POEMS IN MANY LANDS
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., EDINBURGH
CHANDOS STREET, LONDON
POEMS IN MANY LANDS
BY
RENNELL RODD
LONDON
DAVID BOGUE, 3, ST. MARTIN’S PLACE
TRAFALGAR SQUARE, W.C.
1883.
PREFACE.
The kind reception my first small volume of “Songs in the South” met with, has induced me to include a few of those poems in this more complete volume of early lyrics.
I have to acknowledge the permission to reprint one or two poems which have been previously published in magazines, or as songs.
R. R.
December, 1882.
CONTENTS.
A STAR-DREAM.
There was a night when you and I
Looked up from where we lay,
When we were children, and the sky
Was not so far away.
We looked towards the deep dark blue
Beyond our window bars,
And into all our dreaming drew
The spirit of the stars.
We did not see the world asleep—
We were already there!
We did not find the way so steep
To climb that starry stair.
And faint at first and fitfully,
Then sweet and shrill and near,
We heard the eternal harmony
That only angels hear;
And many a hue of many a gem
We found for you to wear,
And many a shining diadem
To bind about your hair.
We saw beneath us faint and far
The little cloudlets strewn,
And I became a wandering star,
And you became my moon.
Ah! have you found our starry skies?
Where are you all the years?
Oh, moon of many memories!
Oh, star of many tears!
THE DAISY.
With little white leaves in the grasses,
Spread wide for the smile of the sun,
It waits till the daylight passes,
And closes them one by one.
I have asked why it closed at even,
And I know what it wished to say:
There are stars all night in the heaven,
And I am the star of day.
“THOSE DAYS ARE LONG DEPARTED.”
Those days are long departed,
Gone where the dead dreams are,
Since we two children started
To look for the morning star.
We asked our way of the swallow
In his language that we knew,
We were sad we could not follow
So swift the dark bird flew.
We set our wherry drifting
Between the poplar trees,
And the banks of meadows shifting
Were the shores of unknown seas.
We talked of the white snow prairies
That lie by the Northern lights,
And of woodlands where the fairies
Are seen in the moonlit nights.
Till one long day was over
And we grew too tired to roam,
And through the corn and clover
We slowly wandered home.
Ah child! with love and laughter
We had journeyed out so far;
We who went in the big years after
To look for another star;
But I go unbefriended
Through wind and rain and foam,—
One day was hardly ended
When the angel took you home.
IN APRIL.
The diamond dew lies cool
In the violet cups athirst,
The buds are ready to burst,
The heart of the spring is full;
Great clouds dream over the sky,
The drops on the grass-blades glisten,
The daffodil droops to listen
As the wind from the South goes by,
For it came through the sea cliffs hollow,
With the dawning over the bay,
And the swallow, it said, the swallow,
The swallow comes home to-day.
IN THE WOODS.
This is a simple song
That the world sings every day,
Hark! as ye pass along
Ye that go by the way!
For the nightingale up in the oak-bough sings,
“Be loyal, be true, true, true,”
And the wood-dove sits with its folded wings,
And answers “to you, to you.”
And the thrush in the hedge, “I am glad, be glad,”
And the linnet, “let love, let live,”
And the wind in the rushes says, “why so sad!”
And the wind in the trees “forgive!”
While ever so high in the skies above
The heart of the lark o’erflows,
And “I love, I love, and I love,”
Is the only song he knows.
Hark! as ye pass along
Ye that go by the way!
This is the simple song
That the world sings every day.
A SUMMER SONG.
Summer in the world and morning, the far hills were in the mist,
And we watched the river borders, how the rush and ripple kist,
While the bird sang “Whither, whither,” and the wind said, “Where I list.”
And we saw the yellow kingcup, and the arrowhead look through,
From the silent, shallow waters, where the mirrored skies were blue,
And the flags about the swan’s nest kept the secret that we knew.
In the hedge a thrush was singing, where the wild hopclusters are,
And the lowly ragged-robin, with its frailly fretted star,
While a soft wind brought the fragrance of the meadow-sweet from far.
All its blushing bells a’ ringing, on a bank the foxglove grows,
Where the honeysuckle tangles in the thorns of the wild rose,
And a sudden sea of blue-bells from the wood-side overflows.
And we watched the silver crescent of the wings of the wild dove
Circle swiftly in the sunlight through the aspen tops above,
And we felt the great world’s heart beat, in the gladness of our love.
THE BURDEN OF AUTUMN.
We are dying, said the flowers,
All the days are out of tune,
Spent are all the sungold hours,
And the glory that was June,
Dying, dying said the flowers.
The snow will hide the garden bed
While they sleep underground,
Wild winds will drift it overhead,
But they will slumber sound.
We are going, said the swallows,
All the singing days are done,
Summer’s over, winter follows,
And we seek a warmer sun,
Going southward, said the swallows.
And I must watch them all depart
And find no song to sing,
Oh take the autumn from my heart
And give me back the spring!
“TO WONDER AND BE STILL.”
