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BROTHER DEATH

 
When thou would’st have me go with thee, O Death,
Over the utmost verge, to the dim place,
Practise upon me with no amorous grace
Of fawning lips, and words of delicate breath,
And curious music thy lute uttereth;
Nor think for me there must be sought-out ways
Of cloud and terror; have we many days
Sojourned together, and is this thy faith?
Nay, be there plainness ’twixt us; come to me
Even as thou art, O brother of my soul;
Hold thy hand out and I will place mine there;
I trust thy mouth’s inscrutable irony,
And dare to lay my forehead where the whole
Shadow lies deep of thy purpureal hair.
 

THE MAGE

 
When I shall sing my songs the world will hear,
—Which hears not these,—I shall be white with age,
My beard on breast great as befits a mage
So skilled; but song is young, and in no drear
Tome-crammed, lamp-litten chamber shall mine fear
To pine ascetic. Where the woods are deep,
Thick leaves for arras, in a noonday sleep
Of breeze and bloom, gaze, but my art revere!
There I will sit, and score rare wisardry
In characters vermilion, azure, gold,
With bird, starred flower, and peering dragon-fly
Limned in the lines; and secrets shall be told
Of greatest Pan, and lives of wood-nymphs shy,
Blabbed by my goat-foot servitor overbold.
 

WISE PASSIVENESS

 
Think you I choose or that or this to sing?
I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream
Dreaming among green fields its summer dream,
Which takes whate’er the gracious hours will bring
Into its quiet bosom; not a thing
Too common, since perhaps you see it there
Who else had never seen it, though as fair
As on the world’s first morn; a fluttering
Of idle butterflies; or the deft seeds
Blown from a thistle-head; a silver dove
As faultlessly; or the large, yearning eyes
Of pale Narcissus; or beside the reeds
A shepherd seeking lilies for his love,
And evermore the all-encircling skies.
 

THE SINGER’S PLEA

 
Why do I sing? I know not why, my friend;
The ancient rivers, rivers of renown,
A royal largess to the sea roll down,
And on those liberal highways nations send
Their tributes to the world,—stored corn and wine,
Gold-dust, the wealth of pearls, and orient spar,
And myrrh, and ivory, and cinnabar,
And dyes to make a presence-chamber shine.
But in the woodlands, where the wild-flowers are,
The rivulets, they must have their innocent will
Who all the summer hours are singing still,
The birds care for them, and sometimes a star,
And should a tired child rest beside the stream
Sweet memories would slide into his dream.
 

THE TRESPASSER

 
Trespassers will be prosecuted,—so
Announced the inhospitable notice-board;
But silver-clear as any lady’s word
Come in, in, in, come in, now rich and low,
Now with tumultuous palpitating flow,
I swear by ring of Canace I heard.
“Sure,” said I, “this is no brown-breasted bird,
But some fair princess, lost an age ago
Through stepdame’s cursed spell, till the saints brought her
Who but myself, the knight foredoomed of grace.”
Alas! poor knight, in all that cockney place
You found no magic, save one radiant sight,
The huge, obstreperous house-keeper’s granddaughter,
A child with eyes of pure ethereal light.
 

RITUALISM

 
This is high ritual and a holy day;
I think from Palestrina the wind chooses
That movement in the firs; one sits and muses
In hushed heart-vacancy made meek to pray;
Listen! the birds are choristers with gay
Clear voices infantine, and with good will
Each acolyte flower has swung his thurible,
Censing to left and right these aisles of May.
For congregation, see! real sheep most clean,
And I—what am I, worshipper or priest?
At least all these I dare absolve from sin,
Ay, dare ascend to where the splendours shine
Of yon steep mountain-altar, and the feast
Is holy, God Himself being bread and wine.
 

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

 
I, who lie warming here by your good fire,
Was once Prometheus and elsewhere have lain;
Ah, still in dreams they come,—the sudden chain,
The swooping birds, the silence, the desire
Of pitying, powerless eyes, the night, and higher
The keen stars; (if you please I fill again
The bowl, Silenus)—; yet ’twas common pain
Their beaks’ mad rooting; O, but they would tire,
And one go circling o’er the misty vast
On great, free wings, and one sit, head out-bent,
Poised for the plunge; then ’twas I crushed the cry
“Zeus, Zeus, I kiss your feet, and learn at last
The baseness of this crude self-government
Matched with glad impulse and blind liberty.”
 

