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\title{Poems}
\date{December 1, 1998}
\author{William Ernest Henley}
\subtitle{}






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\tableofcontents
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\chapter{Front Matter}

\section{Title Page}



\begin{center}

POEMS


\end{center}


By


WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY


The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
\forcelinebreak Though to itself it only live and die.


SHAKESPEARE


Tenth Impression


LONDON
\forcelinebreak Published by DAVID NUTT
\forcelinebreak at the Sign of the Phœnix
\forcelinebreak in Long Acre
\forcelinebreak 1907



\begin{center}

\end{center}

\bigskip
\noindent
 \begin{minipage}[t]{\textwidth}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|X|X|}
\hline
\relax  First Edition printed January  &  1898   \\
\relax  Second Edition printed March  &  1898   \\
\relax  Third Edition printed September  &  1898   \\
\relax  Fourth Edition printed January  &  1900   \\
\relax  Fifth Edition printed December  &  1901   \\
\relax  Sixth Impression printed August  &  1903   \\
\relax  Seventh Impression printed February  &  1904   \\
\relax  Eighth Impression printed May  &  1905   \\
\relax  Ninth Impresion printed April  &  1906   \\
\relax  Tenth Impression printed Nov.  &  1907   \\
\hline
\end{tabularx}
\end{minipage}
\bigskip


Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

\section{Dedication}



\begin{center}

TO MY WIFE


\end{center}

\section{Epigraph}


Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs,
\forcelinebreak For, old or new,
\forcelinebreak All that is good in them belongs
\forcelinebreak Only to you;


And, singing as when all was young,
\forcelinebreak They will recall
\forcelinebreak Those others, lived but left unsung—
\forcelinebreak The bent of all.


W. E. H


April 1888
\forcelinebreak September 1897.

\section{ADVERTISEMENT}


My friend and publisher, Mr. Alfred Nutt, asks me to introduce this re-issue of old work in a new shape. At his request, then, I have to say that nearly all the numbers contained in the present volume are reprinted from ‘A Book of Verses’ (1888) and ‘London Voluntaries’ (1892–3). From the first of these I have removed some copies of verse which seemed to me scarce worth keeping; and I have recovered for it certain others from those publications which had made room for them. I have corrected where I could, added such dates as I might, and, by re-arrangement and revision, done my best to give my book, such as it is, its final form. If any be displeased by the result, I can but submit that my verses are my own, and that this is how I would have them read.


The work of revision has reminded me that, small as is this book of mine, it is all in the matter of verse that I have to show for the years between 1872 and 1897. A principal reason is that, after spending the better part of my life in the pursuit of poetry, I found myself (about 1877) so utterly unmarketable that I had to own myself beaten in art, and to addict myself to journalism for the next ten years. Came the production by my old friend, Mr. H. B. Donkin, in his little collection of ‘Voluntaries’ (1888), compiled for that East-End Hospital to which he has devoted so much time and energy and skill, of those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme, my impressions of the Old Edinburgh Infirmary. They had long since been rejected by every editor of standing in London—I had well-nigh said in the world; but as soon as Mr. Nutt had read them, he entreated me to look for more. I did as I was told; old dusty sheaves were dragged to light; the work of selection and correction was begun; I burned much; I found that, after all, the lyrical instinct had slept—not died; I ventured (in brief) ‘A Book of Verses.’ It was received with so much interest that I took heart once more, and wrote the numbers presently reprinted from ‘The National Observer’ in the collection first (1892) called ‘The Song of the Sword’ and afterwards (1893), ‘London voluntaries.’ If I have said nothing since, it is that I have nothing to say which is not, as yet, too personal—too personal and too a afflicting—for utterance.


For the matter of my book, it is there to speak for itself:—


‘Here’s a sigh to those who love me
\forcelinebreak And a smile to those who hate.’


I refer to it for the simple pleasure of reflecting that it has made me many friends and some enemies.


W. E. H.


Muswell Hill, 4th September 1897.

\chapter{CONTENTS}



\begin{center}

\end{center}

\bigskip
\noindent
 \begin{minipage}[t]{\textwidth}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|X|X|X|}
\hline
\relax  IN HOSPITAL  &   &    \\
\relax   &   &  PAGE   \\
\relax  I.  &  Enter Patient  &  3   \\
\relax  II.  &  Waiting  &  4   \\
\relax  III.  &  Interior  &  5   \\
\relax  IV.  &  Before  &  6   \\
\relax  V.  &  Operation  &  7   \\
\relax  VI.  &  After  &  9   \\
\relax  VII.  &  Vigil  &  10   \\
\relax  VIII.  &  Staff-Nurse: Old Style  &  13   \\
\relax  IX.  &  Lady Probationer  &  14   \\
\relax  X.  &  Staff-Nurse: New Style  &  15   \\
\relax  XI.  &  Clinical  &  16   \\
\relax  XII.  &  Etching  &  19   \\
\relax  XIII.  &  Casualty  &  21   \\
\relax  XIV.  &  Ave, Caeser!  &  23   \\
\relax  XV.  &  ‘The Chief’  &  24   \\
\relax  XVI.  &  House-Surgeon  &  25   \\
\relax  XVII.  &  Interlude  &  26   \\
\relax  XVIII.  &  Children: Private Ward  &  28   \\
\relax  XIX.  &  Srcubber  &  29   \\
\relax  XX.  &  Visitor  &  30   \\
\relax  XXI.  &  Romance  &  31   \\
\relax  XXII.  &  Pastoral  &  33   \\
\relax  XXIII.  &  Music  &  35   \\
\relax  XXIV.  &  Suicide  &  37   \\
\relax  XXV.  &  Apparition  &  39   \\
\relax  XXVI.  &  Anterotics  &  40   \\
\relax  XXVII.  &  Nocturn  &  41   \\
\relax  XXVIII.  &  Discharged  &  42   \\
\relax  Envoy  &  44  &    \\
\relax  The Song of the Sword  &  47  &    \\
\relax  Arabian Nights’ Entertainments  &  57  &    \\
\relax  BRIC-À-BRAC  &   &    \\
\relax  Ballade of the Toyokuni Colour-Print  &  79  &    \\
\relax  Ballade of Youth and Age  &  81  &    \\
\relax  Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights  &  83  &    \\
\relax  Ballade of Dead Actors  &  85  &    \\
\relax  Ballade Made in the Hot Weather  &  87  &    \\
\relax  Ballade of Truisms  &  89  &    \\
\relax  Double Ballade of Life and Death  &  91  &    \\
\relax  Double Ballade of the Nothingness of Things  &  94  &    \\
\relax  At Queensferry  &  98  &    \\
\relax  Orientale  &  99  &    \\
\relax  In Fisherrow  &  100  &    \\
\relax  Back-View  &  101  &    \\
\relax  Croquis  &  102  &    \\
\relax  Attadale, West Highlands  &  103  &    \\
\relax  From a Window in Princes Street  &  104  &    \\
\relax  In the Dials  &  105  &    \\
\relax  The gods are dead  &  106  &    \\
\relax  Let us be drunk  &  107  &    \\
\relax  When you are old  &  108  &    \\
\relax  Beside the idle summer sea  &  109  &    \\
\relax  The ways of Death are soothing and serene  &  110  &    \\
\relax  We shall surely die  &  111  &    \\
\relax  What is to come  &  112  &    \\
\relax  ECHOES  &   &    \\
\relax  I.  &  To my mother  &  115   \\
\relax  II.  &  Life is bitter  &  117   \\
\relax  III.  &  O, gather me the rose  &  118   \\
\relax  IV.  &  Out of the night that covers me  &  119   \\
\relax  V.  &  I am the Reaper  &  120   \\
\relax  VI.  &  Praise the generous gods  &  122   \\
\relax  VII.  &  Fill a glass with golden wine  &  123   \\
\relax  VIII.  &  We’ll go no more a-roving  &  124   \\
\relax  IX.  &  Madam Life’s a piece in bloom  &  126   \\
\relax  X.  &  The sea is full of wandering foam  &  127   \\
\relax  XI.  &  Thick is the darkness  &  128   \\
\relax  XII.  &  To me at my fifth-floor window  &  129   \\
\relax  XIII.  &  Bring her again, O western wind  &  130   \\
\relax  XIV.  &  The wan sun westers, faint and slow  &  131   \\
\relax  XV.  &  There is a wheel inside my head  &  133   \\
\relax  XVI.  &  While the west is paling  &  134   \\
\relax  XVII.  &  The sands are alive with sunshine  &  135   \\
\relax  XVIII.  &  The nightingale has a lyre of gold  &  136   \\
\relax  XIX.  &  Your heart has trembled to my tongue  &  137   \\
\relax  XX.  &  The surges gushed and sounded  &  138   \\
\relax  XXI.  &  We flash across the level  &  139   \\
\relax  XXII.  &  The West a glimmering lake of light  &  140   \\
\relax  XXIII.  &  The skies are strown with stars  &  142   \\
\relax  XXIV.  &  The full sea rolls and thunders  &  143   \\
\relax  XXV.  &  In the year that’s come and gone  &  144   \\
\relax  XXVI.  &  In the placid summer midnight  &  146   \\
\relax  XXVII.  &  She sauntered by the swinging seas  &  148   \\
\relax  XXVIII.  &  Blithe dreams arise to greet us  &  149   \\
\relax  XXIX.  &  A child  &  152   \\
\relax  XXX.  &  Kate-A-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams  &  154   \\
\relax  XXXI.  &  O, have you blessed, behind the stars  &  155   \\
\relax  XXXII.  &  O, Falmouth is a fine town  &  156   \\
\relax  XXXIII.  &  The ways are green  &  158   \\
\relax  XXXIV.  &  Life in her creaking shoes  &  169   \\
\relax  XXXV.  &  A late lark twitters from the quiet skies  &  161   \\
\relax  XXXVI.  &  I gave my heart to a woman  &  163   \\
\relax  XXXVII.  &  Or ever the knightly years were gone  &  164   \\
\relax  XXXVIII.  &  On the way to Kew  &  166   \\
\relax  XXXIX.  &  The past was goodly once  &  168   \\
\relax  XL.  &  The spring, my dear  &  169   \\
\relax  XLI.  &  The Spirit of Wine  &  170   \\
\relax  XLII.  &  A Wink from Hesper  &  172   \\
\relax  XLIII.  &  Friends. . . old friends  &  173   \\
\relax  XLIV.  &  If it should come to be  &  175   \\
\relax  XLV.  &  From the brake the Nightingale  &  179   \\
\relax  XLVI.  &  In the waste hour  &  178   \\
\relax  XLVII.  &  Crosses and troubles  &  181   \\
\relax  LONDON VOLUNTARIES  &   &    \\
\relax  I.  &  Grave  &  185   \\
\relax  II.  &  Andante con Moto  &  187   \\
\relax  III.  &  Scherzando  &  192   \\
\relax  IV.  &  Largo e Mesto  &  186   \\
\relax  V.  &  Allegro Maëstoso  &  200   \\
\relax  RHYMES AND RHYTHMS  &   &    \\
\relax  Prologue  &  207  &    \\
\relax  I.  &  Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade  &  209   \\
\relax  II.  &  We are the Choice of the Will  &  211   \\
\relax  III.  &  A desolate shore  &  214   \\
\relax  IV.  &  It came with the threat of a waning moon  &  216   \\
\relax  V.  &  Why, my heart, do we love her so?  &  217   \\
\relax  VI.  &  One with the ruined sunset  &  218   \\
\relax  VII.  &  There’s a regret  &  219   \\
\relax  VIII.  &  Time and the Earth  &  221   \\
\relax  IX.  &  As like the Woman as you can  &  223   \\
\relax  X.  &  Midsummer midnight skies  &  225   \\
\relax  XI.  &  Gulls in an aery morrice  &  227   \\
\relax  XII.  &  Some starlit garden grey with dew  &  228   \\
\relax  XIII.  &  Under a stagnant sky  &  229   \\
\relax  XIV.  &  Fresh from his fastnesses  &  231   \\
\relax  XV.  &  You played and sang a snatch of song  &  233   \\
\relax  XVI.  &  Space and dread and the dark  &  234   \\
\relax  XVII.  &  Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook  &  236   \\
\relax  XVIII.  &  When you wake in your crib  &  239   \\
\relax  XIX.  &  O, Time and Change  &  242   \\
\relax  XX.  &  The shadow of Dawn  &  243   \\
\relax  XXI.  &  When the wind storms by with a shout  &  244   \\
\relax  XXII.  &  Trees and the menace of night  &  245   \\
\relax  XXIII.  &  Here they trysted, here they strayed  &  247   \\
\relax  XXIV.  &  Not to the staring Day  &  249   \\
\relax  XXV.  &  What have I done for you  &  251   \\
\relax  Epilogue  &  256  &  <\Slash{}center>  \\
\hline
\end{tabularx}
\end{minipage}
\bigskip

\chapter{IN HOSPITAL}


On ne saurait dire à quel point un homme, seul dans son
\forcelinebreak lit et malade, devient personnel.—


Balzac.

\section{I
\forcelinebreak ENTER PATIENT}


The morning mists still haunt the stony street;
\forcelinebreak The northern summer air is shrill and cold;
\forcelinebreak And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old,
\forcelinebreak Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet.
\forcelinebreak Thro’ the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom
\forcelinebreak A small, strange child—so agèd yet so young!—
\forcelinebreak Her little arm besplinted and beslung,
\forcelinebreak Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room.
\forcelinebreak I limp behind, my confidence all gone.
\forcelinebreak The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on,
\forcelinebreak And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail:
\forcelinebreak A tragic meanness seems so to environ
\forcelinebreak These corridors and stairs of stone and iron,
\forcelinebreak Cold, naked, clean—half-workhouse and half-jail.

\section{II
\forcelinebreak WAITING}


A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion),
\forcelinebreak Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight;
\forcelinebreak Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware;
\forcelinebreak Scissors and lint and apothecary’s jars.


Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,
\forcelinebreak Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted:
\forcelinebreak Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach,
\forcelinebreak While at their ease two dressers do their chores.


One has a probe—it feels to me a crowbar.
\forcelinebreak A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.
\forcelinebreak A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers.
\forcelinebreak Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.

\section{III
\forcelinebreak INTERIOR}


The gaunt brown walls
\forcelinebreak Look infinite in their decent meanness.
\forcelinebreak There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle,
\forcelinebreak The fulsome fire.


The atmosphere
\forcelinebreak Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist.
\forcelinebreak Dressings and lint on the long, lean table—
\forcelinebreak Whom are they for?


The patients yawn,
\forcelinebreak Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin.
\forcelinebreak A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles.
\forcelinebreak It’s grim and strange.


Far footfalls clank.
\forcelinebreak The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged.
\forcelinebreak My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . .
\forcelinebreak O, a gruesome world!

\section{IV
\forcelinebreak BEFORE}


Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife.
\forcelinebreak A little while, and at a leap I storm
\forcelinebreak The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform,
\forcelinebreak The drunken dark, the little death-in-life.
\forcelinebreak The gods are good to me: I have no wife,
\forcelinebreak No innocent child, to think of as I near
\forcelinebreak The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear
\forcelinebreak Unmans me for my bout of passive strife.
\forcelinebreak Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick,
\forcelinebreak And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little:
\forcelinebreak My hopes are strong, my will is something weak.
\forcelinebreak Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready.
\forcelinebreak But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle:
\forcelinebreak You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady!

\section{V
\forcelinebreak OPERATION}


You are carried in a basket,
\forcelinebreak Like a carcase from the shambles,
\forcelinebreak To the theatre, a cockpit
\forcelinebreak Where they stretch you on a table.


Then they bid you close your eyelids,
\forcelinebreak And they mask you with a napkin,
\forcelinebreak And the anæsthetic reaches
\forcelinebreak Hot and subtle through your being.


And you gasp and reel and shudder
\forcelinebreak In a rushing, swaying rapture,
\forcelinebreak While the voices at your elbow
\forcelinebreak Fade—receding—fainter—farther.


Lights about you shower and tumble,
\forcelinebreak And your blood seems crystallising—
\forcelinebreak Edged and vibrant, yet within you
\forcelinebreak Racked and hurried back and forward.


Then the lights grow fast and furious,
\forcelinebreak And you hear a noise of waters,
\forcelinebreak And you wrestle, blind and dizzy,
\forcelinebreak In an agony of effort,


Till a sudden lull accepts you,
\forcelinebreak And you sound an utter darkness . . .
\forcelinebreak And awaken . . . with a struggle . . .
\forcelinebreak On a hushed, attentive audience.

\section{VI
\forcelinebreak AFTER}


Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
\forcelinebreak So through the anæsthetic shows my life;
\forcelinebreak So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
\forcelinebreak With the strong stupor that I heave and choke
\forcelinebreak And sicken at, it is so foully sweet.
\forcelinebreak Faces look strange from space—and disappear.
\forcelinebreak Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear—
\forcelinebreak And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet:
\forcelinebreak All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain
\forcelinebreak That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly
\forcelinebreak Time and the place glimpse on to me again;
\forcelinebreak And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty,
\forcelinebreak I wake—relapsing—somewhat faint and fain,
\forcelinebreak To an immense, complacent dreamery.

\section{VII
\forcelinebreak VIGIL}


Lived on one’s back,
\forcelinebreak In the long hours of repose,
\forcelinebreak Life is a practical nightmare—
\forcelinebreak Hideous asleep or awake.


Shoulders and loins
\forcelinebreak Ache - - - !
\forcelinebreak Ache, and the mattress,
\forcelinebreak Run into boulders and hummocks,
\forcelinebreak Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes—
\forcelinebreak Tumbling, importunate, daft—
\forcelinebreak Ramble and roll, and the gas,
\forcelinebreak Screwed to its lowermost,
\forcelinebreak An inevitable atom of light,
\forcelinebreak Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper
\forcelinebreak Snores me to hate and despair.


All the old time
\forcelinebreak Surges malignant before me;
\forcelinebreak Old voices, old kisses, old songs
\forcelinebreak Blossom derisive about me;
\forcelinebreak While the new days
\forcelinebreak Pass me in endless procession:
\forcelinebreak A pageant of shadows
\forcelinebreak Silently, leeringly wending
\forcelinebreak On . . . and still on . . . still on!


Far in the stillness a cat
\forcelinebreak Languishes loudly. A cinder
\forcelinebreak Falls, and the shadows
\forcelinebreak Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me
\forcelinebreak Turns with a moan; and the snorer,
\forcelinebreak The drug like a rope at his throat,
\forcelinebreak Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse,
\forcelinebreak Noiseless and strange,
\forcelinebreak Her bull’s eye half-lanterned in apron,
\forcelinebreak (Whispering me, ‘Are ye no sleepin’ yet?’),
\forcelinebreak Passes, list-slippered and peering,
\forcelinebreak Round . . . and is gone.


Sleep comes at last—
\forcelinebreak Sleep full of dreams and misgivings—
\forcelinebreak Broken with brutal and sordid
\forcelinebreak Voices and sounds that impose on me,
\forcelinebreak Ere I can wake to it,
\forcelinebreak The unnatural, intolerable day.

\section{VIII
\forcelinebreak STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE}


The greater masters of the commonplace,
\forcelinebreak Rembrandt and good Sir Walter—only these
\forcelinebreak Could paint her all to you: experienced ease
\forcelinebreak And antique liveliness and ponderous grace;
\forcelinebreak The sweet old roses of her sunken face;
\forcelinebreak The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes;
\forcelinebreak The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies;
\forcelinebreak The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace.
\forcelinebreak These thirty years has she been nursing here,
\forcelinebreak Some of them under Syme, her hero still.
\forcelinebreak Much is she worth, and even more is made of her.
\forcelinebreak Patients and students hold her very dear.
\forcelinebreak The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill.
\forcelinebreak They say ‘The Chief’ himself is half-afraid of her.

\section{IX
\forcelinebreak LADY-PROBATIONER}


Some three, or five, or seven, and thirty years;
\forcelinebreak A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin;
\forcelinebreak Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin,
\forcelinebreak Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears;
\forcelinebreak A comely shape; a slim, high-coloured hand,
\forcelinebreak Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring;
\forcelinebreak A bashful air, becoming everything;
\forcelinebreak A well-bred silence always at command.
\forcelinebreak Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel chain
\forcelinebreak Look out of place on her, and I remain
\forcelinebreak Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery.
\forcelinebreak Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch . . .
\forcelinebreak ‘Do you like nursing?’ ‘Yes, Sir, very much.’
\forcelinebreak Somehow, I rather think she has a history.

\section{X
\forcelinebreak STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE}


Blue-eyed and bright of face but waning fast
\forcelinebreak Into the sere of virginal decay,
\forcelinebreak I view her as she enters, day by day,
\forcelinebreak As a sweet sunset almost overpast.
\forcelinebreak Kindly and calm, patrician to the last,
\forcelinebreak Superbly falls her gown of sober gray,
\forcelinebreak And on her chignon’s elegant array
\forcelinebreak The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste.
\forcelinebreak She talks Beethoven; frowns disapprobation
\forcelinebreak At Balzac’s name, sighs it at ‘poor George Sand’s’;
\forcelinebreak Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands;
\forcelinebreak Speaks Latin with a right accentuation;
\forcelinebreak And gives at need (as one who understands)
\forcelinebreak Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation.

\section{XI
\forcelinebreak CLINICAL}


Hist? . . .
\forcelinebreak Through the corridor’s echoes,
\forcelinebreak Louder and nearer
\forcelinebreak Comes a great shuffling of feet.
\forcelinebreak Quick, every one of you,
\forcelinebreak Strighten your quilts, and be decent!
\forcelinebreak Here’s the Professor.


In he comes first
\forcelinebreak With the bright look we know,
\forcelinebreak From the broad, white brows the kind eyes
\forcelinebreak Soothing yet nerving you. Here at his elbow,
\forcelinebreak White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse,
\forcelinebreak Towel on arm and her inkstand
\forcelinebreak Fretful with quills.
\forcelinebreak Here in the ruck, anyhow,
\forcelinebreak Surging along,
\forcelinebreak Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs—
\forcelinebreak Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles—
\forcelinebreak Hustles the Class! And they ring themselves
\forcelinebreak Round the first bed, where the Chief
\forcelinebreak (His dressers and clerks at attention),
\forcelinebreak Bends in inspection already.


