Poems of the Past and the Present Read Online

That god's gold nimb

And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim;

Even his flushed form begins to fade,

Till but a shade is left of him.

VI

That modern meditation broke

His spell, that penmen's pleadings dealt a stroke,

Say some; and some that crimes too dire

Did much to mire his crimson cloak.

VII

Yea, seeds of crescent sympathy

Were sown by those more excellent than he,

Long known, though long contemned till then –

The gods of men in amity.

VIII

Souls have grown seers, and thought outbrings

The mournful many-sidedness of things

With foes as friends, enfeebling ires

And fury-fires by gaingivings!

IX

He rarely gladdens champions now;

They do and dare, but tensely – pale of brow;

And would they fain uplift the arm

Of that weak form they know not how.

X

Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold;

Wherefore, at times, as if in ancient mould

He looms, bepatched with paint and lath;

But never hath he seemed the old!

XI

Let men rejoice, let men deplore,

The lurid Deity of heretofore

Succumbs to one of saner nod;

The Battle-god is god no more.

Poems of Pilgrimage

Genoa and the Mediterranean

(March 1887)

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,

Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee

When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.

And multimarbled Genova the Proud,

Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed,

I first beheld thee clad – not as the Beauty but the Dowd.

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit

On housebacks pink, green, ochreous – where a slit

Shoreward 'twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.

And thereacross waved fishwives' high-hung smocks,

Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks;

Often since when my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:

Whereat I grieve, Superba! ... Afterhours

Within Palazzo Doria's orange bowers

Went far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.

But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see,

Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more be

Where lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.

Shelley's Skylark

(The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March 1887)

Somewhere afield here something lies

In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust

That moved a poet to prophecies –

A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust:

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,

And made immortal through times to be; –

Though it only lived like another bird,

And knew not its immortality:

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell –

A little ball of feather and bone;

And how it perished, when piped farewell,

And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,

Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,

Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find

That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

And bring a casket silver-lined,

And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,

And consecrate it to endless time;

For it inspired a bard to win

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

In the Old Theatre, Fiesole

(April 1887)

I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline

Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,

Till came a child who showed an ancient coin

That bore the image of a Constantine.

She lightly passed; nor did she once opine

How, better than all books, she had raised for me

In swift perspective Europe's history

Through the vast years of Cæsar's sceptred line.

For in my distant plot of English loam

'Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find

Coins of like impress. As with one half blind

Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home

In that mute moment to my opened mind

The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

Rome: On the Palatine

(April 1887)

We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,

And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,

Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,

We gained Caligula's dissolving pile.

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile

The outer sense, and shape itself as though

It wore its marble gleams, its pristine glow

Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.

When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh overhead,

Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss:

It stirred me as I stood, in Cæsar's house,

Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,

And blended pulsing life with lives long done,

Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

Rome

Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter

(April 1887)

These umbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry

Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;

Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome

Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.

And cracking frieze and rotten metope

Express, as though they were an open tome

Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;

»Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!«

And yet within these ruins' very shade

The singing workmen shape and set and join

Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin

With no apparent sense that years abrade,

Though each rent wall their feeble works invade

Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.

Rome

The Vatican: Sala delle Muse

(1887)

I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,

And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,

And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,

Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She looked not this nor that of those beings divine,

But each and the whole – an essence of all the Nine;

With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,

A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

»Regarded so long, we render thee sad?« said she.

»Not you,« sighed I, »but my own inconstancy!

I worship each and each; in the morning one,

And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth

Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?«

– »Be not perturbed,« said she. »Though apart in fame,

As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.«

– »But my love goes further – to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,

The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim –

Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!«

– »Nay, wooer, thou sway'st not. These are but phases of one;

And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,

One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be –

Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall,

Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!«

Rome

At the Pyramid of Cestius near the Graves of Shelley and Keats

(1887)

Who, then, was Cestius,

And what is he to me? –

Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous

One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word

Of anything he did;

For me he is a man who died and was interred

To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest

Not with its first design,

Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest

Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,

Slew, breathed out threatening;

I know not. This I know: in death all silently

He does a finer thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet

With marble finger high

To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,

Those matchless singers lie. ...

– Say, then, he lived and died

That stones which bear his name

Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;

It is an ample fame.