KING MOB

 
Dismiss, O sweet King Mob, your foot-lickers!
When you held court last night I too was there
To listen, and in truth well nigh despair
O’ercame me when I saw your greedy ears
Drink such gross poison. I could weep hot tears
To think how three drugged words avail to keep
A waking people still on the edge of sleep,
And lose the world a right good score of years.
I love you too, big Anarch, lately born,
Half beast, yet with a stupid heart of man,
And since I love, would God that I could warn
Work out the beast as shortly as you can,
Till which time oath of mine shall ne’er be sworn,
Nor knee be bent to you, King Caliban.
 

THE MODERN ELIJAH

 
What went ye forth to see? a shaken reed?—
Ye throngers of the Parthenon last night.
Prophet, yea more than prophet, we agreed;
No John a’ Desert with the girdle tight,
And locusts and wild honey for his need,
Before the dreadful day appears in sight
Urging one word to make the conscience bleed,
But an obese John Smith, “a shining light”
(Our chairman felt), “an honour to his creed.”
O by the gas, when buns and tea had wrought
Upon our hearts, how grew the Future bright,—
The Press, the Institutes, Advance of Thought,
And People’s Books, till every mother’s son
Can prove there is a God, or there is none.
 

DAVID AND MICHAL
(2 Samuel vi. 16)

 
But then you don’t mean really what you say—
To hear this from the sweetest little lips,
O’er which each pretty word daintily trips
Like small birds hopping down a garden way,
When I had given my soul full scope to play
For once before her in the Orphic style
Caught from three several volumes of Carlyle,
And undivulged before this very day!
O young men of our earnest school confess
How it is deeply, darkly tragical
To find the feminine souls we would adore
So full of sense, so versed in worldly lore,
So deaf to the Eternal Silences,
So unbelieving, so conventional.
 

WINDLE-STRAWS

I

 
Under grey clouds some birds will dare to sing,
No wild exultant chants, but soft and low;
Under grey clouds the young leaves seek the spring,
And lurking violets blow.
And waves make idle music on the strand,
And inland streams have lucky words to say,
And children’s voices sound across the land
Although the clouds be grey.
 

II

 
Only maidenhood and youth,
Only eyes that are most fair,
And the pureness of a mouth,
And the grace of golden hair,
Yet beside her we grow wise,
And we breathe a finer air.
 
 
Words low-utter’d, simple-sweet,—
Yet, nor songs of morning birds,
Nor soft whisperings of the wheat
More than such clear-hearted words
Make us wait, and love, and listen,
Stir more mellow heart accords.
 
 
Only maiden-motions light,
Only smiles that sweetly go,
Girlish laughter pure and bright,
And a footfall like the snow,
What in these should make us wise?
What should bid the blossom blow?
 
 
Child! on thee God’s angels wait,
’Tis their robes that wave and part,
Make this summer air elate,
Fresh and fragrant, and thou art
But a simple child indeed,
One dare cherish to the heart.
 

III

 
Were life to last for ever, love,
We might go hand in hand,
And pause and pull the flowers that blow
In all the idle land,
And we might lie in sunny fields
And while the hours away
With fallings-out and fallings-in
For half a summer day.
 
 
But since we two must sever, love,
Since some dim hour we part,
I have no time to give thee much
But quickly take my heart,
“For ever thine,” and “thine my love,”—
O Death may come apace,
What more of love could life bestow,
Dearest, than this embrace.
 

IV

 
Now drops in the abyss a day of life:
I count my twelve hours’ gain;—
Tired senses? vain desires? a baffled strife,
Vexed heart and beating brain?
 
 
Ten pages traversed by a languid eye?
—Nay, but one moment’s space
I gazed into the soul of the blue sky;
Rare day! O day of grace!
 

V

 
She kissed me on the forehead,
She spoke not any word,
The silence flowed between us,
And I nor spoke nor stirred.
 
 
So hopeless for my sake it was,
So full of ruth, so sweet,
My whole heart rose and blessed her,
—Then died before her feet.
 

VI

 
Nay, more! yet more, for my lips are fain;
No cups for a babe; I ask the whole
Deep draught that a God could hardly drain,
—Wine of your soul.
 
 
Pour! for the goblet is great I bring,
Not worthless, rough with youths at strife,
And men that toil and women that sing,
—It is all my life.
 

VII

 
Look forward with those steadfast eyes
O Pilot of our star!
It sweeps through rains and driving snows,
Strong Angel, gaze afar!
 