So shows the ring
\forcelinebreak Seen from behind round a conjurer
\forcelinebreak Doing his pitch in the street.
\forcelinebreak High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones,
\forcelinebreak Round, square, and angular, serry and shove;
\forcelinebreak While from within a voice,
\forcelinebreak Gravely and weightily fluent,
\forcelinebreak Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly
\forcelinebreak (Look at the stress of the shoulders!)
\forcelinebreak Out of a quiver of silence,
\forcelinebreak Over the hiss of the spray,
\forcelinebreak Comes a low cry, and the sound
\forcelinebreak Of breath quick intaken through teeth
\forcelinebreak Clenched in resolve. And the Master
\forcelinebreak Breaks from the crowd, and goes,
\forcelinebreak Wiping his hands,
\forcelinebreak To the next bed, with his pupils
\forcelinebreak Flocking and whispering behind him.


Now one can see.
\forcelinebreak Case Number One
\forcelinebreak Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes
\forcelinebreak Stripped up, and showing his foot
\forcelinebreak (Alas for God’s Image!)
\forcelinebreak Swaddled in wet, white lint
\forcelinebreak Brilliantly hideous with red.

\section{XII
\forcelinebreak ETCHING}


Two and thirty is the ploughman.
\forcelinebreak He’s a man of gallant inches,
\forcelinebreak And his hair is close and curly,
\forcelinebreak And his beard;
\forcelinebreak But his face is wan and sunken,
\forcelinebreak And his eyes are large and brilliant,
\forcelinebreak And his shoulder-blades are sharp,
\forcelinebreak And his knees.


He is weak of wits, religious,
\forcelinebreak Full of sentiment and yearning,
\forcelinebreak Gentle, faded—with a cough
\forcelinebreak And a snore.
\forcelinebreak When his wife (who was a widow,
\forcelinebreak And is many years his elder)
\forcelinebreak Fails to write, and that is always,
\forcelinebreak He desponds.


Let his melancholy wander,
\forcelinebreak And he’ll tell you pretty stories
\forcelinebreak Of the women that have wooed him
\forcelinebreak Long ago;
\forcelinebreak Or he’ll sing of bonnie lasses
\forcelinebreak Keeping sheep among the heather,
\forcelinebreak With a crackling, hackling click
\forcelinebreak In his voice.

\section{XIII
\forcelinebreak CASUALTY}


As with varnish red and glistening
\forcelinebreak Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid;
\forcelinebreak Raised, he settled stiffly sideways:
\forcelinebreak You could see his hurts were spinal.


He had fallen from an engine,
\forcelinebreak And been dragged along the metals.
\forcelinebreak It was hopeless, and they knew it;
\forcelinebreak So they covered him, and left him.


As he lay, by fits half sentient,
\forcelinebreak Inarticulately moaning,
\forcelinebreak With his stockinged soles protruded
\forcelinebreak Stark and awkward from the blankets,


To his bed there came a woman,
\forcelinebreak Stood and looked and sighed a little,
\forcelinebreak And departed without speaking,
\forcelinebreak As himself a few hours after.


I was told it was his sweetheart.
\forcelinebreak They were on the eve of marriage.
\forcelinebreak She was quiet as a statue,
\forcelinebreak But her lip was grey and writhen.

\section{XIV
\forcelinebreak AVE CAESER!}


From the winter’s grey despair,
\forcelinebreak From the summer’s golden languor,
\forcelinebreak Death, the lover of Life,
\forcelinebreak Frees us for ever.


Inevitable, silent, unseen,
\forcelinebreak Everywhere always,
\forcelinebreak Shadow by night and as light in the day,
\forcelinebreak Signs she at last to her chosen;
\forcelinebreak And, as she waves them forth,
\forcelinebreak Sorrow and Joy
\forcelinebreak Lay by their looks and their voices,
\forcelinebreak Set down their hopes, and are made
\forcelinebreak One in the dim Forever.


Into the winter’s grey delight,
\forcelinebreak Into the summer’s golden dream,
\forcelinebreak Holy and high and impartial,
\forcelinebreak Death, the mother of Life,
\forcelinebreak Mingles all men for ever.

\section{XV
\forcelinebreak ‘THE CHIEF’}


His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye
\forcelinebreak Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still.
\forcelinebreak Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfill—
\forcelinebreak His face at once benign and proud and shy.
\forcelinebreak If envy scout, if ignorance deny,
\forcelinebreak His faultless patience, his unyielding will,
\forcelinebreak Beautiful gentleness and splendid skill,
\forcelinebreak Innumerable gratitudes reply.
\forcelinebreak His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties,
\forcelinebreak And seems in all his patients to compel
\forcelinebreak Such love and faith as failure cannot quell.
\forcelinebreak We hold him for another Herakles,
\forcelinebreak Battling with custom, prejudice, disease,
\forcelinebreak As once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell.

\section{XVI
\forcelinebreak HOUSE-SURGEON}


Exceeding tall, but built so well his height
\forcelinebreak Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb;
\forcelinebreak Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim;
\forcelinebreak Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted; always bright
\forcelinebreak And always punctual—morning, noon, and night;
\forcelinebreak Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn;
\forcelinebreak Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim;
\forcelinebreak Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight.
\forcelinebreak His piety, though fresh and true in strain,
\forcelinebreak Has not yet whitewashed up his common mood
\forcelinebreak To the dead blank of his particular Schism.
\forcelinebreak Sweet, unaggressive, tolerant, most humane,
\forcelinebreak Wild artists like his kindly elderhood,
\forcelinebreak And cultivate his mild Philistinism.

\section{XVII
\forcelinebreak INTERLUDE}


O, the fun, the fun and frolic
\forcelinebreak That The Wind that Shakes the Barley
\forcelinebreak Scatters through a penny-whistle
\forcelinebreak Tickled with artistic fingers!


Kate the scrubber (forty summers,
\forcelinebreak Stout but sportive) treads a measure,
\forcelinebreak Grinning, in herself a ballet,
\forcelinebreak Fixed as fate upon her audience.


Stumps are shaking, crutch-supported;
\forcelinebreak Splinted fingers tap the rhythm;
\forcelinebreak And a head all helmed with plasters
\forcelinebreak Wags a measured approbation.


Of their mattress-life oblivious,
\forcelinebreak All the patients, brisk and cheerful,
\forcelinebreak Are encouraging the dancer,
\forcelinebreak And applauding the musician.


Dim the gas-lights in the output
\forcelinebreak Of so many ardent smokers,
\forcelinebreak Full of shadow lurch the corners,
\forcelinebreak And the doctor peeps and passes.


There are, maybe, some suspicions
\forcelinebreak Of an alcoholic presence . . .
\forcelinebreak ‘Tak’ a sup of this, my wumman!’ . . .
\forcelinebreak New Year comes but once a twelvemonth.

\section{XVIII
\forcelinebreak CHILDREN: PRIVATE WARD}


Here in this dim, dull, double-bedded room,
\forcelinebreak I play the father to a brace of boys,
\forcelinebreak Ailing but apt for every sort of noise,
\forcelinebreak Bedfast but brilliant yet with health and bloom.
\forcelinebreak Roden, the Irishman, is ‘sieven past,’
\forcelinebreak Blue-eyed, snub-nosed, chubby, and fair of face.
\forcelinebreak Willie’s but six, and seems to like the place,
\forcelinebreak A cheerful little collier to the last.
\forcelinebreak They eat, and laugh, and sing, and fight, all day;
\forcelinebreak All night they sleep like dormice. See them play
\forcelinebreak At Operations:—Roden, the Professor,
\forcelinebreak Saws, lectures, takes the artery up, and ties;
\forcelinebreak Willie, self-chloroformed, with half-shut eyes,
\forcelinebreak Holding the limb and moaning—Case and Dresser.

\section{XIX
\forcelinebreak SCRUBBER}


She’s tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face
\forcelinebreak With flashes of the old fun’s animation
\forcelinebreak There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation
\forcelinebreak Bred of a past where troubles came apace.
\forcelinebreak She tells me that her husband, ere he died,
\forcelinebreak Saw seven of their children pass away,
\forcelinebreak And never knew the little lass at play
\forcelinebreak Out on the green, in whom he’s deified.
\forcelinebreak Her kin dispersed, her friends forgot and gone,
\forcelinebreak All simple faith her honest Irish mind,
\forcelinebreak Scolding her spoiled young saint, she labours on:
\forcelinebreak Telling her dreams, taking her patients’ part,
\forcelinebreak Trailing her coat sometimes: and you shall find
\forcelinebreak No rougher, quainter speech, nor kinder heart.

\section{XX
\forcelinebreak VISITOR}


Her little face is like a walnut shell
\forcelinebreak With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns
\forcelinebreak Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns;
\forcelinebreak And all about her clings an old, sweet smell.
\forcelinebreak Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl.
\forcelinebreak Well might her bonnets have been born on her.
\forcelinebreak Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother
\forcelinebreak The subject of a strong religious call?
\forcelinebreak In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs,
\forcelinebreak All twinkling smiles and texts and pious tales,
\forcelinebreak Her mittened hands, that ever give or pray,
\forcelinebreak Bearing a sheaf of tracts, a bag of buns:
\forcelinebreak A wee old maid that sweeps the Bridegroom’s way,
\forcelinebreak Strong in a cheerful trust that never fails.

\section{XXI
\forcelinebreak ROMANCE}


‘Talk of pluck!’ pursued the Sailor,
\forcelinebreak Set at euchre on his elbow,
\forcelinebreak ‘I was on the wharf at Charleston,
\forcelinebreak Just ashore from off the runner.


‘It was grey and dirty weather,
\forcelinebreak And I heard a drum go rolling,
\forcelinebreak Rub-a-dubbing in the distance,
\forcelinebreak Awful dour-like and defiant.


‘In and out among the cotton,
\forcelinebreak Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors,
\forcelinebreak Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows—
\forcelinebreak Poor old Dixie’s bottom dollar!


‘Some had shoes, but all had rifles,
\forcelinebreak Them that wasn’t bald was beardless,
\forcelinebreak And the drum was rolling Dixie,
\forcelinebreak And they stepped to it like men, sir!


‘Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets,
\forcelinebreak On they swung, the drum a-rolling,
\forcelinebreak Mum and sour. It looked like fighting,
\forcelinebreak And they meant it too, by thunder!’

\section{XXII
\forcelinebreak PASTORAL}


It’s the Spring.
\forcelinebreak Earth has conceived, and her bosom,
\forcelinebreak Teeming with summer, is glad.


Vistas of change and adventure,
\forcelinebreak Thro’ the green land
\forcelinebreak The grey roads go beckoning and winding,
\forcelinebreak Peopled with wains, and melodious
\forcelinebreak With harness-bells jangling:
\forcelinebreak Jangling and twangling rough rhythms
\forcelinebreak To the slow march of the stately, great horses
\forcelinebreak Whistled and shouted along.


White fleets of cloud,
\forcelinebreak Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,
\forcelinebreak Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows.
\forcelinebreak Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds
\forcelinebreak Sway the tall poplars.
\forcelinebreak Pageants of colour and fragrance,
\forcelinebreak Pass the sweet meadows, and viewless
\forcelinebreak Walks the mild spirit of May,
\forcelinebreak Visibly blessing the world.


O, the brilliance of blossoming orchards!
\forcelinebreak O, the savour and thrill of the woods,
\forcelinebreak When their leafage is stirred
\forcelinebreak By the flight of the Angel of Rain!
\forcelinebreak Loud lows the steer; in the fallows
\forcelinebreak Rooks are alert; and the brooks
\forcelinebreak Gurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro’ the gloamings,
\forcelinebreak Under the rare, shy stars,
\forcelinebreak Boy and girl wander,
\forcelinebreak Dreaming in darkness and dew.


It’s the Spring.
\forcelinebreak A sprightliness feeble and squalid
\forcelinebreak Wakes in the ward, and I sicken,
\forcelinebreak Impotent, winter at heart.

\section{XXIII
\forcelinebreak MUSIC}


Down the quiet eve,
\forcelinebreak Thro’ my window with the sunset
\forcelinebreak Pipes to me a distant organ
\forcelinebreak Foolish ditties;


And, as when you change
\forcelinebreak Pictures in a magic lantern,
\forcelinebreak Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceiling
\forcelinebreak Fade and vanish,


And I’m well once more . . .
\forcelinebreak August flares adust and torrid,
\forcelinebreak But my heart is full of April
\forcelinebreak Sap and sweetness.


In the quiet eve
\forcelinebreak I am loitering, longing, dreaming . . .
\forcelinebreak Dreaming, and a distant organ
\forcelinebreak Pipes me ditties.


I can see the shop,
\forcelinebreak I can smell the sprinkled pavement,
\forcelinebreak Where she serves—her chestnut chignon
\forcelinebreak Thrills my senses!


O, the sight and scent,
\forcelinebreak Wistful eve and perfumed pavement!
\forcelinebreak In the distance pipes an organ . . .
\forcelinebreak The sensation


Comes to me anew,
\forcelinebreak And my spirit for a moment
\forcelinebreak Thro’ the music breathes the blessèd
\forcelinebreak Airs of London.

\section{XXIV
\forcelinebreak SUICIDE}


Staring corpselike at the ceiling,
\forcelinebreak See his harsh, unrazored features,
\forcelinebreak Ghastly brown against the pillow,
\forcelinebreak And his throat—so strangely bandaged!


Lack of work and lack of victuals,
\forcelinebreak A debauch of smuggled whisky,
\forcelinebreak And his children in the workhouse
\forcelinebreak Made the world so black a riddle


That he plunged for a solution;
\forcelinebreak And, although his knife was edgeless,
\forcelinebreak He was sinking fast towards one,
\forcelinebreak When they came, and found, and saved him.


Stupid now with shame and sorrow,
\forcelinebreak In the night I hear him sobbing.
\forcelinebreak But sometimes he talks a little.
\forcelinebreak He has told me all his troubles.


In his broad face, tanned and bloodless,
\forcelinebreak White and wild his eyeballs glisten;
\forcelinebreak And his smile, occult and tragic,
\forcelinebreak Yet so slavish, makes you shudder!

\section{XXV
\forcelinebreak APPARITION}


Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably,
\forcelinebreak Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face—
\forcelinebreak Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race,
\forcelinebreak Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea,
\forcelinebreak The brown eyes radiant with vivacity—
\forcelinebreak There shines a brilliant and romantic grace,
\forcelinebreak A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace
\forcelinebreak Of passion and impudence and energy.
\forcelinebreak Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck,
\forcelinebreak Most vain, most generous, sternly critical,
\forcelinebreak Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist:
\forcelinebreak A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck,
\forcelinebreak Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all,
\forcelinebreak And something of the Shorter-Catechist.

\section{XXVI
\forcelinebreak ANTEROTICS}


Laughs the happy April morn
\forcelinebreak Thro’ my grimy, little window,
\forcelinebreak And a shaft of sunshine pushes
\forcelinebreak Thro’ the shadows in the square.


Dogs are tracing thro’ the grass,
\forcelinebreak Crows are cawing round the chimneys,
\forcelinebreak In and out among the washing
\forcelinebreak Goes the West at hide-and-seek.


Loud and cheerful clangs the bell.
\forcelinebreak Here the nurses troop to breakfast.
\forcelinebreak Handsome, ugly, all are women . . .
\forcelinebreak O, the Spring—the Spring—the Spring!

\section{XXVII
\forcelinebreak NOCTURN}


At the barren heart of midnight,
\forcelinebreak When the shadow shuts and opens
\forcelinebreak As the loud flames pulse and flutter,
\forcelinebreak I can hear a cistern leaking.


Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm,
\forcelinebreak Rough, unequal, half-melodious,
\forcelinebreak Like the measures aped from nature
\forcelinebreak In the infancy of music;


Like the buzzing of an insect,
\forcelinebreak Still, irrational, persistent . . .
\forcelinebreak I must listen, listen, listen
\forcelinebreak In a passion of attention;


Till it taps upon my heartstrings,
\forcelinebreak And my very life goes dripping,
\forcelinebreak Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping,
\forcelinebreak In the drip-drop of the cistern.

\section{XXVIII
\forcelinebreak DISCHARGED}


Carry me out
\forcelinebreak Into the wind and the sunshine,
\forcelinebreak Into the beautiful world.


O, the wonder, the spell of the streets!
\forcelinebreak The stature and strength of the horses,
\forcelinebreak The rustle and echo of footfalls,
\forcelinebreak The flat roar and rattle of wheels!
\forcelinebreak A swift tram floats huge on us . . .
\forcelinebreak It’s a dream?
\forcelinebreak The smell of the mud in my nostrils
\forcelinebreak Blows brave—like a breath of the sea!


As of old,
\forcelinebreak Ambulant, undulant drapery,
\forcelinebreak Vaguery and strangely provocative,
\forcelinebreak Fluttersd and beckons. O, yonder—
\forcelinebreak Is it?—the gleam of a stocking!
\forcelinebreak Sudden, a spire
\forcelinebreak Wedged in the mist! O, the houses,
\forcelinebreak The long lines of lofty, grey houses,
\forcelinebreak Cross-hatched with shadow and light!
\forcelinebreak These are the streets . . .
\forcelinebreak Each is an avenue leading
\forcelinebreak Whither I will!


Free . . . !
\forcelinebreak Dizzy, hysterical, faint,
\forcelinebreak I sit, and the carriage rolls on with me
\forcelinebreak Into the wonderful world.


The Old Infirmary, Edinburgh, 1873–75

\chapter{ENVOY
\forcelinebreak To Charles Baxter}


Do you remember
\forcelinebreak That afternoon—that Sunday afternoon!—
\forcelinebreak When, as the kirks were ringing in,
\forcelinebreak And the grey city teemed
\forcelinebreak With Sabbath feelings and aspects,
\forcelinebreak Lewis—our Lewis then,
\forcelinebreak Now the whole world’s—and you,
\forcelinebreak Young, yet in shape most like an elder, came,
\forcelinebreak Laden with Balzacs
\forcelinebreak (Big, yellow books, quite impudently French),
\forcelinebreak The first of many times
\forcelinebreak To that transformed back-kitchen where I lay
\forcelinebreak So long, so many centuries—
\forcelinebreak Or years is it!—ago?


Dear Charles, since then
\forcelinebreak We have been friends, Lewis and you and I,
\forcelinebreak (How good it sounds, ‘Lewis and you and I!’):
\forcelinebreak Such friends, I like to think,
\forcelinebreak That in us three, Lewis and me and you,
\forcelinebreak Is something of that gallant dream
\forcelinebreak Which old Dumas—the generous, the humane,
\forcelinebreak The seven-and-seventy times to be forgiven!—
\forcelinebreak Dreamed for a blessing to the race,
\forcelinebreak The immortal Musketeers.


Our Athos rests—the wise, the kind,
\forcelinebreak The liberal and august, his fault atoned,
\forcelinebreak Rests in the crowded yard
\forcelinebreak There at the west of Princes Street. We three—
\forcelinebreak You, I, and Lewis!—still afoot,
\forcelinebreak Are still together, and our lives,
\forcelinebreak In chime so long, may keep
\forcelinebreak (God bless the thought!)
\forcelinebreak Unjangled till the end.


W. E. H.


Chiswick, March 1888

\chapter{THE SONG
\forcelinebreak OF THE SWORD}


(To Rudyard Kipling)


1890


The Sword
\forcelinebreak Singing—
\forcelinebreak The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
\forcelinebreak Clanging imperious
\forcelinebreak Forth from Time’s battlements
\forcelinebreak His ancient and triumphing Song.


In the beginning,
\forcelinebreak Ere God inspired Himself
\forcelinebreak Into the clay thing
\forcelinebreak Thumbed to His image,
\forcelinebreak The vacant, the naked shell
\forcelinebreak Soon to be Man:
\forcelinebreak Thoughtful He pondered it,
\forcelinebreak Prone there and impotent,
\forcelinebreak Fragile, inviting
\forcelinebreak Attack and discomfiture;
\forcelinebreak Then, with a smile—
\forcelinebreak As He heard in the Thunder
\forcelinebreak That laughed over Eden
\forcelinebreak The voice of the Trumpet,
\forcelinebreak The iron Beneficence,
\forcelinebreak Calling his dooms
\forcelinebreak To the Winds of the world—
\forcelinebreak Stooping, He drew
\forcelinebreak On the sand with His finger
\forcelinebreak A shape for a sign
\forcelinebreak Of his way to the eyes
\forcelinebreak That in wonder should waken,
\forcelinebreak For a proof of His will
\forcelinebreak To the breaking intelligence.
\forcelinebreak That was the birth of me:
\forcelinebreak I am the Sword.


Bleak and lean, grey and cruel,
\forcelinebreak Short-hilted, long shafted,
\forcelinebreak I froze into steel;
\forcelinebreak And the blood of my elder,
\forcelinebreak His hand on the hafts of me,
\forcelinebreak Sprang like a wave
\forcelinebreak In the wind, as the sense
\forcelinebreak Of his strength grew to ecstasy;
\forcelinebreak Glowed like a coal
\forcelinebreak In the throat of the furnace;
\forcelinebreak As he knew me and named me
\forcelinebreak The War-Thing, the Comrade,
\forcelinebreak Father of honour
\forcelinebreak And giver of kingship,
\forcelinebreak The fame-smith, the song-master,
\forcelinebreak Bringer of women
\forcelinebreak On fire at his hands
\forcelinebreak For the pride of fulfilment,
\forcelinebreak Priest (saith the Lord)
\forcelinebreak Of his marriage with victory
\forcelinebreak Ho! then, the Trumpet,
\forcelinebreak Handmaid of heroes,
\forcelinebreak Calling the peers
\forcelinebreak To the place of espousals!
\forcelinebreak Ho! then, the splendour
\forcelinebreak And glare of my ministry,
\forcelinebreak Clothing the earth
\forcelinebreak With a livery of lightnings!
\forcelinebreak Ho! then, the music
\forcelinebreak Of battles in onset,
\forcelinebreak And ruining armours,
\forcelinebreak And God’s gift returning
\forcelinebreak In fury to God!
\forcelinebreak Thrilling and keen
\forcelinebreak As the song of the winter stars,
\forcelinebreak Ho! then, the sound
\forcelinebreak Of my voice, the implacable
\forcelinebreak Angel of Destiny!—
\forcelinebreak I am the Sword.


