the mould ? 
 
 Nay, earth to earth and dust to dust must back ; 
 
 With life all else must lack. 
 
 But we, whose kingdom is not of the earth. 
 
 Whose weal 
 
 No world of death and birth 
 
 Might work nor fill the yearnings that we feel, 
 
 Our visions overlasting life and death, 
 
 Our dreams that cease not with the 'scape of breath, 
 
 From us death cannot steal 
 
 The splendour and the fulness of our faith ; 
 
 We bear with us into the realms of Night 
 
 The seeds of life and light. 
 
 Not of the dust our hope. 
 
 Our thought. 
 
 That soars beyond earth's scope. 
 
 If here it gain the glories not it sought. 
 
HO BARCAROLLE 
 
 Itself its warrant is that such things are, 
 That the bright visions, here from us afar 
 Which flee, are not for nought ; 
 Nay, though it be beyond the topmost star. 
 Our dreams, that seem delusions, simple sooth 
 Are in the air of truth. 
 
 Since here our each desire, 
 
 Fulfilled, 
 
 Becomes a wasting fire, 
 
 A mocking counterfeit of what we willed. 
 
 Thrice happy they who chase some Golden Fleece, 
 
 Beyond man's wit, who seek without surcease 
 
 Some vision that they build. 
 
 Some lovely land of everlasting peace. 
 
 Who, after some divinest dream, o'erstray 
 
 The strands of night and day ! 
 
 Come, then, launch out with me 
 
 And steer 
 
 Into the shoreless sea ! 
 
 Shake out the sails and follow without fear 
 
 Into the distance and the golden West ! 
 
 We yet shall sight the Islands of the Blest ; 
 
 We yet the Hesperian Gardens of our quest 
 
 Shall compass, if not here, 
 
 In this our world of ravin and unrest. 
 
 Then in those lands of a serener air 
 
 Where truth alone is fair. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
RONDEAU REDOUBLE 
 
 My day and night are in my lady's hand ; 
 
 I have none other sunrise than her sight : 
 For me her favour glorifies the land, 
 
 Her anger darkens all the cheerful light. 
 
 Her face is fairer than the hawthorn v^^hite, 
 When all a-flower in May the hedge-rows stand 
 
 Whilst she is kind, I know of none affright : 
 My day and night are in my lady's hand. 
 
 All heaven in her glorious eyes is spanned : 
 
 Her smile is softer than the summer night, 
 Gladder than daybreak on the Faery strand : 
 
 I have none other sunrise than her sight. 
 
 Her silver speech is like the singing flight 
 Of runnels rippling o'er the jewelled sand ; 
 
 Her kiss a dream of delicate delight ; 
 For me her favour glorifies the land. 
 
 What if the winter slay the summer bland ! 
 
 The gold sun in her hair burns ever bright : 
 If she be sad, straightway all joy is banned : 
 
 Her anger darkens all the cheerful light. 
 
 Come weal or woe, I am my lady's knight 
 And in her service every ill withstand : 
 
 Love is my lord, in all the world's despite, 
 And holdeth in the hollow of his hand 
 My day and night. 
 
 From « Exotica." 
 
 i4« 
 
ROCOCO 
 
 Straight and swift the swallows fly- 
 To the sojourn of the sun ; 
 All the golden year is done, 
 All the flower-time flitted by ; 
 Through the boughs the witch-winds sigh 
 But heart's summer is begun ; 
 Life and Love at last are one. 
 Love-lights glitter in the sky. 
 Summer days were soon outrun, 
 With the setting of the sun ; 
 Love's delight is never done. 
 Let the turn-coat roses die ; 
 We are lovers. Love and I : 
 In Love's lips my roses lie. 
 
A BIRTHDAY SONG 
 
 What shall I say to my dearest dear, 
 
 On the sweetest day of the whole sweet year ? 
 
 Shall I tell her how dainty she is and sweet, 
 
 From her golden head to her silver feet ? 
 Love of my loves, shall I say to her — 
 
 Till the breeze catch tune and the birds repeat 
 The chime of my song — thou art bright and rare, 
 (Eyes of the grey and amber hair) 
 
 Who is so white as my love, my sweet ? 
 Who is so sweet and fair ? 
 
 Ah, no ! for my song would faint and die, 
 Faint with a moan and a happy sigh. 
 
 For a kiss of her lips so clear and red. 
 
 For a touch of her dainty gold-wrought head 
 And a look of her tender eye ! 
 
 And even the words, if words there were said. 
 Would fail for the sound of her lovely name. 
 Till the very birds should flout them to shame, 
 
 That they strove to render silver with lead. 
 To image with snow the flame ! 
 
 So e'en I must sing her over again 
 
 The old old song with its one refrain, 
 
 The song that in spring like the cooing dove 
 
 Has nothing for burden but just " I love." 
 143 
 
144 A BIRTHDAY SONG 
 
 Go, O my songs, like a silver rain. 
 
 And flutter her golden head above ; 
 Sing in her w^alks and her happy day, 
 Fill all her dreams with the roundelay, 
 
 " I love " and " I love her," again and again, 
 " I love her," sorry or gay ! 
 
 Is she thinking of me, my lady of love ? 
 (Heart of my heart, is the day enough 
 
 For the thought and the w^ish of her daintiness 
 
 And the memory of the last caress ?) 
 Do her lips seek mine, my gold-plumaged dove — 
 My little lady w^ith glass-grey eyne — 
 
 In long sv/eet dreams of the night to press 
 From the grapes of delight Love's golden w^ine ? 
 
 Does thought seem more and the world seem less. 
 As her hand strays, seeking mine ? 
 
 Fly to her, fly, O my little song ! 
 (Fly to her quickly ; the way is long 
 
 And your little dove-coloured wings are weak.) 
 
 Nestle your head on her roseleaf cheek ; 
 Say what I would, if my wings were strong 
 
 And the heaven were near to seek : 
 Take all the tender fancies that lie 
 And flower in my heart so silently ; 
 
 Sing her the love I can never speak 
 Wholly, but in a sigh ! 
 
 From "Songs of Life and Death." 
 
VILLANELLE 
 
 The air is white with snow-flakes clinging ; 
 
 Between the gusts that come and go 
 Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 
 
 Methinks I see the primrose springing 
 
 On many a bank and hedge, although 
 The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 
 
 Surely the hands of Spring are flinging 
 
 Wood-scents to all the winds that blow : 
 Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 
 
 Methinks I see the swallow winging 
 
 Across the woodlands sad with snow ; 
 The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 
 
 Was that the cuckoo's wood-chime swinging ? 
 
 Was that the linnet fluting low ? 
 Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 
 
 Or can it be the breeze is bringing 
 The breath of violets ? Ah no ! 
 The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 
 
 '45 K 
 
146 VILLANELLE 
 
 It is my lady's voice that's stringing 
 Its beads of gold to song ; and so 
 Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 
 
 The violets I see upspringing 
 
 Are in my lady's eyes, I trow : 
 The air is white with snow-flakes clinging. 
 
 Dear, whilst thy tender tones are ringing, 
 
 E'en though amidst the winter's woe 
 The air is white with snow-flakes clinging, 
 Methinks I hear the woodlark singing. 
 
 From "Exotica." 
 
RONDEAU 
 
 Life lapses by for you and me, 
 Our sweet days pass us by and flee 
 And evermore death draws us nigh : 
 The blue fades fast out of your sky, 
 The ripple ceases from our sea. 
 What would we not give, you and I, 
 The early sweet of life to buy ? 
 Alas ! sweetheart, that cannot be ; 
 Life lapses by. 
 
 Yet, though our young years buried lie. 
 Shall love with spring and summer die ? 
 What if the roses faded be ? 
 We in each other's eyes will see 
 New springs nor questions how or why 
 Life lapses by. 
 
 From "Exotica." 
 
RONDEAU 
 
 One of these days, my lady whispereth, 
 A day made beautiful with summer's breath, 
 Our feet shall cease^from these divided ways. 
 Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze 
 And flower together in a mingling wreath. 
 No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze. 
 No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze ; 
 Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith, 
 One of these days. 
 
 Ah love, my love ! Athwart how many Mays 
 The old hope lures us with its long delays ! 
 How many winters waste our fainting faith ! 
 I wonder, will it come this side of death, 
 With any of the old sun in its rays, 
 One of these days ? 
 
 From ** Exotica." 
 
 148 
 
BASSARID'S HORN 
 
 FROM " THE BOOK OF HERCULES " 
 
 Young, fair land, 
 Robe thyself with flowers ; arise and shine ! 
 Spring, that holdst the summer in the hollow of thy 
 
 hand. 
 Come, for the sweetness of the year is thine. 
 
 Amethyst sea, 
 Blossom and bird-song have burst their winter's graves : 
 See, in the distance the month of storms doth flee : 
 Laugh with the lucent sapphire of thy waves. 
 
 Soul of man. 
 Shake off thy sadness, for the Spring is here. 
 Mark how the meadows have braved the winter's ban ; 
 Glow with the gladness of the newborn year. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
 M9 
 
FROM "REQUIEM FOR OUR DEAD 
 IN SOUTH AFRICA" 
 
 Their bodies are buried in peace ; 
 but their name liveth for ever- 
 more.— EccLUS. xliv. 14. 
 
 Happy are our dead that on the veldt are sleeping, 
 Our dear-beloved dead, that died for England's sake 
 They w^eary not, as we who watch and wake, 
 To follow, on the war-tide's ebb and flow. 
 The fluctuant fight against the faithless foe. 
 Nor hear the widows and the orphans weeping. 
 Upon their graves the shadows come and go ; 
 Their quiet sleep no battle-thunders break, 
 No shouts of jubilance, no wails of woe : 
 Their seed of sacrifice and duty shed 
 Upon the embattled field and with the red 
 Of their young hearts"* blood watered, they lie low 
 And are content to sleep and wait the reaping : 
 They are at peace beneath the moonbeams creeping j 
 They feel the sun-blaze not upon their head ; 
 They shiver not beneath the winter's snow. 
 They need no pity, all with them is well ; 
 O'er them the stars the eternal watch are keeping. 
 The refluent tides of heaven wane and swell ; 
 The reverent skies rain softly on their bed : 
 Far oversea, beyond the wild waves' leaping. 
 They rest in peace, our well-beloved dead. 
 