Oft in the starry middle night
I vex my heart in vain,
To set its mystic music right,
And find the hidden strain.
To-night the summer moon is strong,
The little clouds drift past,—
The wonder is too deep for song—
The silence speaks at last.
“Thou canst not match those harmonies
On moon-enamoured lute,
Serenely silent arch the skies,
And the great stars are mute;
“Thou canst not tune to thine unrest
Their solemn calm above;
In silence thou shalt worship best,
And reverently love.
“Beyond this night in which thou art,
There is a voice of spheres,
Which the eternal in thine heart
Remembers and reveres.
“But how they sing in unison
Earth’s ear hath never heard,
So only in thine heart rings on
The song that has no word.”
AN ANSWER.
Take again thy shallow hearted reason
Groping dimly through the night in which thou art!
Very harmless fall the arrows of thy treason
On the worship and the wonder in my heart.
I have drunk the everlasting fountains
Flowing downward from the infinite to me,
Seen the wonder of the moonrise in the mountains
And the glory of the sunset on the sea.
THE POET.
He will come again as oft of old among you,
With his burden to fulfil;—
Did ye hearken ever to the songs they sung you
Till the song was still?
He will bear again the scorn, the idle wonder,
And heart-hunger and love’s need;
You will drown the sound of music in your thunder,
And he will not heed.
Singing unperplexed above the mocking laughter
Till his day be overpast;
Till the music dies, and silence follows after
And ye turn at last,—
Then when all the echoes breathe it and ye know it,
Ye will seek him to revere;
Cry aloud, and call him, master, lover, poet!
And he will not hear.
VICTORY.
This then—to live and have no joy thereof,
To thirst and hunger and be very tired,
To walk unloved, or know if one should love
It were a bitter thing that he desired,
To have no home in all the earth, to be
Mocked and derided and outcast of men,
To squander love and labour, and to see
No fruit of it, and yet to love, and then
Bearing all slander silently alway,
Serenely when the last reproach is hurled
To look Death in the face alone, and say
“Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”
“AH! WILD SWANS!”
“Ah! wild swans winging southward, I would fly with you to-night;
Southward, ever swiftly southward, through the autumn grey twilight.
“You will leave these downs and gullies, and the white cliffs far behind,
Sailing on above the waters in the music of the wind.
“And the seamen on their highway looking up will see you fly,
Like a misty shadow moving o’er the moon-illumined sky.
“Day and night and all things changing,—sunny skies and overcast,—
Till the cloud-engirdled mountains and the snowy peaks are passed.
“We should near the lands of laughter and the vines and olive trees,
Watch the little sails at sundown sparkle out on summer seas;
“Day and night and ever flying till we reached the wonderland,
And the seaward branching river, and the desert ways of sand;
“Saw beneath us standing lonely that grave bird that never sings,
Like a solemn sentry guarding by the giant tombs of kings.
“And I think it would be sunset when our journeying was done,
And the silver of your plumage would be crimsoned in the sun;
“In a pleasant land of palm-trees, where the lotus lilies grow,
And the fruits of many flood-tides by the river borders blow;
“There forgetting and forgotten, and not any one to hear,
I would sing to you, that sing not, all the winter of the year.”
Brighter burn the stars and colder, twilight deepens into night,
Moans the wind among the willows, and the swans fade out of sight.
DAY’S END.
We watched how robed in royal red
The slow sun sailed to rest,
Through crimson cloud streaks islandèd
In seas of glory o’er the west,
I held your hand, and I heard you say,
“What have we done for the world to-day?”
While still the mountain-heather glowed
All songs were hushed, and through
The twilight east the young moon showed
Her frail white crescent in the blue;
The silence sank profound and deep,
The ways of earth were full of sleep;
And the spirit of silence seemed to say,
“What have ye done for the world to-day?”
FROM THE ROADSIDE.
Peace be with the little red-roofed church out yonder,
With its quiet English village gathered round;
With shade of great beech-trees on the grave-mounds under,
And leaves of the Autumn over all the ground!
There go the rooks at even homeward flying!
The sweet sense of home lies over all that land;
The glow is on the tower of the daylight dying,
And lovers in the shadow are walking hand-in-hand.
Here comes no voice from the middle world to move them,
All the year round no memorable thing;
Yet the great skies arch as beautiful above them,
All the year through there are birds with them that sing.
Ah! well with you who calm and little knowing,
Here in submission to your uneventful days,
Leave the mad world to its coming and its going,
Safe with God’s shadow on your evening ways!
A DIRGE FOR LOVE.
“What is this pitiful song ye sing,
Shades of the passing hours?
What is this beautiful young dead thing,
Borne on a bier of flowers?”
“This is dead Love who, all night through,
Beat at the fast-closed door;
Wept his heart out waiting for you,
Now he will beat no more!
“Here he dwelt for a night and day,
Longer he might not wait;
Never again will he pass this way,
Therefore we sing ‘too late!’ ”
“Ah, but the door of my heart within,
Was it not alway wide?