Heroes, my children,
\forcelinebreak Follow, O, follow me!
\forcelinebreak Follow, exulting
\forcelinebreak In the great light that breaks
\forcelinebreak From the sacred Companionship!
\forcelinebreak Thrust through the fatuous,
\forcelinebreak Thrust through the fungous brood,
\forcelinebreak Spawned in my shadow
\forcelinebreak And gross with my gift!
\forcelinebreak Thrust through, and hearken
\forcelinebreak O, hark, to the Trumpet,
\forcelinebreak The Virgin of Battles,
\forcelinebreak Calling, still calling you
\forcelinebreak Into the Presence,
\forcelinebreak Sons of the Judgment,
\forcelinebreak Pure wafts of the Will!
\forcelinebreak Edged to annihilate,
\forcelinebreak Hilted with government,
\forcelinebreak Follow, O, follow me,
\forcelinebreak Till the waste places
\forcelinebreak All the grey globe over
\forcelinebreak Ooze, as the honeycomb
\forcelinebreak Drips, with the sweetness
\forcelinebreak Distilled of my strength,
\forcelinebreak And, teeming in peace
\forcelinebreak Through the wrath of my coming,
\forcelinebreak They give back in beauty
\forcelinebreak The dread and the anguish
\forcelinebreak They had of me visitant!
\forcelinebreak Follow, O follow, then,
\forcelinebreak Heroes, my harvesters!
\forcelinebreak Where the tall grain is ripe
\forcelinebreak Thrust in your sickles!
\forcelinebreak Stripped and adust
\forcelinebreak In a stubble of empire,
\forcelinebreak Scything and binding
\forcelinebreak The full sheaves of sovranty:
\forcelinebreak Thus, O, thus gloriously,
\forcelinebreak Shall you fulfil yourselves!
\forcelinebreak Thus, O, thus mightily,
\forcelinebreak Show yourselves sons of mine—
\forcelinebreak Yea, and win grace of me:
\forcelinebreak I am the Sword!


I am the feast-maker:
\forcelinebreak Hark, through a noise
\forcelinebreak Of the screaming of eagles,
\forcelinebreak Hark how the Trumpet,
\forcelinebreak The mistress of mistresses,
\forcelinebreak Calls, silver-throated
\forcelinebreak And stern, where the tables
\forcelinebreak Are spread, and the meal
\forcelinebreak Of the Lord is in hand!
\forcelinebreak Driving the darkness,
\forcelinebreak Even as the banners
\forcelinebreak And spears of the Morning;
\forcelinebreak Sifting the nations,
\forcelinebreak The slag from the metal,
\forcelinebreak The waste and the weak
\forcelinebreak From the fit and the strong;
\forcelinebreak Fighting the brute,
\forcelinebreak The abysmal Fecundity;
\forcelinebreak Checking the gross,
\forcelinebreak Multitudinous blunders,
\forcelinebreak The groping, the purblind
\forcelinebreak Excesses in service
\forcelinebreak Of the Womb universal,
\forcelinebreak The absolute drudge;
\forcelinebreak Firing the charactry
\forcelinebreak Carved on the World,
\forcelinebreak The miraculous gem
\forcelinebreak In the seal-ring that burns
\forcelinebreak On the hand of the Master—
\forcelinebreak Yea! and authority
\forcelinebreak Flames through the dim,
\forcelinebreak Unappeasable Grisliness
\forcelinebreak Prone down the nethermost
\forcelinebreak Chasms of the Void!—
\forcelinebreak Clear singing, clean slicing;
\forcelinebreak Sweet spoken, soft finishing;
\forcelinebreak Making death beautiful,
\forcelinebreak Life but a coin
\forcelinebreak To be staked in the pastime
\forcelinebreak Whose playing is more
\forcelinebreak Than the transfer of being;
\forcelinebreak Arch-anarch, chief builder,
\forcelinebreak Prince and evangelist,
\forcelinebreak I am the Will of God:
\forcelinebreak I am the Sword.


The Sword
\forcelinebreak Singing—
\forcelinebreak The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
\forcelinebreak Clanging majestical,
\forcelinebreak As from the starry-staired
\forcelinebreak Courts of the primal Supremacy,
\forcelinebreak His high, irresistible song.

\chapter{ARABIAN NIGHTS’
\forcelinebreak ENTERTAINMENTS}


(To Elizabeth Robins Pennell)


1893


‘O mes chères Mille et Une Nuits!’—Fantasio.


Once on a time
\forcelinebreak There was a little boy: a master-mage
\forcelinebreak By virtue of a Book
\forcelinebreak Of magic—O, so magical it filled
\forcelinebreak His life with visionary pomps
\forcelinebreak Processional! And Powers
\forcelinebreak Passed with him where he passed. And Thrones
\forcelinebreak And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
\forcelinebreak Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
\forcelinebreak The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
\forcelinebreak Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
\forcelinebreak Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
\forcelinebreak Pavilioned jealously, and hid
\forcelinebreak As in the dusk, profound,
\forcelinebreak Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.—


I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
\forcelinebreak A flickering snatch of memory that floats
\forcelinebreak Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
\forcelinebreak And thirty dead years deep,
\forcelinebreak Antic in girlish broideries
\forcelinebreak And skirts and silly shoes with straps
\forcelinebreak And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
\forcelinebreak Plain in the shadow of a church
\forcelinebreak (St. Michael’s: in whose brazen call
\forcelinebreak To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
\forcelinebreak Sedate for all his haste
\forcelinebreak To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
\forcelinebreak Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
\forcelinebreak Boarded in sober drab,
\forcelinebreak With small, square, agitating cuts
\forcelinebreak Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
\forcelinebreak Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
\forcelinebreak What but that blessed brief
\forcelinebreak Of what is gallantest and best
\forcelinebreak In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
\forcelinebreak The Book of rocs,
\forcelinebreak Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
\forcelinebreak Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
\forcelinebreak And ghouls, and genies—O, so huge
\forcelinebreak They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
\forcelinebreak Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
\forcelinebreak In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
\forcelinebreak Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
\forcelinebreak The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
\forcelinebreak Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
\forcelinebreak And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk—
\forcelinebreak Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms—
\forcelinebreak Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
\forcelinebreak The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!


Old friends I had a-many—kindly and grim
\forcelinebreak Familiars, cronies quaint
\forcelinebreak And goblin! Never a Wood but housed
\forcelinebreak Some morrice of dainty dapperlings. No Brook
\forcelinebreak But had his nunnery
\forcelinebreak Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
\forcelinebreak To cabin in his grots, and pace
\forcelinebreak His lilied margents. Every lone Hillside
\forcelinebreak Might open upon Elf-Land. Every Stalk
\forcelinebreak That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
\forcelinebreak Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
\forcelinebreak You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
\forcelinebreak The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
\forcelinebreak And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
\forcelinebreak Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
\forcelinebreak Called for his Faëry Harp. And in it flew,
\forcelinebreak And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
\forcelinebreak Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
\forcelinebreak Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
\forcelinebreak The shy thrush at mid-May
\forcelinebreak Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
\forcelinebreak Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
\forcelinebreak In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
\forcelinebreak For Pan’s own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
\forcelinebreak And mocked him call for call!


I could not pass
\forcelinebreak The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
\forcelinebreak Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
\forcelinebreak In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
\forcelinebreak Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
\forcelinebreak Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
\forcelinebreak His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
\forcelinebreak And elbows. In the rich June fields,
\forcelinebreak Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
\forcelinebreak And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
\forcelinebreak Lolled his half-holiday away
\forcelinebreak Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
\forcelinebreak ’Twas good to follow the Miller’s Youngest Son
\forcelinebreak On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
\forcelinebreak For at his stirrup linked and ran,
\forcelinebreak Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
\forcelinebreak From wall to wall above the espaliers,
\forcelinebreak But in the bravest tops
\forcelinebreak That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
\forcelinebreak Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
\forcelinebreak A banner flaunted in disdain
\forcelinebreak Of human stratagems and shifts:
\forcelinebreak King over All the Catlands, present and past
\forcelinebreak And future, that moustached
\forcelinebreak Artificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots!
\forcelinebreak Or Bluebeard’s Closet, with its plenishing
\forcelinebreak Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
\forcelinebreak And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases—
\forcelinebreak Odd-fangled, most a butcher’s, part
\forcelinebreak A faëry chamber hazily seen
\forcelinebreak And hazily figured—on dark afternoons
\forcelinebreak And windy nights was visiting of the best.
\forcelinebreak Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
\forcelinebreak Out in the roaring darkness told
\forcelinebreak Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
\forcelinebreak Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
\forcelinebreak Between his hell-born Hounds.
\forcelinebreak And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
\forcelinebreak Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
\forcelinebreak The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
\forcelinebreak Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
\forcelinebreak For, listening, I could help him play
\forcelinebreak His wonderful game,
\forcelinebreak In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
\forcelinebreak Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.


But what were these so near,
\forcelinebreak So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
\forcelinebreak The run of Ali Baba’s Cave
\forcelinebreak Just for the saying ‘Open Sesame,’
\forcelinebreak With gold to measure, peck by peck,
\forcelinebreak In round, brown wooden stoups
\forcelinebreak You borrowed at the chandler’s? . . . Or one time
\forcelinebreak Made you Aladdin’s friend at school,
\forcelinebreak Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
\forcelinebreak In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
\forcelinebreak For all the embrowning scars in their white breasts
\forcelinebreak Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
\forcelinebreak Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
\forcelinebreak Strange Curs that cried as they,
\forcelinebreak Till there was never a Black Bitch of all
\forcelinebreak Your consorting but might have gone
\forcelinebreak Spell-driven miserably for crimes
\forcelinebreak Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
\forcelinebreak Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
\forcelinebreak While you lay wondering and acold,
\forcelinebreak Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
\forcelinebreak Queen Labé, abominable and dear,
\forcelinebreak Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
\forcelinebreak Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
\forcelinebreak Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
\forcelinebreak And muttered certain words you could not hear;
\forcelinebreak And there! a living stream,
\forcelinebreak The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
\forcelinebreak And cresses, glittered and sang
\forcelinebreak Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
\forcelinebreak Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .


I was—how many a time!—
\forcelinebreak That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
\forcelinebreak On whom ’twas vehemently enjoined,
\forcelinebreak Pausing at one mysterious door,
\forcelinebreak To pry no closer, but content his soul
\forcelinebreak With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest
\forcelinebreak For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
\forcelinebreak And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
\forcelinebreak (That wonder-working word!),
\forcelinebreak Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
\forcelinebreak And soaring, soaring on
\forcelinebreak From air to air, came charging to the ground
\forcelinebreak Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
\forcelinebreak And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
\forcelinebreak Flicked at me with his tail,
\forcelinebreak And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
\forcelinebreak (Even as I was in deed,
\forcelinebreak When doctors came, and odious things were done
\forcelinebreak On my poor tortured eyes
\forcelinebreak With lancets; or some evil acid stung
\forcelinebreak And wrung them like hot sand,
\forcelinebreak And desperately from room to room
\forcelinebreak Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
\forcelinebreak To get to Bagdad how I might. But there
\forcelinebreak I met with Merry Ladies. O you three—
\forcelinebreak Safie, Amine, Zobëidé—when my heart
\forcelinebreak Forgets you all shall be forgot!
\forcelinebreak And so we supped, we and the rest,
\forcelinebreak On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
\forcelinebreak Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And Haroun
\forcelinebreak Laughed out of his lordly beard
\forcelinebreak On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
\forcelinebreak For all their Mossoul habits). And outside
\forcelinebreak The Tigris, flowing swift
\forcelinebreak Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
\forcelinebreak With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
\forcelinebreak The vast, blue night
\forcelinebreak Was murmurous with peris’ plumes
\forcelinebreak And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
\forcelinebreak Were whispering; and old fishermen,
\forcelinebreak Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
\forcelinebreak Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales
\forcelinebreak Worth in the Caliph’s Kitchen pieces of gold:
\forcelinebreak Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
\forcelinebreak Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
\forcelinebreak In durance under potent charactry
\forcelinebreak Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .


Then, as the Book was glassed
\forcelinebreak In Life as in some olden mirror’s quaint,
\forcelinebreak Bewildering angles, so would Life
\forcelinebreak Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
\forcelinebreak Were changed. Once in a house decayed
\forcelinebreak From better days, harbouring an errant show
\forcelinebreak (For all its stories of dry-rot
\forcelinebreak Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
\forcelinebreak Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
\forcelinebreak I wandered; and no living soul
\forcelinebreak Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
\forcelinebreak Upon them staring—staring. Till at last,
\forcelinebreak Three sets of rafters from the streets,
\forcelinebreak I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
\forcelinebreak With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
\forcelinebreak Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set,
\forcelinebreak Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
\forcelinebreak With an aspect of frills
\forcelinebreak And dimities and dishonoured privacy
\forcelinebreak That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
\forcelinebreak A Woman with her litter of Babes—all slain,
\forcelinebreak All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
\forcelinebreak Staring—still staring; so that I turned and ran
\forcelinebreak As for my neck, but in the street
\forcelinebreak Took breath. The same, it seemed,
\forcelinebreak And yet not all the same, I was to find,
\forcelinebreak As I went up! For afterwards,
\forcelinebreak Whenas I went my round alone—
\forcelinebreak All day alone—in long, stern, silent streets,
\forcelinebreak Where I might stretch my hand and take
\forcelinebreak Whatever I would: still there were Shapes of Stone,
\forcelinebreak Motionless, lifelike, frightening—for the Wrath
\forcelinebreak Had smitten them; but they watched,
\forcelinebreak This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
\forcelinebreak And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
\forcelinebreak The Painted Eyes insufferable,
\forcelinebreak Now, of those grisly images; and I
\forcelinebreak Pursued my best-belovéd quest,
\forcelinebreak Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
\forcelinebreak So the night fell—with never a lamplighter;
\forcelinebreak And through the Palace of the King
\forcelinebreak I groped among the echoes, and I felt
\forcelinebreak That they were there,
\forcelinebreak Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
\forcelinebreak Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
\forcelinebreak A Voice! And in a little while
\forcelinebreak Two tapers burning! And the Voice,
\forcelinebreak Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was—whose?
\forcelinebreak Whose but Zobëidé’s,
\forcelinebreak The lady of my heart, like me
\forcelinebreak A True Believer, and like me
\forcelinebreak An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .


Or, sailing to the Isles
\forcelinebreak Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
\forcelinebreak A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
\forcelinebreak Swiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards,
\forcelinebreak The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
\forcelinebreak Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
\forcelinebreak Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman’s hand,
\forcelinebreak And, turning broadside on,
\forcelinebreak As the most iron would, was haled and sucked
\forcelinebreak Nearer, and nearer yet;
\forcelinebreak And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
\forcelinebreak Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
\forcelinebreak That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
\forcelinebreak Anchors and nails and bolts
\forcelinebreak Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
\forcelinebreak A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
\forcelinebreak Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
\forcelinebreak A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
\forcelinebreak About the waters; and her crew
\forcelinebreak Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
\forcelinebreak To drown. All the long night I swam;
\forcelinebreak But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
\forcelinebreak Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
\forcelinebreak Skirted with shelving sands! And a great wave
\forcelinebreak Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
\forcelinebreak So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
\forcelinebreak And, faring inland, in a desert place
\forcelinebreak I stumbled on an iron ring—
\forcelinebreak The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
\forcelinebreak When, scenting a trap-door,
\forcelinebreak I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
\forcelinebreak Stuck into wood. And then,
\forcelinebreak The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
\forcelinebreak Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault,
\forcelinebreak So neat with niche on niche it might have been
\forcelinebreak Our beer-cellar but for the rows
\forcelinebreak Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist’s jars)
\forcelinebreak Full to the wide, squat throats
\forcelinebreak With gold-dust, but a-top
\forcelinebreak A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
\forcelinebreak I knew for olives! And far, O, far away,
\forcelinebreak The Princess of China languished! Far away
\forcelinebreak Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
\forcelinebreak Of Eunuchs and the privilege
\forcelinebreak Of going out at night
\forcelinebreak To play—unkenned, majestical, secure—
\forcelinebreak Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
\forcelinebreak Like Tigris shore for shore! Haply a Ghoul
\forcelinebreak Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
\forcelinebreak A thighbone in his fist, and glared
\forcelinebreak At supper with a Lady: she who took
\forcelinebreak Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
\forcelinebreak Or you might stumble—there by the iron gates
\forcelinebreak Of the Pump Room—underneath the limes—
\forcelinebreak Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
\forcelinebreak Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
\forcelinebreak Or those red-curtained panes,
\forcelinebreak Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
\forcelinebreak Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
\forcelinebreak Might turn a caravansery’s, wherein
\forcelinebreak You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
\forcelinebreak And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
\forcelinebreak You’d not have given away
\forcelinebreak For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
\forcelinebreak You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
\forcelinebreak Escaped on a roc’s claw,
\forcelinebreak Disguised like Sindbad—but in Christmas beef!
\forcelinebreak And all the blissful while
\forcelinebreak The schoolboy satchel at your hip
\forcelinebreak Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
\forcelinebreak Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
\forcelinebreak From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers
\forcelinebreak Of Tartary and the bazaars,
\forcelinebreak Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.—


Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
\forcelinebreak The magian East: thus the child eyes
\forcelinebreak Spelled out the wizard message by the light
\forcelinebreak Of the sober, workaday hours
\forcelinebreak They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
\forcelinebreak In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
\forcelinebreak In ancient Severn’s arm,
\forcelinebreak Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
\forcelinebreak Whose floating populace of ships—
\forcelinebreak Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
\forcelinebreak Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters—brought
\forcelinebreak To her very doorsteps and geraniums
\forcelinebreak The scents of the World’s End; the calls
\forcelinebreak That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
\forcelinebreak Like fire on some high errand of the race;
\forcelinebreak The irresistible appeals
\forcelinebreak For comradeship that sound
\forcelinebreak Steadily from the irresistible sea.
\forcelinebreak Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
\forcelinebreak Telling itself anew
\forcelinebreak In terms of living, labouring life,
\forcelinebreak Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
\forcelinebreak Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
\forcelinebreak The Angel-Playmate, raining down
\forcelinebreak His golden influences
\forcelinebreak On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
\forcelinebreak Walked with me arm in arm,
\forcelinebreak Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
\forcelinebreak And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
\forcelinebreak Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
\forcelinebreak His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
\forcelinebreak Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
\forcelinebreak Sends the same silver dews
\forcelinebreak Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
\forcelinebreak On some poor collier-hamlet—(mound on mound
\forcelinebreak Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
\forcelinebreak Sullenly smoking over a row
\forcelinebreak Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
\forcelinebreak A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
\forcelinebreak Of hurtling, tipping trams)—
\forcelinebreak As on the amorous nightingales
\forcelinebreak And roses of Shíraz, or the walls and towers
\forcelinebreak Of Samarcand—the Ineffable—whence you espy
\forcelinebreak The splendour of Ginnistan’s embattled spears,
\forcelinebreak Like listed lightnings.
\forcelinebreak Samarcand!
\forcelinebreak That name of names! That star-vaned belvedere
\forcelinebreak Builded against the Chambers of the South!
\forcelinebreak That outpost on the Infinite!
\forcelinebreak And behold!
\forcelinebreak Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
\forcelinebreak Might overtake you: for one fringe,
\forcelinebreak One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
\forcelinebreak Floats founded vague
\forcelinebreak In lubberlands delectable—isles of palm
\forcelinebreak And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
\forcelinebreak The promise of wistful hills—
\forcelinebreak The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

\chapter{BRIC-À-BRAC}


1877–1888


‘The tune of the time.’—Hamlet, concerning Osric

\section{BALLADE OF A TOYOKUNI COLOUR-PRINT}


To W. A.


Was I a Samurai renowned,
\forcelinebreak Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?
\forcelinebreak A histrion angular and profound?
\forcelinebreak A priest? a porter?—Child, although
\forcelinebreak I have forgotten clean, I know
\forcelinebreak That in the shade of Fujisan,
\forcelinebreak What time the cherry-orchards blow,
\forcelinebreak I loved you once in old Japan.


As here you loiter, flowing-gowned
\forcelinebreak And hugely sashed, with pins a-row
\forcelinebreak Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned,
\forcelinebreak Demure, inviting—even so,
\forcelinebreak When merry maids in Miyako
\forcelinebreak To feel the sweet o’ the year began,
\forcelinebreak And green gardens to overflow,
\forcelinebreak I loved you once in old Japan.


Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round
\forcelinebreak Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow,
\forcelinebreak A blue canal the lake’s blue bound
\forcelinebreak Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!
\forcelinebreak Touched with the sundown’s spirit and glow,
\forcelinebreak I see you turn, with flirted fan,
\forcelinebreak Against the plum-tree’s bloomy snow . . .
\forcelinebreak I loved you once in old Japan!


Envoy


Dear, ’twas a dozen lives ago;
\forcelinebreak But that I was a lucky man
\forcelinebreak The Toyokuni here will show:
\forcelinebreak I loved you—once—in old Japan.

\section{BALLADE
\forcelinebreak (DOUBLE REFRAIN)
\forcelinebreak OF YOUTH AND AGE}


I. M.
\forcelinebreak Thomas Edward Brown
\forcelinebreak (1829–1896)


Spring at her height on a morn at prime,
\forcelinebreak Sails that laugh from a flying squall,
\forcelinebreak Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme—
\forcelinebreak Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
\forcelinebreak Winter sunsets and leaves that fall,
\forcelinebreak An empty flagon, a folded page,
\forcelinebreak A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball—
\forcelinebreak These are a type of the world of Age.


Bells that clash in a gaudy chime,
\forcelinebreak Swords that clatter in onsets tall,
\forcelinebreak The words that ring and the fames that climb—
\forcelinebreak Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
\forcelinebreak Hymnals old in a dusty stall,
\forcelinebreak A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage,
\forcelinebreak The scene of a faded festival—
\forcelinebreak These are a type of the world of Age.


