POEMS.

(PRIVATELY PRINTED).



     

---

   

• Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Saying, ‘A little gift is mine,
• A little gift for a heart's desire.
• Hear me speak and make me a sign!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Look, I bring thee a carven cup;
• ( O Troy Town!)
• 10See it here as I hold it up,—
• Shaped it is to the heart's desire,
• Fit to fill when the gods would sup.
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!’

• ‘It was moulded like my breast;
• ( O Troy Town!)
• He that sees it may not rest,
• Rest at all for his heart's desire.
• O give ear to my heart's behest!
• 20 ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘See my breast, how like it is;
• ( O Troy Town!)
• See it bare for the air to kiss!
• Is the cup to thy heart's desire?
• O for the breast, O make it his!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Yea, for my bosom here I sue;
• 30 ( O Troy Town!)
• Thou must give it where 'tis due,
• Give it there to the heart's desire.
• Whom do I give my bosom to?
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Each twin breast is an apple sweet!
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Once an apple stirred the beat
• Of thy heart with the heart's desire:—
• 40Say, who brought it then to thy feet?
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘They that claimed it then were three:
• ( O Troy Town!)
• For thy sake two hearts did he
• Make forlorn of the heart's desire.
• Do for him as he did for thee!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• 50‘Mine are apples grown to the south,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Grown to taste in the days of drouth,
• Taste and waste to the heart's desire:
• Mine are apples meet for his mouth!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Venus looked on Helen's gift,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Looked and smiled with subtle drift,
• 60Saw the work of her heart's desire:—
• ‘There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Venus looked in Helen's face,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Knew far off an hour and place,
• And fire lit from the heart's desire;
• Laughed and said, ‘Thy gift hath grace!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• 70 Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Cupid looked on Helen's breast,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Saw the heart within its nest,
• Saw the flame of the heart's desire;
• There his arrow stood confess'd.
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Cupid took another dart,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• 80Fledged it for another heart,
• Winged the shaft with the heart's desire,
• Drew the string and said, ‘Depart!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Paris turned upon his bed,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Turned upon his bed and said,
• Dead at heart with the heart's desire,—
• ‘O to clasp her golden head!’
• 90 ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

   

• It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Not a drop of her blood was human,
• But she was made like a soft sweet woman.

• Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden;
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• She was the first that thence was driven;
• With her was hell and with Eve was heaven.

• In the ear of the Snake said Lilith:—
• 10 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• ‘To thee I come when the rest is over;
• A snake was I when thou wast my lover.

• ‘I was the fairest snake in Eden:
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• By the earth's will, new form and feature
• Made me a wife for the earth's new creature.

• ‘Take me thou as I come from Adam:
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Once again shall my love subdue thee;
• 20The past is past and I am come to thee.

• ‘O but Adam was born for Lilith!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• All the threads of my hair are golden,
• And there in a net his heart was holden.

• ‘O and Lilith was born for Adam!
• Eden bower's in flower.)
• All the day and the night together
• My breath could shake his soul like a feather.

• ‘What great joys had Adam and Lilith!—
• 30 ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Sweet close rings of the serpent's twining,
• As heart in heart lay sighing and pining.

• ‘What bright babes had Lilith and Adam!—
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
• Glittering sons and jewelled daughters.

• ‘O thou God, the Lord God of Eden!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Say, was this fair body for no man,
• 40That from Adam's flesh thou mak'st him a woman?

• ‘O thou Snake, the King-snake of Eden!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• God's strong will our necks are under,
• But thou and I may cleave it in sunder.

• ‘Help, sweet Snake, sweet lover of Lilith!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• And let God learn how I loved and hated
• Man in the image of God created.

• ‘Help me once against Eve and Adam!
• 50 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Once for one hour this great endeavour,
• And then my love shall be thine for ever!

• ‘Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith:
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Nought in heaven or earth may affright him;
• But join thou with me and we will smite him.

• ‘Strong is God, the great God of Eden:
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Over all he made he hath power;
• 60But lend me thou thy shape for an hour!

• ‘Lend thy shape for the love of Lilith!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Look, my mouth and my cheek are ruddy,
• And thou art cold, and fire is my body.

