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THE WHIRLIGIG

 
Glee at the cottage-doors to-day!
Small hearts with joy are big;
The merchant chanced to come our way
Who vends the whirligig.
 
 
You know the marvel-stick of deal,
And, where the top should taper,
Pinned lightly, the ecstatic wheel,
Flaunting its purple paper.
 
 
Raptures a halfpenny each; and see
The liberal-bosomed mother
Faltering; they tug her skirts the three,
(Ah, soon will come another!)
 
 
Away they start! Swift, swifter fly
The buzzing, whirring chips,
O eyes grown great! O gleesome cry
From daubed, cherubic lips!
 
 
I as companion of my walk
Had chosen a soul heroic
(So much I love superior talk)
An Emperor and a Stoic.
 
 
The cowslip tossed; upsoared the lark;
Our choice was to recline us
Against an elm-bole, I and Mark
Aurelius Antoninus.
 
 
Pale victory lightened on his brow,
Grieved conquest wrung from pain;
Of Nature’s course he spake, and how
Man should sustain, abstain.
 
 
Physician of the soul, he spake
Of simples that allay
The blood, and how the nerves that ache
Freeze under ethic spray.
 
 
I turned; perhaps his touch of pride
Moved me, a garb he wore;
I saw those children eager-eyed,
And Rome’s pale Emperor.
 
 
“You miss,” I said, “born Nature’s rule,
Her statutes unrepealed,
You would remove us from the school,
And from the playing-field.
 
 
And if our griefs be vain, our joys
Vainer, all’s in the plan;
For what are we but gamesome boys?
Through these we grow to man.
 
 
I to my hornbook now give heed,
Now hear my playmates call,
Will ‘chase the rolling circles speed,
And urge the flying ball.’
 
 
Joys, pains, hopes, fears,—a mingled heap,
Grant me, nor Prince nor prig!
I want, sad Emperor, rosy sleep,
Leave me my whirligig.”
 
 
In haste I spoke; such gusty talk
Oft wrongs these lips of mine;
Under grey clouds some day I’ll walk
Again with Antonine.
 

PARADISE LOST AND FOUND

 
Eve, to tell truth, was not deceived;
The snake’s word seemed to tally
With something she herself conceived,
Sick of her happy valley.
 
 
The place amused her for a bit,
(Some think ’twas half a day)
Then came, alas! a desperate fit
Of neurasthenia.
 
 
She tired of lions bland and grand,
She tired of thornless roses,
She felt she could no longer stand
Her Adam’s courtly glozes.
 
 
His “graceful consort,” “spouse adored,”
His amorous-pious lectures;
She found herself supremely bored,
If one may risk conjectures.
 
 
“Would he but scold for once!” sighed she,
“De haut en bas caressings,
Qualified by astronomy,
Prove scarce unmingled blessings.”
 
 
She strolled; fine gentlemen in wings
Would deftly light and stop her;
She looked demure; half-missed her “things,”
Half feared ’twas not quite proper.
 
 
They asked for Adam, always him,
Each affable Archangel,
Nor heeded charms of neck or limb,
Big with their stale evangel.
 
 
They dined; her cookery instinct stirred;
A dinner grew a dream,
Not berries cold, eternal curd,
And everlasting cream.
 
 
Boon fruit was hers, but tame in sooth;
One thought her soul would grapple—
To get her little ivory tooth
Deep in some wicked apple.
 
 
So, when that sinuous cavalier
Spired near the tree of evil,
The woman hasted to draw near;
Such luck!—the genuine devil!
 
 
And Satan, who to man had lied,
Man ever prone to palter,
The franker course with woman tried,
Assured she would not falter.
 
 
He spoke of freedom and its pains,
Of passion and its sorrow,
Of sacrifice, and nobler gains
Wrung from a dark to-morrow.
 
 
He did not shirk the names of death,
Worn heart, a night of tears—
If here the woman caught her breath,
She dared to face her fears.
 
 
Perhaps he touched on pretty needs,
Named frill, flounce, furbelow,
Perhaps referred to sable weeds,
And dignity in woe.
 
 
Glowed like two rose-leaves both ear-lobes,
White grew her lips and set,
The sly snake picturing small white robes,
A roseate bassinet.
 
 
He smiled; then squarely told the curse,
Birth-pang, a lord and master;
She hung her head—“It might be worse,
It seems no huge disaster.”
 
 
She mused—“A sin’s a sin at most;
Life’s joy outweighs my sentence;
What of my man, who now can boast
A virtue so portentous?
 