Hours that strut as the heirs of time,
\forcelinebreak Deeds whose rumour’s a clarion-call,
\forcelinebreak Songs where the singers their souls sublime—
\forcelinebreak Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
\forcelinebreak A staff that rests in a nook of wall,
\forcelinebreak A reeling battle, a rusted gage,
\forcelinebreak The chant of a nearing funeral—
\forcelinebreak These are a type of the world of Age.


Envoy


Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl—
\forcelinebreak Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
\forcelinebreak A smouldering hearth and a silent stage—
\forcelinebreak These are a type of the world of Age.

\section{BALLADE
\forcelinebreak (DOUBLE REFRAIN)
\forcelinebreak OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS}


To W. H.


With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams
\forcelinebreak The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise,
\forcelinebreak And the winds are one with the clouds and beams—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
\forcelinebreak The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze,
\forcelinebreak While the West from a rapture of sunset rights,
\forcelinebreak Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!


The wood’s green heart is a nest of dreams,
\forcelinebreak The lush grass thickens and springs and sways,
\forcelinebreak The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
\forcelinebreak In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways,
\forcelinebreak All secret shadows and mystic lights,
\forcelinebreak Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!


There’s a music of bells from the trampling teams,
\forcelinebreak Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze,
\forcelinebreak The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
\forcelinebreak A soul from the honeysuckle strays,
\forcelinebreak And the nightingale as from prophet heights
\forcelinebreak Sings to the Earth of her million Mays—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!


Envoy


And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
\forcelinebreak It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights—
\forcelinebreak Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

\section{BALLADE
\forcelinebreak OF DEAD ACTORS}


I. M.
\forcelinebreak Edward John Henley
\forcelinebreak (1861–1898)


Where are the passions they essayed,
\forcelinebreak And where the tears they made to flow?
\forcelinebreak Where the wild humours they portrayed
\forcelinebreak For laughing worlds to see and know?
\forcelinebreak Othello’s wrath and Juliet’s woe?
\forcelinebreak Sir Peter’s whims and Timon’s gall?
\forcelinebreak And Millamant and Romeo?
\forcelinebreak Into the night go one and all.


Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed?
\forcelinebreak The plumes, the armours—friend and foe?
\forcelinebreak The cloth of gold, the rare brocade,
\forcelinebreak The mantles glittering to and fro?
\forcelinebreak The pomp, the pride, the royal show?
\forcelinebreak The cries of war and festival?
\forcelinebreak The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow?
\forcelinebreak Into the night go one and all.


The curtain falls, the play is played:
\forcelinebreak The Beggar packs beside the Beau;
\forcelinebreak The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid;
\forcelinebreak The Thunder huddles with the Snow.
\forcelinebreak Where are the revellers high and low?
\forcelinebreak The clashing swords? The lover’s call?
\forcelinebreak The dancers gleaming row on row?
\forcelinebreak Into the night go one and all.


Envoy


Prince, in one common overthrow
\forcelinebreak The Hero tumbles with the Thrall:
\forcelinebreak As dust that drives, as straws that blow,
\forcelinebreak Into the night go one and all.

\section{BALLADE
\forcelinebreak MADE IN THE HOT WEATHER}


To C. M.


Fountains that frisk and sprinkle
\forcelinebreak The moss they overspill;
\forcelinebreak Pools that the breezes crinkle;
\forcelinebreak The wheel beside the mill,
\forcelinebreak With its wet, weedy frill;
\forcelinebreak Wind-shadows in the wheat;
\forcelinebreak A water-cart in the street;
\forcelinebreak The fringe of foam that girds
\forcelinebreak An islet’s ferneries;
\forcelinebreak A green sky’s minor thirds—
\forcelinebreak To live, I think of these!


Of ice and glass the tinkle,
\forcelinebreak Pellucid, silver-shrill;
\forcelinebreak Peaches without a wrinkle;
\forcelinebreak Cherries and snow at will,
\forcelinebreak From china bowls that fill
\forcelinebreak The senses with a sweet
\forcelinebreak Incuriousness of heat;
\forcelinebreak A melon’s dripping sherds;
\forcelinebreak Cream-clotted strawberries;
\forcelinebreak Dusk dairies set with curds—
\forcelinebreak To live, I think of these!


Vale-lily and periwinkle;
\forcelinebreak Wet stone-crop on the sill;
\forcelinebreak The look of leaves a-twinkle
\forcelinebreak With windlets clear and still;
\forcelinebreak The feel of a forest rill
\forcelinebreak That wimples fresh and fleet
\forcelinebreak About one’s naked feet;
\forcelinebreak The muzzles of drinking herds;
\forcelinebreak Lush flags and bulrushes;
\forcelinebreak The chirp of rain-bound birds—
\forcelinebreak To live, I think of these!


Envoy


Dark aisles, new packs of cards,
\forcelinebreak Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards,
\forcelinebreak Dawn dews and starlit seas,
\forcelinebreak White marbles, whiter words—
\forcelinebreak To live, I think of these!

\section{BALLADE OF TRUISMS}


Gold or silver, every day,
\forcelinebreak Dies to gray.
\forcelinebreak There are knots in every skein.
\forcelinebreak Hours of work and hours of play
\forcelinebreak Fade away
\forcelinebreak Into one immense Inane.
\forcelinebreak Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
\forcelinebreak Are as vain
\forcelinebreak As the foam or as the spray.
\forcelinebreak Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
\forcelinebreak One refrain:
\forcelinebreak ‘If it could be always May!’


Though the earth be green and gay,
\forcelinebreak Though, they say,
\forcelinebreak Man the cup of heaven may drain;
\forcelinebreak Though, his little world to sway,
\forcelinebreak He display
\forcelinebreak Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
\forcelinebreak Autumn brings a mist and rain
\forcelinebreak That constrain
\forcelinebreak Him and his to know decay,
\forcelinebreak Where undimmed the lights that wane
\forcelinebreak Would remain,
\forcelinebreak If it could be always May.


Yea, alas, must turn to Nay,
\forcelinebreak Flesh to clay.
\forcelinebreak Chance and Time are ever twain.
\forcelinebreak Men may scoff, and men may pray,
\forcelinebreak But they pay
\forcelinebreak Every pleasure with a pain.
\forcelinebreak Life may soar, and Fortune deign
\forcelinebreak To explain
\forcelinebreak Where her prizes hide and stay;
\forcelinebreak But we lack the lusty train
\forcelinebreak We should gain,
\forcelinebreak If it could be always May.


Envoy


Time, the pedagogue, his cane
\forcelinebreak Might retain,
\forcelinebreak But his charges all would stray
\forcelinebreak Truanting in every lane—
\forcelinebreak Jack with Jane—
\forcelinebreak If it could be always May.

\section{DOUBLE BALLADE
\forcelinebreak OF LIFE AND FATE}


Fools may pine, and sots may swill,
\forcelinebreak Cynics gibe, and prophets rail,
\forcelinebreak Moralists may scourge and drill,
\forcelinebreak Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail.
\forcelinebreak Let them whine, or threat, or wail!
\forcelinebreak Till the touch of Circumstance
\forcelinebreak Down to darkness sink the scale,
\forcelinebreak Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.


What if skies be wan and chill?
\forcelinebreak What if winds be harsh and stale?
\forcelinebreak Presently the east will thrill,
\forcelinebreak And the sad and shrunken sail,
\forcelinebreak Bellying with a kindly gale,
\forcelinebreak Bear you sunwards, while your chance
\forcelinebreak Sends you back the hopeful hail:—
\forcelinebreak ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’


Idle shot or coming bill,
\forcelinebreak Hapless love or broken bail,
\forcelinebreak Gulp it (never chew your pill!),
\forcelinebreak And, if Burgundy should fail,
\forcelinebreak Try the humbler pot of ale!
\forcelinebreak Over all is heaven’s expanse.
\forcelinebreak Gold’s to find among the shale.
\forcelinebreak Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.


Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill,
\forcelinebreak Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail,
\forcelinebreak Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill,
\forcelinebreak Hard Sir Æger dints his mail;
\forcelinebreak And the while by hill and dale
\forcelinebreak Tristram’s braveries gleam and glance,
\forcelinebreak And his blithe horn tells its tale:—
\forcelinebreak ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’


Araminta’s grand and shrill,
\forcelinebreak Delia’s passionate and frail,
\forcelinebreak Doris drives an earnest quill,
\forcelinebreak Athanasia takes the veil:
\forcelinebreak Wiser Phyllis o’er her pail,
\forcelinebreak At the heart of all romance
\forcelinebreak Reading, sings to Strephon’s flail:—
\forcelinebreak ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’


Every Jack must have his Jill
\forcelinebreak (Even Johnson had his Thrale!):
\forcelinebreak Forward, couples—with a will!
\forcelinebreak This, the world, is not a jail.
\forcelinebreak Hear the music, sprat and whale!
\forcelinebreak Hands across, retire, advance!
\forcelinebreak Though the doomsman’s on your trail,
\forcelinebreak Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.


Envoy


Boys and girls, at slug and snail
\forcelinebreak And their kindred look askance.
\forcelinebreak Pay your footing on the nail:
\forcelinebreak Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.

\section{DOUBLE BALLADE
\forcelinebreak OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF THINGS}


The big teetotum twirls,
\forcelinebreak And epochs wax and wane
\forcelinebreak As chance subsides or swirls;
\forcelinebreak But of the loss and gain
\forcelinebreak The sum is always plain.
\forcelinebreak Read on the mighty pall,
\forcelinebreak The weed of funeral
\forcelinebreak That covers praise and blame,
\forcelinebreak The —isms and the —anities,
\forcelinebreak Magnificence and shame:—
\forcelinebreak ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’


The Fates are subtile girls!
\forcelinebreak They give us chaff for grain.
\forcelinebreak And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
\forcelinebreak Like bolted death, disdain
\forcelinebreak At all that heart and brain
\forcelinebreak Conceive, or great or small,
\forcelinebreak Upon this earthly ball.
\forcelinebreak Would you be knight and dame?
\forcelinebreak Or woo the sweet humanities?
\forcelinebreak Or illustrate a name?
\forcelinebreak O Vanity of Vanities!


We sound the sea for pearls,
\forcelinebreak Or drown them in a drain;
\forcelinebreak We flute it with the merles,
\forcelinebreak Or tug and sweat and strain;
\forcelinebreak We grovel, or we reign;
\forcelinebreak We saunter, or we brawl;
\forcelinebreak We answer, or we call;
\forcelinebreak We search the stars for Fame,
\forcelinebreak Or sink her subterranities;
\forcelinebreak The legend’s still the same:—
\forcelinebreak ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’


Here at the wine one birls,
\forcelinebreak There some one clanks a chain.
\forcelinebreak The flag that this man furls
\forcelinebreak That man to float is fain.
\forcelinebreak Pleasure gives place to pain:
\forcelinebreak These in the kennel crawl,
\forcelinebreak While others take the wall.
\forcelinebreak She has a glorious aim,
\forcelinebreak He lives for the inanities.
\forcelinebreak What comes of every claim?
\forcelinebreak O Vanity of Vanities!


Alike are clods and earls.
\forcelinebreak For sot, and seer, and swain,
\forcelinebreak For emperors and for churls,
\forcelinebreak For antidote and bane,
\forcelinebreak There is but one refrain:
\forcelinebreak But one for king and thrall,
\forcelinebreak For David and for Saul,
\forcelinebreak For fleet of foot and lame,
\forcelinebreak For pieties and profanities,
\forcelinebreak The picture and the frame:—
\forcelinebreak ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’


Life is a smoke that curls—
\forcelinebreak Curls in a flickering skein,
\forcelinebreak That winds and whisks and whirls
\forcelinebreak A figment thin and vain,
\forcelinebreak Into the vast Inane.
\forcelinebreak One end for hut and hall!
\forcelinebreak One end for cell and stall!
\forcelinebreak Burned in one common flame
\forcelinebreak Are wisdoms and insanities.
\forcelinebreak For this alone we came:—
\forcelinebreak ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’


Envoy


Prince, pride must have a fall.
\forcelinebreak What is the worth of all
\forcelinebreak Your state’s supreme urbanities?
\forcelinebreak Bad at the best’s the game.
\forcelinebreak Well might the Sage exclaim:—
\forcelinebreak ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’

\section{AT QUEENSFERRY}


To W. G. S.


The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean
\forcelinebreak We bowled along a road that curved a spine
\forcelinebreak Superbly sinuous and serpentine
\forcelinebreak Thro’ silent symphonies of summer green.
\forcelinebreak Sudden the Forth came on us—sad of mien,
\forcelinebreak No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line:
\forcelinebreak A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a sign
\forcelinebreak Of life or death, two spits of sand between.
\forcelinebreak Water and sky merged blank in mist together,
\forcelinebreak The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship’s spars
\forcelinebreak Traced vague, black shadows on the shimmery glaze:
\forcelinebreak We felt the dim, strange years, the grey, strange weather,
\forcelinebreak The still, strange land, unvexed of sun or stars,
\forcelinebreak Where Lancelot rides clanking thro’ the haze.

\section{ORIENTALE}


She’s an enchanting little Israelite,
\forcelinebreak A world of hidden dimples!—Dusky-eyed,
\forcelinebreak A starry-glancing daughter of the Bride,
\forcelinebreak With hair escaped from some Arabian Night,
\forcelinebreak Her lip is red, her cheek is golden-white,
\forcelinebreak Her nose a scimitar; and, set aside
\forcelinebreak The bamboo hat she cocks with so much pride,
\forcelinebreak Her dress a dream of daintiness and delight.
\forcelinebreak And when she passes with the dreadful boys
\forcelinebreak And romping girls, the cockneys loud and crude,
\forcelinebreak My thought, to the Minories tied yet moved to range
\forcelinebreak The Land o’ the Sun, commingles with the noise
\forcelinebreak Of magian drums and scents of sandalwood
\forcelinebreak A touch Sidonian—modern—taking—strange!

\section{IN FISHERROW}


A hard north-easter fifty winters long
\forcelinebreak Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck;
\forcelinebreak Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck;
\forcelinebreak Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong.
\forcelinebreak A wide blue cloak, a squat and sturdy throng
\forcelinebreak Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck,
\forcelinebreak A white vest broidered black, her person deck,
\forcelinebreak Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong.
\forcelinebreak Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh,
\forcelinebreak Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers,
\forcelinebreak The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye,
\forcelinebreak Ever and anon imploring you to buy,
\forcelinebreak As looking down the street she onward lingers,
\forcelinebreak Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry.

\section{BACK-VIEW}


To D. F.


I watched you saunter down the sand:
\forcelinebreak Serene and large, the golden weather
\forcelinebreak Flowed radiant round your peacock feather,
\forcelinebreak And glistered from your jewelled hand.
\forcelinebreak Your tawny hair, turned strand on strand
\forcelinebreak And bound with blue ribands together,
\forcelinebreak Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather,
\forcelinebreak That round your lissome shoulder spanned.
\forcelinebreak Your grace was quick my sense to seize:
\forcelinebreak The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses,
\forcelinebreak The close-drawn scarf, and under these
\forcelinebreak The flowing, flapping draperies—
\forcelinebreak My thought an outline still caresses,
\forcelinebreak Enchanting, comic, Japanese!

\section{CROLUIS}


To G. W.


The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then,
\forcelinebreak He groped and fiddled doggedly along,
\forcelinebreak His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng
\forcelinebreak The stony peevishness of sightless men.
\forcelinebreak He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again,
\forcelinebreak Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song,
\forcelinebreak So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong,
\forcelinebreak You hardly could distinguish one in ten.
\forcelinebreak He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand,
\forcelinebreak And, grasping wearily his bread-winner,
\forcelinebreak Stared dim towards the blue immensity,
\forcelinebreak Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand.
\forcelinebreak He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir:
\forcelinebreak His gesture spoke a vast despondency.

\section{ATTADALE WEST HIGHLANDS}


To A. J.


A black and glassy float, opaque and still,
\forcelinebreak The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep,
\forcelinebreak Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deep
\forcelinebreak The calm grey skies; the solemn spurs of hill;
\forcelinebreak Heather, and corn, and wisps of loitering haze;
\forcelinebreak The wee white cots, black-hatted, plumed with smoke;
\forcelinebreak The braes beyond—and when the ripple awoke,
\forcelinebreak They wavered with the jarred and wavering glaze.
\forcelinebreak The air was hushed and dreamy. Evermore
\forcelinebreak A noise of running water whispered near.
\forcelinebreak A straggling crow called high and thin. A bird
\forcelinebreak Trilled from the birch-leaves. Round the shingled shore,
\forcelinebreak Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and clear,
\forcelinebreak Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, idly heard.

\section{FROM A WINDOW IN PRINCES STREET}


To M. M. M‘B.


Above the Crags that fade and gloom
\forcelinebreak Starts the bare knee of Arthur’s Seat;
\forcelinebreak Ridged high against the evening bloom,
\forcelinebreak The Old Town rises, street on street;
\forcelinebreak With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead,
\forcelinebreak Like rampired walls the houses lean,
\forcelinebreak All spired and domed and turreted,
\forcelinebreak Sheer to the valley’s darkling green;
\forcelinebreak Ranged in mysterious disarray,
\forcelinebreak The Castle, menacing and austere,
\forcelinebreak Looms through the lingering last of day;
\forcelinebreak And in the silver dusk you hear,
\forcelinebreak Reverberated from crag and scar,
\forcelinebreak Bold bugles blowing points of war.

\section{IN THE DIALS}


To Garryowen upon an organ ground
\forcelinebreak Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip,
\forcelinebreak With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip,
\forcelinebreak As in the tumult of a witches’ round.
\forcelinebreak Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.
\forcelinebreak Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip.
\forcelinebreak The artist’s teeth gleam from his bearded lip.
\forcelinebreak High from the kennel howls a tortured hound.
\forcelinebreak The music reels and hurtles, and the night
\forcelinebreak Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light
\forcelinebreak Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused
\forcelinebreak With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags,
\forcelinebreak Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags
\forcelinebreak Look on dispassionate—critical—something ’mused.

\section{THE GODS ARE DEAD}


The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
\forcelinebreak Living at least in Lemprière undeleted,
\forcelinebreak The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
\forcelinebreak Are one and all, I like to think, retreated
\forcelinebreak In some still land of lilacs and the rose.


Once higeh they sat, and high o’er earthly shows
\forcelinebreak With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
\forcelinebreak Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes,
\forcelinebreak The gods are dead.


It must be true. The world, a world of prose,
\forcelinebreak Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,
\forcelinebreak Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!
\forcelinebreak Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows
\forcelinebreak Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:—
\forcelinebreak ‘The Gods are Dead!’

\section{To F. W.}


Let us be drunk, and for a while forget,
\forcelinebreak Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,
\forcelinebreak Live without reason and despite of rhyme,
\forcelinebreak As in a dream preposterous and sublime,
\forcelinebreak Where place and hour and means for once are met.


Where is the use of effort? Love and debt
\forcelinebreak And disappointment have us in a net.
\forcelinebreak Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .
\forcelinebreak Let us be drunk.


In vain our little hour we strut and fret,
\forcelinebreak And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet:
\forcelinebreak We cannot please the tragicaster Time.
\forcelinebreak To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime,
\forcelinebreak Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet,
\forcelinebreak Let us be drunk!

\section{WHEN YOU ARE OLD}


When you are old, and I am passed away—
\forcelinebreak Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray—
\forcelinebreak I think, whate’er the end, this dream of mine,
\forcelinebreak Comforting you, a friendly star will shine
\forcelinebreak Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.


So may it be: that so dead Yesterday,
\forcelinebreak No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay,
\forcelinebreak May serve you memories like almighty wine,
\forcelinebreak When you are old!


Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway
\forcelinebreak Of death the past’s enormous disarray
\forcelinebreak Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign,
\forcelinebreak Live on well pleased: immortal and divine
\forcelinebreak Love shall still tend you, as God’s angels may,
\forcelinebreak When you are old.

\section{BESIDE THE IDLE SUMMER SEA}


Beside the idle summer sea
\forcelinebreak And in the vacant summer days,
\forcelinebreak Light Love came fluting down the ways,
\forcelinebreak Where you were loitering with me.


Who has not welcomed, even as we,
\forcelinebreak That jocund minstrel and his lays
\forcelinebreak Beside the idle summer sea
\forcelinebreak And in the vacant summer days?


We listened, we were fancy-free;
\forcelinebreak And lo! in terror and amaze
\forcelinebreak We stood alone—alone at gaze
\forcelinebreak With an implacable memory
\forcelinebreak Beside the idle summer sea.

\section{I. M.
\forcelinebreak R. G. C. B.
\forcelinebreak 1878}


The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
\forcelinebreak And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.
\forcelinebreak From camp and church, the fireside and the street,
\forcelinebreak She beckons forth—and strife and song have been.


A summer night descending cool and green
\forcelinebreak And dark on daytime’s dust and stress and heat,
\forcelinebreak The ways of Death are soothing and serene,
\forcelinebreak And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.


O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien
\forcelinebreak And radiant faces look upon, and greet
\forcelinebreak This last of all your lovers, and to meet
\forcelinebreak Her kiss, the Comforter’s, your spirit lean . . .
\forcelinebreak The ways of Death are soothing and serene.

\section{WE SHALL SURELY DIE}


We shall surely die:
\forcelinebreak Must we needs grow old?
\forcelinebreak Grow old and cold,
\forcelinebreak And we know not why?


O, the By-and-By,
\forcelinebreak And the tale that’s told!
\forcelinebreak We shall surely die:
\forcelinebreak Must we needs grow old?


Grow old and sigh,
\forcelinebreak Grudge and withhold,
\forcelinebreak Resent and scold? . . .
\forcelinebreak Not you and I?
\forcelinebreak We shall surely die!

\section{WHAT IS TO COME}


What is to come we know not. But we know
\forcelinebreak That what has been was good—was good to show,
\forcelinebreak Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
\forcelinebreak We are the masters of the days that were:
\forcelinebreak We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.


Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow?
\forcelinebreak Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe—
\forcelinebreak Dear, though it spoil and break us!—need we care
\forcelinebreak What is to come?


Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow,
\forcelinebreak Or the gold weather round us mellow slow:
\forcelinebreak We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare
\forcelinebreak And we can conquer, though we may not share
\forcelinebreak In the rich quiet of the afterglow
\forcelinebreak What is to come.

\chapter{ECHOES}


1872–1889


Aquí está encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcías.


Gil Blas AU LECTEUR.

\section{I
\forcelinebreak TO MY MOTHER}


Chiming a dream by the way
\forcelinebreak With ocean’s rapture and roar,
\forcelinebreak I met a maiden to-day
\forcelinebreak Walking alone on the shore:
\forcelinebreak Walking in maiden wise,
\forcelinebreak Modest and kind and fair,
\forcelinebreak The freshness of spring in her eyes
\forcelinebreak And the fulness of spring in her hair.


Cloud-shadow and scudding sun-burst
\forcelinebreak Were swift on the floor of the sea,
\forcelinebreak And a mad wind was romping its worst,
\forcelinebreak But what was their magic to me?
\forcelinebreak Or the charm of the midsummer skies?
\forcelinebreak I only saw she was there,
\forcelinebreak A dream of the sea in her eyes
\forcelinebreak And the kiss of the sea in her hair.


I watched her vanish in space;
\forcelinebreak She came where I walked no more;
\forcelinebreak But something had passed of her grace
\forcelinebreak To the spell of the wave and the shore;
\forcelinebreak And now, as the glad stars rise,
\forcelinebreak She comes to me, rosy and rare,
\forcelinebreak The delight of the wind in her eyes
\forcelinebreak And the hand of the wind in her hair.


1872

\section{II}


Life is bitter. All the faces of the years,
\forcelinebreak Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears.
\forcelinebreak Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep?
\forcelinebreak In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers,
\forcelinebreak Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . .
\forcelinebreak Let me sleep.


Riches won but mock the old, unable years;
\forcelinebreak Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears;
\forcelinebreak Love must wither, or must live alone and weep.
\forcelinebreak In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers,
\forcelinebreak While we slumber, death approaches though the hours! . . .
\forcelinebreak Let me sleep.


1872

\section{III}


O, gather me the rose, the rose,
\forcelinebreak While yet in flower we find it,
\forcelinebreak For summer smiles, but summer goes,
\forcelinebreak And winter waits behind it!


For with the dream foregone, foregone,
\forcelinebreak The deed forborne for ever,
\forcelinebreak The worm, regret, will canker on,
\forcelinebreak And Time will turn him never.


So well it were to love, my love,
\forcelinebreak And cheat of any laughter
\forcelinebreak The fate beneath us and above,
\forcelinebreak The dark before and after.


The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
\forcelinebreak The sunshine and the swallow,
\forcelinebreak The dream that comes, the wish that goes,
\forcelinebreak The memories that follow!


1874

\section{IV
\forcelinebreak I. M.
\forcelinebreak R. T. HAMILTON BRUCE
\forcelinebreak (1846–1899)}


Out of the night that covers me,
\forcelinebreak Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
\forcelinebreak I thank whatever gods may be
\forcelinebreak For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
\forcelinebreak I have not winced nor cried aloud.
\forcelinebreak Under the bludgeonings of chance
\forcelinebreak My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
\forcelinebreak Looms but the Horror of the shade,
\forcelinebreak And yet the menace of the years
\forcelinebreak Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
\forcelinebreak How charged with punishments the scroll,
\forcelinebreak I am the master of my fate:
\forcelinebreak I am the captain of my soul.


1875

\section{V}


I am the Reaper.
\forcelinebreak All things with heedful hook
\forcelinebreak Silent I gather.
\forcelinebreak Pale roses touched with the spring,
\forcelinebreak Tall corn in summer,
\forcelinebreak Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms—
\forcelinebreak Reaping, still reaping—
\forcelinebreak All things with heedful hook
\forcelinebreak Timely I gather.


I am the Sower.
\forcelinebreak All the unbodied life
\forcelinebreak Runs through my seed-sheet.
\forcelinebreak Atom with atom wed,
\forcelinebreak Each quickening the other,
\forcelinebreak Fall through my hands, ever changing, still changeless
\forcelinebreak Ceaselessly sowing,
\forcelinebreak Life, incorruptible life,
\forcelinebreak Flows from my seed-sheet.


Maker and breaker,
\forcelinebreak I am the ebb and the flood,
\forcelinebreak Here and Hereafter.
\forcelinebreak Sped through the tangle and coil
\forcelinebreak Of infinite nature,
\forcelinebreak Viewless and soundless I fashion all being.
\forcelinebreak Taker and giver,
\forcelinebreak I am the womb and the grave,
\forcelinebreak The Now and the Ever.


1875

\section{VI}


Praise the generous gods for giving
\forcelinebreak In a world of wrath and strife
\forcelinebreak With a little time for living,
\forcelinebreak Unto all the joy of life.


At whatever source we drink it,
\forcelinebreak Art or love or faith or wine,
\forcelinebreak In whatever terms we think it,
\forcelinebreak It is common and divine.


Praise the high gods, for in giving
\forcelinebreak This to man, and this alone,
\forcelinebreak They have made his chance of living
\forcelinebreak Shine the equal of their own.


1875

\section{VII}


Fill a glass with golden wine,
\forcelinebreak And the while your lips are wet
\forcelinebreak Set their perfume unto mine,
\forcelinebreak And forget,
\forcelinebreak Every kiss we take and give
\forcelinebreak Leaves us less of life to live.


Yet again! Your whim and mine
\forcelinebreak In a happy while have met.
\forcelinebreak All your sweets to me resign,
\forcelinebreak Nor regret
\forcelinebreak That we press with every breath,
\forcelinebreak Sighed or singing, nearer death.


1875

\section{VIII}


We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
\forcelinebreak November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
\forcelinebreak The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
\forcelinebreak We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.


We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
\forcelinebreak The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
\forcelinebreak Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
\forcelinebreak We’ll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.


We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
\forcelinebreak If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.
\forcelinebreak No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,
\forcelinebreak We’ll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.


1875

\section{IX
\forcelinebreak To W. R.}


Madam Life’s a piece in bloom
\forcelinebreak Death goes dogging everywhere:
\forcelinebreak She’s the tenant of the room,
\forcelinebreak He’s the ruffian on the stair.


You shall see her as a friend,
\forcelinebreak You shall bilk him once and twice;
\forcelinebreak But he’ll trap you in the end,
\forcelinebreak And he’ll stick you for her price.


With his kneebones at your chest,
\forcelinebreak And his knuckles in your throat,
\forcelinebreak You would reason—plead—protest!
\forcelinebreak Clutching at her petticoat;


But she’s heard it all before,
\forcelinebreak Well she knows you’ve had your fun,
\forcelinebreak Gingerly she gains the door,
\forcelinebreak And your little job is done.


1877

\section{X}


The sea is full of wandering foam,
\forcelinebreak The sky of driving cloud;
\forcelinebreak My restless thoughts among them roam . . .
\forcelinebreak The night is dark and loud.


Where are the hours that came to me
\forcelinebreak So beautiful and bright?
\forcelinebreak A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . .
\forcelinebreak O, dark and loud’s the night!


1876

\section{XI
\forcelinebreak To W. R.}


Thick is the darkness—
\forcelinebreak Sunward, O, sunward!
\forcelinebreak Rough is the highway—
\forcelinebreak Onward, still onward!


Dawn harbours surely
\forcelinebreak East of the shadows.
\forcelinebreak Facing us somewhere
\forcelinebreak Spread the sweet meadows.


Upward and forward!
\forcelinebreak Time will restore us:
\forcelinebreak Light is above us,
\forcelinebreak Rest is before us.


1876

\section{XII}


To me at my fifth-floor window
\forcelinebreak The chimney-pots in rows
\forcelinebreak Are sets of pipes pandean
\forcelinebreak For every wind that blows;


And the smoke that whirls and eddies
\forcelinebreak In a thousand times and keys
\forcelinebreak Is really a visible music
\forcelinebreak Set to my reveries.


O monstrous pipes, melodious
\forcelinebreak With fitful tune and dream,
\forcelinebreak The clouds are your only audience,
\forcelinebreak Her thought is your only theme!


1875

\section{XIII}


Bring her again, O western wind,
\forcelinebreak Over the western sea:
\forcelinebreak Gentle and good and fair and kind,
\forcelinebreak Bring her again to me!


Not that her fancy holds me dear,
\forcelinebreak Not that a hope may be:
\forcelinebreak Only that I may know her near,
\forcelinebreak Wind of the western sea.


1875

\section{XIV}


The wan sun westers, faint and slow;
\forcelinebreak The eastern distance glimmers gray;
\forcelinebreak An eerie haze comes creeping low
\forcelinebreak Across the little, lonely bay;
\forcelinebreak And from the sky-line far away
\forcelinebreak About the quiet heaven are spread
\forcelinebreak Mysterious hints of dying day,
\forcelinebreak Thin, delicate dreams of green and red.


And weak, reluctant surges lap
\forcelinebreak And rustle round and down the strand.
\forcelinebreak No other sound . . . If it should hap,
\forcelinebreak The ship that sails from fairy-land!
\forcelinebreak The silken shrouds with spells are manned,
\forcelinebreak The hull is magically scrolled,
\forcelinebreak The squat mast lives, and in the sand
\forcelinebreak The gold prow-griffin claws a hold.


It steals to seaward silently;
\forcelinebreak Strange fish-folk follow thro’ the gloom;
\forcelinebreak Great wings flap overhead; I see
\forcelinebreak The Castle of the Drowsy Doom
\forcelinebreak Vague thro’ the changeless twilight loom,
\forcelinebreak Enchanted, hushed. And ever there
\forcelinebreak She slumbers in eternal bloom,
\forcelinebreak Her cushions hid with golden hair.


1875

\section{XV}


There is a wheel inside my head
\forcelinebreak Of wantonness and wine,
\forcelinebreak An old, cracked fiddle is begging without,
\forcelinebreak But the wind with scents of the sea is fed,
\forcelinebreak And the sun seems glad to shine.


The sun and the wind are akin to you,
\forcelinebreak As you are akin to June.
\forcelinebreak But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about,
\forcelinebreak And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?—
\forcelinebreak He’s playing your favourite tune.


1875

\section{XVI}


While the west is paling
\forcelinebreak Starshine is begun.
\forcelinebreak While the dusk is failing
\forcelinebreak Glimmers up the sun.


So, till darkness cover
\forcelinebreak Life’s retreating gleam,
\forcelinebreak Lover follows lover,
\forcelinebreak Dream succeeds to dream.


Stoop to my endeavour,
\forcelinebreak O my love, and be
\forcelinebreak Only and for ever
\forcelinebreak Sun and stars to me.


1876

\section{XVII}


The sands are alive with sunshine,
\forcelinebreak The bathers lounge and throng,
\forcelinebreak And out in the bay a bugle
\forcelinebreak Is lilting a gallant song.


The clouds go racing eastward,
\forcelinebreak The blithe wind cannot rest,
\forcelinebreak And a shard on the shingle flashes
\forcelinebreak Like the shining soul of a jest;


While children romp in the surges,
\forcelinebreak And sweethearts wander free,
\forcelinebreak And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . .
\forcelinebreak I would it were deep over me!


1875

\section{XVIII
\forcelinebreak To A. D.}


The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
\forcelinebreak The lark’s is a clarion-call,
\forcelinebreak And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
\forcelinebreak But I love him best of all.


For his song is all of the joy of life,
\forcelinebreak And we in the mad, spring weather,
\forcelinebreak We two have listened till he sang
\forcelinebreak Our hearts and lips together.


1876

\section{XIX}


Your heart has trembled to my tongue,
\forcelinebreak Your hands in mine have lain,
\forcelinebreak Your thought to me has leaned and clung,
\forcelinebreak Again and yet again,
\forcelinebreak My dear,
\forcelinebreak Again and yet again.


Now die the dream, or come the wife,
\forcelinebreak The past is not in vain,
\forcelinebreak For wholly as it was your life
\forcelinebreak Can never be again,
\forcelinebreak My dear,
\forcelinebreak Can never be again.


1876

\section{XX}


The surges gushed and sounded,
\forcelinebreak The blue was the blue of June,
\forcelinebreak And low above the brightening east
\forcelinebreak Floated a shred of moon.


The woods were black and solemn,
\forcelinebreak The night winds large and free,
\forcelinebreak And in your thought a blessing seemed
\forcelinebreak To fall on land and sea.


1877

\section{XXI}


We flash across the level.
\forcelinebreak We thunder thro’ the bridges.
\forcelinebreak We bicker down the cuttings.
\forcelinebreak We sway along the ridges.


A rush of streaming hedges,
\forcelinebreak Of jostling lights and shadows,
\forcelinebreak Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
\forcelinebreak Of racing woods and meadows.


We charge the tunnels headlong—
\forcelinebreak The blackness roars and shatters.
\forcelinebreak We crash between embankments—
\forcelinebreak The open spins and scatters.


We shake off the miles like water,
\forcelinebreak We might carry a royal ransom;
\forcelinebreak And I think of her waiting, waiting,
\forcelinebreak And long for a common hansom.


1876

\section{XXII}


The West a glimmering lake of light,
\forcelinebreak A dream of pearly weather,
\forcelinebreak The first of stars is burning white—
\forcelinebreak The star we watch together.
\forcelinebreak Is April dead? The unresting year
\forcelinebreak Will shape us our September,
\forcelinebreak And April’s work is done, my dear—
\forcelinebreak Do you not remember?


O gracious eve! O happy star,
\forcelinebreak Still-flashing, glowing, sinking!—
\forcelinebreak Who lives of lovers near or far
\forcelinebreak So glad as I in thinking?
\forcelinebreak The gallant world is warm and green,
\forcelinebreak For May fulfils November.
\forcelinebreak When lights and leaves and loves have been,
\forcelinebreak Sweet, will you remember?


O star benignant and serene,
\forcelinebreak I take the good to-morrow,
\forcelinebreak That fills from verge to verge my dream,
\forcelinebreak With all its joy and sorrow!
\forcelinebreak The old, sweet spell is unforgot
\forcelinebreak That turns to June December;
\forcelinebreak And, tho’ the world remembered not,
\forcelinebreak Love, we would remember.


1876

\section{XXIII}


The skies are strown with stars,
\forcelinebreak The streets are fresh with dew
\forcelinebreak A thin moon drifts to westward,
\forcelinebreak The night is hushed and cheerful.
\forcelinebreak My thought is quick with you.


Near windows gleam and laugh,
\forcelinebreak And far away a train
\forcelinebreak Clanks glowing through the stillness:
\forcelinebreak A great content’s in all things,
\forcelinebreak And life is not in vain.


1877

\section{XXIV}


The full sea rolls and thunders
\forcelinebreak In glory and in glee.
\forcelinebreak O, bury me not in the senseless earth
\forcelinebreak But in the living sea!


Ay, bury me where it surges
\forcelinebreak A thousand miles from shore,
\forcelinebreak And in its brotherly unrest
\forcelinebreak I’ll range for evermore.


1876

\section{XXV}


In the year that’s come and gone, love, his flying feather
\forcelinebreak Stooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk together.
\forcelinebreak In the year that’s coming on, though many a troth be broken,
\forcelinebreak We at least will not forget aught that love hath spoken.


In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tether
\forcelinebreak All of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together.
\forcelinebreak In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of roses
\forcelinebreak We shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes.


In the year that’s come and gone, in the golden weather,
\forcelinebreak Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of life together.
\forcelinebreak In the year that’s coming on, rich in joy and sorrow,
\forcelinebreak We shall light our lamp, and wait life’s mysterious morrow.


1877

\section{XXVI}


In the placid summer midnight,
\forcelinebreak Under the drowsy sky,
\forcelinebreak I seem to hear in the stillness
\forcelinebreak The moths go glimmering by.


One by one from the windows
\forcelinebreak The lights have all been sped.
\forcelinebreak Never a blind looks conscious—
\forcelinebreak The street is asleep in bed!


But I come where a living casement
\forcelinebreak Laughs luminous and wide;
\forcelinebreak I hear the song of a piano
\forcelinebreak Break in a sparkling tide;


And I feel, in the waltz that frolics
\forcelinebreak And warbles swift and clear,
\forcelinebreak A sudden sense of shelter
\forcelinebreak And friendliness and cheer . . .


A sense of tinkling glasses,
\forcelinebreak Of love and laughter and light—
\forcelinebreak The piano stops, and the window
\forcelinebreak Stares blank out into the night.


The blind goes out, and I wander
\forcelinebreak To the old, unfriendly sea,
\forcelinebreak The lonelier for the memory
\forcelinebreak That walks like a ghost with me.

\section{XXVII}


She sauntered by the swinging seas,
\forcelinebreak A jewel glittered at her ear,
\forcelinebreak And, teasing her along, the breeze
\forcelinebreak Brought many a rounded grace more near.


So passing, one with wave and beam,
\forcelinebreak She left for memory to caress
\forcelinebreak A laughing thought, a golden gleam,
\forcelinebreak A hint of hidden loveliness.


1876

\section{XXVIII
\forcelinebreak To S. C.}


Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
\forcelinebreak And life feels clean and new,
\forcelinebreak For the old love comes to meet us
\forcelinebreak In the dawning and the dew.
\forcelinebreak O’erblown with sunny shadows,
\forcelinebreak O’ersped with winds at play,
\forcelinebreak The woodlands and the meadows
\forcelinebreak Are keeping holiday.
\forcelinebreak Wild foals are scampering, neighing,
\forcelinebreak Brave merles their hautboys blow:
\forcelinebreak Come! let us go a-maying
\forcelinebreak As in the Long-Ago.


Here we but peak and dwindle:
\forcelinebreak The clank of chain and crane,
\forcelinebreak The whir of crank and spindle
\forcelinebreak Bewilder heart and brain;
\forcelinebreak The ends of our endeavour
\forcelinebreak Are merely wealth and fame,
\forcelinebreak Yet in the still Forever
\forcelinebreak We’re one and all the same;
\forcelinebreak Delaying, still delaying,
\forcelinebreak We watch the fading west:
\forcelinebreak Come! let us go a-maying,
\forcelinebreak Nor fear to take the best.


Yet beautiful and spacious
\forcelinebreak The wise, old world appears.
\forcelinebreak Yet frank and fair and gracious
\forcelinebreak Outlaugh the jocund years.
\forcelinebreak Our arguments disputing,
\forcelinebreak The universal Pan
\forcelinebreak Still wanders fluting—fluting—
\forcelinebreak Fluting to maid and man.
\forcelinebreak Our weary well-a-waying
\forcelinebreak His music cannot still:
\forcelinebreak Come! let us go a-maying,
\forcelinebreak And pipe with him our fill.


When wanton winds are flowing
\forcelinebreak Among the gladdening glass;
\forcelinebreak Where hawthorn brakes are blowing,
\forcelinebreak And meadow perfumes pass;
\forcelinebreak Where morning’s grace is greenest,
\forcelinebreak And fullest noon’s of pride;
\forcelinebreak Where sunset spreads serenest,
\forcelinebreak And sacred night’s most wide;
\forcelinebreak Where nests are swaying, swaying,
\forcelinebreak And spring’s fresh voices call,
\forcelinebreak Come! let us go a-maying,
\forcelinebreak And bless the God of all!


1878

\section{XXIX
\forcelinebreak To R. L. S.}


A child,
\forcelinebreak Curious and innocent,
\forcelinebreak Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing
\forcelinebreak Loses himself in the Fair.


Thro’ the jostle and din
\forcelinebreak Wandering, he revels,
\forcelinebreak Dreaming, desiring, possessing;
\forcelinebreak Till, of a sudden
\forcelinebreak Tired and afraid, he beholds
\forcelinebreak The sordid assemblage
\forcelinebreak Just as it is; and he runs
\forcelinebreak With a sob to his Nurse
\forcelinebreak (Lighting at last on him),
\forcelinebreak And in her motherly bosom
\forcelinebreak Cries him to sleep.


Thus thro’ the World,
\forcelinebreak Seeing and feeling and knowing,
\forcelinebreak Goes Man: till at last,
\forcelinebreak Tired of experience, he turns
\forcelinebreak To the friendly and comforting breast
\forcelinebreak Of the old nurse, Death.


1876

\section{XXX}


Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams,
\forcelinebreak Still debating, still delay,
\forcelinebreak And the world’s a ghost that gleams—
\forcelinebreak Wavers—vanishes away!


We must live while live we can;
\forcelinebreak We should love while love we may.
\forcelinebreak Dread in women, doubt in man . . .
\forcelinebreak So the Infinite runs away.


1876

\section{XXXI}


O, have you blessed, behind the stars,
\forcelinebreak The blue sheen in the skies,
\forcelinebreak When June the roses round her calls?—
\forcelinebreak Then do you know the light that falls
\forcelinebreak From her belovèd eyes.


And have you felt the sense of peace
\forcelinebreak That morning meadows give?—
\forcelinebreak Then do you know the spirit of grace,
\forcelinebreak The angel abiding in her face,
\forcelinebreak Who makes it good to live.


She shines before me, hope and dream,
\forcelinebreak So fair, so still, so wise,
\forcelinebreak That, winning her, I seem to win
\forcelinebreak Out of the dust and drive and din
\forcelinebreak A nook of Paradise.


1877

\section{XXXII
\forcelinebreak To D. H.}


O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay,
\forcelinebreak And I wish from my heart it’s there I was to-day;
\forcelinebreak I wish from my heart I was far away from here,
\forcelinebreak Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear.
\forcelinebreak For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.
\forcelinebreak Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.
\forcelinebreak O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
\forcelinebreak They’re all growing green in the old countrie.


In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet
\forcelinebreak With her babe on her arm, as she came down the street;
\forcelinebreak And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing ready
\forcelinebreak For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie.
\forcelinebreak And it’s home, dearie, home . . .


O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring;
\forcelinebreak And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king:
\forcelinebreak With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blue
\forcelinebreak He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do.
\forcelinebreak And it’s home, dearie, home . . .