Had he not wings to have entered in,
Why did he beat outside?”
“Once he came, though his eyes were blind,
Up to the outer door;
The way within was too hard to find,
Peace! For he wakes no more.”
“Yet ye knew I had waited long,
Was I not always true?
How could I will sweet Love this wrong—
Where do ye bear him to?”
“Back to the land where he lives again,
Over the westward strand;
Over the waves and the cloud domain,
Into the rainbow land!”
“Then, sweet spirits, do this for grace,
Set my heart on his bier;
So, when he comes to his resting-place,
Love may awake and hear!”
NOS COLLINES D’AUTREFOIS.
Can you remember when we dwelt together,
In the golden land of childhood long ago;
Up on our mountain heights in the clear weather,
How we longed to see the valleys down below?
Lands so lovely never found we after,—
Oh, our winters with the wonder of their snows;
Oh, the swallows of our spring-time, and the laughter,
Oh, the starnight of our summers and the rose!
Well-belovèd in that land were all the faces,
None are like them of these dwellers in the plain;
Oh, why did we come down from our high places!
We can never climb the bitter hills again!
THE TWO GATES.
Two gates—and one was morning’s, gold with gleams
Of sudden sunlight, and clear skies above
Ways where the air is musical with love,
And summer singing in a land of streams:
One sad with twilight and low sound that seems
Like the marred song-voice of a broken heart,
Where life and love sit evermore apart,
And look back longing to the gate of dreams.
Time was, I wandered in those sunlit lands,
And felt the glamour in my wakening eyes;
But now with sword aflame the angel stands,
Pointing the threshold of the gate of gloom;
While through the monotone of human cries,
Upsoars this pitiless, “fulfil thy doom!”
GETTATI AL VENTO.
I.
The sea swallows wheel and fly
To their homes in the grey cliff-side;
And the silent ships drift by,
The world and its ways are wide!
Oh, which of you wandering sails
Will carry a word from me?
Spread all your wings in the gales,
Fly fast to her northern sea!
Go say to my heart’s desired,
Too long from her side I roam,
And say I am tired, tired,
And I would she would call me home!
II.
I thought that I wandered, wandered,
All night till the dawn of day,
And I came to the house she dwells in,
A hundred miles away:
So I watched the hills grow golden,
I heard the birds begin,
And she came to open her window,
And let the morning in.
But when she would not greet me,
And I called to her all in vain,
I awoke, and knew I was dreaming,
But I could not sleep again.
I.
What shadow is this of dead delight,
That thou art dreaming of?
Oh, heart, what ails thee in the evenlight,
And is it thine old burden love,
That wistful-eyed, like one who roams,
I stand and watch from far,
The peace of sunset over quiet homes,
And the belovéd evening star?
II.
Are not the heavens wide? And yet,
Until all journeyings be done,
No star shall change the orbit set,
That marks its journey round the sun.
And, sweet, we travel down our days,
As the stars wander in their sky;
We cannot change our fated ways,
But meet and greet and hasten by.
III.
I breathed a name once and again,
I said a bitter thing in my pain,
“I gave you all my love, and I spent it all in vain!”
Then I saw a form across the night
Glide down the stars in a veil of light,
And I said, “Who are you, dweller of the Infinite?”
And I heard a voice on the stilly air,
“You chide amiss in your own despair;
Lo, I am the soul of her love, and I follow you everywhere!”
THE SEA-KING’S GRAVE.
High over the wild sea-border, on the furthest downs to the west,
Is the green grave-mound of the Norseman, with the yew-tree grove on its crest.
And I heard in the winds his story, as they leapt up salt from the wave,
And tore at the creaking branches that grow from the sea-king’s grave.
Some son of the old-world Vikings, the wild sea-wandering lords,
Who sailed in a snake-prowed galley, with a terror of twenty swords.
From the fiords of the sunless winter, they came on an icy blast,
Till over the whole world’s sea-board the shadow of Odin passed,
Till they sped to the inland waters and under the South-land skies,
And stared on the puny princes, with their blue victorious eyes.
And they said he was old and royal, and a warrior all his days,
But the king who had slain his brother lived yet in the island ways;
And he came from a hundred battles, and died in his last wild quest,
For he said, “I will have my vengeance, and then I will take my rest.”
He had passed on his homeward journey, and the king of the isles was dead;
He had drunken the draught of triumph, and his cup was the Isle-king’s head;
And he spoke of the song and feasting, and the gladness of things to be,
And three days over the waters they rowed on a waveless sea;
Till a small cloud rose to the shoreward, and a gust broke out of the cloud,
And the spray beat over the rowers, and the murmur of winds was loud
With the voice of the far-off thunders, till the shuddering air grew warm,
And the day was as dark as at even, and the wild god rode on the storm.
But the old man laughed in the thunder as he set his casque on his brow,
And he waved his sword in the lightning and clung to the painted prow.