"REQUIEM FOR OUR DEAD" 151 
 
 Happy are our dead, that in our hearts are living, 
 
 Our holy dead, who died to hold us true and great ! 
 Whatever lie beyond the years in vv^ait, 
 
 Whatever webs the future may be weaving. 
 
 Theirs shall the glory be, for theirs the giving. 
 
 'Twas they that stemmed for us the storm of hate ; 
 'Twas they that turned for us the tides of Fate : 
 
 Ours was the wreck ; but theirs was the retrieving ; 
 
 They gave us all and asked for no returning, 
 
 Fought on nor looked to know the darkness burning 
 With the bright signs of morning or to see 
 The dayspring and the dawn of victory. 
 
 Enough their faith for them and the believing 
 That England never from her fair estate 
 Should fail whilst yet her lion brood should be, 
 Each breast a bulwark in her foremost gate. 
 
 Strong with the strength of duty for the achieving 
 Of the impossible by land and sea, 
 Each one a little England, unafraid 
 To face the world in arms, where England bade. 
 
 Theirs is the triumph ; ours is the bereaving ; 
 
 The trophy theirs ; ours but the broken blade, 
 The bloodstained arms, for love and memory laid. 
 Wet with our weeping, on the narrow bed 
 Whereas our heroes sleep, of doubt and dread 
 
 Absolved, of sorry thought and sad conceiving. 
 
 So leave we them to rest ; but, in the leaving. 
 
 Let not their perfect peace our mourning mar ; 
 
 Let not our tears upon their triumph jar. 
 
 They live and shall not die ! Whilst England stands 
 
 Upon the Eastern and the Western strands, 
 
 The light of virtue haloing her head, 
 
 Crowned, from the morning to the evening-red, 
 
 Queen of the Orient and the Austral lands, 
 
152 "REQUIEM FOR OUR DEAD" 
 
 The memory of their deeds shall never die : 
 Whilst " England liveth yet ! " it shall be said, 
 Defying Time that maketh low and high, 
 
 This one downsetting still and that upheaving, 
 
 They shall live on with England. Far and nigh, 
 Their names shall shine as polestars in her sky, 
 Till she and all her memories are sped. 
 
 Leave them to rest ; there is no need of grieving. 
 Sleep on in peace, our unforgotten dead 1 
 
 Jan. 1902. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER 
 
 A WIND came over the Western water, 
 
 {Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh spring-time!) 
 
 "Weary of life," it said, " poor lover ? 
 Sick for a love that is dead and gone ? 
 
 (Winds blow over her, earth's above her.) 
 Sick for a day that was faded at dawn ? 
 
 The cure is the kiss of the marsh-king's daughter." 
 
 Weary of life, I answered and said, 
 
 " O wind of the Western water ! " 
 Sick for a day and a love that are dead, 
 " Why should I seek," I answered and said, 
 
 " The kiss of the marsh-king's daughter ? " 
 
 II 
 
 The wind came over the Western water : 
 
 {The death-flower blows in the summer' s p/une !) 
 
 " If one be weary and sick of living. 
 
 Sick for the sake of a vanished love, 
 
 Sick of the glow and blossom of spring, 
 Sick of the summer's glitter and ring j 
 
 If colour lack in the autumn's weaving, 
 And the winter hold not sorrow enough. 
 
 The cure is the kiss of the marsh-king's daughter.' 
 153 
 
154 THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Weary of life, I answered and said, 
 
 " O wind of the Western water ! " 
 Bitter with tears that I could not shed, 
 " Tell me, West-wind," I answered and said, 
 " The home of the marsh-king's daughter ? " 
 
 III 
 
 " It lies far over the Western water, 
 
 {Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh spring-time !) 
 
 Under the arch of the sun at setting, 
 'Twixt gold of sunset and dusk of night. 
 
 Under the sound of the sea-winds' fretting ; 
 In the purple heart of the marish mist, 
 That the shafts of the dying day have kissed, 
 
 Under the ceiling where stars are bright. 
 
 There is the home of the marsh-king's daughter. 
 
 Weary of life, I answered and said, 
 
 " O wind of the Western water ! 
 My hopes lie close in the house of the dead ; 
 But I will go," I answered and said, 
 
 " To seek for the marsh-king's daughter." 
 
 IV 
 
 I wandered over the Western water, 
 
 (O/2 sweet is the rose in the fresh spring-time /) 
 And I came in the evening, when light was dying. 
 
 To a land where the hum of the world was still, 
 Where the voice of the evening wind was sighing 
 
 And the spells of sleep were over the air ; 
 
 And I saw in the setting the golden hair 
 Of the sunset broider the mists, until 
 They grew to the robe of the marsh-king's daughter. 
 
THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER 155 
 
 Golden starlets were over her head, 
 
 (A crown for the marsh-king's daughter.) 
 
 " Come to my arms,"" I answered and said ; 
 
 And she came, with the West-wind's murmurous 
 tread, 
 To me that so long had sought her. 
 
 A voice came over the Western water : 
 
 {The death- flower blows in the summer's prime !) 
 
 " Dearly," it said, " hast thou won and bought her. 
 Her kisses are cold as are the dead 
 And the gold of her hair o^er thee is shed. 
 
 As wings of the birds that fly to the slaughter ! 
 The lips thou shouldst kiss are living and red. 
 
 Thine eyes should feast on the joys of earth. 
 Thy hands pluck flowers in the golden prime. 
 
 Youth was not made for sorrow and dearth : 
 Get thee back, whilst there yet is time ; 
 
 For Death is the name of the marsh-king's 
 daughter ! " 
 
 Weary of life, I answered and said, 
 
 " O wind of the Western water ! 
 My lips shall kiss but the lips of the dead." 
 Sick of the day, I answered and said, 
 
 " Kiss me, O marsh-king's daughter ! " 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
THE WESTWARD SAILING 
 
 Oh, blithe and glad the Hege-folk were 
 
 In all the Norway strand 1 
 For home the king a bride did bring. 
 
 The king of all the land. 
 
 With many a gay gold flag they decked 
 
 The city of the king ; 
 Loud sang the choirs and from the spires 
 
 The bells for joy did ring. 
 
 There was no man in all the land 
 
 But laid his grief aside, 
 What time the king with holy ring 
 
 Was wedded to his bride. 
 
 Within the royal banquet-hall 
 
 The bridal feast was spread ; 
 The cup went round with garlands crowned. 
 
 And eke the wine ran red. 
 
 The harpers smote the silver strings, 
 The gleemen all did sing 
 
 Thereto a song so sweet and strong. 
 That all the hall did ring. 
 
 iS6 
 
THE WESTWARD SAILING 157 
 
 And therein sat upon his throne, 
 
 Among his barons all, 
 The king, beside his troth-plight bride, 
 
 And ruled the festival. 
 
 He kissed his bride, his bride kissed him. 
 
 From the same cup drank they ; 
 And therewithal the minstrels all 
 
 Did sing a joyous lay. 
 
 Oh, merry, merry went the feast 
 
 And fast the red wine ran ! 
 The gates gaped wide, and in did stride 
 
 An old seafaring man. 
 
 In russet leather was he clad. 
 
 As those that use the sea. 
 And, three times rolled, a chain of gold 
 
 About his neck had he. 
 
 Grey was his head, his beard was grey 
 
 And furrowed was his brow ; 
 But in his eye a might did lie 
 
 That made all heads to bow. 
 
 He gazed upon the crowned king. 
 
 Upon his barons all ; 
 And there befell a sudden spell 
 
 Of silence in the hall. 
 
 With steel-grey eyes he gazed on them, 
 Whilst none the hush might break — 
 
 The words to come were stricken dumb — 
 And thus to them he spake : 
 
158 THE WESTWARD SAILING 
 
 " The lift is clear, the wind blows free 
 
 Toward the sunset land ; 
 Oh, who with me will sail the sea 
 
 Unto the Western strand ? 
 
 " Now let the courtier leave his feast 
 And plough the deep with me ! 
 
 The king his bride let leave, to ride 
 Over the briny sea ! 
 
 " Now let the baron leave his hall, 
 
 The minstrel leave his song ! 
 For in the West is set the quest 
 
 Whereafter all men long. 
 
 " There are the forests thick with flower 
 And there the winds breathe balm 
 
 And there gold birds sing wonder-words 
 Under the summer calm. 
 
 " There is the earth thick-strewn with gems, 
 
 The sands are golden-shelled, 
 And in the skies the magic lies 
 
 That gives new youth to eld. 
 
 " Oh, who will sail the seas with me 
 
 Unto the shores of gold ? 
 There lieth rest, that is the best 
 
 For all men, young or old." 
 
 Then up there leapt the crowned king. 
 
 The king of all the land : 
 " Oh, I with thee will sail the sea 
 
 Unto the Western strand ! 
 
THE WESTWARD SAILING 159 
 
 " Whate'er thou art, thy words have wrought 
 
 Such yearning in my breast, 
 That I will sail, come weal or bale, 
 
 Unto the golden West ! " 
 
 His bride hath laid upon his arm 
 
 Her hand more white than snow ; 
 She kissed him thrice, with tearful eyes 
 
 And mouth all white for woe ; 
 
 And on his finger, for a sign 
 
 That he should ne'er forget, 
 A ring threefold of good red gold 
 
 And sapphires hath she set. 
 
 The seaman led them with his eye 
 
 Out of the high gold door ; 
 And they are come, for wonder dumb, 
 
 Down to the white sea-shore. 
 
 Before the city, on the sea, 
 
 A fair tall ship there lay, 
 With sails of silk as white as milk 
 
 And ropes of sea-green say. 
 
 Into the vessel tall and stout 
 
 He brought them every one ; 
 And as he bade, all sail they made 
 
 Toward the setting sun. 
 
 Oh, many a weary day they sailed 
 
 Across the silver spray ! 
 And ever due the West wind blew, 
 
 But never land saw they : 
 
i6o THE WESTWARD SAILING 
 
 A wild wide waste of emerald sea, 
 Flecked with the argent foam ; 
 
 A sun of gold that westward rolled 
 Over the blue sky-dome ; 
 
 The twilight grey, that ends the day, 
 And then the moon on high ; 
 
 The purple night, with moonlight white 
 And stars thick set in sky. 
 
 So fifty days were wellnigh past. 
 
 And on the fiftieth day. 
 At eventide, the sad wind sighed. 
 