Lausanne

In Gibbon's Old Garden: 11-12 p.m.

27 June 1897

(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the »Decline and Fall« at the same hour and place)

A spirit seems to pass,

Formal in pose, but grave withal and grand:

He contemplates a volume in his hand,

And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed,

With »It is finished!« And at the alley's end

He turns, and when on me his glances bend

As from the Past comes speech – small, muted, yet composed.

»How fares the Truth now? – Ill?

– Do pens but slily further her advance?

May one not speed her but in phrase askance?

Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?

Still rule those minds on earth

At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled:

›Truth like a bastard comes into the world

Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth‹?«

Zermatt

To the Matterhorn

(June-July 1897)

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,

Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,

Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,

And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done,

And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight

To that day's tragic feat of manly might,

As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon

Thou didst behold the planets lift and lower;

Saw'st, maybe, Joshua's pausing sun and moon,

And the betokening sky when Cæsar's power

Approached its bloody end; yea, even that Noon

When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

The Bridge of Lodi33

(Spring 1887)

I

When of tender mind and body,

I was moved by minstrelsy,

And that air »The Bridge of Lodi«

Brought a strange delight to me.

II

In the battle-breathing jingle

Of its forward-footing tune

I could see the armies mingle,

And the columns crushed and hewn

III

On that far-famed spot by Lodi

Where Napoleon clove his way

To his fame, when like a god he

Bent the nations to his sway.

IV

Hence the tune came capering to me

While I traced the Rhone and Po;

Nor could Milan's Marvel woo me

From the spot englamoured so.

V

And to-day, sunlit and smiling,

Here I stand upon the scene,

With its saffron walls, dun tiling,

And its meads of maiden green,

VI

Even as when the trackway thundered

With the charge of grenadiers,

And the blood of forty hundred

Splashed its parapets and piers. ...

VII

Any ancient crone I'd toady

Like a lass in young-eyed prime,

Could she tell some tale of Lodi

At that moving mighty time.

VIII

So, I ask the wives of Lodi

For traditions of that day;

But, alas! not anybody

Seems to know of such a fray.

IX

And they heed but transitory

Marketings in cheese and meat,

Till I judge that Lodi's story

Is extinct in Lodi's street.

X

Yet while here and there they thrid them

In their zest to sell and buy,

Let me sit me down amid them

And behold those thousands die. ...

XI

– Not a creature cares in Lodi

How Napoleon swept each arch,

Or where up and downward trod he,

Or for his outmatching march!

XII

So that wherefore should I be here,

Watching Adda lip the lea,

When the whole romance to see here

Is the dream I bring with me?

XIII

And why sing »The Bridge of Lodi«

As I sit thereon and swing,

When none shows by smile or nod he

Guesses why or what I sing? ...

XIV

Since all Lodi, low and head ones,

Seem to pass that story by,

It may be the Lodi-bred ones

Rate it truly, and not I.

XV

Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi,

Is thy claim to glory gone?

Must I pipe a palinody,

Or be silent thereupon?

XVI

And if here, from strand to steeple,

Be no stone to fame the fight,

Must I say the Lodi people

Are but viewing war aright? ...

XVII

Nay; I'll sing »The Bridge of Lodi« –

That long-loved, romantic thing,

Though none show by smile or nod he

Guesses why and what I sing!

On an Invitation to the United States

I

My ardours for emprize nigh lost

Since Life has bared its bones to me,

I shrink to seek a modern coast

Whose riper times have yet to be;

Where the new regions claim them free

From that long drip of human tears

Which peoples old in tragedy

Have left upon the centuried years.

II

For, wonning in these ancient lands,

Enchased and lettered as a tomb,

And scored with prints of perished hands,

And chronicled with dates of doom,

Though my own Being bear no bloom

I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,

Give past exemplars present room,

And their experience count as mine.

Miscellaneous Poems

The Mother Mourns

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,

And sedges were horny,

And summer's green wonderwork faltered

On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly

Came wheeling around me

Those phantoms obscure and insistent

That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me

A low lamentation,

As though from a tree-god disheartened,

Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather

That Nature herself there

Was breathing in aëry accents,

With dirge-like refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,

Had grieved her by holding

Her ancient high fame of perfection

In doubt and disdain. ...

