Thus they abide, Thus fouled and desecrate, The summons of the Trumpet, and the while These Twain, their murderers, Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, Hang at the heels of their children—She aloft As in the shining streets, He as in ambush at some accomplice door.
The stalwart Ships, The beautiful and bold adventurers! Stationed out yonder in the isle, The tall Policeman, Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peers About him in the ancient vacancy, Tells them this way is safety—this way home.
IV
It came with the threat of a waning moon And the wail of an ebbing tide, But many a woman has lived for less, And many a man has died; For life upon life took hold and passed, Strong in a fate set free, Out of the deep into the dark On for the years to be.
Between the gloom of a waning moon And the song of an ebbing tide, Chance upon chance of love and death Took wing for the world so wide. O, leaf out of leaf is the way of the land, Wave out of wave of the sea And who shall reckon what lives may live In the life that we bade to be?
V
Why, my heart, do we love her so? (Geraldine, Geraldine!) Why does the great sea ebb and flow? - Why does the round world spin? Geraldine, Geraldine, Bid me my life renew: What is it worth unless I win, Love—love and you?
Why, my heart, when we speak her name (Geraldine, Geraldine!) Throbs the word like a flinging flame? - Why does the Spring begin? Geraldine, Geraldine, Bid me indeed to be: Open your heart, and take us in, Love—love and me.
VI
One with the ruined sunset, The strange forsaken sands, What is it waits, and wanders, And signs with desparate hands?
What is it calls in the twilight - Calls as its chance were vain? The cry of a gull sent seaward Or the voice of an ancient pain?
The red ghost of the sunset, It walks them as its own, These dreary and desolate reaches … But O, that it walked alone!
VII
There’s a regret So grinding, so immitigably sad, Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad … Do you not know it yet?
For deeds undone Rankle and snarl and hunger for their due, Till there seems naught so despicable as you In all the grin o’ the sun.
Like an old shoe The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie About the beach of Time, till by and by Death, that derides you too -
Death, as he goes His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray, With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way; And then—and then, who knows
But the kind Grave Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, In that black bridewell working out his term, Hanker and grope and crave?
‘Poor fool that might - That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, Think of it, here and thus made over to me In the implacable night!’
And writhing, fain And like a triumphing lover, he shall take His fill where no high memory lives to make His obscene victory vain.
VIII—To A. J. H.
Time and the Earth - The old Father and Mother - Their teeming accomplished, Their purpose fulfilled, Close with a smile For a moment of kindness, Ere for the winter They settle to sleep.
Failing yet gracious, Slow pacing, soon homing, A patriarch that strolls Through the tents of his children, The Sun, as he journeys His round on the lower Ascents of the blue, Washes the roofs And the hillsides with clarity; Charms the dark pools Till they break into pictures; Scatters magnificent Alms to the beggar trees; Touches the mist-folk, That crowd to his escort, Into translucencies Radiant and ravishing: As with the visible Spirit of Summer Gloriously vaporised, Visioned in gold!
Love, though the fallen leaf Mark, and the fleeting light And the loud, loitering Footfall of darkness Sign to the heart Of the passage of destiny, Here is the ghost Of a summer that lived for us, Here is a promise Of summers to be.
IX
‘As like the Woman as you can’ - (Thus the New Adam was beguiled) - ‘So shall you touch the Perfect Man’ - (God in the Garden heard and smiled). ‘Your father perished with his day: ‘A clot of passions fierce and blind, ‘He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way: ‘Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.
‘The Brute that lurks and irks within, ‘How, till you have him gagged and bound, ‘Escape the foullest form of Sin?’ (God in the Garden laughed and frowned). ‘So vile, so rank, the bestial mood ‘In which the race is bid to be, ‘It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: ‘Live, therefore, you, for Purity!
‘Take for your mate no gallant croup, ‘No girl all grace and natural will: ‘To work her mission were to stoop, ‘Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill. ‘Choose one of whom your grosser make’ - (God in the Garden laughed outright) - ‘The true refining touch may take, ‘Till both attain to Life’s last height.