 The sapphire lift grew grey. 
 
 The icebergs rose about the ship. 
 
 All in a death-white ring, 
 And grimly round with ice they bound 
 
 The vessel of the king. 
 
 The helmsman stood beside the helm ; 
 
 The flesh from off him fell ; 
 And in his stead there reared its head 
 
 A grisly Death from Hell. 
 
 The Death-King stood upon the deck. 
 
 High as the topmost mast. 
 And thrice among that pallid throng 
 
 He blew a deathly blast. 
 
 With the first breath the sky turned black, 
 
 The sun a red fire grew. 
 And ghastly pale, the hearts did fail 
 
 Of all that luckless crew. 
 
THE WESTWARD SAILING i6i 
 
 A second time he breathed on them 
 
 Under the heavens' pall, 
 And with his breath the sleep of death 
 
 Fell down upon them all. 
 
 A third time with his mouth he blew — 
 
 His mouth without a lip — 
 And far below the chill tide-flow 
 
 Down sank the doomed ship. 
 
 Deep in the bosom of the sea 
 
 The frozen Norsemen rest ; 
 Each mother's son the prize hath won 
 
 That for all men is best. 
 
 All in the trance of that strange sleep, 
 
 Upon the deck they stand ; 
 And Death the King, he hath the ring 
 
 Upon his bony hand. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
FROM "CADENCES" MAJOR 
 
 Oh, what shall be the burden of our rhyme 
 And what shall be our ditty when the blossom's on the lime ? 
 Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long : 
 We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song! 
 
 O lady of my summer and my spring, 
 We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet 
 
 throstle sing 
 And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet, 
 When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear 
 
 fields are sweet. 
 
 We shall see the roses blowing in the green, 
 The pink-lipped roses kissing in the golden summer-sheen ; 
 We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells 
 
 of summer-gold 
 And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the 
 
 corn-crowned wold. 
 
 The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain ; 
 There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past be- 
 twixt us twain ; 
 But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together, 
 And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic 
 weather. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
 162 
 
PANTOUM 
 
 A SONG IN THE MALAY MANNER 
 
 The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath, 
 The sweet airs ripple up the lake : 
 
 My soul, my soul is sick to death. 
 My heart, my heart is like to break. 
 
 The sweet airs ripple up the lake, 
 I hear the thin woods' fluttering : 
 
 My heart, my heart is like to break ; 
 What part have I, alas ! in spring ? 
 
 I hear the thin woods' fluttering ; 
 
 The brake is brimmed with linnet-song : 
 What part have I, alas ! in spring ? 
 
 For me, heart's winter is lifelong ; 
 
 The brake is brimmed with linnet-song ; 
 
 Clear carols flutter through the trees ; 
 For me, heart's winter is lifelong ; 
 
 I cast my sighs on every breeze. 
 
 Clear carols flutter through the trees ; 
 
 The new year hovers like a dove : 
 
 I cast my sighs on every breeze ; 
 
 Spring is no spring, forlorn of love. 
 163 
 
i64 PANTOUM 
 
 The new year hovers like a dove 
 
 Above the breast of the green earth : 
 
 Spring is no spring, forlorn of love ; 
 Alike to me are death and birth. 
 
 Above the breast of the green earth, 
 The soft sky flutters like a flower : 
 
 Alike to me are death and birth ; 
 I dig Love's grave in every hour. 
 
 The soft sky flutters like a flower 
 Along the glory of the hills : 
 
 I dig Love's grave in every hour ; 
 I hear Love's dirge in all the rills. 
 
 Along the glory of the hills 
 
 Flowers slope into a rim of gold : 
 
 I hear Love's dirge in all the rills ; 
 Sad singings haunt me as of old. 
 
 Flowers slope into a rim of gold 
 Along the marges of the sky : 
 
 Sad singings haunt me as of old ; 
 Shall Love come back to me to die ? 
 
 Along the marges of the sky 
 
 The birds wing homeward from the East 
 Shall Love come back to me to die ? 
 
 Shall Hope relive, once having ceased ? 
 
 The birds wing homeward from the East ; 
 
 I smell spice-breaths upon the air : 
 Shall Hope relive, once having ceased ? 
 
 Hope would lie black on my despair. 
 
PANTOUM 165 
 
 I smell spice-breaths upon the air ; 
 
 The golden Orient-savours pass : 
 Hope would lie black on my despair, 
 
 Like a moon-shadow on the grass. 
 
 The golden Orient-savours pass ; 
 
 The full spring throbs in all the shade : 
 Like a moon-shadow on the grass, 
 
 My hope into the dusk would fade. 
 
 The full spring throbs in all the shade ; 
 
 We shall have roses soon, I trow ; 
 My hope into the dusk would fade ; 
 
 Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow. 
 
 We shall have roses soon, I trow ; 
 
 Soon will the rich red poppies burn : 
 Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow ; 
 
 My hope is fled beyond return. 
 
 Soon will the rich red poppies burn ; 
 
 Soon will blue iris star the stream : 
 My hope is fled beyond return ; 
 
 Have mine eyes tears for my waste dream ? 
 
 Soon will blue iris star the stream ; 
 
 Summer will turn the air to wine : 
 Have mine eyes tears for my waste dream ? 
 
 Can songs come from these lips of mine ? 
 
 Summer will turn the air to wine. 
 
 So full and sweet the mid-spring flowers ! 
 Can songs come from these lips of mine ? 
 
 My thoughts are grey as winter-hours. 
 
i66 PANTOUM 
 
 So full and sweet the mid-spring flowers ! 
 
 The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath. 
 My thoughts are grey as winter-hours ; 
 
 My soul, my soul is sick to death. 
 
 From "Exotica." 
 
THE BALLAD OF THE KING'S 
 DAUGHTER 
 
 I 
 
 The still earth sleeps in the summer night, 
 
 The air is full of the moon ; 
 All over the land, in her silver sight, 
 The roses blossom ruddy and w^hite ; 
 
 The w^orld is joyous with June. 
 
 There goes a moan in the greenw^ood hoar, 
 
 A moan, but and a w^ail : 
 What sighing is that the breezes bore ? 
 What plaining is that which shrilleth o'er 
 
 The note of the nightingale ? 
 
 A green glade lies in the middle wood : 
 
 Under the moonlight pale, 
 The greensward glitters many a rood. 
 Who lies on the grass, bedabbled with blood ? 
 
 A knight in his silver mail. 
 
 A murdered knight on the greensward lies, 
 
 Under the witch-white moon : 
 
 The air is thick with his dying sighs ; 
 
 The nightbirds flutter about his eyes ; 
 
 The corbies over him croon. 
 167 
 
1 68 BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER 
 
 II 
 
 The night-wind wails, 
 
 The moon-silver pales, 
 The stars are faint in the mist ; 
 The king's daughter rides over hill and dale. 
 Under the arch of the pine-shade pale, 
 A lily of gold in the moon-mist's veil. 
 
 And as she rides 
 
 Where the mill-stream glides, 
 A raven is sitting on the tree by the brown water, 
 
 With *' JVoe to thee ! ohy woe to thee^ kings daughter ! 
 
 Thou ridest to an evil tryst." 
 
 The silence quivers, 
 The pine-shade shivers. 
 Sad flute-notes wake in the gloom. 
 The king's daughter rides in the hawthorn track ; 
 Gold is her hair on the black steed's back. 
 Whose steps are those 
 That the echo throws 
 Back on the startled ear of the night ? 
 What form is that in the moonlight white 
 That follows the track of her horse's feet ? 
 Whose hands on the red-gold bridle meet ? 
 Whose spells are they that such scath have wrought her. 
 That the night-winds cry to her, " TVoe^ king's daughter / 
 Thou ridest to thy place of doom" 
 
 The moon brims up 
 In her pearled cup, 
 The air grows purple as gore ; 
 The stars are red 
 With blood to be shed ; 
 
BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER 169 
 
 The king's daughter sees in the purple sky 
 The wings of the birds of ill omen fly, 
 And the broidered lights in the cloud-rack burn 
 With a word that is weary and fierce and stern ; 
 The shadows of the night in their arms have caught her, 
 And the night-winds cry to her, " TVoey king's daughter ! 
 Thy pleasant place of life shall never know thee moreT 
 
 Out of the maze 
 Of the woodbine ways. 
 Into a moonlit glade 
 The maiden rides, with the shape of gloom 
 Casting a shade on her cheek's rose-bloom, 
 A shadow of surely hastening doom. 
 What glitter is that of silvered mail. 
 Prone on the grass in the moonlight pale ? 
 
 A sword-hilt joined to a broken blade : 
 Whose blood is red on the bright brown steel ? 
 
 Who lies in the sleep of death ? 
 It is her knight, that was true and leal. 
 
 Whose lips so often her lips have kissed. 
 To whom the shades of the night have brought her ; 
 And she hears in the echo his dying breath : 
 " Ah 1 woe is me for thee^ king's daughter ! 
 Thou comest to a woful tryst.'''' 
 
 Ill 
 
 She hath alighted from off her steed, 
 And she hath raised her lover's head 
 And laid it on her knees; 
 The rose of her heart begins to bleed 
 And on her breast his blood is red ; 
 Her heart begins to freeze. 
 
I70 BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER 
 
 She hath arisen from off the ground, 
 And she hath ta'en the bloodied blade 
 And dug with it a grave ; 
 She hath digged a grave both deep and round 
 And there his body hath she laid : 
 His soul the dear Christ save ! 
 
 She hath folded her round her mantle grey 
 And she hath stepped into the tomb 
 And laid her by his side : 
 The dead and the live, the knight and his may. 
 They are wedded at last in night and gloom : 
 The grave is fair and wide. 
 
 IV 
 
 The day-flower blows on the eastern hills. 
 (Woe is me for the king's daughter !) 
 The throstle in the morn 
 Sings blithely on the thorn 
 And golden is the sun on the grave of the king's daughter. 
 
 The wind of dawn through the forest shrills, 
 With leaves for the grave of the king's daughter. 
 A lily of red gold 
 Its flower-flames doth unfold 
 And glisters in the sun from the heart of the king's 
 daughter. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 
 
 Oh, sweet is the spring in coppice and wold 
 And the bonny fresh flowers are springing ! 
 
 May Margaret walks in the merry greenwood, 
 To hear the blithe birds singing. 
 