– »I had not proposed me a Creature

(She soughed) so excelling

All else of my kingdom in compass

And brightness of brain

As to read my defects with a god-glance,

Uncover each vestige

Of old inadvertence, annunciate

Each flaw and each stain!

My purpose went not to develop

Such insight in Earthland;

Such potent appraisements affront me,

And sadden my reign!

Why loosened I olden control here

To mechanize skywards,

Undeeming great scope could outshape in

A globe of such grain?

Man's mountings of mindsight I checked not,

Till range of his vision

Now tops my intent, and finds blemish

Throughout my domain.

He holds as inept his own soul-shell –

My deftest achievement –

Contemns me for fitful inventions

Ill-timed and inane:

No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape,

My moon as the Night-queen,

My stars as august and sublime ones

That influences rain:

Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching,

Immoral my story,

My love-lights a lure that my species

May gather and gain.

›Give me,‹ he has said, ›but the matter

And means the gods lot her,

My brain could evolve a creation

More seemly, more sane.‹

If ever a naughtiness seized me

To woo adulation

From creatures more keen than those crude ones

That first formed my train –

If inly a moment I murmured,

›The simple praise sweetly,

But sweetlier the sage‹ – and did rashly

Man's vision unrein,

I rue it! ... His guileless forerunners,

Whose brains I could blandish,

To measure the deeps of my mysteries

Applied them in vain.

From them my waste aimings and futile

I subtly could cover;

›Every best thing,‹ said they, ›to best purpose

Her powers preordain.‹ –

No more such! ... My species are dwindling,

My forests grow barren,

My popinjays fail from their tappings,

My larks from their strain.

My leopardine beauties are rarer,

My tusky ones vanish,

My children have aped mine own slaughters

To quicken my wane.

Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,

And slimy distortions,

Let nevermore things good and lovely

To me appertain;

For Reason is rank in my temples,

And Vision unruly,

And chivalrous laud of my cunning

Is heard not again!«

I Said to Love

I said to Love,

»It is not now as in old days

When men adored thee and thy ways

All else above;

Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One

Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,«

I said to Love.

I said to him,

»We now know more of thee than then;

We were but weak in judgment when,

With hearts abrim,

We clamoured thee that thou would'st please

Inflict on us thine agonies,«

I said to him.

I said to Love,

»Thou art not young, thou art not fair,

No elfin darts, no cherub air,

Nor swan, nor dove

Are thine; but features pitiless,

And iron daggers of distress,«

I said to Love.

»Depart then, Love! ...

– Man's race shall perish, threatenest thou,

Without thy kindling coupling-vow?

The age to come the man of now

Know nothing of? –

We fear not such a threat from thee;

We are too old in apathy!

Mankind shall cease. – So let it be,«

I said to Love.

A Commonplace Day

The day is turning ghost,

And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,

To join the anonymous host

Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,

To one of like degree.

I part the fire-gnawed logs,

Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends

Upon the shining dogs;

Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,

And beamless black impends.

Nothing of tiniest worth

Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,

Since the pale corpse-like birth

Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays –

Dullest of dull-hued Days!

Wanly upon the panes

The rain slides, as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet

Here, while Day's presence wanes,

And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,

He wakens my regret.

Regret – though nothing dear

That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,

Or bloomed elsewhere than here,

To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,

Or mark him out in Time. ...

– Yet, maybe, in some soul,

In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,

Or some intent upstole

Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows

The world's amendment flows;

But which, benumbed at birth

By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be

Embodied on the earth;

And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity

May wake regret in me.

At a Lunar Eclipse

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,

Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine

In even monochrome and curving line

Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry

With the torn troubled form I know as thine,

That profile, placid as a brow divine,

With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw

So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme

Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,

Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,

Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

The Lacking Sense

Scene. – A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale

I

»O time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,

As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?

Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,

With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,

As of angel fallen from grace?«

II

– »Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:

In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.

The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,

Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun

Such deeds her hands have done.«

III

– »And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,

These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,

Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features

Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,

Distress into delights?«

IV

– »Ah! knowest thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,

Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves?