And a shaft from the storm-god’s quiver flashed out from the flame-flushed skies,
Rang down on his war-worn harness and gleamed in his fiery eyes,
And his mail and his crested helmet, and his hair, and his beard burned red;
And they said, “It is Odin calls;” and he fell, and they found him dead.
So here, in his war-guise armoured, they laid him down to his rest,
In his casque with the rein-deer antlers, and the long grey beard on his breast;
His bier was the spoil of the islands, with a sail for a shroud beneath,
And an oar of his blood-red galley, and his battle-brand in the sheath;
And they buried his bow beside him, and planted the grove of yew,
For the grave of a mighty archer, one tree for each of his crew;
Where the flowerless cliffs are sheerest, where the sea-birds circle and swarm,
And the rocks are at war with the waters, with their jagged grey teeth in the storm;
And the huge Atlantic billows sweep in, and the mists enclose
The hill with the grass-grown mound where the Norseman’s yew-tree grows.
DISILLUSION.
Ah! what would youth be doing
To hoist his crimson sails,
To leave the wood-doves cooing,
The song of nightingales;
To leave this woodland quiet
For murmuring winds at strife,
For waves that foam and riot
About the seas of life?
From still bays, silver sanded,
Wild currents hasten down
To rocks where ships are stranded
And eddies where men drown.
Far out, by hills surrounded,
Is the golden haven gate,
And all beyond unbounded
Are shoreless seas of fate.
They steer for those far highlands
Across the summer tide
And dream of fairy islands
Upon the further side.
They only see the sunlight,
The flashing of gold bars;
But the other side is moonlight
And glimmer of pale stars.
They will not heed the warning
Blown back on every wind,
For hope is born with morning,
The secret is behind.
Whirled through in wild confusion,
They pass the narrow strait,
To the sea of disillusion
That lies beyond the gate.
ON THE BORDER HILLS.
So the dark shadows deepen in the trees
That crown the border mountains, all the air
Is filled with mist-begotten phantasies
Shaped and transfigured in the sunset glare.
What wildly spurring warrior-wraiths are these?
What tossing headgear, and what red-gold hair?
What lances flashing, what far trumpet’s blare,
That dies along the desultory breeze?
Slow night comes creeping with her misty wings
Up to the hill’s crest, where the yew trees grow;
About their shadow-haunted circle clings
The rumour of an unrecorded woe,
Old as the battle of those border kings
Slain in the darkling hollow-lands below.
WHEN HE HAD FINISHED.
When He had finished, first his orbèd sun
Blazed through the startled firmament, and all
His hosts cried glory, and the stars each one
Sang joy together,—then did there not fall
A peace of solemn silence on His world,
A moment’s hush before one leaf was stirred
Or one wave o’er the ocean mirror curled!
Lo! then it was the carol of a bird
Gave the joy-note of being, up the sky
Some lark’s song mounted and the young greenwood
Woke to a matin of wild melody,—
And He looked down and saw that it was good.
THE LONELY BAY.
Hollowed and worn by tide on tide
The rocks are steep, to the water’s side;
Never a swimmer might hope to land
With the sheer, sheer rocks upon either hand;
Never a ship dare enter in
For the sunken reefs are cruel and thin;
Only at times a plaintive moan
Comes from yon arch in the caverned stone,
When the seals that dwell in the ocean cave
Rise to look through the lifting wave;
Only the gulls as they float or fly
Answer the waves with their wind-borne cry.
Weeds of the waste uptossed lie there
On the sandy space that the tide leaves bare,
Ever at ebb some waif or stray
That ever the flood wave washes away,
And round and round in the lonely bay.
And one dwells there in the caves below
That only the seals and the seagulls know,
And the haunting spirit is passing fair
With sea-flowers set in her grey-green hair,
But she looks not oft to the daylight skies
For the sunshine dazzles her ocean eyes;
But now and again the sea-winds say,
In the twilight hour of after-day,
They have seen her look through her veil of spray.
Stilled are the waves when she lies asleep
And the stars are mirrored along the deep,
The gulls are at rest on the rifted rocks
And slumbering round are the ocean flocks,
Where the waving oarweeds lull and lull
And the calm of the water is beautiful.
But ever and aye in the moonless night,
When the waves are at war and the surf is white,
When the storm-wind howls in the dreary sky,
And the storm-clouds break as it whirls them by;
When it tears the boughs from the churchyard tree
And they think in the world of the folk at sea,
When the great cliffs quake in the thunder’s crash
And the gulls are scared at the lightning flash,
You will hear her laugh in the depths below,
Where the moving swell is a sheet of snow,
Mocking the mariner’s shriek of woe.
Let us away, for the sky grows wild
And the wind has the voice of a moaning child!
And if she looked through her veil of spray,
And called and beckoned, you might not stay;
You would leap from the height to her cold embrace
And drown in the smile of her wanton face!
She would carry you under the mazy waves
From deep to deep of her ocean caves,
Hold you fast with the things that be
Held in the drifts of the drifting sea,
Round and round for eternity!
