The Orpheus Series  No. 5

DREAM-SONGS
FOR THE BELOVÈD

BY
ELEANOR FARJEON
(Author of "Pan-Worship")
The Orpheus Press
3, Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, E.C.
Spring, 1911

By the same Author
Pan-Worship (a book of verses), published by
Elkin Mathews, 1908.
2s. 6d. net.

CONTENTS

✶

TO MY MOTHER

Unuttered songs fly round my thoughts like birds,

And aerially, above an earth of words,

Imagined music on my spirit showers

From azure-feathered throat and golden tongue.

Most dear, of the many songs I cannot sing

Yours is the bird of heavenliest wing

Whose sunward flight beyond my following towers

And leaves me with an impotent harp unstrung.

And yet the shadow of my song for you

Falls on my heart forever as a dew,

Or the dim-breathing soul of evening flowers

That love the delicate light of stars still young.

These lesser songs that all who listen may hear

Shall we call yours for a day, most dear, most dear?—

Knowing there is one other, only ours,

For ever singing, and for ever unsung.

✶

DREAM-SONGS FOR THE BELOVÈD

I.

They said it was a lone land, a land of many sorrows,

Grey weeping waters and a strip of golden sand,

Loss and desolation and the washing out of footsteps

That dare to treat the narrow golden peril of the sand.

They said it was a fire-land, a land of flaming passions,

The sun like a molten rose in burning sapphire skies,

And never sound nor stir save of hearts that beat their way there

Like southron birds whose wings seek the blue of burning skies.

But I have found a still land of neither pain nor passion,

No loss because no giving there, no gain since no desire,

And the great silent light of the Belovèd's spirit brooding

With the soul of all time there, made empty of desire.

II

Even as between the silence of the sea

And rounded silver miracle of the moon

A little dew is drawn upon the night

To dwell there like the image of a cloud:

So from the silence of the darkest hour

The light that is a miracle in my soul

Distils the presence of the Well-Belov'd

And I possess the image in him of God.

III.

I seem to walk as a shadow in Love's shadow,

I seem to have always known what love might be

And beyond knowledge passed to the great tranquillity.

I seem to have gained the light without the longing,

For lo! even as the smoking rose-torch came

Within my hands, red flame turned smokeless silver flame.

Now in my dreams I tread an asphodel meadow

Where move the lovers out of the dreamful past.

"Dead lovers, how is it with you?"

"It is well at last,

Sister," reply their eyes about me thronging,

And all the phantoms of that immortal flight

Carry their torches still, and all the flames are white.

IV.

Often, so often, you walk in the cool dim thoughts of me,

Though you may never know how often and where,

And a dream like a little lantern unknowing have given to me—

Between my two hands as I sit I hold it there

And never will let it again go out of the hands of me.

For it may be that once you will let me wander the thoughts of you

By a chance, for a moment, and then you will see me bear

The fast-held lantern-light of the dream that was given by you

Since I never will let it go ... will you know? will you care

That the light I bear in my hands came out of the hands of you?

V.

If by the Messengers of Sleep

I should be told that you had died

I do not think that I would weep.—

For you it only were to glide

Out of the shallows into the deep;

For me—how could such tidings shake

The thin clear crystal of my dream,

Mine past the breath of the earth to break?

Till some bright breath from the Supreme

Keen-singing shatters it awake,

Whether you linger here or there

Still in the groves of trance I lean,

While on the hushed and heavenly air

The moon of your spirit floats serene

And makes my twilight softly fair.

For from the shallows or the deep

Beyond the ports of tranquil death

I know some word of you will creep

Nightly on the mysterious breath

Of the white Messengers of Sleep.

IN LOVE'S HOUSE

Love the God at last has unclouded his eyes....

"Newcomer, what are these things that you bear unto me?"

"Songs, the flower and fruit of my wondering heart,

All the creating I have to offer to you."

"Nothing may be created of you in my house,

Drift your little singing away on the wind.

You cannot hang me about with a music of sighs,

You cannot deck me with roseal vapours of song,

Shape sweet words in a garland to circle my brows

Or make a jewel of speech to be worn in my bosom.

"Out of soft rain of tears and glamour of joy

Iris-arcs though you weave for your heart's-delight,

Bring me no luminous dream of the saffron and gold,

Bring me no dews of the emerald flame of the grass,

Bring me no vanishing fires of the poppy and rose,

No melting mirage of heavenly hyacinth light,

For I take nothing of colour of those who are mine.

"I it is colour my chosen ones, never they me,

I am not theirs to possess, they are mine, they are mine.

Did you believe I was given to you as a gift,

Something to treasure and care for and handle and clothe?

Lo! it is you are my gift to be treasured and clothed,

Fashion no garments for me, mine has fallen on you.

"How should men colour me? sing me? array me in light?

How should they think me, conceive me, endow me with form?

Mine is the thought, the conception none other's than mine,

You and the children of men are the birth I bring forth,

Not within you do I enter, you enter in me.

"All is expressed for you finally here in my heart.

Struggle no more to express me. My silences sing."

DOUBLE BEAUTY

Love of the light compels the lark to sing

And brims his tiny body with a spark;

The nightingale draws music from a spring

Out of the bosom of the belovèd dark;

But on man's twofold nature God has breathed

The double soul of beauty like a spell,

And dark in light or light in darkness sheathed

His spirit still must sing the miracle.