That sightless are those orbs of hers? – which bar to her omniscience

Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones

Whereat all creation groans.

V

She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,

When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;

Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;

Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch

That the seers marvel much.

VI

Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;

Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;

And while she plods dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,

Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,

For thou art of her clay.«

To Life

O Life with the sad seared face,

I weary of seeing thee,

And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,

And thy too-forced pleasantry!

I know what thou would'st tell

Of Death, Time, Destiny –

I have known it long, and know, too, well

What it all means for me.

But canst thou not array

Thyself in rare disguise,

And feign like truth, for one mad day,

That Earth is Paradise?

I'll tune me to the mood,

And mumm with thee till eve;

And maybe what as interlude

I feign, I shall believe!

Doom and She

I

There dwells a mighty pair –

Slow, statuesque, intense –

Amid the vague Immense:

None can their chronicle declare,

Nor why they be, nor whence.

II

Mother of all things made,

Matchless in artistry,

Unlit with sight is she. –

And though her ever well-obeyed

Vacant of feeling he.

III

The Matron mildly asks –

A throb in every word –

»Our clay-made creatures, lord,

How fare they in their mortal tasks

Upon Earth's bounded bord?

IV

The fate of those I bear,

Dear lord, pray turn and view,

And notify me true;

Shapings that eyelessly I dare

Maybe I would undo.

V

Sometimes from lairs of life

Methinks I catch a groan,

Or multitudinous moan,

As though I had schemed a world of strife,

Working by touch alone.«

VI

»World-weaver!« he replies,

»I scan all thy domain;

But since nor joy nor pain

It lies in me to recognize,

Thy questionings are vain.

VII

World-weaver! what is Grief?

And what are Right, and Wrong,

And Feeling, that belong

To creatures all who owe thee fief?

Why is Weak worse than Strong?« ...

VIII

– Unanswered, curious, meek,

She broods in sad surmise. ...

– Some say they have heard her sighs

On Alpine height or Polar peak

When the night tempests rise.

The Problem

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it –

We who believe the evidence?

Here and there the watch-towers knell it

With a sullen significance,

Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained sense.

Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;

Better we let, then, the old view reign:

Since there is peace in that, why decry it?

Since there is comfort, why disdain?

Note not the pigment so long as the painting determines humanity's joy and pain.

The Subalterns

I

»Poor wanderer,« said the leaden sky,

»I fain would lighten thee,

But there are laws in force on high

Which say it must not be.«

II

– »I would not freeze thee, shorn one,« cried

The North, »knew I but how

To warm my breath, to slack my stride;

But I am ruled as thou.«

III

– »To-morrow I attack thee, wight,«

Said Sickness. »Yet I swear

I bear thy little ark no spite,

But am bid enter there.«

IV

– »Come hither, Son,« I heard Death say;

»I did not will a grave

Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,

But I, too, am a slave!«

V

We smiled upon each other then,

And life to me had less

Of that fell look it wore ere when

They owned their passiveness.

The Sleep-Worker

When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see –

As one who, held in trance, has laboured long

By vacant rote and prepossession strong –

The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;

Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,

Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,

Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,

And curious blends of ache and ecstasy? –

Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes

All that Life's palpitating tissues feel,

How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise? –

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,

Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,

Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?

The Bullfinches

Brother Bulleys, let us sing

From the dawn till evening! –

For we know not that we go not

When to-day's pale pinions fold

Where they be that sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,

Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,

Roosting near them I could hear them

Speak of queenly Nature's ways,

Means, and moods, – well known to fays.

All we creatures, nigh and far

(Said they there), the Mother's are;

Yet she never shows endeavour

To protect from warrings wild

Bird or beast she calls her child.

Busy in her handsome house

Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;

Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,

While beneath her groping hands

Fiends make havoc in her bands.

How her hussif'ry succeeds

She unknows or she unheeds,

All things making for Death's taking!

– So the green-gowned faeries say

Living over Blackmoor way.

Come then, brethren, let us sing,

From the dawn till evening! –

For we know not that we go not

When the day's pale pinions fold

Where those be that sang of old.

God-Forgotten

I towered far, and lo! I stood within

The presence of the Lord Most High,

Sent thither by the sons of Earth, to win

Some answer to their cry.