The sun goes under, away, away!
It’s dark and weird by the lonely bay.
MUSIC.
What angel viol, effortless and sure,
Speaks through the straining silence, whence, ah whence
That tremulous low joy, so keen, so pure
That all existence narrows to one sense,
Lapped round and round
In rapture of sweet sound?
Oh, how it wins along the steep, and loud and loud,
Over the chasm and the cloud,
Swells in its lordly tide
Higher and higher, and undenied,
Full throated to the star!—
Then lowlier, softer, dreaming dies and dies
Over the closing eyes,
Dies with my spirit away, afar,
Swayed as on ocean’s breast
Dies into rest.
“WHAT HOLDS THEE BACK?”
What holds thee back then? Hast thou aught to do,
And fearest for the venture, art thou too,
So light a thing that every wind blows through?
What hast thou envied in the lives of these,
That thou should’st heed to please them or displease
And fill thine own with mirrored mockeries?
This arm of thine is thine alone, and strong
To thy free service through thy whole life long,
Hear thine heart’s voice, it will not lead thee wrong!
WORDS FOR MUSIC.
I.
The autumn wind goes sighing
Through the quivering aspen tree,
The swallows will be flying
Toward their summer sea;
The grapes begin to sweeten
On the trellised vine above,
And on my brows have beaten
The little wings of love.
Oh wind if you should meet her
You will whisper all I sing!
Oh swallow fly to greet her,
And bring me word in spring!
II.
I see your white arms gliding,
In music o’er the keys,
Long drooping lashes hiding
A blue like summer seas:
The sweet lips wide asunder,
That tremble as you sing,
I could not choose but wonder,
You seemed so fair a thing.
For all these long years after
The dream has never died,
I still can hear your laughter,
Still see you at my side;
One lily hiding under
The waves of golden hair;
I could not choose but wonder,
You were so strangely fair.
I keep the flower you braided
Among those waves of gold,
The leaves are sere and faded,
And like our love grown old.
Our lives have lain asunder,
The years are long, and yet,
I could not choose but wonder.
I cannot quite forget.
III.
All through the golden weather
Until the autumn fell,
Our lives went by together
So wildly and so well.—
But autumn’s wind uncloses
The heart of all your flowers,
I think as with the roses,
So hath it been with ours.
Like some divided river
Your ways and mine will be,
—To drift apart for ever,
For ever till the sea.
And yet for one word spoken,
One whisper of regret,
The dream had not been broken
And love were with us yet.
IV.
I remember low on the water
They hung from the dripping moss,
In the broken shrine of some streamgod’s daughter
Where the north and south roads cross;
And I plucked some sprays for my love to wear,
Some tangled sprays of maidenhair.
So you went north with the swallow
Away from this southern shore,
And the summers pass, and the winters follow,
And the years, but you come no more,
You have roses now in your breast to wear,
And you have forgotten the maidenhair.
And the sound of the echoing laughter,
The songs that we used to sing,
To remember these in the years long after
May seem but a foolish thing,—
Yet I know to me they are always fair
My withered sprays of maidenhair.
V.
The wide seas lay before us
The moon was late to rise,
The skies were starry o’er us
And Love was in our eyes;
And “like those stars, abiding,”
You whispered “Love shall be,”
Then one great star went gliding
Right down into the sea.
Since then beyond recalling
How many moons have set!
And still the stars keep falling,
But the sky is starry yet:
And I look up and wonder
If they can hear and know,
For still we walk asunder,
And that was years ago.
BELLA DONNA.
Two tear-drops of the bluest seas
Were prisoned in those laughing eyes,
And soft as wind in summer trees
The music of her low replies;
A sunbeam caught entangled there
Makes light in all her golden hair;
The wild rose where the wild bees sip
Is not so delicate as this,
And yet that little rose-curled lip
Is very poisonous to kiss,
And they were stars of wintry skies
That lit the lustre in her eyes.
And she will smile and bid you stay
And love a little at her will,
And love a little—and betray
But smile as ever sweetly still;
She knows that roses fade away,
To-morrows turn to yesterday.
She walks the smooth and easy ways
Apparelled in her queenly dress,
She hears no word that is not praise,
And ever of her loveliness;
And she will kill, that cannot hate,
Dispassionately passionate.
JOSEPH BARA.
In the year of battles, ninety-three,
In Vendée, by the westward sea,
The word was whispered—Liberty.
There was a child that would not stay,
When he watched them arm and ride away,
For the sword was bared in la Vendée.
Thirteen years, and girl-like fair,
With blue wide eyes and yellow hair—
And the word had moved him unaware.
“Mother,” he said, “if I were old,
My arm should win the young ones gold—
A boy’s life may be dearly sold.
“Mother, the hearts of the children bleed,
There are lips enough for one hand to feed,
And the youngest born have the greater need.”
In the year of battles, ninety-three,
In Vendée by the westward sea,
He rode to fight for liberty.