 May Margaret walks in the heart of the treen, 
 Under the green boughs straying ; 
 
 And she hath met the king of the elves, 
 Under the lindens playing. 
 
 " Oh, wed thou with me, May Margaret, 
 
 All in the merry green Maytime, 
 And thou shalt dance all the moonlit night 
 
 And sleep on flowers in the daytime ! " 
 
 "O king of the elves, it may not be. 
 For the sake of the folk that love me ; 
 
 I may not be queen of the elfland green. 
 For the fear of the heaven above me." 
 
 "Oh, an thou wilt be the elfland's queen, 
 Thy robe shall be blue and golden, 
 
 And thou shalt drink of the rose-red wine 
 In blue-bell chalices holden." 
 
 171 
 
172 THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 
 
 " O king of the elves, ft may not be, 
 My father at home would miss me ; 
 
 And if I were queen of the elfland green, 
 My mother would never kiss me." 
 
 "Oh, an thou wilt be the elfland's queen. 
 Thy shoon shall be seagreen sendal ; 
 
 Thy thread shall be silk as white as milk 
 And snow-white silver thy spindle." 
 
 He hath led her by the lilywhite hand 
 
 Into the hillside palace : 
 And he hath given her wine to drink 
 
 Out of the blue-bell chalice. 
 
 Now seven long years are over and gone. 
 Since the thorn began to blossom ; 
 
 And she hath brought the elf-king a son 
 And beareth it on her bosom. 
 
 "A boon, a boon, my husband the king, 
 For the sake of my babe I cry thee ! " 
 
 " Now ask what thou wilt. May Margaret ; 
 There's nothing I may deny thee." 
 
 " Oh, let me go home for a night and a day 
 To show my mother her daughter. 
 
 And fetch a priest to my bonny wee babe, 
 To sprinkle the holy water ! 
 
 " Oh, let me go home for a day and a night 
 To the little town by the river ! 
 
 And we will turn to the merry greenwood 
 And dwell with the elves for ever." 
 
THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 173 
 
 Oh, out of the elfland are they gone, 
 
 Mother and babe together, 
 And they are come, in the blithe springtime. 
 
 To the land of the blowing heather. 
 
 " Oh, where is my mother I used to kiss 
 And my father that erst caressed me ? 
 
 They both lie cold in the churchyard mould 
 And I have no whither to rest me. 
 
 " Oh, where is the dove that I used to love, 
 And the lover that used to love me ? 
 
 The one is dead, the other is fled ; 
 But the heaven is left above me. 
 
 " I pray thee, sir priest, to christen my babe 
 With bell and candle and psalter ; 
 
 And I will give up this bonny gold cup. 
 To stand on the holy altar." 
 
 " O queen of the elves, it may not be ! 
 
 The elf must suffer damnation, 
 But if thou wilt bring thy costliest thing. 
 
 As guerdon for its salvation." 
 
 " Oh, surely my life is my costliest thing ! 
 
 I give it and never rue it. 
 An if thou wilt save my innocent babe, 
 
 The blood of my heart ensue it ! " 
 
 The priest hath made the sign of the cross. 
 The white-robed choristers sing ; 
 
 But the babe is dead ere blessing be said. 
 May Margaret's costliest thing. 
 
174 THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET 
 
 Oh, drearly and loud she shrieked, as if 
 The soul from her breast should sever ! 
 
 And she hath gone to the merry greenwood. 
 To dwell with the elves for ever. 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
THE HOUSE OF SORROW 
 
 There is a story, told with many a rhyme 
 
 In dusty tomes of old, 
 Of how folk sailed, in the fresh ancient time. 
 
 Into the sunset*'s gold : 
 
 Into the land of Western hope they sailed, 
 
 To seek the soul of joy. 
 That from the modern life of men had failed. 
 
 Crushed by the dull annoy 
 
 Of pain and toil ; the gladness of the age, 
 
 When Love was king on earth. 
 And summer, midmost in the winter's rage. 
 
 In men''s warm hearts had birth : 
 
 This did they seek. Beyond the sun, they thought. 
 
 Deep in the purple West, 
 There lay the charm of joyance that they sought. 
 
 Awaiting some high quest ; 
 
 Charm to be won by earnest souls and pure 
 
 And brought anew to life ; 
 
 Wherewith provided, one might hope to cure 
 
 Men's endless dole and strife. 
 17s 
 
176 THE HOUSE OF SORROW 
 
 So, from the chains of love and toil and gold, 
 
 The love of wife and maid, — 
 All human ties had they cast loose, — unrolled 
 
 The fluttering sails and weighed 
 
 Swift anchor, steering toward the dying day, 
 
 Hope in their hearts most high 
 That they should win the charm that therein lay 
 
 For men's sake, ere to die 
 
 The angel bade them. And the high heart fell 
 
 Not in them, though the wind 
 Blew fresh and swift for many a day, the swell 
 
 Ran pearled the keel behind, 
 
 Along the emerald, and the golden dawn 
 
 Sank ever sad and pale 
 Into the westering distance and was gone, 
 
 Whenas the dew did fail ; 
 
 And nothing met their vision, save the streaks 
 
 Of gold and crimson, wound 
 About the westward, when the dead day's cheeks 
 
 Flushed with the sun, that drowned 
 
 His glory sullenly in amber foam. 
 
 And the dim mists that lay 
 Along the sapphire marges of the dome 
 
 Of heaven, in the grey 
 
 Oi the pale dawning, and the narrowing wheel 
 
 Of seabirds round the sail 
 And silver fish that played about the keel. 
 
 With many a golden scale 
 
THE HOUSE OF SORROW 177 
 
 And fin of turquoise glancing through the spray : 
 
 But never the fair line 
 Of green and golden shores, the long array 
 
 Of palaces divine, 
 
 That held the dream of their long venturings, 
 
 Rose in the changeful West ; 
 But still the ship sped with its silver wings 
 
 Over the fretted crest 
 
 Of the slow ripple ; still the sea was green 
 
 And calm on every side. 
 And the swift course unto their vision keen 
 
 Brought but the weary wide 
 
 Grey circle bounded by the silver foam ; 
 
 And still they looked and hoped 
 For the fair land where the true joy had home 
 
 Wherefor they sighed and groped 
 
 Amid the mirk of living. Ever pale 
 
 And paler grew the skies, 
 And less refulgent in its crimson mail 
 
 The hour when the day dies : 
 
 And every day the dawn was tenderer 
 
 And sadder in its white 
 And rosy pudency ; and still the stir 
 
 Of the sad winds of night 
 
 Crept closelier on the noontide, till the day 
 
 Was hardly much more glad 
 Than the pale night and morning was as grey 
 
 As when the hours are sad 
 
 M 
 
178 THE HOUSE OF SORROW 
 
 With stormy twilight. So at last they came 
 
 When, in the dreaming West, 
 The scarlet last of sunset's fading flame 
 
 Lay on the billows' breast 
 
 Still climbing skyward, as it were to catch 
 
 The day's last fluttering sigh — 
 In sight of a fair city, that did match 
 
 The tender amethyst sky, 
 
 Pale purple with the setting. Very fair 
 
 And lucent were the walls ; 
 And in the evening the enchanted hair 
 
 Of some pale star, that falls 
 
 From azure heights of mystery, did seem 
 
 To compass it about 
 And girdle it with glamours of a dream, 
 
 Webs of desire and doubt : 
 
 So that for those sweet clinging veils of mist. 
 
 Amber and vaporous. 
 One might but faintly note the amethyst 
 
 And jewels of the house 
 
 That rose with many a stately battlement 
 
 Out of the pulsing sea. 
 And could but dimly trace the forms that went, 
 
 Most fair and sad to see, 
 
 About the silver highways and the quays 
 
 Of gold and chrysoprase. 
 Tender and tristful as the shapes one sees, 
 
 In some sweet autumn haze. 
 
THE HOUSE OF SORROW 179 
 
 Flit, in the gloaming, through the enchanted air ; 
 
 When there is none to know, 
 Save some pale poet, that may never dare 
 
 To tell the lovely woe. 
 
 The tender ecstasy of sad delight 
 
 He has seen pictured there 
 Upon the canvas of the lingering light, 
 
 Under the evening air. 
 
 But they that sailed in that enchanted ship, 
 
 No whit cast down, drew sail 
 And came to where the amber-polished lip 
 
 Of the gold shore grew pale 
 
 Under the kisses of the purpled sea : 
 
 And there they landed all ; 
 And wandering inward through the blazonry 
 
 Of portico and hall, 
 
 They came to where the soul of sadness sat. 
 
 Throned in a woman's form — 
 Most holy and most lovely — and forgat 
 
 In her sweet sight the worm 
 
 Of yearning that had gnawed their hearts so long 
 
 And knew at last, 
 From her low whispers and the sad sea's song. 
 
 That thither had Life past 
 
 As to its goal-point : for the golden thing, 
 
 That they had lacked on earth. 
 Was not (as they had deemed) the god rose-wing 
 
 Of gladness and of mirth — 
 
i8o THE HOUSE OF SORROW 
 
 The god of vine-and-ivy-trellised brow 
 
 And sunny orient eyes — 
 For he doth haunt men ever, did they know 
 
 But to be linnet-wise : 
 
 But that best gift of the Immortal Ones, 
 
 That men have lost for aye ; 
 The pure sweet sadness that we know but once, 
 
 And then we pass away : 
 
 The mingled love and pain we Sorrow call, 
 
 There did it dwell alone, 
 The tender godlike pain once known to all. 
 
 Now but to poets known. 
 
 There sit they through the long unwearying years, 
 
 At that fair lady's knees. 
 Lulled by the ripple of her songs and tears 
 
 And the sweet sighful breeze 
 
 Into forgetting of the things of life 
 
 And the weird shapes that fleet 
 Across its stage of mingled dole and strife ; 
 
 For sorrow is so sweet. 
 
 There is no gladness that may equal it 
 
 Nor any charm of bliss. 
 And fain would I from the pale seekers wit 
 
 Which way the steering is 
 
 That may, with helm and sail and oar pursued. 
 
 Bring me where she doth dwell, 
 The lovely lady of that solitude. 
 
 Is there no one can tell ? 
 
 From " Ballads and Romances." 
 