‘There, equal, purged of soul and sense. ‘Beneficent, high-thinking, just, ‘Beyond the appeal of Violence, ‘Incapable of common Lust, ‘In mental Marriage still prevail’ - (God in the Garden hid His face) - ‘Till you achieve that Female-Male ‘In Which shall culminate the race.’
X
Midsummer midnight skies, Midsummer midnight influences and airs, The shining, sensitive silver of the sea Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn; And all so solemnly still I seem to hear The breathing of Life and Death, The secular Accomplices, Renewing the visible miracle of the world.
The wistful stars Shine like good memories. The young morning wind Blows full of unforgotten hours As over a region of roses. Life and Death Sound on—sound on … And the night magical, Troubled yet comforting, thrills As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart Of the wood’s dark wonderment Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banks With exquisite visitants: Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires With living looks intolerable, regrets Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been - Beautiful, miserable, distraught - The Law no man may baffle denied and slew.
The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms … Glimmers … goes out … and there, O, there where it fades, What grace, what glamour, what wild will, Transfigure the shadows? Whose, Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?
Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air Teems with them even to the gleaming ends Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, Everywhere—everywhere—till I and you At last—dear love, at last! - Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.
XI
Gulls in an aery morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam … The full sea, sleepily basking, Dreams under skies of dream.
Gulls in an aery morrice Circle and swoop and close … Fuller and ever fuller The rose of the morning blows.
Gulls, in an aery morrice Frolicking, float and fade … O, the way of a bird in the sunshine, The way of a man with a maid!
XII
Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire?
Behind, a past that scolds and jeers For ungirt loins and lamps unlit; In front, the unmanageable years, The trap upon the Pit;
Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life:
Arise! no more a living lie, And with me quicken and control Some memory that shall magnify The universal Soul.
XIII—To James McNeill Whistler
Under a stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble to a broken tune (Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, transitory world.
What of the incantation That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore To take and wear the night Like a material majesty? That touched the shafts of wavering fire About this miserable welter and wash - (River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!) - Into long, shining signals from the panes Of an enchanted pleasure-house, Where life and life might live life lost in life For ever and evermore?
O Death! O Change! O Time! Without you, O, the insuperable eyes Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!
XIV—To J. A. C.
Fresh from his fastnesses Wholesome and spacious, The North Wind, the mad huntsman, Halloas on his white hounds Over the grey, roaring Reaches and ridges, The forest of ocean, The chace of the world. Hark to the peal Of the pack in full cry, As he thongs them before him, Swarming voluminous, Weltering, wide-wallowing, Till in a ruining Chaos of energy, Hurled on their quarry, They crash into foam!
Old Indefatigable, Time’s right-hand man, the sea Laughs as in joy From his millions of wrinkles: Laughs that his destiny, Great with the greatness Of triumphing order, Shows as a dwarf By the strength of his heart And the might of his hands.
Master of masters, O maker of heroes, Thunder the brave, Irresistible message:- ‘Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.’
XV
You played and sang a snatch of song, A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient wrong; And was it really I and you? O, since the end of life’s to live And pay in pence the common debt, What should it cost us to forgive Whose daily task is to forget?
You babbled in the well-known voice - Not new, not new the words you said. You touched me off that famous poise, That old effect, of neck and head. Dear, was it really you and I? In truth the riddle’s ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.
XVI
Space and dread and the dark - Over a livid stretch of sky Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train Of huge, primeval presences Stooping beneath the weight Of some enormous, rudimentary grief; While in the haunting loneliness The far sea waits and wanders with a sound As of the trailing skirts of Destiny, Passing unseen To some immitigable end With her grey henchman, Death.
What larve, what spectre is this Thrilling the wilderness to life As with the bodily shape of Fear? What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced, in a dusk Inviolable utterly, and dead As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes In hugger-mugger through eternity?
Life—life—let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!
Life—give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest hell of the fight I may be snatched and flung Into the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream.
XVII—CARMEN PATIBULARE—To H. S.
Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook And the rope of the Black Election, ‘Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule Can never achieve perfection: So ‘It’s O, for the time of the new Sublime And the better than human way, When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his own And the Wolf shall have his day!’