 
Seest thou a zone of golden air?
Hearest thou the March-winds ring?
Or is thy heart prophetic yet
With stirrings of the Spring?
 

VIII

 
Words for my song like sighing of dim seas,
Words with no thought in them,—a piping reed,
An infant’s cry, a moan low-uttered,—these
Are all the words I need.
 
 
Others have song for broad-winged winds that pass,
For stars and sun, for standing men around;
I put my mouth low down into the grass,
And whisper to the ground.
 

HERE END THE POEMS WHICH WERE FIRST PUBLISHED IN A VOLUME IN 1876

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS OF LATER DATES

AT THE OAR

 
I dare not lift a glance to you, yet stay
Ye Gracious Ones, still save me, hovering near;
If music live upon mine inward ear,
I know ye lean bright brow to brow, and say
Your secret things; if rippling breezes play
Cool on my cheeks, it is those robes ye wear
That wave, and shadowy fragrance of your hair
Drifted, the fierce noon fervour to allay,
Fierce fervour, ceaseless stroke, small speed, and I
Find grim contentment in the servile mood;
But should I gaze in yon untrammelled sky
Once, or behold your dewy eyes, my blood
Would madden, and I should fling with one free cry
My body headlong in the whelming flood.
 

THE DIVINING ROD

 
Here some time flowed my springs and sent a cry
Of joy before them up the shining air,
While morn was new, and heaven all blue and bare;
Here dipped the swallow to a tenderer sky,
And o’er my flowers lean’d some pure mystery
Of liquid eyes and golden-glimmering hair;
For which now, drouth and death, a bright despair,
Shards, choking slag, the world’s dust small and dry.
Yet turn not hence thy faithful foot, O thou,
Diviner of my buried life; pace round,
Poising the hazel-wand; believe and wait,
Listen and lean; ah, listen! even now
Stirrings and murmurings of the underground
Prelude the flash and outbreak of my fate.
 

SALOME
(By Henri Regnault)

 
Fair sword of doom, and bright with martyr blood,
Thee Regnault saw not as mine eyes have seen;
No Judith of the Faubourg, mænad-queen,
Pale on her tumbril-throne, when the live flood
Foams through revolted Paris, unwithstood,
Is of thy kin. Blossom and bud between,
Clear-brow’d Salome, with her silk head’s sheen,
Lips where a linnet might have pecked for food,
Pure curves of neck, and dimpling hand aloft,
Moved like a wave at sunrise. Herod said—
“A boon for maiden freshness! Ask of me
What toy may please, though half my Galilee;”
And with beseeching eyes, and bird-speech soft,
She fluted: “Give me here John Baptist’s head.”
 

WATERSHED

 
Now on life’s crest we breathe the temperate air;
Turn either way; the parted paths o’erlook;
Dear, we shall never bid the Sphinx despair,
Nor read in Sibyl’s book.
 
 
The blue bends o’er us; good are Night and Day;
Some blissful influence from the starry Seven
Thrilled us ere youth took wing; wherefore essay
The vain assault on heaven?
 
 
And what great Word Life’s singing lips pronounce,
And what intends the sealing kiss of Death,
It skills us not; yet we accept, renounce,
And draw this tranquil breath.
 
 
Enough, one thing we know, haply anon
All truths; yet no truths better or more clear
Than that your hand holds my hand; wherefore on!
The downward pathway, Dear!
 

THE GUEST

 
Rude is the dwelling, low the door,
No chamber this where men may feast,
I strew clean rushes on the floor,
Set wide my window to the East.
 
 
I can but set my little room
In order, then gaze forth and wait;
I know not if the Guest will come,
Who holds aloft his starry state.
 

MORITURUS

 
Lord, when my hour to part is come,
And all the powers of being sink,
When eyes are filmed, and lips are dumb,
And scarce I hang upon the brink.
 
 
Grant me but this—in that strange light
Or blind amid confused alarms,
One moment’s strength to stand upright
And cast myself into Thy arms.
 

ALONE

 
This is the shore of God’s lone love, which stirs
And heaves to some majestic tidal law;
And bright the illimitable horizons’ awe;
God’s love; yet all my soul cries out for hers.
 

FAME

 
My arches crumble; that bright dome I flung
Heavenward in pride decays; yet all unmoved
One column soars, and, graven in sacred tongue,
Endure the victor words—“This man was loved.”
 