SHADOW-SOUL 
 
 "Destine a n'avoir que le songe de mon existence, 
 pour moi je ne pretends pas vivre, mais seulement 
 regarder la vie. . . . Des jours pleins de tristesse, I'habi- 
 tude reveuse d'une ame comprimee, les longs ennuis 
 qui perpdtuent le sentiment du n^ant de la vie." — 
 Senancourt. 
 
 "On m'a demand^, ' Pourquoi pleurez-vous?' Et 
 quand je I'ait dit, nul n'a pleur^, parce que Ton ne me 
 comprenoit point. . . . Je soupire parce que la vie n'est 
 pas venue jusqu'4 moi." — Lamenn'Ais. 
 
 There is a tale of days of old 
 
 Of how a man, by sorcery, 
 Wrought to defeat the spells that hold 
 
 The soul in bonds, and spirit-free 
 At will to wander, naked-souled. 
 
 About the earth and air and sea. 
 
 Long thus he went (the legend says) 
 
 Until at length a counter-spell, 
 Flung out upon the worldly ways 
 
 From some abysmal crack of hell. 
 Seized on him and, for all his days. 
 
 Doomed him to walk invisible ; 
 
 Doomed him to pass among the things 
 Of life, its joy and strife and dole, 
 
 Note all men's hopes and wearyings, 
 Feel all their tides beside him roll, 
 
 Yet have in all no communings. 
 But walk a lone, unfriended soul. 
 
 x8i 
 
i82 SHADOW-SOUL 
 
 So oftentimes to me it seems 
 
 As if some sad enchantment laid 
 
 Upon my life its hand, that teems 
 With many-mingling spells of shade, 
 
 And walled me in a web of dreams, 
 Shut out and sole from human aid. 
 
 For life has nought to do with me ; 
 
 I stand and watch its pageant pass, 
 Stream by with pomp and blazonry 
 
 Of many goodly things. Alas ! 
 Before my gaze its glories flee. 
 
 Like moon-motes on a dream-lake's glass. 
 
 Life's guerdons melt beneath my hands ; 
 
 Its sweets fade from me like a mist : 
 I see folk conquer in the lands ; 
 
 I know men crowned for what I missed ; 
 I see my barren grey life-sands 
 
 Yield to them gold and amethyst. 
 
 My life is such a shadow-thing, — 
 So all unmixed with other lives, 
 
 With all men's joy and suffering 
 
 And all the aims for which life strives, — 
 
 I think sometimes each hour must bring 
 The nothingness whence it derives. 
 
 For men pass by me through the air. 
 Hot with bright stress of eager aims 
 
 Or furrowed with a sordid care. 
 
 Seeking sweet ease or blazoned names ; 
 
 Glance at me with a passing stare 
 
 And vanish from me like swift flames. 
 
SHADOW-SOUL 183 
 
 My soul is like a wandering light 
 
 Born of marsh-solitudes and lost, 
 A hollow flame of heatless white, 
 
 Among a ruddy life-warm host 
 Of living fires, — that may unite 
 
 With none, a solitary ghost. 
 
 My voice is like the voice of woods, 
 
 When the wind shrills between the pines ; 
 
 An echo of sad autumn moods. 
 Wherein the listening ear divines 
 
 A tale of endless solitudes, 
 
 Dim vistas stretched in shadowy lines. 
 
 My eyes are like some lake of dun. 
 
 Hid in the shadow of the hills ; 
 Where all around, by day, the sun 
 
 Shines nor may pass athwart its sills 
 Of firs, but, when the day is done. 
 
 The white moon all the silence fills. 
 
 I gaze around me as I go, 
 
 A pale leaf drifting down the stream ; 
 Men's lives flit by me on the flow. 
 
 Made dark or bright with shade or gleam : 
 For me, I feel them not, nor know ; 
 
 Life passes by me like a dream. 
 
 I wander with sad yearning eyes 
 And heart a-longing for the lost, 
 
 (Known but in some dream-Paradise) : 
 And ever as my way is crossed 
 
 By folk, my sad soul shrinks and flies. 
 Among live men a sighing ghost. 
 
i84 SHADOW-SOUL 
 
 My feet love well to haunt the meads 
 And wander where the thrush is loud ; 
 
 And yet some sad enchantment leads 
 Me aye among the busy crowd, 
 
 And with bent head, my life proceeds. 
 Where the smoke hovers like a cloud. 
 
 And as I wander, once-a-while 
 I turn to gaze on folk gone by. 
 
 That seem to me not wholly vile. 
 Having some kindred in their eye : 
 
 They pass me mutely, and I smile 
 And my heart pulses like to die. 
 
 My heart feeds on its own desire : 
 
 The flowers that blossom in my breast 
 
 Blow out to frail life and expire, 
 
 Unknown, unloved and uncaressed ; 
 
 And the pale phantom-haunted fire 
 Burns inward aye of my unrest. 
 
 I see twinned lovers, hand in hand. 
 Walk in the shadow of the trees ; 
 
 Across the gold floor of the sand 
 Life passes by with melodies : 
 
 Alone upon the brink I stand 
 
 And hear the murmur of the seas. 
 
 I see afar full many a maid 
 
 Walk, musing of the love to come ; 
 
 But, as I near them, in the shade 
 Of my sad eyes they read my doom 
 
 Of lonely life, and fly afraid 
 
 And leave me silent in my gloom. 
 
SHADOW-SOUL 185 
 
 None may take hold upon my soul : 
 
 No spirit flies from men to me ; 
 Billows of dreams between us roll, 
 
 Waves spreading out to a great sea : 
 Neither in gladness nor in dole 
 
 Can our desires conjoined be. 
 
 I have no heart in their delight ; 
 
 My aim has nothing of their aim ; 
 And yet the same flowers soothe our sight ; 
 
 The air that rounds us is the same ; 
 The same moon haunts our ways by night ; 
 
 The same sun rises like a flame. 
 
 But over me a charm is cast, 
 
 A spell of flowers and fate and fire ; 
 
 My hands stretch out through wastes more vast, 
 My dreams from deeper deeps aspire : 
 
 Life throbs around me, like a blast 
 That sweeps the courses of a lyre. 
 
 The merest unregarded thing. 
 
 Dropped into this my solitude, 
 Fills all my soul with echoing 
 
 Of dreams, as in some haunted wood 
 A pebble's plash into a spring 
 
 Is by the circling air renewed. 
 
 And yet there stirs a great desire 
 For human aid within my breast ; 
 
 Men's doings haunt me like a fire, 
 
 My heart throbs loud with their unrest ; 
 
 And now and then, as hope draws nigher, 
 My soul leaps to them, unrepressed. 
 
1 86 SHADOW-SOUL 
 
 For, though my feet in silence move 
 Alone across this waste of hours, 
 
 My heart strains hopeward like a dove. 
 My soul bursts out in passion-flowers ; 
 
 My life brims o'er with a great love, 
 Alone in this wide world of ours. 
 
 My full soul quivers with a tide 
 
 Of songs ; my head heaves with a hum 
 
 Of golden words, that shall divide 
 
 The dusk and bid the full light come. 
 
 Alas ! men pass me, careless-eyed ; 
 And still my lips are cold and dumb. 
 
 I go beneath the moon at night. 
 Along the grey deserted streets ; 
 
 My heart yearns out in the wan light, 
 A new hope pulses in its beats ; 
 
 Meseems that in the radiance white 
 My soul a like pale spirit meets ; 
 
 As if the trance of the sad star 
 
 Were the mute passion of some spright. 
 
 That (like my own) some fate did bar 
 From all life's fruits of dear delight ; 
 
 Some soul that aye must mourn afar 
 And never with its love unite. 
 
 Then doth my heart in blossoms ope ; 
 
 A new sweet music sweeps along 
 The courses of my soul ; the scope 
 
 Of heaven is peopled with a throng 
 Of long-pent thoughts and all my hope 
 
 Pours forth into a flood of song. 
 
SHADOW-SOUL 187 
 
 Bytimes, too, as I walk alone, 
 
 The mists roll up before my eyes 
 
 And unto me strange lights are shown 
 And many a dream of sapphire skies ; 
 
 The world and all its cares are gone ; 
 I walk awhile in Paradise. 
 
 But, in the day unfolded clear, 
 When the fresh life is all begun. 
 
 My soul into the old sad sphere 
 
 Falls off; my dull feet seem to shun 
 
 Once more the daylight, and I fear 
 To face the frankness of the sun. 
 
 Alone and dumb, my heart yearns sore ; 
 
 I am nigh worn with waste desire : 
 I stand upon a rocky shore. 
 
 Watch life and love sail nigh and nigher ; 
 Then all pass by for evermore 
 
 And leave me by my last hope's pyre. 
 
 And yet I grieve not nor complain ; 
 
 The time for me has long gone by. 
 When I could half assuage my pain 
 
 By giving it delivery : 
 My grief within my breast has lain 
 
 Unspoken and my eyes are dry. 
 
 I am confirmed in this my fate ; 
 
 I lock my love within my breast 
 Nor look to find my soul a mate 
 
 Nor match with hope my hope unblest : 
 I am content to watch and wait, 
 
 Impassible in my unrest. 
 
SHADOW-SOUL 
 
 Long have I ceased the idle stress 
 Toward the rending of my gloom : 
 
 I am made whole in loneliness ; 
 I lay no blame on this my doom ; 
 
 I curse not, if I do not bless : 
 My life is silent as the tomb. 
 
 And yet (methinks) some day of days, 
 The silence, that doth wrap me round, 
 
 Shall at its heart of soundless ways 
 With some faint echoing resound 
 
 Of my own heart-cry, and the rays 
 Of a like light in it be found. 
 
 Haply, one day these songs of mine 
 Some world-worn mortal shall console 
 
 With savour of the bitter wine 
 
 Of tears crushed out from a man's dole ; 
 
 And he shall say, tears in his eyne, 
 
 There was great love in this mans soul ! 
 
 Ay^ hitter crushed-out wine of love ^ 
 Pressed out upon his every ivord ; 
 
 A note as of some sad-voiced dove^ 
 As of some white unfriended bird^ 
 
 Dwelling alone in some dim grove ^ 
 
 Whose song no man hath ever heard ; 
 
 But only the pale trackless sea 
 
 And the clear trances of the moon 
 
 Have quivered to his melody ; 
 And for the rapture of the tune. 
 