– »The Earth, sayest thou? The Human race?

By Me created? Sad its lot?

Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:

Such world I fashioned not.« –

– »O Lord, forgive me when I say

Thou spakest the word that made it all.« –

»The Earth of men – let me bethink me. ... Yea!

I dimly do recall

Some tiny sphere I built long back

(Mid millions of such shapes of mine)

So named ... It perished, surely – not a wrack

Remaining, or a sign?

It lost my interest from the first,

My aims therefor succeeding ill;

Haply it died of doing as it durst?« –

»Lord, it existeth still.« –

»Dark, then, its life! For not a cry

Of aught it bears do I now hear;

Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby

Its plaints had reached mine ear.

It used to ask for gifts of good,

Till came its severance, self-entailed,

When sudden silence on that side ensued,

And has till now prevailed.

All other orbs have kept in touch;

Their voicings reach me speedily:

Thy people took upon them overmuch

In sundering them from me!

And it is strange – though sad enough –

Earth's race should think that one whose call

Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff

Must heed their tainted ball! ...

But sayest it is by pangs distraught,

And strife, and silent suffering? –

Sore grieved am I that injury should be wrought

Even on so poor a thing!

Thou shouldst have learnt that Not to Mend

For Me could mean but Not to Know:

Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end

To what men undergo.« ...

Homing at dawn, I thought to see

One of the Messengers standing by.

– Oh, childish thought! ... Yet often it comes to me

When trouble hovers nigh.

The Bedridden Peasant

To an Unknowing God

Much wonder I – here long low-laid –

That this dead wall should be

Betwixt the Maker and the made,

Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,

He eyes it now and then

To know if better it is, or worse,

And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv'st us men our day

In helpless bondage thus

To Time and Chance, and seem'st straightway

To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme

And tore us wide apart,

So that no cry can cross, I deem;

For Thou art mild of heart,

And wouldst not shape and shut us in

Where voice can not be heard:

Plainly Thou meant'st that we should win

Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies

Like man's from clime to clime,

Thou wouldst not let me agonize

Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear –

Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind –

Wouldst heal the ills with quickest care

Of me and all my kind.

Then, since Thou mak'st not these things be,

But these things dost not know,

I'll praise Thee as were shown to me

The mercies Thou wouldst show!

By the Earth's Corpse

I

»O Lord, why grievest Thou? –

Since Life has ceased to be

Upon this globe, now cold

As lunar land and sea,

And humankind, and fowl, and fur

Are gone eternally,

All is the same to Thee as ere

They knew mortality.«

II

»O Time,« replied the Lord,

»Thou readest me ill, I ween;

Were all the same, I should not grieve

At that late earthly scene,

Now blestly past – though planned by me

With interest close and keen! –

Nay, nay: things now are not the same

As they have earlier been.

III

Written indelibly

On my eternal mind

Are all the wrongs endured

By Earth's poor patient kind,

Which my too oft unconscious hand

Let enter undesigned.

No god can cancel deeds foredone,

Or thy old coils unwind!

IV

As when, in Noë's days,

I whelmed the plains with sea,

So at this last, when flesh

And herb but fossils be,

And, all extinct, their piteous dust

Revolves obliviously,

That I made Earth, and life, and man,

It still repenteth me!«

Mute Opinion

I

I traversed a dominion

Whose spokesmen spake out strong

Their purpose and opinion

Through pulpit, press, and song.

I scarce had means to note there

A large-eyed few, and dumb,

Who thought not as those thought there

That stirred the heat and hum.

II

When, grown a Shade, beholding

That land in lifetime trode,

To learn if its unfolding

Fulfilled its clamoured code,

I saw, in web unbroken,

Its history outwrought

Not as the loud had spoken,

But as the mute had thought.

To an Unborn Pauper Child

I

Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,

And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,

Sleep the long sleep:

The Doomsters heap

Travails and teens around us here,

And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

II

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,

And laughters fail, and greetings die:

Hopes dwindle; yea,

Faiths waste away,

Affections and enthusiasms numb;

Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombèd souls

Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,

And thou wert free

To cease, or be,

Then would I tell thee all I know,

And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence

To theeward fly: to thy locked sense

Explain none can

Life's pending plan:

Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make

Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

V

Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot

Of earth's wide wold for thee, where not

One tear, one qualm,

Should break the calm.