They wondered how his stedfast eye
Could see the strong men bleed and die,
His shrill lips shape the battle cry.
At Chollet, in the month Frimaire
They found the lion in his lair,
And long the struggle wavered there.
Till wide and scattered, man with man,
The bloody waves of battle ran,
The boy was leading in the van.
His bugle at his waist he wore,
His sword-arm pointing straight before,
And on his brow the tricolore.
Horse and rider overthrown,
Lay about him stark as stone,
The bugle boy stood all alone.
They closed about him menacing,
To strike him seemed a murderous thing;
“Take life, cry homage to the King!”
Fearless their bayonets he eyed,
The dead he loved were at his side,
And “Vive la République,” he cried.
Sword thrust and bayonet
In his young heart’s-blood met,
The groan died in his lips hard set,
And through his eyes shone life’s regret.
O’er his torn and bleeding breast
All the storm of battle pressed,—
He lay lowly with the rest.
When the bitter fight was done
There they found their little one,
Stark and staring at the sun.
Freedom, let thy banners wave,
Where he lies among the brave,
For that young fresh life he gave!
Song above the names that die
Shrine his name in memory!
IN CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.
Through yonder windows stained and old,
Four level rays of red and gold
Strike down the twilight dim,
Four lifted heads are aureoled
Of the sculptured cherubim,
And soft like sounds on faint winds blown
Of voices dying far away,
The organ’s dreamy undertone,
The murmur while they pray;
And I sit here alone, alone,
And have no word to say;
Cling closer shadows, darker yet,
And heart be happy to forget.
And now, the mystic silence—and they kneel,
A young priest lifts a star of gold,—
And then the sudden organ peal!
Ave and Ave! and the music rolled
Along the carven wonder of the choir,
Thrilled canopy and spire,
Up till the echoes mingled with the song;
And now a boy’s flute note that rings
Shrill sweet and long,
Ave and Ave, louder and more loud,
Rises the strain he sings,
Upon the angel’s wings!
Right up to God!
And you that sit there in the lowliest place,
With lips that hardly dare to move;
You with the old sad furrowed face,
Dream on your dream of love!
For you, glide down the music’s swell
The folding arms of peace,
For me wild thoughts, I dare not tell
Desires that never cease.
For you the calm, the angel’s breast,
Whose dim foreknowledge is at rest;
For me the beat of broken wings,
The old unanswered questionings.
BY THE ANNIO.
(PASTORAL.)
Here where shallows ripple by,
And the woody banks are high,
Every little wind that frets
Waves the scent of violets;
Here the greening beech has made
Such a palace of cool shade,
You and I would rather sit
Silent in the shade of it,
Seeking questions and replies
Only through each other’s eyes.
Sweet, than climb the thorny ways
Up their barren hills of praise.
In the gloom of yonder glen
Hides the crimson cyclamen,
And the tall narcissus still
Lingers near the reedy rill,
In the ooze the rushes grow
Pipes for merry lips to blow;
Here the songs that we shall sing
Shall be all of love or spring;
Here the emerald dragon-fly
Flits and stays and passes by,
While the bird that overhead
Mocked our song, grows unafraid,
Splashing till his breast be cool
At the margin of the pool.
In my hand the hand I hold
Lies more daintily than gold;
On your lips is all the praise
I would barter for my lays,
In your eyes I look to see
Witness of my sovereignty.
They that long for high estate
Turn to look for love too late,
Climbing on at last they find
Love has long been left behind;
Sweet, we do not envy these
In our riverland of trees.
Seldom feet of mortals pass
Here along the dewy grass;
Only in the loneliest spot,
Where the woodman enters not,
Spirits of these groves and springs
Make their nightly wanderings.
Never now they walk at day
Since the Satyrs fled away,
Only when the fireflies gleam
Up the winding wooded stream,
You may hear low silver tones,
Like the ripple on the stones,
Asking some familiar star
Where their olden lovers are.
Listen, listen, up above
All the branches sing of love!
When the world is tired of May,
When the springtide fades away,
When the clouds draw over head,
And the moon of love is dead,
When the joy is no more new,
Seek we other work to do!
Only while the heart is young
Let no other song be sung!
BY THE CRUCIFIX.
He tells his story with his young sad eyes,
The rags are drooping from his sunburnt breast,
He had sat down a little while to rest,
Far off the country of his longing lies;
He sits there looking at his bare bruised feet
And sees the rich man and the priest pass by,
There where the crucifix is planted high
On the grass bank outside the village street.
Beside him lies his little flageolet—
The children danced that morning when he played,
Laughed loud to hear the music that he made;—
Now the day closes and he wanders yet.
Oh, if some one of all the folk who pass,
Would turn and speak one word and hear him though,
And help! It were so small a thing to do;
And all they see him lying in the grass.
So the day ended, and the evening sun
Cast the long shadows down; he turned and saw
The crucifix blood-red, and in mute awe,
He crossed himself, and shuddered, and went on.