 Their attributes^ sad sanctity 
 
 And peace, theyj^gave to him for boon ,• 
 
SHADOW-SOUL 189 
 
 So that his sadness^ in the womb 
 
 Of the mild piteous years, has grown 
 
 A holy thing ; and from the tomby 
 Where in the shade he lies alone, 
 
 {^As was in life his lonely doom) 
 The seed of his desire has blown 
 
 Into a flower above his grave. 
 
 Full of most fair and holy scent ; 
 Most powerful and sweet to save 
 
 And to heal men from dreariment. 
 And I shall turn me in my grave 
 
 And fall to sleep again, content. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
DOUBLE BALLAD 
 
 OF THE SINGERS OF THE TIME 
 
 Why are our songs like the moan of the main, 
 
 When the wild winds buffet it to and fro, 
 (Our brothers ask us again and again) 
 
 A weary burden of hopes laid low ? 
 
 Have birds left singing or flowers to blow ? 
 Is life cast down from its fair estate ? 
 
 This I answer them — nothing mo' — 
 Songs and singers are out of date. 
 
 What shall we sing of? Our hearts are fain, 
 Our bosoms burn with a sterile glow. 
 
 Shall we sing of the sordid strife for gain. 
 For shameful honour, for wealth and woe, 
 Hunger and luxury, — weeds that throw 
 
 Up from one seeding their flowers of hate ? 
 
 Can we tune our lutes to these themes ? Ah, no ! 
 
 Songs and singers are out of date. 
 
 Our songs should be of faith without stain, 
 Of haughty honour and deaths that sow 
 
 The seeds of life on the battle-plain, 
 Of loves unsullied and eyes that show 
 The fair white soul in the deeps below. 
 
 Where are they, these that our songs await 
 To wake to joyance ? Doth any know ? 
 
 Songs and singers are out of date. 
 
DOUBLE BALLAD 191 
 
 What have we done with meadow and lane ? 
 
 Where are the flowers and the hawthorn-snow ? 
 Acres of brick in the pitiless rain, — 
 
 These are our gardens for thorpe and stow. 
 
 Summer has left us long ago, 
 Turned to the lands where the turtles mate 
 
 And the crickets chirp in the wild-rose row. 
 Songs and singers are out of date. 
 
 We sit and sing to a world in pain ; 
 
 Our heart-strings quiver sadly and slow : 
 But, aye and anon, the murmurous strain 
 
 Swells up to a clangour of strife and throe, 
 
 And the folk that hearken, or friend or foe, 
 Are ware that the stress of the time is great. 
 
 And say to themselves, as they come and go. 
 Songs and singers are out oj date. 
 
 Winter holds us, body and brain : 
 
 Ice is over our being's flow ; 
 Song is a flower that will droop and wane. 
 
 If it have no heaven toward which to grow. 
 
 Faith and beauty are dead, I trow ; 
 Nothing is left but fear and fate : 
 
 Men are weary of hope ; and so 
 Songs and singers are out of date. 
 
 From "Exotica." 
 
THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 
 
 Bytimes, from out the stillness of my days, 
 
 Grown silent, as they nigh 
 The darkness and the undiscovered ways, 
 
 I hear folk question why 
 The fountain of my songs, that once ran high 
 
 And full, is fallen dry ; 
 Why in that concert of the fields and hills 
 
 Of poesy, that fills 
 Our English heaven with music never mute, 
 
 There is one broken lute, 
 
 One voiceless bird. 
 One linnet of the woods, whose wilding note, 
 
 Erst in the morning hours of some that heard 
 Held sweet, is dumb within his stricken throat. 
 
 Ere yet the glory of the noon be o'er, — 
 Whose song, though day still shines, is heard no more. 
 
 — They ask in very idleness, nor pause 
 
 For answer ; yet the cause 
 Who will may know : 
 My voice is dumb for weariness of woe. 
 
 I am no night-bird piping in the dark ; 
 
 For me, as for the lark, 
 The sun must rise to set me on the wing : 
 Except hope shine on me, I cannot sing : 
 
THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 193 
 
 I cannot carol in a lightless land 
 
 Nor hymn the dawn, except it be at hand.] 
 
 Love was my dayspring and my evenglow, 
 
 The sun that set my April blossoming, 
 That made my summer carolful ; and lo ! 
 My daystar set in darkness long ago. 
 
 My sun lies buried in a nameless tomb, 
 Midmost a mighty desert of the dead, 
 Where the great city's gloom 
 Lengthens its skirt of shadow overhead, 
 Darkening the morning and the evening red. 
 
 There, in the narrow room, 
 After long pain and many a piteous day 
 Of hopeless waiting for the hopeless end, 
 Since love nor care might bend 
 The iron course of fore-appointed doom, 
 
 Her weary head to lay 
 She came, for whom my songs were sung of yore. 
 For whom the barrens of my life ran o'er 
 With lush and lavish bloom. 
 
 Since that sad day, my songs are turned to sighs ; 
 The flowerage of my heart is all fordone : 
 But she, the eternal rest so hardly won, 
 
 At peace she lies 
 And sleeps as well, frail lover of the sun. 
 
 Beneath our English skies, 
 Our pallid skies of watchet-chequered dun. 
 As if she lay where the rose-laurels run 
 Adown Grenada's hillside, torrent-wise, 
 Or where, amidst the Andalusian vines, 
 The rosy gold of Seville's turrets shines. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 
 
 Ah, what is left us of the dear-loved dead ? 
 The dainty gold-fledged head, 
 
 The eyes' soft grey, 
 From which the dreams of childhood never fled ; 
 
 The mouth's rose-campion red, 
 The lips, on which the faint smile sat alway. 
 Sad as the break of April's youngest day ; 
 The rose-blush cheeks and forehead, garlanded 
 
 With clustering curls astray. 
 Like woodbine tendrils in the flush of May ; 
 The voice, too soft for joy, too sweet for pain. 
 
 That in its blithest tone 
 Had yet some note of never-ceasing moan. 
 
 Some half-enchanted strain, 
 As of some disembodied spirit, fain 
 
 To be set free again 
 From this waste world that never was its own. 
 
 Since in some clime unknown 
 The airs and flames of heaven to it were blown ? 
 These hath Time taken back to its treasury, 
 In other worlds, mayhap, alas ! but ne'er 
 In this of night and day reborn to be : 
 Nay, all are gone and even memory 
 
 Will fade of what they were. 
 Might we but deem some lapse of land and sea, 
 
 Some brighter sky 
 Should bring these back to heart and ear and eye, 
 
 These that in death's hand lie ! 
 Ah God, to see the daisies springing there. 
 
 Year after year, as if life ne'er should die. 
 And see no sign and know no reason why 
 
 Her life that was so fair, 
 Her soul, that was so sweet, so heavens-high. 
 
 Is faded out for e'er 
 Into the deserts of the abysmal air ! 
 
THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 195 
 
 Could we but hope the all-engrossing earth, 
 
 That for the eternal rest 
 Took back her blighted beauty to its breast, 
 
 Might yet enrich our dearth 
 With some unknown, enchanted wonder-birth 
 Of blossom, brilliant as her starry eyes. 
 
 Sweet as her balmy breath. 
 Some flowerage of heaven, defying death, 
 Wherein our yearning memory might retrace 
 
 The frankness of her face, 
 In whose bright beauty thought might recognise 
 The spirit-prime of her lost loveliness. 
 
 Born as it were again 
 In some new earth, delivered from the press 
 Of mortal grossness by the purge of pain, — 
 Or might we deem the unresponsive air, 
 — That bore her gentle spirit far away 
 
 And scattered it for aye 
 Beyond the confines of the night and day. 
 To all the winds of being, nor would e'er 
 
 Vouchsafe to our despair 
 One echo of her voice's dulcet strain, — 
 Should yet grow great with graciousness and bear 
 Some mystic birth of music strange and fair, 
 Some seraph-song of Paradisal bird. 
 Some melody of mortals never heard. 
 
 Wherein her silver speech 
 And the far memory of her voice might reach 
 Our longing ears and witness to our faith. 
 She was not all disfeatured by the scaith 
 
 Of unrespective death. 
 That something of her sweetness yet survives 
 
 In interstellar lands 
 Or in the sunset-calm of spirit-lives. 
 Nor was all scattered by the 'scape of breath ! 
 
196 THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 
 
 Nay, hope is vain ; in vain our lifted hands ! 
 In vain our cryings storm the heaven's stair : 
 There are no ears to hearken anyw^here, 
 No lips to speak in ansv^^er to our prayer. 
 The heavens are empty as the empty air ; 
 The Gods are dead as she is dead, and nought 
 
 Abides of her but thought. 
 In one man's brain, who soon himself must go 
 To join the unnumbered nations that lie low^ 
 In that untravelled land v/here thought is none 
 And sight is senseless there of star and sun. 
 
 One sole man''s thought against the grim array 
 Of Death and Fate her only hope and stay, 
 
 Her one 
 Frail-seeming fortalice ! And yet, how slight 
 Soe'er it show against the iron might 
 Of the blind Titans of oblivion, 
 Methinks it shall suffice for many a day 
 
 To hinder Time's decay 
 From blotting out her traces ; yea, despite 
 The myriad graves that let her from the light, 
 
 Th"" innumerable throngs 
 That overcrowd her of the nameless dead, 
 . Remembrance still shall blossom o''er her head 
 And guard her gentle memory from Time's wrongs ; 
 
 For in that narrow bed 
 With her my heart lies buried, and my songs. 
 
 If you should find the hidden violet there. 
 
 Softening the smoky air 
 With that sad scent of hers, that seems to hold 
 The very soul of tears, or see the mould 
 
 Lit with the lucent gold 
 
THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 197 
 
 Of thronging primrose, — if the breeze should bear 
 
 The roses' royal breath 
 
 And lilies white, 
 The fair flower-angels with the heart of light. 
 With jessamines unite 
 To glorify that darkling garth of death, — 
 
 Think not these are but flowers. 
 The common creatures of the sun and showers : 
 Nay, these are no mere scions of the spring. 
 
 No summer's blossoming. 
 The tired earth's homage to the lengthening hours j 
 These are the secret treasures of my prime. 
 
 My hoards of love and rhyme. 
 Which, did she live, were songs, but, she being dead. 
 
 Are flowers above her head. 
 
 If you should marvel there to hear the lark 
 
 Sunder the morning-dark 
 With that shrill clarion call of his for light. 
 