For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam And the power of provocation, You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit Till your fruit is mere stupration: And ‘It’s how should we rise to be pure and wise, And how can we choose but fall, So long as the Hangman makes us dread, And the Noose floats free for all?’
So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign And the trick there’s no recalling, They will haggle and hew till they hack you through And at last they lay you sprawling: When ‘Hey! for the hour of the race in flower And the long good-bye to sin!’ And for the lack the fires of Hell gone out Of the fuel to keep them in!’
But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, Your growth began with the life of Man, And only his death can end you. They may tug in line at your hempen twine, They may flourish with axe and saw; But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs In the living rock of Law.
And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, When the spent sun reels and blunders Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit As it seethes in spate and thunders, Stern on the glare of the tortured air Your lines august shall gloom, And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed In the ruining roar of Doom.
XVIII—I. M.—MARGARET EMMA HENLEY (1888-1894)
When you wake in your crib, You, an inch of experience - Vaulted about With the wonder of darkness; Wailing and striving To reach from your feebleness Something you feel Will be good to and cherish you, Something you know And can rest upon blindly: O, then a hand (Your mother’s, your mother’s!) By the fall of its fingers All knowledge, all power to you, Out of the dreary, Discouraging strangenesses Comes to and masters you, Takes you, and lovingly Woos you and soothes you Back, as you cling to it, Back to some comforting Corner of sleep.
So you wake in your bed, Having lived, having loved; But the shadows are there, And the world and its kingdoms Incredibly faded; And you group through the Terror Above you and under For the light, for the warmth, The assurance of life; But the blasts are ice-born, And your heart is nigh burst With the weight of the gloom And the stress of your strangled And desperate endeavour: Sudden a hand - Mother, O Mother! - God at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the infinite Peace of the Grave.
October 1891
XIX—I. M.—R. L. S. (1850-1894)
O, Time and Change, they range and range From sunshine round to thunder! - They glance and go as the great winds blow, And the best of our dreams drive under: For Time and Change estrange, estrange - And, now they have looked and seen us, O, we that were dear, we are all-too near With the thick of the world between us.
O, Death and Time, they chime and chime Like bells at sunset falling! - They end the song, they right the wrong, They set the old echoes calling: For Death and Time bring on the prime Of God’s own chosen weather, And we lie in the peace of the Great Release As once in the grass together.
February 1891
XX
The shadow of Dawn; Stillness and stars and overmastering dreams Of Life and Death and Sleep; Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound Of the old, unchanging Sea.
My soul and yours - O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, Into the ghostliness, The infinite and abounding solitudes, Beyond—O, beyond!—beyond …
Here in the porch Upon the multitudinous silences Of the kingdoms of the grave, We twain are you and I—two ghosts Omnipotence Can touch no more … no more!
XXI
When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife - Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.
But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire’s old song - O, you envy the blessed death that can live no more!
XXII
Trees and the menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell, As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds, It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.
Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night (Night and the wretchedness of the sky) Is it the hurry of the rain? Or the noise of a drive of the Dead, Streaming before the irresistible Will Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land Between their place and ours?
Like the forgetfulness Of the work-a-day world made visible, A mist falls from the melancholy sky. A messenger from some lost and loving soul, Hopeless, far wandered, dazed Here in the provinces of life, A great white moth fades miserably past.
Thro’ the trees in the strange dead night, Under the vast dead sky, Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.
XXIII—To P. A. G.
Here they trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June. ‘Death is fleet, Life is sweet,’ Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet, While they dreamed, was yesterday.
Many a maid and many a man Found the leafage close and boon; Many a destiny began - O, the morn was merry June! Dead and gone, dead and gone, (Hark the blackbird in the may!), Life and Death went hurrying on, Cheek on cheek—and where were they?
Dust on dust engendering dust In the leafage fresh and boon, Man and maid fulfil their trust - Still the morn turns merry June. Mother Life, Father Death (O, the blackbird in the may!), Each the other’s breath for breath, Fleet the times of the world away.
XXIV—To A. C.
Not to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, The Trees—God’s sentinels Over His gift of live, life-giving air, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves. Midsummer-manifold, each one Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams That haunt their leafier privacies, Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaks Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.
But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect - Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread - Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed.
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