 
Best for him too! Sweat, workman’s groan
And death which makes us even;
I want a sinner of my own,
Who finds my breast his heaven.”
 
 
Our General Mother, which is true
This tale, or that old story,
Tradition’s fable convenue
Fashioned for Jahveh’s glory?
 

AFTER METASTASIO

 
If seeking me she ask “What hap
Befel him? Whither is he fled,
My friend, my poor unhappy friend?”
Then softly answer “He is dead.”
 
 
Yet no! May never pang so keen
Be hers, and I the giver! Say,
If word be spoken, this alone,
“Weeping for you he went his way.”
 

THE CORN-CRAKE

I

 
Here let the bliss of summer and her night
Be on my heart as wide and pure as heaven;
Now while o’er earth the tide of young delight
Brims to the full, calm’d by the wizard Seven,
And their high mistress, yon enchanted Moon;
The air is faint, yet fresh as primrose buds,
And dim with weft of honey-colour’d beams,
A bride-robe for the new espousèd June,
Who lies white-limbed among her flowers, nor dreams,
Such a divine content her being floods.
 

II

 
Awake, awake! The silence hath a voice;
Not thine, thou heart of fire, palpitating
Until all griefs change countenance and rejoice,
And all joys ache o’er-ripe since thou dost sing,
Not thine this voice of the dry meadow-lands,
Harsh iteration! note untuneable!
Which shears the breathing quiet with a blade
Of ragged edge! Say, wilt thou ne’er be still
Crier in June’s high progress, whose commands
Upon no heedless drowzed heart are laid?
 

III

 
Nay, cease not till thy breast disquieted
Hath won a term of ease; the dewy grass
Trackless at morn betrays not thy swift tread,
And through smooth-closing air thy call-notes pass,
To faint on yon soft-bosom’d pastoral steep
Thee bird the Night accepts; and I, through thee,
Reach to embalmèd hearts of summers dead,
Feel round my feet old, inland meadows deep,
And bow o’er flowers that not a leaf have shed,
Nor once have heard moan of an alien sea.
 

IV

 
Even while I muse thy halting-place doth shift,
Now nearer, now more distant—I have seen
When April, through her shining hair adrift,
Gleams a farewell, and elms are fledged with green,
The voiceful, wandering envoy of the Spring;
Thee, never; though the mower’s scythe hath dashed
Thy nest aside, but thou hast sped askant,
Viewless; then last we lose thee, and thy wing
Brushes Nilotic maize and thou dost chaunt
Haply all night to stony ears of Pasht.
 

V

 
Ah, now an end to thy inveterate tale!
The silence melts from the mid spheres of heaven;
Enough! before this peace has time to fail
From out my soul, or yon white cloud has driven
Up the moon’s path I turn, and I will rest
Once more with summer in my heart. Farewell!
Shut are the wild-rose cups; no moth’s awhirr;
My room will be moon-silvered from the west
For one more hour; thy note shall be a burr
To tease out thought and catch the slumbrous spell.
 

IN THE CATHEDRAL

 
The altar-lights burn low, the incense-fume
Sickens: O listen, how the priestly prayer
Runs as a fenland stream; a dim despair
Hails through their chaunt of praise, who here inhume
A clay-cold Faith within its carven tomb.
But come thou forth into the vital air
Keen, dark, and pure! grave Night is no betrayer,
And if perchance some faint cold star illume
Her brow of mystery, shall we walk forlorn?
An altar of the natural rock may rise
Somewhere for men who seek; there may be borne
On the night-wind authentic prophecies:
If not, let this—to breathe sane breath—suffice,
Till in yon East, mayhap, the dark be worn.
 

EDGAR ALLAN POE
(Read at the Centenary Celebration, University of Virginia, 19th Jan. 1909)

 
Seeker for Eldorado, magic land,
Whose gold is beauty fine-spun, amber-clear,
O’er what Moon-mountains, down what Valley of fear
By what love waters fringed with pallid sand,
Did thy foot falter? Say what airs have fanned
Thy fervid brow, blown from no terrene sphere,
What rustling wings, what echoes thrilled thine ear
From mighty tombs whose brazen ports expand?
Seeker, who never quite attained, yet caught,
Moulded and fashioned, as by strictest law
The rainbow’d moon-mist and the flying gleam
To mortal loveliness, for pity and awe,
To us what carven dreams thy hand has brought
Dreams with the serried logic of a dream.
 