O, there’s a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,
\forcelinebreak And that of all the winds is the one I like the best,
\forcelinebreak For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free,
\forcelinebreak And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie.
\forcelinebreak For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.
\forcelinebreak Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.
\forcelinebreak O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
\forcelinebreak They’re all growing green in the old countrie.


1878


Note.—The burthen and the third stanza are old.

\section{XXXIII}


The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
\forcelinebreak Of the young year’s fairest daughter.
\forcelinebreak O, the shadows that fleet o’er the springing wheat!
\forcelinebreak O, the magic of running water!
\forcelinebreak The spirit of spring is in every thing,
\forcelinebreak The banners of spring are streaming,
\forcelinebreak We march to a tune from the fifes of June,
\forcelinebreak And life’s a dream worth dreaming.


It’s all very well to sit and spell
\forcelinebreak At the lesson there’s no gainsaying;
\forcelinebreak But what the deuce are wont and use
\forcelinebreak When the whole mad world’s a-maying?
\forcelinebreak When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
\forcelinebreak And the air’s with love-motes teeming,
\forcelinebreak When fancies break, and the senses wake,
\forcelinebreak O, life’s a dream worth dreaming!


What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
\forcelinebreak Is worded so wisely and kindly
\forcelinebreak That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
\forcelinebreak Must up and follow her blindly.
\forcelinebreak Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme
\forcelinebreak In the being and the seeming,
\forcelinebreak And they that have heard the overword
\forcelinebreak Know life’s a dream worth dreaming.


1878

\section{XXXIV
\forcelinebreak To K. de M.}


Love blows as the wind blows,
\forcelinebreak Love blows into the heart.—Nile Boat-Song.


Life in her creaking shoes
\forcelinebreak Goes, and more formal grows,
\forcelinebreak A round of calls and cues:
\forcelinebreak Love blows as the wind blows.
\forcelinebreak Blows! . . . in the quiet close
\forcelinebreak As in the roaring mart,
\forcelinebreak By ways no mortal knows
\forcelinebreak Love blows into the heart.


The stars some cadence use,
\forcelinebreak Forthright the river flows,
\forcelinebreak In order fall the dews,
\forcelinebreak Love blows as the wind blows:
\forcelinebreak Blows! . . . and what reckoning shows
\forcelinebreak The courses of his chart?
\forcelinebreak A spirit that comes and goes,
\forcelinebreak Love blows into the heart.


1878

\section{XXXV
\forcelinebreak I. M.
\forcelinebreak MARGARITÆ SORORI
\forcelinebreak (1886)}


A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
\forcelinebreak And from the west,
\forcelinebreak Where the sun, his day’s work ended,
\forcelinebreak Lingers as in content,
\forcelinebreak There falls on the old, grey city
\forcelinebreak An influence luminous and serene,
\forcelinebreak A shining peace.


The smoke ascends
\forcelinebreak In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
\forcelinebreak Shine, and are changed. In the valley
\forcelinebreak Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
\forcelinebreak Closing his benediction,
\forcelinebreak Sinks, and the darkening air
\forcelinebreak Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—
\forcelinebreak Night with her train of stars
\forcelinebreak And her great gift of sleep.


So be my passing!
\forcelinebreak My task accomplished and the long day done,
\forcelinebreak My wages taken, and in my heart
\forcelinebreak Some late lark singing,
\forcelinebreak Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
\forcelinebreak The sundown splendid and serene,
\forcelinebreak Death.


1876

\section{XXXVI}


I gave my heart to a woman—
\forcelinebreak I gave it her, branch and root.
\forcelinebreak She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,
\forcelinebreak She cast it under foot.


Under her feet she cast it,
\forcelinebreak She trampled it where it fell,
\forcelinebreak She broke it all to pieces,
\forcelinebreak And each was a clot of hell.


There in the rain and the sunshine
\forcelinebreak They lay and smouldered long;
\forcelinebreak And each, when again she viewed them,
\forcelinebreak Had turned to a living song.

\section{XXXVII
\forcelinebreak To W. A.}


Or ever the knightly years were gone
\forcelinebreak With the old world to the grave,
\forcelinebreak I was a King in Babylon
\forcelinebreak And you were a Christian Slave.


I saw, I took, I cast you by,
\forcelinebreak I bent and broke your pride.
\forcelinebreak You loved me well, or I heard them lie,
\forcelinebreak But your longing was denied.
\forcelinebreak Surely I knew that by and by
\forcelinebreak You cursed your gods and died.


And a myriad suns have set and shone
\forcelinebreak Since then upon the grave
\forcelinebreak Decreed by the King in Babylon
\forcelinebreak To her that had been his Slave.


The pride I trampled is now my scathe,
\forcelinebreak For it tramples me again.
\forcelinebreak The old resentment lasts like death,
\forcelinebreak For you love, yet you refrain.
\forcelinebreak I break my heart on your hard unfaith,
\forcelinebreak And I break my heart in vain.


Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
\forcelinebreak The deed beyond the grave,
\forcelinebreak When I was a King in Babylon
\forcelinebreak And you were a Virgin Slave.

\section{XXXVIII}


On the way to Kew,
\forcelinebreak By the river old and gray,
\forcelinebreak Where in the Long Ago
\forcelinebreak We laughed and loitered so,
\forcelinebreak I met a ghost to-day,
\forcelinebreak A ghost that told of you—
\forcelinebreak A ghost of low replies
\forcelinebreak And sweet, inscrutable eyes
\forcelinebreak Coming up from Richmond
\forcelinebreak As you used to do.


By the river old and gray,
\forcelinebreak The enchanted Long Ago
\forcelinebreak Murmured and smiled anew.
\forcelinebreak On the way to Kew,
\forcelinebreak March had the laugh of May,
\forcelinebreak The bare boughs looked aglow,
\forcelinebreak And old, immortal words
\forcelinebreak Sang in my breast like birds,
\forcelinebreak Coming up from Richmond
\forcelinebreak As I used with you.


With the life of Long Ago
\forcelinebreak Lived my thought of you.
\forcelinebreak By the river old and gray
\forcelinebreak Flowing his appointed way
\forcelinebreak As I watched I knew
\forcelinebreak What is so good to know—
\forcelinebreak Not in vain, not in vain,
\forcelinebreak Shall I look for you again
\forcelinebreak Coming up from Richmond
\forcelinebreak On the way to Kew.

\section{XXXIX}


The Past was goodly once, and yet, when all is said,
\forcelinebreak The best of it we know is that it’s done and dead.


Dwindled and faded quite, perished beyond recall,
\forcelinebreak Nothing is left at last of what one time was all.


Coming back like a ghost, staring and lingering on,
\forcelinebreak Never a word it speaks but proves it dead and gone.


Duty and work and joy—these things it cannot give;
\forcelinebreak And the Present is life, and life is good to live.


Let it lie where it fell, far from the living sun,
\forcelinebreak The Past that, goodly once, is gone and dead and done.

\section{XL}


The spring, my dear,
\forcelinebreak Is no longer spring.
\forcelinebreak Does the blackbird sing
\forcelinebreak What he sang last year?
\forcelinebreak Are the skies the old
\forcelinebreak Immemorial blue?
\forcelinebreak Or am I, or are you,
\forcelinebreak Grown cold?


Though life be change,
\forcelinebreak It is hard to bear
\forcelinebreak When the old sweet air
\forcelinebreak Sounds forced and strange.
\forcelinebreak To be out of tune,
\forcelinebreak Plain You and I . . .
\forcelinebreak It were better to die,
\forcelinebreak And soon!

\section{XLVI
\forcelinebreak To R. A. M. S.}


The Spirit of Wine
\forcelinebreak Sang in my glass, and I listened
\forcelinebreak With love to his odorous music,
\forcelinebreak His flushed and magnificent song.


—‘I am health, I am heart, I am life!
\forcelinebreak For I give for the asking
\forcelinebreak The fire of my father, the Sun,
\forcelinebreak And the strength of my mother, the Earth.
\forcelinebreak Inspiration in essence,
\forcelinebreak I am wisdom and wit to the wise,
\forcelinebreak His visible muse to the poet,
\forcelinebreak The soul of desire to the lover,
\forcelinebreak The genius of laughter to all.


‘Come, lean on me, ye that are weary!
\forcelinebreak Rise, ye faint-hearted and doubting!
\forcelinebreak Haste, ye that lag by the way!
\forcelinebreak I am Pride, the consoler;
\forcelinebreak Valour and Hope are my henchmen;
\forcelinebreak I am the Angel of Rest.


‘I am life, I am wealth, I am fame:
\forcelinebreak For I captain an army
\forcelinebreak Of shining and generous dreams;
\forcelinebreak And mine, too, all mine, are the keys
\forcelinebreak Of that secret spiritual shrine,
\forcelinebreak Where, his work-a-day soul put by,
\forcelinebreak Shut in with his saint of saints—
\forcelinebreak With his radiant and conquering self—
\forcelinebreak Man worships, and talks, and is glad.


‘Come, sit with me, ye that are lovely,
\forcelinebreak Ye that are paid with disdain,
\forcelinebreak Ye that are chained and would soar!
\forcelinebreak I am beauty and love;
\forcelinebreak I am friendship, the comforter;
\forcelinebreak I am that which forgives and forgets.’—


The Spirit of Wine
\forcelinebreak Sang in my heart, and I triumphed
\forcelinebreak In the savour and scent of his music,
\forcelinebreak His magnetic and mastering song.

\section{XLII}


A wink from Hesper, falling
\forcelinebreak Fast in the wintry sky,
\forcelinebreak Comes through the even blue,
\forcelinebreak Dear, like a word from you . . .
\forcelinebreak Is it good-bye?


Across the miles between us
\forcelinebreak I send you sigh for sigh.
\forcelinebreak Good-night, sweet friend, good-night:
\forcelinebreak Till life and all take flight,
\forcelinebreak Never good-bye.

\section{XLII}


Friends . . . old friends . . .
\forcelinebreak One sees how it ends.
\forcelinebreak A woman looks
\forcelinebreak Or a man tells lies,
\forcelinebreak And the pleasant brooks
\forcelinebreak And the quiet skies,
\forcelinebreak Ruined with brawling
\forcelinebreak And caterwauling,
\forcelinebreak Enchant no more
\forcelinebreak As they did before.
\forcelinebreak And so it ends
\forcelinebreak With friends.


Friends . . . old friends . . .
\forcelinebreak And what if it ends?
\forcelinebreak Shall we dare to shirk
\forcelinebreak What we live to learn?
\forcelinebreak It has done its work,
\forcelinebreak It has served its turn;
\forcelinebreak And, forgive and forget
\forcelinebreak Or hanker and fret,
\forcelinebreak We can be no more
\forcelinebreak As we were before.
\forcelinebreak When it ends, it ends
\forcelinebreak With friends.


Friends . . . old friends . . .
\forcelinebreak So it breaks, so it ends.
\forcelinebreak There let it rest!
\forcelinebreak It has fought and won,
\forcelinebreak And is still the best
\forcelinebreak That either has done.
\forcelinebreak Each as he stands
\forcelinebreak The work of its hands,
\forcelinebreak Which shall be more
\forcelinebreak As he was before? . . .
\forcelinebreak What is it ends
\forcelinebreak With friends?

\section{XLIV}


If it should come to be,
\forcelinebreak This proof of you and me,
\forcelinebreak This type and sign
\forcelinebreak Of hours that smiled and shone,
\forcelinebreak And yet seemed dead and gone
\forcelinebreak As old-world wine:


Of Them Within the Gate
\forcelinebreak Ask we no richer fate,
\forcelinebreak No boon above,
\forcelinebreak For girl child or for boy,
\forcelinebreak My gift of life and joy,
\forcelinebreak Your gift of love.

\section{XLV
\forcelinebreak To W. B.}


From the brake the Nightingale
\forcelinebreak Sings exulting to the Rose;
\forcelinebreak Though he sees her waxing pale
\forcelinebreak In her passionate repose,
\forcelinebreak While she triumphs waxing frail,
\forcelinebreak Fading even while she glows;
\forcelinebreak Though he knows
\forcelinebreak How it goes—
\forcelinebreak Knows of last year’s Nightingale
\forcelinebreak Dead with last year’s Rose.


Wise the enamoured Nightingale,
\forcelinebreak Wise the well-belovèd Rose!
\forcelinebreak Love and life shall still prevail,
\forcelinebreak Nor the silence at the close
\forcelinebreak Break the magic of the tale
\forcelinebreak In the telling, though it shows—
\forcelinebreak Who but knows
\forcelinebreak How it goes!—
\forcelinebreak Life a last year’s Nightingale,
\forcelinebreak Love a last year’s Rose.

\section{XLVI
\forcelinebreak MATRI DILECTISSIMÆ
\forcelinebreak I. M.}


In the waste hour
\forcelinebreak Between to-day and yesterday
\forcelinebreak We watched, while on my arm—
\forcelinebreak Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone—
\forcelinebreak Dabbled in sweat the sacred head
\forcelinebreak Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:
\forcelinebreak Till the dear face turned dead,
\forcelinebreak And to a sound of lamentation
\forcelinebreak The good, heroic soul with all its wealth—
\forcelinebreak Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,
\forcelinebreak Suffering and passionate faith—was reabsorbed
\forcelinebreak In the inexorable Peace,
\forcelinebreak And life was changed to us for evermore.


Was nothing left of her but tears
\forcelinebreak Like blood-drops from the heart?
\forcelinebreak Nought save remorse
\forcelinebreak For duty unfulfilled, justice undone,
\forcelinebreak And charity ignored? Nothing but love,
\forcelinebreak Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth,
\forcelinebreak But for this passing
\forcelinebreak Into the unimaginable abyss
\forcelinebreak These things had never been?


Nay, there were we,
\forcelinebreak Her five strong sons!
\forcelinebreak To her Death came—the great Deliverer came!—
\forcelinebreak As equal comes to equal, throne to throne.
\forcelinebreak She was a mother of men.


The stars shine as of old. The unchanging River,
\forcelinebreak Bent on his errand of immortal law,
\forcelinebreak Works his appointed way
\forcelinebreak To the immemorial sea.
\forcelinebreak And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home:—
\forcelinebreak That she in us yet works and shines,
\forcelinebreak Lives and fulfils herself,
\forcelinebreak Unending as the river and the stars.


Dearest, live on
\forcelinebreak In such an immortality
\forcelinebreak As we thy sons,
\forcelinebreak Born of thy body and nursed
\forcelinebreak At those wild, faithful breasts,
\forcelinebreak Can give—of generous thoughts,
\forcelinebreak And honourable words, and deeds
\forcelinebreak That make men half in love with fate!
\forcelinebreak Live on, O brave and true,
\forcelinebreak In us thy children, in ours whose life is thine—
\forcelinebreak Our best and theirs! What is that best but thee—
\forcelinebreak Thee, and thy gift to us, to pass
\forcelinebreak Like light along the infinite of space
\forcelinebreak To the immitigable end?


Between the river and the stars,
\forcelinebreak O royal and radiant soul,
\forcelinebreak Thou dost return, thine influences return
\forcelinebreak Upon thy children as in life, and death
\forcelinebreak Turns stingless! What is Death
\forcelinebreak But Life in act? How should the Unteeming Grave
\forcelinebreak Be victor over thee,
\forcelinebreak Mother, a mother of men?

\section{XLVII}


Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me.
\forcelinebreak One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me.
\forcelinebreak I have worked and dreamed, and I’ve talked at will.
\forcelinebreak Of art and drink I have had my fill.
\forcelinebreak I’ve comforted here, and I’ve succoured there.
\forcelinebreak I’ve faced my foes, and I’ve backed my friends.
\forcelinebreak I’ve blundered, and sometimes made amends.
\forcelinebreak I have prayed for light, and I’ve known despair.
\forcelinebreak Now I look before, as I look behind,
\forcelinebreak Come storm, come shine, whatever befall,
\forcelinebreak With a grateful heart and a constant mind,
\forcelinebreak For the end I know is the best of all.


1888–1889

\chapter{LONDON VOLUNTARIES}


(To Charles Whibley)


1890–1892

\section{I
\forcelinebreak Grave}


St. Margaret’s bells,
\forcelinebreak Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,
\forcelinebreak Sing in the storied air,
\forcelinebreak All rosy-and-golden, as with memories
\forcelinebreak Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas
\forcelinebreak Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.
\forcelinebreak O, the low, lingering lights! The large last gleam
\forcelinebreak (Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)
\forcelinebreak Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,
\forcelinebreak The silent River ranging tide-mark high
\forcelinebreak And the callow, grey-faced Hospital,
\forcelinebreak With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!
\forcelinebreak The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,
\forcelinebreak And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky
\forcelinebreak (Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)
\forcelinebreak Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.
\forcelinebreak The sober Sabbath stir—
\forcelinebreak Leisurely voices, desultory feet!—
\forcelinebreak Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street,
\forcelinebreak Where in their summer frocks the girls go by,
\forcelinebreak And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer,
\forcelinebreak Just as they did an hundred years ago,
\forcelinebreak Just as an hundred years to come they will:—
\forcelinebreak When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low,
\forcelinebreak And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil,
\forcelinebreak Nor any sunset fade serene and slow;
\forcelinebreak But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die.

\section{II
\forcelinebreak Andante con moto}


Forth from the dust and din,
\forcelinebreak The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
\forcelinebreak The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,
\forcelinebreak The wrangle and jangle of unrests,
\forcelinebreak Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win—
\forcelinebreak As from swart August to the green lap of May—
\forcelinebreak To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts
\forcelinebreak Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware
\forcelinebreak In any of her innumerable nests
\forcelinebreak Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
\forcelinebreak Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,
\forcelinebreak Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day
\forcelinebreak In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
\forcelinebreak Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
\forcelinebreak Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
\forcelinebreak On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
\forcelinebreak And spins into the outlook of the Sun
\forcelinebreak (The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial charge),
\forcelinebreak With light, with living light, from marge to marge
\forcelinebreak Until the course He set and staked be run.


Through street and square, through square and street,
\forcelinebreak Each with his home-grown quality of dark
\forcelinebreak And violated silence, loud and fleet,
\forcelinebreak Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,
\forcelinebreak The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O, hark,
\forcelinebreak Sweet, how the old mare’s bit and chain
\forcelinebreak Ring back a rough refrain
\forcelinebreak Upon the marked and cheerful tramp
\forcelinebreak Of her four shoes! Here is the Park,
\forcelinebreak And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust,
\forcelinebreak The tired midsummer blooms!
\forcelinebreak O, the mysterious distances, the glooms
\forcelinebreak Romantic, the august
\forcelinebreak And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees
\forcelinebreak Turns to a tryst of vague and strange
\forcelinebreak And monstrous Majesties,
\forcelinebreak Let loose from some dim underworld to range
\forcelinebreak These terrene vistas till their twilight sets:
\forcelinebreak When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand
\forcelinebreak Beggared and common, plain to all the land
\forcelinebreak For stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour,
\forcelinebreak His silent, shining sorcery winged with power!
\forcelinebreak Still, still the streets, between their carcanets
\forcelinebreak Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep.
\forcelinebreak But see how gable ends and parapets
\forcelinebreak In gradual beauty and significance
\forcelinebreak Emerge! And did you hear
\forcelinebreak That little twitter-and-cheep,
\forcelinebreak Breaking inordinately loud and clear
\forcelinebreak On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?
\forcelinebreak ’Tis a first nest at matins! And behold
\forcelinebreak A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold!
\forcelinebreak A spent witch homing from some infamous dance—
\forcelinebreak Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade
\forcelinebreak Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!
\forcelinebreak And now! a little wind and shy,
\forcelinebreak The smell of ships (that earnest of romance),
\forcelinebreak A sense of space and water, and thereby
\forcelinebreak A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky,
\forcelinebreak And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleams
\forcelinebreak And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams,
\forcelinebreak His dreams that never save in our deaths can die.


What miracle is happening in the air,
\forcelinebreak Charging the very texture of the gray
\forcelinebreak With something luminous and rare?
\forcelinebreak The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,
\forcelinebreak And, as one lights a candle, it is day.
\forcelinebreak The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire
\forcelinebreak On the little formal church, is not yet green
\forcelinebreak Across the water: but the house-tops nigher,
\forcelinebreak The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean,
\forcelinebreak How new, how naked! See the batch of boats,
\forcelinebreak Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!
\forcelinebreak And those are barges that were goblin floats,
\forcelinebreak Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!
\forcelinebreak And in the piles the water frolics clear,
\forcelinebreak The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,
\forcelinebreak And we—we can behold that could but hear
\forcelinebreak The ancient River singing as he goes,
\forcelinebreak New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea.
\forcelinebreak The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:
\forcelinebreak The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake,
\forcelinebreak And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take
\forcelinebreak His hobnailed way to work!


Let us too pass—
\forcelinebreak Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows—
\forcelinebreak Through these long, blindfold rows
\forcelinebreak Of casements staring blind to right and left,
\forcelinebreak Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece
\forcelinebreak Of life in death’s own likeness—Life bereft
\forcelinebreak Of living looks as by the Great Release—
\forcelinebreak Pass to an exquisite night’s more exquisite close!


Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel,
\forcelinebreak These colonies of dreams! And as we steal
\forcelinebreak Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze,
\forcelinebreak Fitfully frolicking to heel
\forcelinebreak With news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas,
\forcelinebreak We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are—
\forcelinebreak Be wandering some dispeopled star,
\forcelinebreak Some world of memories and unbroken graves,
\forcelinebreak So broods the abounding Silence near and far:
\forcelinebreak Till even your footfall craves
\forcelinebreak Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.

\section{III
\forcelinebreak Scherzando}


Down through the ancient Strand
\forcelinebreak The spirit of October, mild and boon
\forcelinebreak And sauntering, takes his way
\forcelinebreak This golden end of afternoon,
\forcelinebreak As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,
\forcelinebreak And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.