• ‘Lend thy shape for the hate of Adam!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• That he may wail my joy that forsook him,
• And curse the day when the bride-sleep took him.

• ‘Lend thy shape for the shame of Eden!
• 70 ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Is not the foe-God weak as the foeman
• When love grows hate in the heart of a woman?

• ‘Would 'st thou know the heart's hope of Lilith?
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Come then close till thy heart doth glisten
• Along my breast, and lip me and listen.

• ‘Am I sweet, O sweet Snake of Eden?
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Then ope thine ear to my warm mouth's cooing
• 80And learn what deed remains for our doing.

• ‘Thou didst hear when God said to Adam:—
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• “Of all this wealth I have made thee warden;
• Thou'rt free to eat of the trees of the garden:

• ‘“Only of one tree eat not in Eden;
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• All save one I give to thy freewill,—
• The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

• ‘O my love, come nearer to Lilith!
• 90 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• In thy sweet folds bind me and bend me,
• And let me feel the shape thou shalt lend me!

• ‘Help, sweet Snake, sweet lover of Lilith!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• And let God learn how I loved and hated
• Man in the image of God created.

• ‘Help me once against Eve and Adam!
• 50 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Help me once for this one endeavour,
• And then my love shall be thine for ever!

• ‘Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith:
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Nought in heaven or earth may affright him;
• But join thou with me and we will smite him.

• ‘Strong is God, the great God of Eden:
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Over all he made he hath power;
• 60But lend me thou thy shape for an hour!

• ‘Lend thy shape for the love of Lilith!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Look, my mouth and my cheek are ruddy,
• And thou art cold, and fire is my body.

• ‘Lend thy shape for the hate of Adam!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• That he may wail my joy that forsook him,
• And curse the day when the bride-sleep took him.

• ‘Lend thy shape for the shame of Eden!
• 70 ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Is not the foe-God weak as the foeman
• When love grows hate in the heart of a woman?

• ‘Would'st thou know the heart's hope of Lilith?
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Bring thy gemmed head close till it glisten
• Along my breast, and lip me and listen.

• ‘Am I sweet, O sweet Snake of Eden?
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Then ope thine ear to my warm mouth's cooing
• 80And learn what deed remains for our doing.

• ‘Thou didst hear when God said to Adam:—
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• “Of all this wealth I have made thee warden;
• Thou'rt free to eat of the trees of the garden:

• ‘“Only of one tree eat not in Eden;
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• All save one I give to thy freewill,—
• The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

• ‘O my love, come nearer to Lilith!
• 90 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• In thy sweet folds bind me and bend me,
• And let me feel the shape thou shalt lend me!

• ‘In thy shape I'll go back to Eden;
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• In these coils that Tree will I grapple,
• And stretch this crowned head forth by the apple.

• ‘Lo, Eve bends to the breath of Lilith!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• O how then shall my heart desire
• 100All her blood as food to its fire!

• ‘Lo, Eve bends to the words of Lilith!—
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• “Nay, this tree's fruit,—why should ye hate it,
• Or Death be born the day that ye ate it?

• ‘“Nay, but on that great day in Eden,
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• By the help that in this wise Tree is,
• God knows well ye shall be as He is.”

• ‘Then Eve shall eat and give unto Adam;
• 110 ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• And then they both shall know they are naked,
• And their hearts ache as my heart hath achèd.

• ‘Then they shall hide in the trees of Eden,
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• As in the cool of the day in the garden
• God shall walk without pity or pardon.

• ‘Hear thou, Eve, the man's heart in Adam!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Of his brave words hark to the bravest:—
• 120“This the woman gave that thou gavest.”

• ‘Hear Eve speak, yea, list to her, Lilith!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Let thine heart hear words that shall sate it:—
• “This the serpent gave and I ate it.”

• ‘O proud Eve, cling close to thine Adam,
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Driven forth as the beasts of his naming
• By the sword that for ever is flaming.

• ‘Know, thy path is known unto Lilith!
• 130 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• While the blithe birds sang at thy wedding,
• There her tears grew thorns for thy treading.