DEUS ABSCONDITUS

 
Since Thou dost clothe Thyself to-day in cloud,
Lord God in heaven, and no voice low or loud
Proclaims Thee,—see, I turn me to the Earth,
Its wisdom and its sorrow and its mirth,
Thy Earth perchance, but sure my very own,
And precious to me grows the clod, the stone,
A voiceless moor’s brooding monotony,
A keen star quivering through the sunset dye,
Young wrinkled beech leaves, saturate with light,
The arching wave’s suspended malachite;
I turn to men, Thy sons perchance, but sure
My brethren, and no face shall be too poor
To yield me some unquestionable gain
Of wonder, laughter, loathing, pity, pain,
Some dog-like craving caught in human eyes,
Some new-waked spirit’s April ecstasies;
These will not fail nor foil me; while I live
There will be actual truck in take and give,
But Thou hast foiled me; therefore undistraught,
I cease from seeking what will not be sought,
Or sought, will not be found through joy or fear,
If still Thou claimst me, seek me. I am here.
 

SUBLIMINAL

 
Door, little door,
Shadowed door in the innermost room of my heart,
I lean and listen, withdrawn from the stir and apart,
For a word of the wordless love.
 
 
And still you hide,
Yourself of me, who are more than myself, within,
And I wait if perchance a whisper I may win
From my soul on the other side.
 
 
What do I catch
Afloat on the air, for something is said or done?
Are there two who speak—my soul and the nameless One?
Little door, could I lift the latch.
 
 
Sigh for some want
Measureless sigh of desire, or a speechless prayer?
Rustle of robe of a priest at sacrifice there
Benediction or far-heard chaunt?
 
 
Could we but meet,
Myself and my hidden self in a still amaze!
But the tramp of men comes up, and the roll of drays,
And a woman’s cry from the street!
 

LOUISA SHORE
(Author of “Hannibal, a Drama”)

 
Who dared to pluck the sleeve of Hannibal,
And hale him from the shades? Who bade the man,
Indomitable of brain, return to plan
A vast revenge and vowed? Wild clarions call;
Dusk faces flame; the turreted brute-wall
Moves, tramples, overwhelms; van clashes van;
Roman, Numidian, Carthaginian;
And griefs are here, unbowed, imperial.
Who caught the world’s fierce tides? An English girl.
Shy dreamer ’neath fledged elm and apple-bloom,
With Livy or Polybius on her knee,
Whose dreams were light as dew and pure as pearl,—
Yet poignant-witted; thew’d for thought; girl-groom
Sped to her Lord across the Midland Sea.
 

FLOWERS FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

 
Thanks spoken under rainy skies,
And tossed by March winds of the North,
And faint ere they can find your eyes,
Pale thanks are mine and poor in worth,
 
 
Matched with your gift of dews and light,
Quick heart-beats of the Southern spring,
Provençal flowers, pearl-pure, blood-bright,
Which heard the Mid-sea murmuring.
 
 
Listen! a lark in Irish air,
A silver spray of ecstasy!
O wind of March blow wide and bear
This song of home as thanks for me.
 
 
Nay, but yourself find thanks more meet;
Blossoms like these which drank the sky
Strew in some shadowy alcove-seat,
And lay your violin where they lie;
 
 
Leave them; but with the first star rise,
And bring the bow, and poise at rest
The enchanted wood. Ah, shrill sweet cries!
A prisoned heart is in its breast.
 

TO HESTER
(At the Piano)

 
So ends your fingers’ fine intrigue!
The netted guile! Nor yonder sat he
In pump and frill who made the gigue,
Your Neapolitan Scarlatti.
 
 
The twilight yields you to me; strange!
My dainty sprite, a most rare vision!
Well, is it not a wise exchange,
Live maid for ghost of dead musician?
 
 
Yet gently let the shadows troop
To darkness; lightly lie the dust on
Damon and Chloe, hose and hoop,
My bevy of the days Augustan.
 
 
What led my fancy down the track,
Through century-silent, shadowy mazes?
Perhaps that foolish bric-à-brac
Your pseudo-classic shelf that graces.
 
 
Or haply something I divined,
While on your face I stayed a dweller,
Of that fair ancestress—unsigned—
It pleases you to name a Kneller;
 
 
And still your fingers ran the keys,
Through quaint encounter, pretty wrangle
Light laughter, interspace of ease,
Fine turn, and softly-severed tangle,
 
 
Gigue, minuet, rondo, ritornelle—
Quaint jars with rose-leaf memories scented,
Stored with glad sound, when life went well,
Ere melancholy was invented,
 
 
When pleasure ran, a rippling tide,
And Phillida with Phyllis carolled,
Ere Werther yet for Lotte sighed,
Or English maids adored Childe Harold;
 
 
Ere music shook the central heart,
Or soared to spheral heights inhuman,
Ere Titans stormed the heaven of art,
Let by the hammer-welder, Schumann.
 