But I am weak as thou and bare;

No man can change the common lot to rare.

VI

Must come and bide. And such are we –

Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary –

That I can hope

Health, love, friends, scope

In full for thee; can dream thou'lt find

Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

To Flowers from Italy in Winter

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;

– If all organic things

Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,

What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite

From this bleak spot of thorn,

And birch, and fir, and frozen white

Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought!

Your dust will not regain

Old sunny haunts of Classic thought

When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit

With frigid Boreal flame,

And not a sign remain in it

To tell man whence you came.

On a Fine Morning

I

Whence comes Solace? – Not from seeing

What is doing, suffering, being,

Not from noting Life's conditions,

Nor from heeding Time's monitions;

But in cleaving to the Dream,

And in gazing at the gleam

Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding

Shadows but as lights unfolding,

As no specious show this moment

With its iris-hued embowment;

But as nothing other than

Part or a benignant plan;

Proof that earth was made for man.

To Lizbie Browne

I

Dear Lizbie Browne,

Where are you now?

In sun, in rain? –

Or is your brow

Past joy, past pain,

Dear Lizbie Browne?

II

Sweet Lizbie Browne,

How you could smile,

How you could sing! –

How archly wile

In glance-giving,

Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne,

Who else had hair

Bay-red as yours,

Or flesh so fair

Bred out of doors,

Sweet Lizbie Browne?

IV

When, Lizbie Browne,

You had just begun

To be endeared

By stealth to one,

You disappeared

My Lizbie Browne!

V

Ay, Lizbie Browne,

So swift your life,

And mine so slow,

You were a wife

Ere I could show

Love, Lizbie Browne.

VI

Still, Lizbie Browne,

You won, they said,

The best of men

When you were wed. ...

Where went you then,

O Lizbie Browne?

VII

Dear Lizbie Browne,

I should have thought,

»Girls ripen fast,«

And coaxed and caught

You ere you passed,

Dear Lizbie Browne!

VIII

But, Lizbie Browne,

I let you slip;

Shaped not a sign;

Touched never your lip

With lip of mine,

Lost Lizbie Browne!

IX

So, Lizbie Browne,

When on a day

Men speak of me

As not, you'll say,

»And who was he?« –

Yes, Lizbie Browne!

Song of Hope

O sweet To-morrow! –

After to-day

There will away

This sense of sorrow.

Then let us borrow

Hope, for a gleaming

Soon will be streaming,

Dimmed by no gray –

No gray!

While the winds wing us

Sighs from The Gone,

Nearer to dawn

Minute-beats bring us;

When there will sing us

Larks, of a glory

Waiting our story

Further anon –

Anon!

Doff the black token,

Don the red shoon,

Right and retune

Viol-strings broken:

Null the words spoken

In speeches of rueing,

The night cloud is hueing,

To-morrow shines soon –

Shines soon!

The Well-Beloved

I went by star and planet shine

Towards the dear one's home

At Kingsbere, there to make her mine

When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood

Beside the Ikling Way,

Nigh where the Pagan temple stood

In the world's earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked

On gravel and on green,

I sang to sky, and tree, or talked

Of her I called my queen.

– »O faultless is her dainty form,

And luminous her mind;

She is the God-created norm

Of perfect womankind!«

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed

Slid softly by my side,

A woman's; and her motion seemed

The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile

Out from the ancient leaze,

Where once were pile and peristyle

For men's idolatries.

– »O maiden lithe and lone, what may

Thy name and lineage be

Who so resemblest by this ray

My darling? – Art thou she?«

The Shape: »Thy bride remains within

Her father's grange and grove.«

– »Thou speakest rightly,« I broke in,

»Thou art not she I love.«

– »Nay: though thy bride remains inside

Her father's walls,« said she,

»The one most dear is with thee here,

For thou dost love but me.«

Then I: »But she, my only choice,

Is now at Kingsbere Grove?«

Again her soft mysterious voice:

»I am thy only Love.«

Thus still she vouched, and still I said,

»O sprite, that cannot be!« ...