WHERE WERT THOU?

 
Where wert Thou, Master, ’mid that rain of tears,
When grey the waste before me stretched and wide,
And when with boundless silence ached mine ears?
“Child, I was at thy side.”
 
 
Where wert Thou when I trod the obscure wood,
And one lone cry of sorrow was the wind,
And drop by heavy drop failed my heart’s blood?
“Before thee and behind.”
 
 
Where wert Thou when I fell and lay alone
Faithless and hopeless, yet through one dear smart
Not loveless quite, making my empty moan?
“Son, I was in thy heart.”
 

A WISH

 
Could I roll off two heavy years
That lie on me like lead;
And see you past their cloudy tears,
Nor dream that you are dead.
 
 
I would not touch your lips, your hair,
Your breast, that once were mine;
Ah! not for me in Faith’s despair
Love’s sacramental wine.
 
 
Find you I must for only this
In some new earth or heaven,
To bare my sorry heart, and kiss
Your feet and be forgiven.
 

THE GIFT

 
“Now I draw near: alone, apart
I stood, nor deemed I should require
Such access, till my musing heart
Suddenly kindled to desire.
 
 
No farther from Thee than Thy feet!
No less a sight than all Thy face!
Nay, touch me where the heart doth beat,
Breathe where the throbbing brain hath place.
 
 
Yield me the best, the unnamed good,
The gift which most shall prove me near,
Thy wine for drink, Thy fruit for food,
Thy tokens of the nail, the spear!”
 
 
Such cry was mine: I lifted up
My face from treacherous speech to cease,
Daring to take the bitter cup,
But ah! Thy perfect gift was peace.
 
 
Quiet deliverance from all need,
A little space of boundless rest,
To live within the Light indeed
To lean upon the Master’s breast.
 

RECOVERY

 
I joy to know I shall rejoice again
Borne upward on the good tide of the world,
Shall mark the cowslip tossed, the fern uncurled
And hear the enraptured lark high o’er my pain,
And o’er green graves; and I shall love the wane
Of sea-charm’d sunsets with all winds upfurl’d,
And that great gale adown whose stream are whirl’d,
Pale autumn dreams, dead hopes, and broodings vain.
Nor do I fear that I shall faintlier bless
The joy of youth and maid, or the gold hair
Of a wild-hearted child; then, none the less,
Instant within my shrine, no man aware,
Feed on a living sorrow’s sacredness,
And lean my forehead on this altar-stair.
 

IF IT MIGHT BE

 
If it might be, I would not have my leaves
Drop in autumnal stillness one by one,
Like these pale fluttering waifs that heap sad sheaves
Through mere inertia trembling, tottering down.
 
 
Better one roaring day, one wrestling night,
The dark musician’s fiercer harmony,
And then abandoned bareness, or the light
Of strange discovered skies, if it might be.
 

WINTER NOONTIDE

 
I go forth now, but not to fill my lap
With violets and white sorrel of the wood;
This is a winter noon; and I may hap
Upon a few dry sticks, and fire is good.
 
 
A quickening shrewdness edges the fore wind;
Some things stand clear in this dismantled hour
Which deep-leaved June had hidden; earth is kind,
The heaven is wide, and fire shall be my flower.
 

THE POOL

 
A wood obscure in this man’s haunt of love,
And midmost in the wood where leaves fall sere,
A pool unplumbed; no winds these waters move,
Gathered as in a vase from year to year.
 
 
And he has thought that he himself lies drowned,
Wan-faced where the pale water glimmereth,
And that the voiceless man who paces round
The brink, nor sheds a tear now, is his wraith.
 

THE DESIRE TO GIVE

 
They who would comfort guess not the main grief—
Not that her hand is never on my hair,
Her lips upon my brow; the time is brief
At longest, and I grow inured to bear.
 
 
All that was ever mine I have and hold;
But that I cannot give by day or night
My poor gift which was dear to her of old,
And poorly given—that loss is infinite.
 

A BEECH-TREE IN WINTER

 
Now in the frozen gloom I trace thy girth,
Broad beech, that with lit leaves upon a day
When heaven was wide and down the meadow May
Moved bride-like, touched my forehead in sweet mirth,
And blissful secrets told of the deep Earth,
Low in mine ear; wherefore this eve I lay
My hand thus close till stirrings faint bewray
Thy piteous secrets of the days of dearth,
Silence! yet to my heart from thine has passed
Divine contentment; it is well with thee;
Still let the stars slide o’er thee whispering fate,
The might be in thee of the shouldering blast,
Still let fire-fingered snow thy tiremaid be,
Still bearing springtime in thy bosom wait.
 