 
Ah, well, we sigh beneath the load,
We sing our pain, our pride, our passion,
And Weltschmerz is the modern mode,
But sweet seventeen is still a fashion.
 
 
Let be a while the Infinite,
Those chords with tremulous fervour laden,
Where Chopin’s fire and dew unite—
I choose instead one mortal maiden.
 
 
Let sorrow rave, and sadness fret,
And all our century’s ailments pester,
I am not quite despairful yet—
There, at the keyboard, sits a Hester.
 

UNUTTERED

 
Song that is pent in me,
Song that is aching,
Ne’er to escape from me,
Sleeping or waking,
 
 
Down aspic! the dust of me,
Blown the world over
A century hence
Will envenom a lover.
 
 
His red lips grow vocal,
His great word is new,
And the world knows my secret,
Is dreaming of you.
 

IMITATED FROM J. SOULARY’S “LE FOSSOYEUR”

 
For every child new-born God brings to birth
A little grave-digger, deft at his trade,
Who ’neath his master’s feet still voids the earth,
There where one day the man’s dark plunge is made.
 
 
Do you know yours? Hideous perhaps is he,
You shudder seeing the workman at his task;
Such gracious looks commend who waits on me
I yield whole-hearted, nor for quarter ask.
 
 
A child rose-white, sweet-lipped, my steps he presses
On to the pit with coaxings and caresses,
Lovelier assassin none could choose to have.
Rogue, hast thou done? Let’s haste. The hour comes quick,
Give with a kiss the last stroke of the pick,
And gently lay me in my flowery grave.
 

IMITATED FROM GOETHE’S “GANYMEDE”

 
As with splendour of morning
Around me thou flamest,
O Spring time, my lover,
With a thousand delights and desires;
To my heart comes thronging
The sacred sense
Of thy glow everlasting,
O infinite beauty!
 
 
Would I might seize thee
In these my arms!
 
 
Ah! on thy bosom
I lie sore yearning;
Thy flowers, thy grasses,
Press close to my heart;
Fresh breeze of the morn
Thy coolest the burning
Thirst of my breast.
With love the nightingale
Calls to me from the misty valley!
 
 
I come, I am coming!
Whither? Ah, whither?
Upward! Upward the urge is!
Lower the clouds come drifting,
They stoop to the longing of love.
For me! for me!
Borne in the lap of you
Upwards!
Embracing, embraced!
Upwards, even to the bosom
Of thee all-loving, my Father!
 

WITH A COPY OF MY “POEMS”

 
My slender, wondering Nautilus,
Sunk in the ooze—a thing how frail!—
Because you choose to have it thus
Through wavering waters luminous
Rises once more, sets up the sail;
 
 
It trembles to the sun, has fear
Of life, that knew no fear of death:
Ah! may kind Ariel, hovering near,
Speed the toy onward with his breath!
 

PROLOGUE TO MAURICE GEROTHWOHL’S VERSION OF VIGNY’S “CHATTERTON”
(March 1909)

 
Not yet to life inured, the Muse’s son,
Born to be lord of visions, Chatterton,
A youth, nor yet the master of his dream,
Poor, proud, o’erwrought, perplex’d in the extreme
By poetry, his demon, and by love—
Powers of the deep below, the height above—
Ringed by a world with dreams and love at strife,
Rejects in fiery spleen the gift of life.
 
 
Condemn, but pity!
In the South, they say,
Boys in their sportive mood affect a play;
The brands aglow they fashion in a ring,
Then in the ardent cirque a scorpion fling;
Crouched motionless the creature lies, until
Urged by the fire you see him throb and thrill,
Whereon the laughter peals! Anon, he’ll shape
Right on the flames his course to make escape,
And backward draws o’erpowered. Fresh shouts of glee!
Next round the circle curving timorously
He seeks impossible exit; now, once more,
Quailing, and in the centre as before,
He shrinks despairing; lest, he knows his part,
Turns on himself, grown bold, his poisoned dart,
And on the instant dies. O then at height
We hear the cries uproarious of delight!
Doubtless the wretch on mortal crime was bent,
Doubtless the boys were good and innocent.
 