It was as if my bosom bled,

So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: »Thou hast transferred

To her dull form awhile

My beauty, fame, and deed, and word,

My gestures and my smile.

O fatuous man, this truth infer,

Brides are not what they seem;

Thou lovest what thou dreamest her;

I am thy very dream!«

– »O then,« I answered miserably,

Speaking as scarce I knew,

»My loved one, I must wed with thee

If what thou sayest be true!«

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:

»Though, since troth-plight began,

I have ever stood as bride to groom,

I wed no mortal man!«

Thereat she vanished by the lane

Adjoining Kingsbere town,

Near where, men say, once stood the Fane

To Venus, on the Down.

– When I arrived and met my bride

Her look was pinched and thin,

As if her soul had shrunk and died,

And left a waste within.

Her Reproach

Con the dead page as 'twere live love: press on!

Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee;

Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan

To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame's far summits be,

Whose inclines many a skeleton overlies

That missed both dream and substance, stop and see

How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise

To water love, than toil to leave anon

A name whose glory-gleam will but advise

Invidious minds to eclipse it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay

A moment; musing, »He, too, had his day!«

Westbourne Park Villas, 1867

The Inconsistent

I say, »She was as good as fair!«

When standing by her mound;

»Such passing sweetness,« I declare,

»No longer treads the ground.«

I say, »What living Love can catch

Her bloom and bonhomie,

And what in recent maidens match

Her olden warmth to me!«

– There stands within yon vestry-nook

Where bonded lovers sign,

Her name upon a faded book

With one that is not mine.

To him she breathed the tender vow

She once had breathed to me,

But yet I say, »O Love, even now

Would I had died for thee!«

A Broken Appointment

You did not come,

And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. –

Yet less for loss of your dear presence there

Than that I thus found lacking in your make

That high compassion which can overbear

Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake

Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,

You did not come.

You love not me,

And love alone can lend you loyalty;

– I know and knew it. But, unto the store

Of human deeds divine in all but name,

Was it not worth a little hour or more

To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came

To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be

You love not me?

Between Us Now

Between us now and here –

Two thrown together

Who are not wont to wear

Life's flushest feather –

Who see the scenes slide past,

The daytimes dimming fast,

Let there be truth at last,

Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long

Have you now known me,

So real in faith and strong

Have I now shown me,

That nothing needs disguise

Further in any wise,

Or asks or justifies

A guarded tongue.

Face unto face, then, say,

Eyes my own meeting,

Is your heart far away,

Or with mine beating?

When false things are brought low,

And swift things have grown slow,

Feigning like froth shall go,

Faith be for aye.

How Great My Grief

(Triolet)

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Since first it was my fate to know thee!

– Have the slow years not brought to view

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Nor memory shaped old times anew,

Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Since first it was my fate to know thee?

I Need Not Go

I need not go

Through sleet and snow

To where I know

She waits for me;

She will tarry me there

Till I find it fair,

And have time to spare

From company.

When I've overgot

The world somewhat,

When things cost not

Such stress and strain,

Is soon enough

By cypress sough

To tell my Love

I am come again.

And if some day,

When none cries nay,

I still delay

To seek her side,

(Though ample measure

Of fitting leisure

Await my pleasure)

She will not chide.

What – not upbraid me

That I delayed me,

Nor ask what stayed me

So long? Ah, no! –

New cares may claim me,

New loves inflame me,

She will not blame me,

But suffer it so.

The Coquette, and After

(Triolets)

I

For long the cruel wish I knew

That your free heart should ache for me

While mine should bear no ache for you;

For long – the cruel wish! – I knew

How men can feel, and craved to view

My triumph – fated not to be

For long! ... The cruel wish I knew

That your free heart should ache for me!

II

At last one pays the penalty –

The woman – women always do.

My farce, I found, was tragedy

At last! – One pays the penalty

With interest when one, fancy-free,

Learns love, learns shame. ... Of sinners two

At last one pays the penalty –

The woman – women always do!

A Spot

In years defaced and lost,

Two sat here, transport-tossed,

Lit by a living love

The wilted world knew nothing of:

Scared momently

By gaingivings,

Then hoping things

That could not be.