Lo! the round sun, half-down the western slope—
\forcelinebreak Seen as along an unglazed telescope—
\forcelinebreak Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:
\forcelinebreak Gifting the long, lean, lanky street
\forcelinebreak And its abounding confluences of being
\forcelinebreak With aspects generous and bland;
\forcelinebreak Making a thousand harnesses to shine
\forcelinebreak As with new ore from some enchanted mine,
\forcelinebreak And every horse’s coat so full of sheen
\forcelinebreak He looks new-tailored, and every ’bus feels clean,
\forcelinebreak And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;
\forcelinebreak And every jeweller within the pale
\forcelinebreak Offers a real Arabian Night for sale;
\forcelinebreak And even the roar
\forcelinebreak Of the strong streams of toil, that pause and pour
\forcelinebreak Eastward and westward, sounds suffused—
\forcelinebreak Seems as it were bemused
\forcelinebreak And blurred, and like the speech
\forcelinebreak Of lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach—
\forcelinebreak With this enchanted lustrousness,
\forcelinebreak This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caress
\forcelinebreak Brings back to some faded face, beloved before,
\forcelinebreak A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore
\forcelinebreak Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech)
\forcelinebreak Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless
\forcelinebreak Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more:
\forcelinebreak Till Clement’s, angular and cold and staid,
\forcelinebreak Gleams forth in glamour’s very stuffs arrayed;
\forcelinebreak And Bride’s, her aëry, unsubstantial charm
\forcelinebreak Through flight on flight of springing, soaring stone
\forcelinebreak Grown flushed and warm,
\forcelinebreak Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown;
\forcelinebreak And the high majesty of Paul’s
\forcelinebreak Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls—
\forcelinebreak Calls to his millions to behold and see
\forcelinebreak How goodly this his London Town can be!


For earth and sky and air
\forcelinebreak Are golden everywhere,
\forcelinebreak And golden with a gold so suave and fine
\forcelinebreak The looking on it lifts the heart like wine.
\forcelinebreak Trafalgar Square
\forcelinebreak (The fountains volleying golden glaze)
\forcelinebreak Shines like an angel-market. High aloft
\forcelinebreak Over his couchant Lions, in a haze
\forcelinebreak Shimmering and bland and soft,
\forcelinebreak A dust of chrysoprase,
\forcelinebreak Our Sailor takes the golden gaze
\forcelinebreak Of the saluting sun, and flames superb,
\forcelinebreak As once he flamed it on his ocean round.
\forcelinebreak The dingy dreariness of the picture-place,
\forcelinebreak Turned very nearly bright,
\forcelinebreak Takes on a luminous transiency of grace,
\forcelinebreak And shows no more a scandal to the ground.
\forcelinebreak The very blind man pottering on the kerb,
\forcelinebreak Among the posies and the ostrich feathers
\forcelinebreak And the rude voices touched with all the weathers
\forcelinebreak Of the long, varying year,
\forcelinebreak Shares in the universal alms of light.
\forcelinebreak The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires,
\forcelinebreak The height and spread of frontage shining sheer,
\forcelinebreak The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires—
\forcelinebreak ’Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain,
\forcelinebreak The Golden City! And when a girl goes by,
\forcelinebreak Look! as she turns her glancing head,
\forcelinebreak A call of gold is floated from her ear!
\forcelinebreak Golden, all golden! In a golden glory,
\forcelinebreak Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky,
\forcelinebreak The day, not dies but, seems
\forcelinebreak Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed
\forcelinebreak Upon a past of golden song and story
\forcelinebreak And memories of gold and golden dreams.

\section{IV
\forcelinebreak Largo e mesto}


Out of the poisonous East,
\forcelinebreak Over a continent of blight,
\forcelinebreak Like a maleficent Influence released
\forcelinebreak From the most squalid cellarage of hell,
\forcelinebreak The Wind-Fiend, the abominable—
\forcelinebreak The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light—
\forcelinebreak Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,
\forcelinebreak Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;
\forcelinebreak And in a cloud unclean
\forcelinebreak Of excremental humours, roused to strife
\forcelinebreak By the operation of some ruinous change,
\forcelinebreak Wherever his evil mandate run and range,
\forcelinebreak Into a dire intensity of life,
\forcelinebreak A craftsman at his bench, he settles down
\forcelinebreak To the grim job of throttling London Town.


So, by a jealous lightlessness beset
\forcelinebreak That might have oppressed the dragons of old time
\forcelinebreak Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime,
\forcelinebreak A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams,
\forcelinebreak Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet,
\forcelinebreak The afflicted City, prone from mark to mark
\forcelinebreak In shameful occultation, seems
\forcelinebreak A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting,
\forcelinebreak With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting,
\forcelinebreak Rent in the stuff of a material dark,
\forcelinebreak Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale,
\forcelinebreak Shows like the leper’s living blotch of bale:
\forcelinebreak Uncoiling monstrous into street on street
\forcelinebreak Paven with perils, teeming with mischance,
\forcelinebreak Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread,
\forcelinebreak Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet
\forcelinebreak Somewhither in the hideousness ahead;
\forcelinebreak Working through wicked airs and deadly dews
\forcelinebreak That make the laden robber grin askance
\forcelinebreak At the good places in his black romance,
\forcelinebreak And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose
\forcelinebreak Go pinched and pined to bed
\forcelinebreak Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way
\forcelinebreak From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey.


Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows,
\forcelinebreak His green garlands and windy eyots forgot,
\forcelinebreak The old Father-River flows,
\forcelinebreak His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom,
\forcelinebreak As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore,
\forcelinebreak Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides,
\forcelinebreak Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot
\forcelinebreak In the squalor of the universal shore:
\forcelinebreak His voices sounding through the gruesome air
\forcelinebreak As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom
\forcelinebreak With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides:
\forcelinebreak The while his children, the brave ships,
\forcelinebreak No more adventurous and fair,
\forcelinebreak Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides,
\forcelinebreak But infamously enchanted,
\forcelinebreak Huddle together in the foul eclipse,
\forcelinebreak Or feel their course by inches desperately,
\forcelinebreak As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted,
\forcelinebreak From sinister reach to reach out—out—to sea.


And Death the while—
\forcelinebreak Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile,
\forcelinebreak Death in his threadbare working trim—
\forcelinebreak Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland,
\forcelinebreak And with expert, inevitable hand
\forcelinebreak Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung,
\forcelinebreak Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:
\forcelinebreak Thus signifying unto old and young,
\forcelinebreak However hard of mouth or wild of whim,
\forcelinebreak ’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient watch—to part
\forcelinebreak From books and women and talk and drink and art.
\forcelinebreak And you go humbly after him
\forcelinebreak To a mean suburban lodging: on the way
\forcelinebreak To what or where
\forcelinebreak Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say:
\forcelinebreak And you—how should you care
\forcelinebreak So long as, unreclaimed of hell,
\forcelinebreak The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable,
\forcelinebreak Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down
\forcelinebreak To the black job of burking London Town?

\section{V
\forcelinebreak Allegro maëstoso}


Spring winds that blow
\forcelinebreak As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may;
\forcelinebreak Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow,
\forcelinebreak Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow
\forcelinebreak With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay,
\forcelinebreak What makes this insolent and comely stream
\forcelinebreak Of appetence, this freshet of desire
\forcelinebreak (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!),
\forcelinebreak Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam
\forcelinebreak In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre?
\forcelinebreak Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn
\forcelinebreak The wealth of her enchanted urn
\forcelinebreak Till, over-billowing all between
\forcelinebreak Her cheerful margents, grey and living green,
\forcelinebreak It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing,
\forcelinebreak An estuary of the joy of being?
\forcelinebreak Why should the lovely leafage of the Park
\forcelinebreak Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing?
\forcelinebreak —Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides,
\forcelinebreak Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides
\forcelinebreak In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark,
\forcelinebreak Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade,
\forcelinebreak In the divine conviction robed and crowned
\forcelinebreak The globe fulfils his immemorial round
\forcelinebreak But as the marrying-place of all things made!


There is no man, this deifying day,
\forcelinebreak But feels the primal blessing in his blood.
\forcelinebreak There is no woman but disdains—
\forcelinebreak The sacred impulse of the May
\forcelinebreak Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins—
\forcelinebreak To vail the ensigns of her womanhood.
\forcelinebreak None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes,
\forcelinebreak Bounteous in looks of her delicious best,
\forcelinebreak On her inviolable quest:
\forcelinebreak These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those,
\forcelinebreak But all desirable and frankly fair,
\forcelinebreak As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst,
\forcelinebreak And in the knowledge went imparadised!
\forcelinebreak For look! a magical influence everywhere,
\forcelinebreak Look how the liberal and transfiguring air
\forcelinebreak Washes this inn of memorable meetings,
\forcelinebreak This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings,
\forcelinebreak Till, through its jocund loveliness of length
\forcelinebreak A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,
\forcelinebreak A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,
\forcelinebreak It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,
\forcelinebreak Some vision multitudinous and agleam,
\forcelinebreak Of happiness as it shall be evermore!


Praise God for giving
\forcelinebreak Through this His messenger among the days
\forcelinebreak His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living!
\forcelinebreak For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan—
\forcelinebreak Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned,
\forcelinebreak But the gay genius of a million Mays
\forcelinebreak Renewing his beneficent endeavour!—
\forcelinebreak Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned
\forcelinebreak Since in the dim blue dawn of time
\forcelinebreak The universal ebb-and-flow began,
\forcelinebreak To sound his ancient music, and prevails,
\forcelinebreak By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme,
\forcelinebreak Here in this radiant and immortal street
\forcelinebreak Lavishly and omnipotently as ever
\forcelinebreak In the open hills, the undissembling dales,
\forcelinebreak The laughing-places of the juvenile earth.
\forcelinebreak For lo! the wills of man and woman meet,
\forcelinebreak Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared,
\forcelinebreak As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell,
\forcelinebreak To share his shameless, elemental mirth
\forcelinebreak In one great act of faith: while deep and strong,
\forcelinebreak Incomparably nerved and cheered,
\forcelinebreak The enormous heart of London joys to beat
\forcelinebreak To the measures of his rough, majestic song;
\forcelinebreak The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell
\forcelinebreak That keeps the rolling universe ensphered,
\forcelinebreak And life, and all for which life lives to long,
\forcelinebreak Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.

\chapter{RHYMES AND RHYTHMS}


1889–1892

\section{PROLOGUE}


Something is dead . . .
\forcelinebreak The grace of sunset solitudes, the march
\forcelinebreak Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power
\forcelinebreak Of round on round of shining soldier-stars
\forcelinebreak Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun—
\forcelinebreak Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable—
\forcelinebreak The multitudinous friendliness of the sea,
\forcelinebreak Possess no more—no more.


Something is dead . . .
\forcelinebreak The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks
\forcelinebreak And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs,
\forcelinebreak His melancholy close and closer yet
\forcelinebreak Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring
\forcelinebreak That made the heart a centre of miracles
\forcelinebreak Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
\forcelinebreak Arise no more—no more.


Something is dead . . .
\forcelinebreak ’Tis time to creep in close about the fire
\forcelinebreak And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream
\forcelinebreak Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice
\forcelinebreak In the young life that round us leaps and laughs,
\forcelinebreak A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride
\forcelinebreak Of God’s best gift that to us twain returns,
\forcelinebreak Dear Heart, no more—no more.

\section{I
\forcelinebreak To H. B. M. W.}


Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade
\forcelinebreak On desolate sea and lonely sand,
\forcelinebreak Out of the silence and the shade
\forcelinebreak What is the voice of strange command
\forcelinebreak Calling you still, as friend calls friend
\forcelinebreak With love that cannot brook delay,
\forcelinebreak To rise and follow the ways that wend
\forcelinebreak Over the hills and far away?


Hark in the city, street on street
\forcelinebreak A roaring reach of death and life,
\forcelinebreak Of vortices that clash and fleet
\forcelinebreak And ruin in appointed strife,
\forcelinebreak Hark to it calling, calling clear,
\forcelinebreak Calling until you cannot stay
\forcelinebreak From dearer things than your own most dear
\forcelinebreak Over the hills and far away.


Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow,
\forcelinebreak Out of the sight of lamp and star,
\forcelinebreak It calls you where the good winds blow,
\forcelinebreak And the unchanging meadows are:
\forcelinebreak From faded hopes and hopes agleam,
\forcelinebreak It calls you, calls you night and day
\forcelinebreak Beyond the dark into the dream
\forcelinebreak Over the hills and far away

\section{II
\forcelinebreak To R. F. B.}


We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word
\forcelinebreak That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;


Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,
\forcelinebreak And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.


East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,
\forcelinebreak As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.


Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease—
\forcelinebreak (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)—


Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,
\forcelinebreak Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.


Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;
\forcelinebreak Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;


We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones;
\forcelinebreak The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;


Till now the name of names, England, the name of might,
\forcelinebreak Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night;


And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound,
\forcelinebreak Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;


And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze,
\forcelinebreak Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;


And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers,
\forcelinebreak And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!


Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die,
\forcelinebreak While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?


For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father’s debt,
\forcelinebreak And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set;


And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave,
\forcelinebreak Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave.

\section{III}


A desolate shore,
\forcelinebreak The sinister seduction of the Moon,
\forcelinebreak The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.


Flaunting, tawdry and grim,
\forcelinebreak From cloud to cloud along her beat,
\forcelinebreak Leering her battered and inveterate leer,
\forcelinebreak She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,
\forcelinebreak Her horrible old man,
\forcelinebreak Mumbling old oaths and warming
\forcelinebreak His villainous old bones with villainous talk—
\forcelinebreak The secrets of their grisly housekeeping
\forcelinebreak Since they went out upon the pad
\forcelinebreak In the first twilight of self-conscious Time:
\forcelinebreak Growling, hideous and hoarse,
\forcelinebreak Tales of unnumbered Ships,
\forcelinebreak Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance,
\forcelinebreak In some vile alley of the night
\forcelinebreak Waylaid and bludgeoned—
\forcelinebreak Dead.


Deep cellared in primeval ooze,
\forcelinebreak Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled,
\forcelinebreak They lie where the lean water-worm
\forcelinebreak Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides
\forcelinebreak Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide,
\forcelinebreak Thus fouled and desecrate,
\forcelinebreak The summons of the Trumpet, and the while
\forcelinebreak These Twain, their murderers,
\forcelinebreak Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued,
\forcelinebreak Hang at the heels of their children—She aloft
\forcelinebreak As in the shining streets,
\forcelinebreak He as in ambush at some accomplice door.


The stalwart Ships,
\forcelinebreak The beautiful and bold adventurers!
\forcelinebreak Stationed out yonder in the isle,
\forcelinebreak The tall Policeman,
\forcelinebreak Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peers
\forcelinebreak About him in the ancient vacancy,
\forcelinebreak Tells them this way is safety—this way home.

\section{IV}


It came with the threat of a waning moon
\forcelinebreak And the wail of an ebbing tide,
\forcelinebreak But many a woman has lived for less,
\forcelinebreak And many a man has died;
\forcelinebreak For life upon life took hold and passed,
\forcelinebreak Strong in a fate set free,
\forcelinebreak Out of the deep into the dark
\forcelinebreak On for the years to be.


Between the gloom of a waning moon
\forcelinebreak And the song of an ebbing tide,
\forcelinebreak Chance upon chance of love and death
\forcelinebreak Took wing for the world so wide.
\forcelinebreak O, leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,
\forcelinebreak Wave out of wave of the sea
\forcelinebreak And who shall reckon what lives may live
\forcelinebreak In the life that we bade to be?

\section{V}


Why, my heart, do we love her so?
\forcelinebreak (Geraldine, Geraldine!)
\forcelinebreak Why does the great sea ebb and flow?—
\forcelinebreak Why does the round world spin?
\forcelinebreak Geraldine, Geraldine,
\forcelinebreak Bid me my life renew:
\forcelinebreak What is it worth unless I win,
\forcelinebreak Love—love and you?


Why, my heart, when we speak her name
\forcelinebreak (Geraldine, Geraldine!)
\forcelinebreak Throbs the word like a flinging flame?—
\forcelinebreak Why does the Spring begin?
\forcelinebreak Geraldine, Geraldine,
\forcelinebreak Bid me indeed to be:
\forcelinebreak Open your heart, and take us in,
\forcelinebreak Love—love and me.

\section{VI}


One with the ruined sunset,
\forcelinebreak The strange forsaken sands,
\forcelinebreak What is it waits, and wanders,
\forcelinebreak And signs with desparate hands?


What is it calls in the twilight—
\forcelinebreak Calls as its chance were vain?
\forcelinebreak The cry of a gull sent seaward
\forcelinebreak Or the voice of an ancient pain?


The red ghost of the sunset,
\forcelinebreak It walks them as its own,
\forcelinebreak These dreary and desolate reaches . . .
\forcelinebreak But O, that it walked alone!

\section{VII}


There’s a regret
\forcelinebreak So grinding, so immitigably sad,
\forcelinebreak Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad . . .
\forcelinebreak Do you not know it yet?


For deeds undone
\forcelinebreak Rankle and snarl and hunger for their due,
\forcelinebreak Till there seems naught so despicable as you
\forcelinebreak In all the grin o’ the sun.


Like an old shoe
\forcelinebreak The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie
\forcelinebreak About the beach of Time, till by and by
\forcelinebreak Death, that derides you too—


Death, as he goes
\forcelinebreak His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray,
\forcelinebreak With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way;
\forcelinebreak And then—and then, who knows


But the kind Grave
\forcelinebreak Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,
\forcelinebreak In that black bridewell working out his term,
\forcelinebreak Hanker and grope and crave?


‘Poor fool that might—
\forcelinebreak That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,
\forcelinebreak Think of it, here and thus made over to me
\forcelinebreak In the implacable night!’


And writhing, fain
\forcelinebreak And like a triumphing lover, he shall take
\forcelinebreak His fill where no high memory lives to make
\forcelinebreak His obscene victory vain.

\section{VIII
\forcelinebreak To A. J. H.}


Time and the Earth—
\forcelinebreak The old Father and Mother—
\forcelinebreak Their teeming accomplished,
\forcelinebreak Their purpose fulfilled,
\forcelinebreak Close with a smile
\forcelinebreak For a moment of kindness,
\forcelinebreak Ere for the winter
\forcelinebreak They settle to sleep.


Failing yet gracious,
\forcelinebreak Slow pacing, soon homing,
\forcelinebreak A patriarch that strolls
\forcelinebreak Through the tents of his children,
\forcelinebreak The Sun, as he journeys
\forcelinebreak His round on the lower
\forcelinebreak Ascents of the blue,
\forcelinebreak Washes the roofs
\forcelinebreak And the hillsides with clarity;
\forcelinebreak Charms the dark pools
\forcelinebreak Till they break into pictures;
\forcelinebreak Scatters magnificent
\forcelinebreak Alms to the beggar trees;
\forcelinebreak Touches the mist-folk,
\forcelinebreak That crowd to his escort,
\forcelinebreak Into translucencies
\forcelinebreak Radiant and ravishing:
\forcelinebreak As with the visible
\forcelinebreak Spirit of Summer
\forcelinebreak Gloriously vaporised,
\forcelinebreak Visioned in gold!


Love, though the fallen leaf
\forcelinebreak Mark, and the fleeting light
\forcelinebreak And the loud, loitering
\forcelinebreak Footfall of darkness
\forcelinebreak Sign to the heart
\forcelinebreak Of the passage of destiny,
\forcelinebreak Here is the ghost
\forcelinebreak Of a summer that lived for us,
\forcelinebreak Here is a promise
\forcelinebreak Of summers to be.

\section{IX}


‘As like the Woman as you can’—
\forcelinebreak (Thus the New Adam was beguiled)—
\forcelinebreak ‘So shall you touch the Perfect Man’—
\forcelinebreak (God in the Garden heard and smiled).
\forcelinebreak ‘Your father perished with his day:
\forcelinebreak ‘A clot of passions fierce and blind,
\forcelinebreak ‘He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way:
\forcelinebreak ‘Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.


‘The Brute that lurks and irks within,
\forcelinebreak ‘How, till you have him gagged and bound,
\forcelinebreak ‘Escape the foullest form of Sin?’
\forcelinebreak (God in the Garden laughed and frowned).
\forcelinebreak ‘So vile, so rank, the bestial mood
\forcelinebreak ‘In which the race is bid to be,
\forcelinebreak ‘It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood:
\forcelinebreak ‘Live, therefore, you, for Purity!


‘Take for your mate no gallant croup,
\forcelinebreak ‘No girl all grace and natural will:
\forcelinebreak ‘To work her mission were to stoop,
\forcelinebreak ‘Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill.
\forcelinebreak ‘Choose one of whom your grosser make’—
\forcelinebreak (God in the Garden laughed outright)—
\forcelinebreak ‘The true refining touch may take,
\forcelinebreak ‘Till both attain to Life’s last height.


‘There, equal, purged of soul and sense.
\forcelinebreak ‘Beneficent, high-thinking, just,
\forcelinebreak ‘Beyond the appeal of Violence,
\forcelinebreak ‘Incapable of common Lust,
\forcelinebreak ‘In mental Marriage still prevail’—
\forcelinebreak (God in the Garden hid His face)—
\forcelinebreak ‘Till you achieve that Female-Male
\forcelinebreak ‘In Which shall culminate the race.’

\section{X}


Midsummer midnight skies,
\forcelinebreak Midsummer midnight influences and airs,
\forcelinebreak The shining, sensitive silver of the sea
\forcelinebreak Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn;
\forcelinebreak And all so solemnly still I seem to hear
\forcelinebreak The breathing of Life and Death,
\forcelinebreak The secular Accomplices,
\forcelinebreak Renewing the visible miracle of the world.


The wistful stars
\forcelinebreak Shine like good memories. The young morning wind
\forcelinebreak Blows full of unforgotten hours
\forcelinebreak As over a region of roses. Life and Death
\forcelinebreak Sound on—sound on . . . And the night magical,
\forcelinebreak Troubled yet comforting, thrills
\forcelinebreak As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart
\forcelinebreak Of the wood’s dark wonderment
\forcelinebreak Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banks
\forcelinebreak With exquisite visitants:
\forcelinebreak Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires
\forcelinebreak With living looks intolerable, regrets
\forcelinebreak Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child
\forcelinebreak Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been—
\forcelinebreak Beautiful, miserable, distraught—
\forcelinebreak The Law no man may baffle denied and slew.