• ‘O my love, O Love-snake of Eden!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• O to-day and the day to come after!
• Loose me, love,—give breath to my laughter!

• ‘O bright Snake, the Death-worm of Adam!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Wreathe thy neck with my hair's bright tether,
• 140And wear my gold and thy gold together!

• ‘On that day on the skirts of Eden,
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• In thy shape shall I glide back to thee,
• And in my shape for an instant view thee.

• ‘But when thou'rt thou and Lilith is Lilith,
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• In what bliss past hearing or seeing
• Shall each one drink of the other's being.

• ‘With cries of “Eve!” and “Eden!” and “Adam!”
• 150 ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• How shall we mingle our love's caresses,
• I in thy folds, and thou in my tresses?

• ‘With those names, ye echoes of Eden,
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Fire shall cry from my heart that burneth,—
• “Dust he is and to dust returneth!”

• ‘Yet to-day, thou master of Lilith,—
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Wrap me round in the coils I'll borrow
• 160And let me tell thee of sweet to-morrow.

• ‘In the planted garden eastward in Eden,
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Where the river goes forth to water the garden,
• The springs shall dry and the soil shall harden.

• ‘Yea, where the bride-sleep fell upon Adam,
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• None shall hear when the storm-wind whistles
• Through roses choked among thorns and thistles.

• ‘Yea, beside the east-gate of Eden,
• 170 ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Where God joined them and none might sever,
• The sword turns this way and that for ever.

• ‘What of Adam cast out of Eden?
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Lo! with care like a shadow shaken,
• He tills the hard earth whence he was taken.

• ‘What of Eve too, cast out of Eden?
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• Nay, but she, the bride of God's giving,
• 180Must yet be mother of all men living.

• ‘Lo, God's grace, by the grace of Lilith!
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• To Eve's womb, from our sweet to-morrow,
• God shall greatly multiply sorrow.

• ‘Fold me fast, O God-snake of Eden!
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• What more prize than love to impel thee?
• Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!

• Lo! two babes for Eve and for Adam!
• 190 ( And O the bower and the hour!)
• Lo! sweet Snake, the travail and treasure,—
• Two men-children born for their pleasure!

• ‘The first is Cain and the second Abel:
• ( Eden bower's in flower.)
• The soul of one shall be made thy brother,
• And thy tongue shall lap the blood of the other.’
• ( And O the bower and the hour!)

   

• The blessed damozel leaned out
• From the gold bar of Heaven;
• Her eyes were deeper than the depth
• Of waters stilled at even;
• She had three lilies in her hand,
• And the stars in her hair were seven.

• Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
• No wrought flowers did adorn,
• But a white rose of Mary's gift,
• 10 For service meetly worn;
• And her hair lying down her back
• Was yellow like ripe corn.

• Herseemed she scarce had been a day
• One of God's choristers;
• The wonder was not yet quite gone
• From that still look of hers;
• Albeit, to them she left, her day
• Had counted as ten years.

• ( To one, it is ten years of years.
• 20 . . . Yet now, and in this place,
• Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
• Fell all about my face. . . .
• Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
• The whole year sets apace.)

• It was the rampart of God's house
• That she was standing on;
• By God built over the sheer depth
• The which is Space begun;
• So high, that looking downward thence
• 30 She scarce could see the sun.

• It lies in Heaven, across the flood
• Of ether, as a bridge.
• Beneath, the tides of day and night
• With flame and darkness ridge
• The void, as low as where this earth
• Spins like a fretful midge.

• Heard hardly, some of her new friends
• Amid their loving games
• Spake evermore among themselves
• 40 Their virginal chaste names;
• And the souls mounting up to God
• Went by her like thin flames.

• And still she bowed above the vast
• Waste sea of worlds that swarm;
page: 17  
Sig. C
• Until her bosom must have made
• The bar she leaned on warm,
• And the lilies lay as if asleep
• Along her bended arm.

• From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
• 50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
• Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
• Within the gulf to pierce
• Its path; and now she spoke as when
• The stars sang in their spheres.