 Out of the deeps of night, 
 Or mark the mavis and the ousel make 
 Their wild free music there for April's sake, — 
 Nay, if some magic in the air should bring 
 
 The nightingales to sing 
 Her requiem who rests beneath the earth 
 In this grim graveyard city of her birth. 
 Deem not but birds are these. 
 But simple songsters of the woods and leas. 
 These are no common choristers of air. 
 The singing sprites of heaven's lowest stair. 
 That hymn the spring and summer everywhere ; 
 They are the tuneful creatures of my soul. 
 
 My thoughts of joy and dole, 
 
198 THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS 
 
 Which, did she live, were music wild and free, 
 
 Pageant and jubilee, 
 Such as had overflooded land and sea 
 With tides of song, but, she being dead, I gave 
 
 To glorify her grave. 
 
 From " Songs of Life and Death." 
 
SONNETS 
 
 J. B. COROT 
 
 Died 22nd February 1875 
 
 Before the earliest violet he died, 
 
 Who loved the new^ green and the stress of spring 
 
 So tenderly. He knew that March must bring 
 
 The primrose by the brook and all the w^ide 
 
 Green spaces of the forest glorified 
 
 With scent and singing, w^hen each passing v^ing 
 
 Would call him and each burst of blossoming : 
 
 He knewT he could not die in the springtide. 
 
 Yet he was weary, for his task was done 
 
 And sleep seemed sweet unto the tired eyes : 
 
 Weary ! for many a year he had seen the sun 
 
 Arise ; so in the season of the snows 
 
 He put off life — ere spring could interpose 
 
 To hold him back — and went where Gautier lies. 
 
 199 
 
200 SONNETS 
 
 A STEPHANE MALLARME 
 
 Ami, te souviens-tu des longues causeries, 
 Nous promenant le soir le long du Serpentin, 
 Suivant, les yeux ravis, le rayon argentin, 
 Qui, revetant les tons roses des reveries, 
 S'en allait, lentement, le long des eclaircies ? 
 Douce, la nuit venait sur I'ombrage serein 
 Et dans I'eau satinee, aux moirages d'etain, 
 Les gaseliers piquaient leurs flammes adoucies. 
 Cependant, nous causions, pliens de la fin du jour, 
 Du grand et puissant Art, cette noble maitresse 
 Qui serre nos deux coeurs de son fecond amour. 
 Sur nos levres — refrain qui revenait sans cesse — 
 Chantaient les vers aim6s, les noms des grands amis ; 
 Londres pour nous ce soir redevenait Paris. 
 
 From " Les Soirs de Londres." 
 
SONNETS 20I 
 
 HYDE PARK 
 
 II est un oasis dans la noire cite, 
 
 Nid fleurant ou celui, — dont I'esprit reveur ose, 
 
 Dans ton Babel infect, que la fumee arrose, 
 
 O Londres, 6 s^jour lugubre et enchante, 
 
 Songer parfois a I'Art et la sainte beaut6, — 
 
 Vient la soir, un instant, a I'heure ou le ciel rose 
 
 Guerit du gazon vert la diurne chlorose, 
 
 Se tremper dans le calme et dans rimmensite. 
 
 Parmi la foule, helas ! qui crie et se lutine, 
 
 Esp^rant vainement de tromper la rigueur 
 
 Du chien noir du travail qui tout pres d'eux chemine, 
 
 Seul et sileacieux, il passe, lui, reveur : 
 
 Et quand la nuit gravit la pente crystalline, 
 
 Les vers germent, joyeux, dans son esprit en fleur. 
 
 From " Les Soirs de Londres." 
 
202 SONNETS 
 
 SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 
 
 The desert of the unaccomplished years 
 Fills the round compass of our careful eyes 
 And still, from age to age, the same suns rise 
 And life troops past, a masque of smiles and tears : 
 The same void hopes vie with the same vain fears 
 And in the grey sad circuit of the skies. 
 To the monotonous music of our sighs, ^ 
 
 We plod tovi^ard the goal that never nears. 
 Ah, who shall solve us of the dreary days. 
 The unlived life and the tormenting dreams. 
 That on the happy blank of easeful night 
 Paint evermore for us the backward ways 
 And the old mirage, with its cheating streams. 
 And urge us back into the unwon fight ? 
 
SONNETS 203 
 
 SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 
 
 We turn for comfort to the wise of old, 
 
 For tidings of the land that lies ahead, 
 
 The land to which their firmer feet have led, 
 
 Hymning its shores of amethyst and gold. 
 
 We ask ; the answer comes back stern and cold ; 
 
 " Gird up your loins ! Rest is not for the dead. 
 
 Beyond the graveyard and the evening-red. 
 
 New lives and ever yet new lives unfold." 
 
 Ye speak in vain. If rest be not from life. 
 
 What reck we of new worlds and clearer air. 
 
 Of brighter suns and skies of deeper blue. 
 
 If life and all its weariness be there ? 
 
 Is there no sage of all we turn unto 
 
 Will guide us to the guerdon of our strife ? 
 
204 SONNETS 
 
 SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 
 
 III 
 
 Yes, there is one : for the sad sons of man, 
 
 That languish in the deserts, travail-worn, 
 
 Five times five hundred years ago was born. 
 
 Under those Orient skies, from whence began 
 
 All light, a saviour from the triple ban 
 
 Of birth and death and life renewed forlorn. 
 
 Third of the Christs he came to those who mourn : 
 
 Prometheus, Hercules had led the van. 
 
 His scriptures were the forest and the fen : 
 
 From the dead flower he learnt and the spent night 
 
 The lesson of the eternal nothingness, 
 
 How what is best is ceasing from the light 
 
 And putting off life's raiment of duresse. 
 
 And taught it to the weary race of men. 
 
SONNETS 205 
 
 SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA 
 
 IV 
 
 He did not mock the battle-broken soul 
 
 With promise of vain heavens beyond the tomb, 
 
 As who should think to break the boding gloom 
 
 Of stormful skies, uplifting to the pole 
 
 Gilt suns and tinsel stars. Unto their dole. 
 
 Who batten on life's galls, he knew no doom 
 
 Is dread as that which in death's darkling womb 
 
 Rewrites life's endless and accursed scroll. 
 
 Wherefore he taught that to abstain is best. 
 
 Seeing that to those, who have their hope in nought, 
 
 Peace quicklier comes and that eternal rest, 
 
 Wherein ensphered thou, Siddartha, art, 
 
 Chief of the high sad souls that sit apart. 
 
 Throned in their incommunicable thought. 
 
2o6 SONNETS 
 
 CON UN ESEMPLARE BELLA 
 DIVINA COMMEDIA 
 
 Amico, in questo libro che ti dono, 
 La voce angelica del dottor mio, 
 De' lai mie' maestro e quasi dio, 
 Deir alte cose e con vario suono, 
 Ch' ora sembr' arpeggiar ed ora tuono, 
 Ragiona, ne' suoi canti oltra pregio, 
 Poeta, a te poeta il travaglio, 
 Tesor di tutti chi poeti sono, 
 Offro, affinche fra noi due impegno 
 D' amicizia ed anche segno sia 
 Del camminar commune nella Via 
 Deir alme nostre, varie d' ingegno 
 Fill che le luci suUe sfere spunte, 
 Ma nondimen nel variar congiunte. 
 
SONNETS 207 
 
 TRANSLATION OF THE FOREGOING 
 
 WITH A COPY OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 
 
 Friend,^ in this book I proffer thee hereby, 
 The angehc voice of him my song obeys, 
 The well-nigh God and master of my lays, 
 With various speech, of matters rare and high. 
 That harp notes now, now thunder doth outvie, 
 Discourseth in his verses passing praise. 
 This treasured work of all who bear the bays, 
 A poet, to thee, poet, offer I, 
 That evermore a pledge betwixt us twain 
 Of friendship and to boot a sign it may 
 Be of the common travel in the Way 
 Of our two souls, that various of strain 
 More than in heaven benighted star and star. 
 But none the less conjoined in variance are. 
 
 1 Arthur O'Shaughnessy. 
 
2o8 SONNETS 
 
 OMAR KHEYYAM 
 
 O THOU, the Orient morning's nightingale, 
 
 That, from the darkness of the Long Ago, 
 
 Thy note of unpropitiable woe 
 
 Cast'st out upon the time-traversing gale, 
 
 — Its burden still life's lamentable tale. 
 
 Too late come hither and too soon to go, 
 
 Whence brought and whither bounden none doth know 
 
 Nor why thrust forth into this world of wail, — 
 
 We, thy sad brethren of the Western lands, 
 
 Sons of the secret of this latter day, 
 
 We, who have sailed with thee the sea of tears. 
 
 Have trod with thee the blood-devouring way. 
 
 We, thy soul's mates, with thee join hearts and hands 
 
 Across the abysses of eight hundred years. 
 
SONNETS 
 
 209 
 
 AD DANTEM 
 
 To thee, my master, thee, my shining one. 
 Whose solitary face, immovable. 
 Burning athwart the midmost glooms of Hell, 
 Calls up stern shadows of the things undone, — 
 To thee, immortal, shining like the sun 
 In the blue heart of heaven's clearest bell. 
 Circled with radiances ineffable, — 
 These pale sad flowers I bring, — how hardly won 
 From this grey night of modern lovelessness. 
 How hardly and how wearily God knows ! 
 These at thy feet I lay, whose hues confess 
 Thy mighty shade, so haply they may shine 
 With some pale reflex of that light divine 
 Which ripples round thine own supernal rose. 
 
210 SONNETS 
 
 WITH A COPY OF HENRY VAUGHAN'S 
 SACRED POEMS 
 
 Lay down thy burden at this gate, and knock. 
 
 What if the world without be dark and drear ? 
 
 For there be fountains of refreshment here 
 
 Sweeter than all the runnels of the rock. 
 
 Hark ! even to thy hand upon the lock 
 
 A wilding warble answers, loud and clear, 
 
 That falls as fain upon the heart of fear 
 
 As shepherds' songs unto the folded flock. 
 
 This is the quiet wood-church of the soul. 
 
 Be thankful, heart, to him betimes that stole, 
 
 Some Easter morning, through the golden door — 
 
 Haply ajar for early prayer to rise — 
 
 And brought thee back from that song-flowered shore 
 
 These haunting harmonies of Paradise. 
 