440 B.C.

(Friday, September 24th, 1909)

More than my sons that day my fathers were mighty within me!

Walking the Past alone nothing I found there unknown.

Time like a whirlwind blew where I stood by the Tree of the Ages:

Boughs that in years did abound scattered their burthen aground,

Till in immense liberation divinely austere and familiar,

Naked of over-ripe fruit, knew I the Stem and the Root.

Under the hand of the Sculptor, the carver of visible music,

Felt I an infinite Truth, saw I immutable Youth.

Out of the marble a sparkle of motion and delicate gesture

Even as a rose unsheathed blossom-like started and breathed:

Even as animate light, a tremulous prism, made captive

Once in an æon whose spark leaps to us out of the dark.

Swift on a wonderful rapture upswung, the eternal procession

Joined I by some great right sharing the ages' delight.

Deathless singing there sounded and there moved life unarrested,

I was the body and soul, I was the part and the whole.

I was that boy's fine strength restraining his quivering charger,

Ay, and the nostril's fire quickened by curbèd desire.

I was this rhythmic strain of melodic, ineffable beauty

Maidenly garments reveal singing from shoulder to heel.

Well I remember how once when my sandal-latchet was loosened,

While the procession delayed, stooping the knot I re-made.

Greater and less was I than the flower divinely unconscious,

Golden Youth flowing by scarce asking Whither and Why:

I was both seed and fruit of it: I was the beast sacrificial,

Garlanded ignorance led forth to be glorious dead:

Also the elders within whose bosoms the torchlight of duty

Mellowed by Service and Time burned in aloofness sublime:

More than these things! the thing they aspired to, the ultimate Godhead,

Like a half-realised dream lifting to clasp the Supreme,

Crown and star of this Life-Stream endlessly singing and dancing

Till it attain the Most High, Knowledge and Wisdom was I!

Pheidias! under thy hand the unquenchable spark that Myself is,

Man and his Father and Son, all indissolubly one,

After great labour of years at last grew a visible wonder

Where men a-gaze at the shrine finally know them divine.

Ay! though To-morrow become the Wind in the Tree of the Ages,

Dust of my body to spread wide with the dust of the dead,

In thy golden procession eternally singing and dancing,

Let what may be the rest, stand I for ever expressed.

FOGBOUND

Out of the fog-banks dank and yellow,

As I groped like a soul alone,

The shadow lurched of a drunken fellow,

Blasphemous, ragged, and then was gone.

Swift the shape of a stranger-woman—

Soft-shod maidenhood? draggled quean?

Only I know it was something human—

Passed, and was as it had not been.

Claspèd lovers with footfall muffled

Faded by ere I caught their bloom,

Whimpering urchins unmothered shuffled

Up from the desolate murky womb.

Shadows on shadows the lone way haunted

Where one shadow the more, I stole,

Each with a soul I must take for granted—

But how to be aware of the soul?

Just the shapes of my fellow-creatures,

Dim and fitful as ghosts at dawn,

Lacking the life-pulse, void of features,

Self-encompassed, adrift, withdrawn.

Sisters! brothers! remote procession!

I would love and be loved of you,

Give myself for your whole possession,

Take yourselves as my human due:—

But my steps were as yours made noiseless

That none may know how we go and come:—

But you were all created voiceless

Even as I was fashioned dumb.

Each in his fogbound isolation

Who shall know how the other yearns?

Till some flash of a new Creation

Through this smoke with a clear flame burns,

And the world is man's for resistless brotherhood

Of hands grown warm and of shining brows,

And the world is woman's for mighty motherhood,

And life is lived in a common house.

THE DANCE-RING

It was the middle of the spring

I saw three girls dance in a ring.

One was golden as the day,

Around her neck bright tresses lay.

One as hazel-nuts was brown

And to her feet her hair fell down.

One was black as midnight sky,

Her locks were like a crown piled high.

"Sweetings, shall I with ye fling?

It is the middle of the spring."

I heard the three together sing:

"No man shall break our dancing-ring."

"Sweetings, that ye cannot tell—

Unkind sweetings, fare ye well."

Then each a mocking kiss did blow:

"Give us presents ere you go."

"You that the morning-glow outvie

For all my gift shall take a sigh.

To you that like the ebbing year

In russet go I give a tear.

With you that seem of night to weave

Your grace a broken heart I leave."

Then as from them I turned my feet

I listened how they laughèd sweet:

And "Fare you well," their laughter ran,

"Broken-hearted gentleman."

But shoulder-over I did call:

"Dance on, ye scornful sweetings all.

"When I am lost in shadows grey

My gifts ye shall not fling away.

"While still the spring beneath your feet

Flows green your ring shall stand complete.

"But when the year begins to turn

My gifts to use ye well shall learn.

"And one shall sigh and one shall weep

And one shall crave eternal sleep."

It was the middle of the spring

I saw three girls dance in a ring.

One was a yellow rose new-blown,

One as hazel-nuts was brown,

One she wore a midnight crown.

(My heart is still a-hungering.)

THE HAPPY SHEPHERD

(Old Love-Lilt)

Hither when I see to stray

Her pink dress

With her flock round it prest

As she were a rose in snow:

Then my heart within my breast

Like a lamb to and fro

On a hill of green doth play

For happiness.

Meward when I hear her sing

And impress

All sweet airs that do flow

Round her head with airs more sweet:

Little songs my heart doth blow,

Gay and glad, half-complete,

Like the snatches piped by spring