And then, it seemed that the pale form above
Moved slowly, lifting up the thorn-crowned head,
And the drooped eyelids opened, and he said,
“Oh, ye who make profession of your love,
“With voices echoing a hollow cry,
My name is ever on your lips, and yet
I wander wearily and ye forget,
I am as nothing to you passers by,
“I had no heed of any shame or loss,
And will ye leave me tired and homeless still
Oh, call my name by any name ye will,
But leave me not for ever on my cross!”
“UNE HEURE VIENDRA QUI TOUT PAIERA.”
It was a tomb in Flanders, old and grey,
A knight in armour, lying dead, unknown
Among the long-forgotten, yet the stone
Cried out for vengeance where the dead man lay;
No name was chiselled at his side to say
What wrongs his spirit thirsted to atone,
Only the armour with green moss o’ergrown,
And those grim words no years had worn away.
It may be haply in the songs of old
His deeds were wonders to sweet music set,
His name the thunder of a battle call,
Among the things forgotten and untold;
His only record is the dead man’s threat—
“An hour will come that shall atone for all!”
IN THE ALPS.
It is spring by now in the world, but here
The doom of winter on all the year;
A little brown bird flits to and fro,
Watching perhaps for a rift of blue
Where the mists divide and the sky looks through,
Or a crocus-bell in the half-thawed snow.
Little brown bird, have you no nest here
When winds blow cold in the long starlight?
Never a tree, and the fields so white—
And are you ever a wayfarer?
It is spring by now in the vales below,
And why do you stay in the world of snow?
IN NOTRE DAME DE....
There were two had died one day
So they told me by the way;
“One, ah well, poor soul,” they said,
“Better off that he is dead,
Such a poor man!—but the other
He was our good prefect’s brother;
Rich! And surely of great worth;—”
Both at one now—earth and earth!—
“Half the town is deep in prayer;
Round him at our Lady’s there;
But the poor man’s funeral
Is in the church outside the wall;
Aye, our Lady’s nave is wide,
Would you lay them side by side?”
So I followed both these dead;—
Where the poor man’s pall was spread,
Boarded in his box of deal,
There were only six to kneel,
And a priest that hurried through
Such quick office as would do.
Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Oh, but here how good to see
The great sable canopy!
All the columns shrouded o’er,
The rich curtains at the door,
And the purple velvet pall,
And the high catafalque o’er all,
Where a hundred tapers glow
On the same pale face of death below.—
All the good town’s folk are there,
Some to weep and some to stare;
Little recks he how ye weep,
Very sound he lies asleep;
Little recks he how ye pray,
For his ears are sealed alway!
Many a monk to thumb his beads,
Chant his canticles and creeds;
Aye and here with quivering lips
O’er his meagre finger-tips
Prays the priest, and all the while
Drones the deep organ thrill; and then
Along the gloomy curtained aisle,
Swells the full chant again;
Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine,
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Now beyond the city wall
Winds his pomp of funeral;
Feebly do those tapers flare
In the sunshine’s summer glare,
Loud above their chanting swells
The horror of the tolling bells,
Tapers burn where light is needed
For the living, not the dead!
Aye, and if your chants be heeded,
For the living be they said!
Where were all this folk who pray
When the poor man passed this way?
Long ago the spirit fled,
All of him that was of worth,
In his sojourning on earth;
Wherefore o’er a body dead,
Need long litanies be said?
Shall the jewelled cross he presses
In those bony hands of his,
Aught avail, when death caresses
With his equal mouldering kiss?
Shall the rosary they twined
Round and round his stiffened wrists,
Hold his body sanctified
From the worms, the socialists?
Gaudea sempiterna possideat!
So the two that died one day
Travelled down the selfsame way,
One in simple coffin board
Painted cross along it scored,
One with all his high estate
Graven on the silver plate,
All the pomp that he could save
To adorn him in the grave,
Lily wreaths of eucharis
To cover those poor bones of his,
From the graveyard’s mouldy sod,—
But the poor man’s soul and this
Went the same way up to God!
In Paradisum deducant te angeli,
Æternam habeas requiem!
By the sable shrouded door,
Of our Lady’s church once more!
Softly came low music floating from above,
And a voice seemed to breathe its cadence through;
“Peace, peace! Lo this we did it of our love,
There was so little we could do!”
Requiem æternam dona iis, Domine,
Et lux æterna luceat iis.
TWO SONNETS.
I.—ACTEA.
When the last bitterness was past, she bore
Her singing Cæsar to the Garden Hill,
Her fallen pitiful dead emperor.
She lifted up the beggar’s cloak he wore
—The one thing living that he would not kill—
And on those lips of his that sang no more,
That world-loathed head which she found lovely still,
Her cold lips closed, in death she had her will.
Oh wreck of the lost human soul left free
To gorge the beast thy mask of manhood screened!
Because one living thing, albeit a slave,
Shed those hot tears on thy dishonoured grave,
Although thy curse be as the shoreless sea,
Because she loved, thou art not wholly fiend.