The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze
\forcelinebreak To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . .
\forcelinebreak Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades,
\forcelinebreak What grace, what glamour, what wild will,
\forcelinebreak Transfigure the shadows? Whose,
\forcelinebreak Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?


Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air
\forcelinebreak Teems with them even to the gleaming ends
\forcelinebreak Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts,
\forcelinebreak Everywhere—everywhere—till I and you
\forcelinebreak At last—dear love, at last!—
\forcelinebreak Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death,
\forcelinebreak Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.

\section{XI}


Gulls in an aëry morrice
\forcelinebreak Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .
\forcelinebreak The full sea, sleepily basking,
\forcelinebreak Dreams under skies of dream.


Gulls in an aëry morrice
\forcelinebreak Circle and swoop and close . . .
\forcelinebreak Fuller and ever fuller
\forcelinebreak The rose of the morning blows.


Gulls, in an aëry morrice
\forcelinebreak Frolicking, float and fade . . .
\forcelinebreak O, the way of a bird in the sunshine,
\forcelinebreak The way of a man with a maid!

\section{XII}


Some starlit garden grey with dew,
\forcelinebreak Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
\forcelinebreak What matters where, so I and you
\forcelinebreak Are worthy our desire?


Behind, a past that scolds and jeers
\forcelinebreak For ungirt loins and lamps unlit;
\forcelinebreak In front, the unmanageable years,
\forcelinebreak The trap upon the Pit;


Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
\forcelinebreak The scandal of unnatural strife,
\forcelinebreak The slur upon immortal needs,
\forcelinebreak The treason done to life:


Arise! no more a living lie,
\forcelinebreak And with me quicken and control
\forcelinebreak Some memory that shall magnify
\forcelinebreak The universal Soul.

\section{XIII
\forcelinebreak To James McNeill Whistler}


Under a stagnant sky,
\forcelinebreak Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,
\forcelinebreak The River, jaded and forlorn,
\forcelinebreak Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on;
\forcelinebreak Yet in and out among the ribs
\forcelinebreak Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles
\forcelinebreak Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls,
\forcelinebreak Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,
\forcelinebreak Lingers to babble to a broken tune
\forcelinebreak (Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!)
\forcelinebreak So melancholy a soliloquy
\forcelinebreak It sounds as it might tell
\forcelinebreak The secret of the unending grief-in-grain,
\forcelinebreak The terror of Time and Change and Death,
\forcelinebreak That wastes this floating, transitory world.


What of the incantation
\forcelinebreak That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore
\forcelinebreak To take and wear the night
\forcelinebreak Like a material majesty?
\forcelinebreak That touched the shafts of wavering fire
\forcelinebreak About this miserable welter and wash—
\forcelinebreak (River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!)—
\forcelinebreak Into long, shining signals from the panes
\forcelinebreak Of an enchanted pleasure-house,
\forcelinebreak Where life and life might live life lost in life
\forcelinebreak For ever and evermore?


O Death! O Change! O Time!
\forcelinebreak Without you, O, the insuperable eyes
\forcelinebreak Of these poor Might-Have-Beens,
\forcelinebreak These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!

\section{XIV
\forcelinebreak To J. A. C.}


Fresh from his fastnesses
\forcelinebreak Wholesome and spacious,
\forcelinebreak The North Wind, the mad huntsman,
\forcelinebreak Halloas on his white hounds
\forcelinebreak Over the grey, roaring
\forcelinebreak Reaches and ridges,
\forcelinebreak The forest of ocean,
\forcelinebreak The chace of the world.
\forcelinebreak Hark to the peal
\forcelinebreak Of the pack in full cry,
\forcelinebreak As he thongs them before him,
\forcelinebreak Swarming voluminous,
\forcelinebreak Weltering, wide-wallowing,
\forcelinebreak Till in a ruining
\forcelinebreak Chaos of energy,
\forcelinebreak Hurled on their quarry,
\forcelinebreak They crash into foam!


Old Indefatigable,
\forcelinebreak Time’s right-hand man, the sea
\forcelinebreak Laughs as in joy
\forcelinebreak From his millions of wrinkles:
\forcelinebreak Laughs that his destiny,
\forcelinebreak Great with the greatness
\forcelinebreak Of triumphing order,
\forcelinebreak Shows as a dwarf
\forcelinebreak By the strength of his heart
\forcelinebreak And the might of his hands.


Master of masters,
\forcelinebreak O maker of heroes,
\forcelinebreak Thunder the brave,
\forcelinebreak Irresistible message:—
\forcelinebreak ‘Life is worth Living
\forcelinebreak Through every grain of it,
\forcelinebreak From the foundations
\forcelinebreak To the last edge
\forcelinebreak Of the cornerstone, death.’

\section{XV}


You played and sang a snatch of song,
\forcelinebreak A song that all-too well we knew;
\forcelinebreak But whither had flown the ancient wrong;
\forcelinebreak And was it really I and you?
\forcelinebreak O, since the end of life’s to live
\forcelinebreak And pay in pence the common debt,
\forcelinebreak What should it cost us to forgive
\forcelinebreak Whose daily task is to forget?


You babbled in the well-known voice—
\forcelinebreak Not new, not new the words you said.
\forcelinebreak You touched me off that famous poise,
\forcelinebreak That old effect, of neck and head.
\forcelinebreak Dear, was it really you and I?
\forcelinebreak In truth the riddle’s ill to read,
\forcelinebreak So many are the deaths we die
\forcelinebreak Before we can be dead indeed.

\section{XVI}


Space and dread and the dark—
\forcelinebreak Over a livid stretch of sky
\forcelinebreak Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train
\forcelinebreak Of huge, primeval presences
\forcelinebreak Stooping beneath the weight
\forcelinebreak Of some enormous, rudimentary grief;
\forcelinebreak While in the haunting loneliness
\forcelinebreak The far sea waits and wanders with a sound
\forcelinebreak As of the trailing skirts of Destiny,
\forcelinebreak Passing unseen
\forcelinebreak To some immitigable end
\forcelinebreak With her grey henchman, Death.


What larve, what spectre is this
\forcelinebreak Thrilling the wilderness to life
\forcelinebreak As with the bodily shape of Fear?
\forcelinebreak What but a desperate sense,
\forcelinebreak A strong foreboding of those dim
\forcelinebreak Interminable continents, forlorn
\forcelinebreak And many-silenced, in a dusk
\forcelinebreak Inviolable utterly, and dead
\forcelinebreak As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes
\forcelinebreak In hugger-mugger through eternity?


Life—life—let there be life!
\forcelinebreak Better a thousand times the roaring hours
\forcelinebreak When wave and wind,
\forcelinebreak Like the Arch-Murderer in flight
\forcelinebreak From the Avenger at his heel,
\forcelinebreak Storm through the desolate fastnesses
\forcelinebreak And wild waste places of the world!


Life—give me life until the end,
\forcelinebreak That at the very top of being,
\forcelinebreak The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,
\forcelinebreak Out of the reddest hell of the fight
\forcelinebreak I may be snatched and flung
\forcelinebreak Into the everlasting lull,
\forcelinebreak The immortal, incommunicable dream.

\section{XVII
\forcelinebreak CARMEN PATIBULARE
\forcelinebreak To H. S.}


Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook
\forcelinebreak And the rope of the Black Election,
\forcelinebreak ’Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule
\forcelinebreak Can never achieve perfection:
\forcelinebreak So ‘It’s O, for the time of the new Sublime
\forcelinebreak And the better than human way,
\forcelinebreak When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his own
\forcelinebreak And the Wolf shall have his day!’


For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam
\forcelinebreak And the power of provocation,
\forcelinebreak You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit
\forcelinebreak Till your fruit is mere stupration:
\forcelinebreak And ‘It’s how should we rise to be pure and wise,
\forcelinebreak And how can we choose but fall,
\forcelinebreak So long as the Hangman makes us dread,
\forcelinebreak And the Noose floats free for all?’


So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign
\forcelinebreak And the trick there’s no recalling,
\forcelinebreak They will haggle and hew till they hack you through
\forcelinebreak And at last they lay you sprawling:
\forcelinebreak When ‘Hey! for the hour of the race in flower
\forcelinebreak And the long good-bye to sin!’
\forcelinebreak And for the lack the fires of Hell gone out
\forcelinebreak Of the fuel to keep them in!’


But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough
\forcelinebreak And the ghastly Dreams that tend you,
\forcelinebreak Your growth began with the life of Man,
\forcelinebreak And only his death can end you.
\forcelinebreak They may tug in line at your hempen twine,
\forcelinebreak They may flourish with axe and saw;
\forcelinebreak But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs
\forcelinebreak In the living rock of Law.


And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork,
\forcelinebreak When the spent sun reels and blunders
\forcelinebreak Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit
\forcelinebreak As it seethes in spate and thunders,
\forcelinebreak Stern on the glare of the tortured air
\forcelinebreak Your lines august shall gloom,
\forcelinebreak And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed
\forcelinebreak In the ruining roar of Doom.

\section{XVIII
\forcelinebreak I. M.
\forcelinebreak MARGARET EMMA HENLEY
\forcelinebreak (1888–1894)}


When you wake in your crib,
\forcelinebreak You, an inch of experience—
\forcelinebreak Vaulted about
\forcelinebreak With the wonder of darkness;
\forcelinebreak Wailing and striving
\forcelinebreak To reach from your feebleness
\forcelinebreak Something you feel
\forcelinebreak Will be good to and cherish you,
\forcelinebreak Something you know
\forcelinebreak And can rest upon blindly:
\forcelinebreak O, then a hand
\forcelinebreak (Your mother’s, your mother’s!)
\forcelinebreak By the fall of its fingers
\forcelinebreak All knowledge, all power to you,
\forcelinebreak Out of the dreary,
\forcelinebreak Discouraging strangenesses
\forcelinebreak Comes to and masters you,
\forcelinebreak Takes you, and lovingly
\forcelinebreak Woos you and soothes you
\forcelinebreak Back, as you cling to it,
\forcelinebreak Back to some comforting
\forcelinebreak Corner of sleep.


So you wake in your bed,
\forcelinebreak Having lived, having loved;
\forcelinebreak But the shadows are there,
\forcelinebreak And the world and its kingdoms
\forcelinebreak Incredibly faded;
\forcelinebreak And you group through the Terror
\forcelinebreak Above you and under
\forcelinebreak For the light, for the warmth,
\forcelinebreak The assurance of life;
\forcelinebreak But the blasts are ice-born,
\forcelinebreak And your heart is nigh burst
\forcelinebreak With the weight of the gloom
\forcelinebreak And the stress of your strangled
\forcelinebreak And desperate endeavour:
\forcelinebreak Sudden a hand—
\forcelinebreak Mother, O Mother!—
\forcelinebreak God at His best to you,
\forcelinebreak Out of the roaring,
\forcelinebreak Impossible silences,
\forcelinebreak Falls on and urges you,
\forcelinebreak Mightily, tenderly,
\forcelinebreak Forth, as you clutch at it,
\forcelinebreak Forth to the infinite
\forcelinebreak Peace of the Grave.


October 1891

\section{XIX
\forcelinebreak I. M.
\forcelinebreak R. L. S.
\forcelinebreak (1850–1894)}


O, Time and Change, they range and range
\forcelinebreak From sunshine round to thunder!—
\forcelinebreak They glance and go as the great winds blow,
\forcelinebreak And the best of our dreams drive under:
\forcelinebreak For Time and Change estrange, estrange—
\forcelinebreak And, now they have looked and seen us,
\forcelinebreak O, we that were dear, we are all-too near
\forcelinebreak With the thick of the world between us.


O, Death and Time, they chime and chime
\forcelinebreak Like bells at sunset falling!—
\forcelinebreak They end the song, they right the wrong,
\forcelinebreak They set the old echoes calling:
\forcelinebreak For Death and Time bring on the prime
\forcelinebreak Of God’s own chosen weather,
\forcelinebreak And we lie in the peace of the Great Release
\forcelinebreak As once in the grass together.


February 1891

\section{XX}


The shadow of Dawn;
\forcelinebreak Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
\forcelinebreak Of Life and Death and Sleep;
\forcelinebreak Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound
\forcelinebreak Of the old, unchanging Sea.


My soul and yours—
\forcelinebreak O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,
\forcelinebreak Into the ghostliness,
\forcelinebreak The infinite and abounding solitudes,
\forcelinebreak Beyond—O, beyond!—beyond . . .


Here in the porch
\forcelinebreak Upon the multitudinous silences
\forcelinebreak Of the kingdoms of the grave,
\forcelinebreak We twain are you and I—two ghosts Omnipotence
\forcelinebreak Can touch no more . . . no more!

\section{XXI}


When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves
\forcelinebreak Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves,
\forcelinebreak Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life
\forcelinebreak Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife—
\forcelinebreak Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.


But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before,
\forcelinebreak When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore,
\forcelinebreak Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong,
\forcelinebreak Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire’s old song—
\forcelinebreak O, you envy the blesséd death that can live no more!

\section{XXII}


Trees and the menace of night;
\forcelinebreak Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
\forcelinebreak Backed by a desolate fell,
\forcelinebreak As by a spectral battlement; and then,
\forcelinebreak Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,
\forcelinebreak A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky,
\forcelinebreak So beggared, so incredibly bereft
\forcelinebreak Of starlight and the song of racing worlds,
\forcelinebreak It might have bellied down upon the Void
\forcelinebreak Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.


Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night
\forcelinebreak (Night and the wretchedness of the sky)
\forcelinebreak Is it the hurry of the rain?
\forcelinebreak Or the noise of a drive of the Dead,
\forcelinebreak Streaming before the irresistible Will
\forcelinebreak Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land
\forcelinebreak Between their place and ours?


Like the forgetfulness
\forcelinebreak Of the work-a-day world made visible,
\forcelinebreak A mist falls from the melancholy sky.
\forcelinebreak A messenger from some lost and loving soul,
\forcelinebreak Hopeless, far wandered, dazed
\forcelinebreak Here in the provinces of life,
\forcelinebreak A great white moth fades miserably past.


Thro’ the trees in the strange dead night,
\forcelinebreak Under the vast dead sky,
\forcelinebreak Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead
\forcelinebreak Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell,
\forcelinebreak And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.

\section{XXIII
\forcelinebreak To P. A. G.}


Here they trysted, here they strayed,
\forcelinebreak In the leafage dewy and boon,
\forcelinebreak Many a man and many a maid,
\forcelinebreak And the morn was merry June.
\forcelinebreak ‘Death is fleet, Life is sweet,’
\forcelinebreak Sang the blackbird in the may;
\forcelinebreak And the hour with flying feet,
\forcelinebreak While they dreamed, was yesterday.


Many a maid and many a man
\forcelinebreak Found the leafage close and boon;
\forcelinebreak Many a destiny began—
\forcelinebreak O, the morn was merry June!
\forcelinebreak Dead and gone, dead and gone,
\forcelinebreak (Hark the blackbird in the may!),
\forcelinebreak Life and Death went hurrying on,
\forcelinebreak Cheek on cheek—and where were they?


Dust on dust engendering dust
\forcelinebreak In the leafage fresh and boon,
\forcelinebreak Man and maid fulfil their trust—
\forcelinebreak Still the morn turns merry June.
\forcelinebreak Mother Life, Father Death
\forcelinebreak (O, the blackbird in the may!),
\forcelinebreak Each the other’s breath for breath,
\forcelinebreak Fleet the times of the world away.

\section{XXIV
\forcelinebreak To A. C.}


Not to the staring Day,
\forcelinebreak For all the importunate questionings he pursues
\forcelinebreak In his big, violent voice,
\forcelinebreak Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude,
\forcelinebreak The Trees—God’s sentinels
\forcelinebreak Over His gift of live, life-giving air,
\forcelinebreak Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.
\forcelinebreak Midsummer-manifold, each one
\forcelinebreak Voluminous, a labyrinth of life,
\forcelinebreak They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams
\forcelinebreak That haunt their leafier privacies,
\forcelinebreak Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still
\forcelinebreak With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile
\forcelinebreak Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,
\forcelinebreak And disappearances of homing birds,
\forcelinebreak And frolicsome freaks
\forcelinebreak Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.


But at the word
\forcelinebreak Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,
\forcelinebreak Night of the many secrets, whose effect—
\forcelinebreak Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread—
\forcelinebreak Themselves alone may fully apprehend,
\forcelinebreak They tremble and are changed.
\forcelinebreak In each, the uncouth individual soul
\forcelinebreak Looms forth and glooms
\forcelinebreak Essential, and, their bodily presences
\forcelinebreak Touched with inordinate significance,
\forcelinebreak Wearing the darkness like the livery
\forcelinebreak Of some mysterious and tremendous guild,
\forcelinebreak They brood—they menace—they appal;
\forcelinebreak Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring
\forcelinebreak Wild hands of warning in the face
\forcelinebreak Of some inevitable advance of the doom;
\forcelinebreak Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing
\forcelinebreak As in some monstrous market-place,
\forcelinebreak They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,
\forcelinebreak In that old speech their forefathers
\forcelinebreak Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard
\forcelinebreak The troubled voice of Eve
\forcelinebreak Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.


Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell
\forcelinebreak The tale of their dim life, with all
\forcelinebreak Its compost of experience: how the Sun
\forcelinebreak Spreads them their daily feast,
\forcelinebreak Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;
\forcelinebreak Of the old Moon’s fitful solicitude
\forcelinebreak And those mild messages the Stars
\forcelinebreak Descend in silver silences and dews;
\forcelinebreak Or what the sweet-breathing West,
\forcelinebreak Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,
\forcelinebreak Said, and their leafage laughed;
\forcelinebreak And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain
\forcelinebreak Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year—
\forcelinebreak The sting of the stirring sap
\forcelinebreak Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,
\forcelinebreak Their summer amplitudes of pomp,
\forcelinebreak Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,
\forcelinebreak Embittered housewifery
\forcelinebreak Of the lean Winter: all such things,
\forcelinebreak And with them all the goodness of the Master,
\forcelinebreak Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,
\forcelinebreak Whose left hand honours with decay and death.


Thus under the constraint of Night
\forcelinebreak These gross and simple creatures,
\forcelinebreak Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,
\forcelinebreak A servant of the Will!
\forcelinebreak And God, the Craftsman, as He walks
\forcelinebreak The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer
\forcelinebreak In thus accomplishing
\forcelinebreak The aims of His miraculous artistry.

\section{XXV}


What have I done for you,
\forcelinebreak England, my England?
\forcelinebreak What is there I would not do,
\forcelinebreak England, my own?
\forcelinebreak With your glorious eyes austere,
\forcelinebreak As the Lord were walking near,
\forcelinebreak Whispering terrible things and dear
\forcelinebreak As the Song on your bugles blown,
\forcelinebreak England—
\forcelinebreak Round the world on your bugles blown!


Where shall the watchful Sun,
\forcelinebreak England, my England,
\forcelinebreak Match the master-work you’ve done,
\forcelinebreak England, my own?
\forcelinebreak When shall he rejoice agen
\forcelinebreak Such a breed of mighty men
\forcelinebreak As come forward, one to ten,
\forcelinebreak To the Song on your bugles blown,
\forcelinebreak England—
\forcelinebreak Down the years on your bugles blown?


Ever the faith endures,
\forcelinebreak England, my England:—
\forcelinebreak ‘Take and break us: we are yours,
\forcelinebreak ‘England, my own!
\forcelinebreak ‘Life is good, and joy runs high
\forcelinebreak ‘Between English earth and sky:
\forcelinebreak ‘Death is death; but we shall die
\forcelinebreak ‘To the Song on your bugles blown,
\forcelinebreak ‘England—
\forcelinebreak ‘To the stars on your bugles blown!


They call you proud and hard,
\forcelinebreak England, my England:
\forcelinebreak You with worlds to watch and ward,
\forcelinebreak England, my own!
\forcelinebreak You whose mailed hand keeps the keys
\forcelinebreak Of such teeming destinies
\forcelinebreak You could know nor dread nor ease
\forcelinebreak Were the Song on your bugles blown,
\forcelinebreak England,
\forcelinebreak Round the Pit on your bugles blown!


Mother of Ships whose might,
\forcelinebreak England, my England,
\forcelinebreak Is the fierce old Sea’s delight,
\forcelinebreak England, my own,
\forcelinebreak Chosen daughter of the Lord,
\forcelinebreak Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient sword,
\forcelinebreak There’s the menace of the Word
\forcelinebreak In the Song on your bugles blown,
\forcelinebreak England—
\forcelinebreak Out of heaven on your bugles blown!

\section{EPILOGUE}


These, to you now, O, more than ever now—
\forcelinebreak Now that the Ancient Enemy
\forcelinebreak Has passed, and we, we two that are one, have seen
\forcelinebreak A piece of perfect Life
\forcelinebreak Turn to so ravishing a shape of Death
\forcelinebreak The Arch-Discomforter might well have smiled
\forcelinebreak In pity and pride,
\forcelinebreak Even as he bore his lovely and innocent spoil
\forcelinebreak From those home-kingdoms he left desolate!


Poor windlestraws
\forcelinebreak On the great, sullen, roaring pool of Time
\forcelinebreak And Chance and Change, I know!
\forcelinebreak But they are yours, as I am, till we attain
\forcelinebreak That end for which me make, we two that are one:
\forcelinebreak A little, exquisite Ghost
\forcelinebreak Between us, smiling with the serenest eyes
\forcelinebreak Seen in this world, and calling, calling still
\forcelinebreak In that clear voice whose infinite subtleties
\forcelinebreak Of sweetness, thrilling back across the grave,
\forcelinebreak Break the poor heart to hear:—
\forcelinebreak ‘Come, Dadsie, come!
\forcelinebreak Mama, how long—how long!’


July 1897.

\chapter{Back Cover}


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A critique of his ideas \& actions.



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William Ernest Henley

Poems



December 1, 1998


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         Transcribed from the 1907 David Nutt edition by Diarmuid Pigott with some additional material and proofing by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
       

       

       

       

       

   



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