JUDGMENT

 
I stand for judgment; vain the will
To judge myself, O Lord!
I cannot sunder good from ill
With a dividing sword.
 
 
How should I know myself aright,
Who would by Thee be known?
Let me stand naked in Thy sight;
Thy doom shall be my own.
 
 
Slay in me that which would be slain!
Thy justice be my grace!
If aught survive the joy, the pain,
Still must it seek Thy face.
 

DÜRER’S “MELENCHOLIA”

 
The bow of promise, this lost flaring star,
Terror and hope are in mid-heaven; but She,
The mighty-wing’d crown’d Lady Melancholy,
Heeds not. O to what vision’d goal afar
Does her thought bear those steadfast eyes which are
A torch in darkness? There nor shore nor sea,
Nor ebbing Time vexes Eternity,
Where that lone thought outsoars the mortal bar.
Tools of the brain—the globe, the cube—no more
She deals with; in her hand the compass stays;
Nor those, industrious genius, of her lore
Student and scribe, thou gravest of the fays,
Expect this secret to enlarge thy store;
She moves through incommunicable ways.
 

MILLET’S “THE SOWER”

 
Son of the Earth, brave flinger of the seed,
Strider of furrows, copesmate of the morn,
Which, stirr’d with quickenings now of day unborn,
Approves the mystery of thy fruitful deed;
Thou, young in hope and old as man’s first need,
Through all the hours that laugh, the hours that mourn,
Hold’st to one strenuous faith, by time unworn,
Sure of the miracle—that the clod will breed.
Dark is this upland, pallid still the sky,
And man, rude bondslave of the glebe, goes forth
To labour; serf, yet genius of the soil,
Great his abettors—a confederacy
Of mightiest Powers, old laws of heaven and earth,
Foresight and Faith, and ever-during Toil.
 

AT MULLION (CORNWALL)

Sunday

 
Where the blue dome is infinite,
And choral voices of the sea
Chaunt the high lauds, or meek, as now,
Intone their ancient litany;
 
 
Where through his ritual pomp still moves
The Sun in robe pontifical,
Whose only creed is catholic light,
Whose benediction is for all;
 
 
I enter with glad face uplift,
Asperged on brow and brain and heart;
I am confessed, absolved, illumed,
Receive my blessing and depart.
 

THE WINNOWER TO THE WINDS
(From Joachim de Bellay)

 
To yon light troop, who fly
On wing that hurries by
The wide world over,
And with soft sibilance
Bid every shadow dance
Of the glad cover.
 
 
These violets I consign
Lilies and sops-in-wine
Roses, all yours,
These roses vermeil-tinctured
Their graces new-uncinctured
And gilly-flowers.
 
 
So with your gentle breath
Blow on the plain beneath
Through my grange blow,
What time I swink and strain,
Winnowing my golden grain
In noontide’s glow.
 

EMERSON

 
Memnon the Yankee! bare to every star,
But silent till one vibrant shaft of light
Strikes; then a voice thrilling, oracular,
And clear harmonies through the infinite.
 

SENT TO AN AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY

 
’Twixt us through gleam and gloom in glorious play
League-long the leonine billows ramp and roll,
The same maturing sun illumes our day,
Ripens our blood—the sun of Shakespeare’s soul.
 

NOCTURNE

 
Ere sleep upheaves me on one glassy billow
To drift me down the deep,
I lie with easeful head upon my pillow,
Letting the minutes creep.
 
 
Until Time’s pulse is stayed and all earth’s riot
Fades in a limit white,
While over me curve fragrant wings of quiet
Tender and great as Night.
 
 
Then I gaze up. Divine, descending slumber
Thine access yet forbear,
Though vow I proffer none, nor blessings number,
Nor breathe a wordless prayer.
 
 
A Presence is within me and above me,
That takes me for its own,
A Motherhood, a bosom prompt to love me,
I know it and am known.
 
 
So softly I roll back the Spirit’s portals;
O be the entrance wide!
Silence and light from home of my Immortals
Flow in, a tranquil tide.
 
 
Calming, assuaging, cleansing, freshening, freeing,
It floods each inlet deep;
Now pass thou wave of Light, ebb thought and being!
Come thou dark wave of sleep!