II.—IMPERATOR AUGUSTUS.
Is this the man by whose decree abide
The lives of countless nations, with the trace
Of fresh tears wet upon the hard cold face?
—He wept, because a little child had died.
They set a marble image by his side,
A sculptured Eros, ready for the chase;
It wore the dead boy’s features, and the grace
Of pretty ways that were the old man’s pride.
And so he smiled, grown softer now, and tired
Of too much empire, and it seemed a joy
Fondly to stroke and pet the curly head,
The smooth round limbs so strangely like the dead,
To kiss the white lips of his marble boy
And call by name his little heart’s-desired.
AT LANUVIUM.
“Festo quid potius die
Neptuni faciam.”
Horace, Odes, iii. 28.
Spring grew to perfect summer in one day,
And we lay there among the vines, to gaze
Where Circe’s isle floats purple, far away
Above the golden haze;
And on our ears there seemed to rise and fall
The burden of an old world song we knew,
That sang, “To-day is Neptune’s festival,
And we, what shall we do?”
Go down brown-armed Campagna maid of mine,
And bring again the earthen jar that lies
With three years’ dust above the mellow wine;
And while the swift day dies.
You first shall sing a song of waters blue,
Paphos and Cnidos in the summer seas,
And one who guides her swan-drawn chariot through
The white-shored Cyclades;
And I will take the second turn of song,
Of floating tresses in the foam and surge
Where Nereid maids about the sea-god throng;
And night shall have her dirge.
A ROMAN MIRROR.
They found it in her hollow marble bed,
There where the numberless dead cities sleep,
They found it lying where the spade struck deep,
A broken mirror by a maiden dead.
These things—the beads she wore about her throat
Alternate blue and amber all untied,
A lamp to light her way, and on one side
The toll-men pay to that strange ferry-boat.
No trace to-day of what in her was fair!
Only the record of long years grown green
Upon the mirror’s lustreless dead sheen,
Grown dim at last, when all else withered there.
Dead, broken, lustreless! It keeps for me
One picture of that immemorial land,
For oft as I have held thee in my hand
The dull bronze brightens, and I dream to see
A fair face gazing in thee wondering wise,
And o’er one marble shoulder all the while
Strange lips that whisper till her own lips smile,
And all the mirror laughs about her eyes.
It was well thought to set thee there, so she
Might smooth the windy ripples of her hair
And knot their tangled waywardness, or ere
She stood before the queen Persephone.
And still it may be where the dead folk rest
She holds a shadowy mirror to her eyes,
And looks upon the changelessness and sighs,
And sets the dead land lilies in her breast.
THE SONG OF THE DEAD CHILD.
FLORENCE, ’81.
By the light of their waxen tapers, I saw not ever a tear,
For the child in its bridal garment, the little dead child on the bier.
Some child of the poor;—I wonder, was it glad that the years were done,
This flower that fell in spring tide, and had hardly looked on the sun?
They have decked her in burial raiment, they have twined a wreath for her hair;
Ah child, you had never in life such delicate dress to wear!
And the man in the pilgrim’s habit has covered the marble head,
And carried it out for ever to the sleeping place of the dead.
Rest, little one, have no fear, you will hardly turn in your sleep,
Though the moon and the stars are clouded, and the grave they have made be deep!
But an hour before the dawning there will come one down on the night,
With the wings and the brows of an angel, in wonder-robes of white.
He will smile in your eyes of wonder, he will take your hand in his hand,
And gather you up in his arms and pass from the sleeping land.
Then after a while, at morning, you will come to the lands that lie
On the other side of the sunrise between the cloud and the sky,
And here is the place of resting with the wings of your angel furled,
For the feet that are tired with travel in the dusty ways of the world.
And here is the children’s meeting, the length of a summer’s day,
You will gather you crowns of roses, in the deep meadow lands at play.
While up through the clouds dividing, like a sweet bewildering dream,
You will watch the wings of the angels drift by in an endless stream;
Such marvellous robes are o’er them, and whiter are some than snows,
And some like the April blossom, and some like the pale primrose.
For these are the hues of day-dawn that you saw from the world of old,
And the first light over the mountains was shed from their crowns of gold;
And many go by with weeping, for ever, the long night through,
The tears of the sorrowing angels fall over the earth in dew;
Till your eyes grow weary of wonder as you sit in the long cool grass,
And many will bend and kiss you of the wonderful forms that pass;
With your head on the breast of the angel there will steal down over your eyes
The sleep of the long forgetting, and the dream where memory dies,
As the flowers are washed in the night-time, when the dew drops down from above,
You will reck no more of the winter, and hunger, and want of love.
Then at last it will seem like even when you waken, and hand in hand
You will pass with your angels guiding, to the utmost verge of the land;
And I think you will hear far voices growing musical there, and loud,
As you pass, with an unfelt swiftness, from luminous cloud to cloud;
Till the light shall turn to a glory, that seemed but a lone faint star,
That will be the gate of Heaven, where the souls of the children are.