 
Play not, O world of men, the savage boy,
Make not the poet, quickener of earth’s joy,
Your scorpion! Hardly once a hundred years
Compact of spirit and fire and dew, appears
He through whose song the spheral harmonies
Vibrate in mortal hearing. Nay, be wise,
For your own joy, and see he lacks not bread,
If ye but wreathe the white brows of the dead,
’Tis ye yourselves are disinherited.
 

A SONG

 
When did such moons upheave?
When were such pure dawns born?
Yet fly morn into eve,
Fly eve into morn.
 
 
Lily and iris blooms,
Blooms of the orchard close,
Pass—for she comes, she comes,
Your sovereign, the rose.
 
 
Lark, that is heart of the height,
Thrush, that is voice of the vale,
Cease, it is nearing, the night
Of the nightingale.
 
 
Hasten great noon that glows,
Night, when the swift stars pale,
Hasten noon of the rose,
Night of the nightingale.
 

THE DROPS OF NECTAR. 1789
Imitated from Goethe’s “Die Nektartropfen”

 
When Minerva, granting graces
To her darling, her Prometheus,
Brought a brimming bowl of nectar
To the underworld from heaven
To rejoice his race of mortals,
And to quicken in their bosom
Of all gracious arts the impulse,
Fearing Jupiter should see her,
With a rapid foot she hastened,
And the golden bowl was shaken,
And there fell some slender sprinklings
On the verdurous plain below her.
 
 
Whereupon the bees grew busy
With the same in eager sucking.
Came the butterfly as eager
Some small drop to gather also.
Even the spider, the unshapely,
Hither crept and sucked with gusto.
Happy are they to have tasted,
They and other delicate creatures,
For they share henceforth with mortals
Art, of all earth’s joys the fairest.
 

AMOR AS LANDSCAPE-PAINTER
Imitated from Goethe’s “Amor als Landschaftsmaler”

 
On a point of rock I sat one morning,
Gazed with fixèd eyes upon the vapour,
Like a sheet of solid grey outspreading
Did it cover all in plain and mountain.
 
 
By my side meanwhile a boy had placed him,
And he spake. “Good friend, how can’st thou calmly
Stare upon the void grey sheet before thee?
Hast thou then for painting and for modelling
All desire, it seemeth, lost for ever?”
 
 
On the child I looked, and thought in secret,
“Would the little lad then play the Master?”
 
 
“If thou wouldst be ever sad and idle,”
Spake the boy, “no thing of skill can follow.
Look! I’ll paint you straight a little picture,
Teach you how to paint a pretty picture.”
 
 
And thereon forth stretched he his forefinger,
Which was rosy even as a rose blossom,
To the ample canvas strained before him
Set to work at sketching with his finger.
There on high a glorious sun he painted,
Which mine eyes with its effulgence dazzled,
And the fringe of clouds he made it golden.
Through the clouds he let press forth the sunbeams,
Then the tree-tops delicate, light, he painted,
Late refreshed and quickened. Over the hillrange
Hill behind hill folded, for a background.
Nor were waters wanting. There below them
He the river limned, so true to Nature,
That it seemed to sparkle in the sunbeams,
That against its banks it seemed to murmur.
 
 
And there stood beside the river flowers,
And their colours glowed upon the meadow,
Gold and an enamel green and purple;
As if all were emerald and carbuncle.
Pure and clear above he limned the heaven,
And the azure mountains far and further,
So that I, new-born and all enraptured,
Gazed on now the painter, now the picture.
 
 
“I have given thee proof, perhaps,” so spake he,
“That this handicraft I’ve comprehended
But the hardest part is yet to follow.”
 
 
Then and with his finger-tip he outlined,
Using utmost care beside the thicket,
At the point where from earth’s gleaming surface
Was the sun cast back in all its radiance—
Outlined there the loveliest of maidens,
Fair of form, now clad in richest raiment,
Brown her hair and ’neath it cheeks the freshest
And the cheeks were of the self-same colour
As the pretty finger that had drawn them.
 
 
“O my boy,” I cried, “declare what master
Did receive thee in his school as pupil,
That so swiftly and so true to Nature
Thou with skill beginn’st and well completest?”
 
 
But while yet I spake a breeze uprises.
And behold, it sets astir the summits,
Curleth every wave upon the river,
Puffs the veil out of the charming maiden.
And, what me the astonished, more astonished,
Now the maiden’s foot is put in motion,
She advances, and to the place draws nearer,
Where I sit beside the cunning Master.
 
 
Now when all things, all things are in motion,
Trees and river, flowers and veil outblowing,
And the slender foot of her the fairest,
Think you I upon my rock stayed seated,
Speechless as a rock and as immobile?