SONNETS 2H 
 
 BEATRICE 
 
 Sweet, I have sung of thee in many modes, 
 If haply singing I might ease my pain ; 
 And still the unwearying fates bring me again 
 Back by the flowery and the thorny roads 
 To the old goal-point : still my soul forbodes 
 The coming of the sad sweet dreams of old 
 And in my Occident the sunset's gold 
 Grows dim and sad above the lost abodes. 
 Dear, had I loved thee less or loved life more. 
 Had had more hope in men, in love less faith, 
 I should not now be seeking, as of yore. 
 For the faint sadness of dream-violets' breath ; 
 I should not now be weaving, o'er and o'er. 
 These bitter melodies of Love and Death. 
 
212 SONNETS 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER 
 
 I SAID, " The time of grief is overpast : 
 
 The mists of morning hold the plains no more ; 
 
 The flowers of spring are dead ; the woods that wore 
 
 The silver suits of summer o'er them cast 
 
 Are stripped and bare before the wintry blast. 
 
 Is it for thee to weary and implore 
 
 The ruthless gods, to beat against their door 
 
 For ever and for ever to the last ? 
 
 Rise and be strong ; yonder the new life lies. 
 
 Who knows but haply, past the sand-hills traced 
 
 Bounding the prospect, destiny have placed 
 
 A sunny land of flowers and sapphire skies. 
 
 For balm of hearts and cure of loves laid waste ? 
 
 Up, and leave weeping to a woman's eyes ! " 
 
SONNETS 213 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER 
 
 II 
 
 Then turned I sadly to the olden signs 
 By which I had so long lived lingering ; 
 The faded woods, the birds long ceased to sing, 
 The withered grapes dried on the weathered vines 
 And the thin rill that through the time-worn lines 
 Of grey-leaved herbs fled, faintly murmuring 
 Its ghostly memories of the songs of spring, 
 Weird whispers of the wind among the pines. 
 Farewell I bade them all, with heart as sad 
 Well-nigh as when love left me long ago, 
 And turned into the distance. Long I had 
 Their murmur in my ears, as long and slow 
 The melancholy way did spread and wind 
 That left the memories of youth behind. 
 
214 SONNETS 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER 
 
 III 
 
 At last a new land opened on my view : 
 No phantom of the dear dead spring of old 
 It was, but a fair land of autumn gold 
 And corn-fields sloping to a sea of blue : 
 And I looked down upon its face and knew 
 The autumn land of which my heart had told, 
 The land where love at last should be consoled 
 And balm flower forth among life's leaves of rue. 
 A sunset land it was ; and long and sweet. 
 The shadows of the setting lay on it : 
 And through the long fair valleys there did flit 
 Strange birds with pale gold wings, that did repeat 
 The loveliest songs whereof men aye had wit ; 
 And over all the legend " Peace " was writ. 
 
SONNETS 215 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER 
 
 IV 
 
 And as I gazed on it, my heart was filled 
 
 With rapture of the sudden cease of pain : 
 
 And in my spirit, ever and again, 
 
 There rang the golden legend, sweet and stilled 
 
 With speech of birds ; and in the pauses rilled 
 
 Fair fountains through the green peace of the plain, 
 
 That with the tinkle of their golden rain 
 
 Made carol to the songs the linnets trilled ; 
 
 Whilst, over all, the waves upon the shore 
 
 Throbbed with a music, sad but very sweet, 
 
 That had in it the melodies of yore, 
 
 Softened, as when the angels do repeat. 
 
 In heaven, to souls in rapture of new birth. 
 
 The names that they have sadly borne on earth. 
 
2i6 SONNETS 
 
 TROPIC FLOWER 
 
 As I went walking in the air one day — 
 
 Sadly enough — a thought laid hold on me 
 
 With flower-soft hands and would not set me free. 
 
 It was, meseemed, as if a rose of May 
 
 Blew suddenly against a wintry way 
 
 Of snow and barren boughs ; for I could see 
 
 No cause why such a lovely light should be 
 
 In my dull soul, nor how my heart's dismay 
 
 Should have lent life to any pleasant thing. 
 
 But, with remembering, presently I knew 
 
 That this was but the scarlet flowering 
 
 Of some most bitter aloe-root that grew 
 
 In my sick soul an hundred years and drew 
 
 All my lost summers to its single spring. 
 
SONNETS 217 
 
 EVOCATION 
 
 SECOND SONNET 
 
 How many times, sweetheart, how many times 
 
 I have made running rivers of my sighs, 
 
 Poured out my yearning into melodies 
 
 Of love, that on the torrent of my rhymes 
 
 My thought might voyage to those golden climes 
 
 Of mystery, jewelled o'er with sapphire skies, 
 
 Where thy feet walk and make life Paradise ! 
 
 And unto thee, mayhap, as 'twere the chimes 
 
 Of some far dream-bell fluttering in the air. 
 
 The echo of my great desire has won. 
 
 Like to a sigh of spirits far away ; 
 
 And thou, with some still sadness filled and fair, 
 
 Hast for a dream-space stood and watched the sun 
 
 And the clear colours fading from the day. 
 
2i8 SONNETS 
 
 FEMME FELLAH DE LANDELLE 
 
 O THOU that hold'st the desert in thine eyes, 
 With that long look into the world of dreams, 
 As of deep yearning for the distant streams 
 Of some green oasis that haply lies 
 Beyond the torrid glow of orient skies 
 In the blue distance ! I have known thee long 
 In that dim dreamland, where the fluted song 
 Of nightingales is mixed with dulcet sighs 
 Of scented winds and balm of mystic flowers ; 
 And in the white warm moonlight, all bestrewn 
 About the trellised woodways and the bowers 
 Vine-clustered, I have often known the tune 
 Of birds swell sweetlier and the hurrying hours 
 Halt, as thy face grew clear beneath the moon. 
 
SONNETS 219 
 
 INDIAN ISLE 
 
 I FOUND in dreams a dwelling of delight 
 
 And did possess it with my soul's desire : 
 
 An island, cinctured with the radiant fire 
 
 Of orient noons and girt about with white 
 
 Of wave-washed reefs, wherein there slumbered bright. 
 
 Ah ! dream-bright bays, that brought the blue sky nigher 
 
 Down to my wish ; and many a flower-sheathed spire 
 
 Of mystic splendid trees bare up that height 
 
 Of imminent azure, flowered above the earth. 
 
 There, for my spirit's ease, my hope I laid, 
 
 To dwell within that golden-hearted shade 
 
 And drink the splendour of the things that be. 
 
 Renewing ever with the new sun's birth 
 
 And rounded with the slumber of the sea. 
 
220 SONNETS 
 
 LIFE UNLIVED 
 
 How many months, how many a weary year 
 My soul had stood upon that brink of days, 
 Straining dim eyes into the treacherous haze 
 For signs of life's beginning. Far and near 
 The grey mist floated, like a shadow-mere, 
 Beyond hope's bounds ; and in the lapsing ways. 
 Pale phantoms flitted, seeming to my gaze 
 The portents of the coming hope and fear. 
 " Surely," I said, " life shall rise up at last, 
 Shall sweep me by with pageant and delight ! " 
 But, as I spoke, the waste shook with a blast 
 Of cries and clamours of a mighty fight ; 
 Then all was still. Upon me fell the night, 
 And a voice whispered to me, " Life is past." 
 
SONNETS 221 
 
 ENGLAND'S HOPE: KITCHENER 
 OF KHARTOUM 
 
 Whelp of the lion-breed of Wellington ; 
 Careless to fit the date unto the deed 
 Or trumpet forth, that all who run may read, 
 His valiant worth to every mother's son ; 
 In the lost field, as in the victory won, 
 Steadfast alike, unrecking whose the meed. 
 So but the achievement of his country's need 
 And honour saved attend on duty done : 
 Diluting action not with vain debate ; 
 Contemptuous of Fortune's good and ill ; 
 Not blown about, as is the unstable soul, 
 Hither and thither with each shift of fate. 
 But constant as the compass to the pole. 
 Fast founded on th' unconquerable will. 
 
 November 1900. 
 
222 SONNETS 
 
 ANGEL DEATH 
 
 Lo ! I have made an end of many things, 
 
 Singing ; yet never have I sung to thee, 
 
 Beloved angel, that by life's sad sea 
 
 Standest star-crov/ned, whilst all the dusk air rings 
 
 With the quick spirit-pulse of viewless wings : 
 
 No voice of mine has lifted litany 
 
 To thee with song, no hand of mine set free 
 
 The soul of praise that slumbers m the strings. 
 
 For am I not to thee as one (in this) 
 
 That lingers by some shining water-deeps. 
 
 When the slow tide sings in its moon-stilled sleeps. 
 
 Until his heart-strings catch its harmonies 
 
 And his life pulses to the time it keeps : 
 
 And yet thereof no thing he speaks, ywis ? 
 
SONNETS 223 
 
 AD ZOILOS 
 
 Chide me who will for that my song is sad 
 
 And all my fancy follows on the wave 
 
 That bears our little being to the grave ! 
 
 When did it fail that those — whose lives were glad 
 
 For lack of light and want of virtue had 
 
 To know the mystery and the hair-hung glaive 
 
 That shadow all our life so seeming brave — 
 
 The accusing wail of those that weep forbad ? 
 
 Peace, triflers ! Peace, dull ears and heedless eyne ! 
 
 Yet haply time unto your foolish fears 
 
 Shall yield a mocking accord and the years 
 
 Falling full-fated on these days of mine, 
 
 Crush from the grapes of grief a bitter wine 
 
 Of laughters, sadder than the saddest tears. 
 
224 SONNETS 
 
 EXIT 
 
 This is my House of Dreams — a house of shade, 
 Built with the fleeting visions of the night : 
 Here have I set my youth and all its w^hite 
 Sad mem'ries — in this dw^elling that I made 
 With idle rhyme, as lonely fancy bade. 
 If any wonder at the strange sad might 
 The God of Vision holds upon my sight 
 And set himself my weak song to upbraid 
 For all the wailing notes therein that teem, 
 I pray him of his favour that to lands 
 Of sunnier clime he wend ; for things that seem 
 Are here the things of life and give commands 
 To living ; for a dream is on my hands 
 And on my life the shadow of a dream. 
 
 THE END 
 
SEP 2 1903