• The sun was gone now; the curled moon
• Was like a little feather
• Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
• She spoke through the still weather.
• Her voice was like the voice the stars
• 60 Had when they sang together.

• ‘I wish that he were come to me,
• For he will come,’ she said.
• ‘Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
• Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
• Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
• And shall I feel afraid?

• ‘When round his head the aureole clings,
• And he is clothed in white,
• I'll take his hand and go with him
• 70 To the deep wells of light;
page: 18  
• We will step down as to a stream,
• And bathe there in God's sight.

• ‘We two will stand beside that shrine,
• Occult, withheld, untrod,
• Whose lamps are stirred continually
• With prayer sent up to God;
• And see our old prayers, granted, melt
• Each like a little cloud.

• ‘We two will lie i'the shadow of
• 80 That living mystic tree
• Within whose secret growth the Dove
• Is sometimes felt to be,
• While every leaf that His plumes touch
• Saith His Name audibly.

• ‘And I myself will teach to him,
• I myself, lying so,
• The songs I sing here; which his voice
• Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
• And find some knowledge at each pause,
• 90 Or some new thing to know.’

• ( Ah sweet! Just now, in that bird's song,
• Strove not her accents there,
• Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
• Possessed the midday air,
• Was she not stepping to my side
• Down all the trembling stair?)

• ‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves
• Where the lady Mary is,
• With her five handmaidens, whose names
• 100 Are five sweet symphonies,
• Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
• Margaret and Rosalys.

• ‘Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
• And foreheads garlanded;
• Into the fine cloth white like flame
• Weaving the golden thread,
• To fashion the birth-robes for them
• Who are just born, being dead.

• ‘He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
• 110 Then will I lay my cheek
• To his, and tell about our love,
• Not once abashed or weak:
• And the dear Mother will approve
• My pride, and let me speak.

• ‘Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
• To Him round whom all souls
• Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
• Bowed with their aureoles:
• And angels meeting us shall sing
• 120 To their citherns and citoles.

• ‘There will I ask of Christ the Lord
• Thus much for him and me:—
page: 20  
• Only to live as once on earth
• With Love,—only to be,
• As then awhile, for ever now
• Together, I and he.’

• She gazed and listened and then said,
• Less sad of speech than mild,—
• ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased.
• 130 The light thrilled towards her, fill'd
• With angels in strong level flight.
• Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.

• ( I saw her smile). But soon their path
• Was vague in distant spheres:
• And then she cast her arms along
• The golden barriers,
• And laid her face between her hands,
• And wept. ( I heard her tears.)

   

• Master of the murmuring courts
• Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
• Lo! my spirit here exhorts
• All the powers of thy demesne
• For their aid to woo my queen.
• What reports
• Yield thy jealous courts unseen?

• Vaporous, unaccountable,
• Dreamland lies forlorn of light,
• 10Hollow like a breathing shell.
• Ah! that from all dreams I might
• Choose one dream and guide its flight!
• I know well
• What her sleep should tell to-night.

• There the dreams are multitudes:
• Some whose buoyance waits not sleep,
• Deep within the August woods;
• Some that hum while rest may steep
• Weary labour laid a-heap;
• 20 Interludes,
• Some, of grievous moods that weep.

• Poets' fancies all are there:
• There the elf-girls flood with wings
• Valleys full of plaintive air;
• There breathe perfumes; there in rings
• Whirl the foam-bewildered springs;
• Siren there
• Winds her dizzy hair and sings.

• Thence the one dream mutually
• 30 Dreamed in bridal unison,
• Less than waking ecstasy;
• Half-formed visions that make moan
• In the house of birth alone;
• And what we
• At death's wicket see, unknown.

• But for mine own sleep, it lies
• In one gracious form's control,
• Fair with honorable eyes,
• Lamps of an auspicious soul:
• 40 O their glance is loftiest dole,
• Sweet and wise,
• Wherein Love descries his goal.

• Reft of her, my dreams are all
• Clammy trance that fears the sky:
• Changing footpaths shift and fall;
• From polluted coverts nigh,
• Miserable phantoms sigh;
• Quakes the pall,
• And the funeral goes by.

• 50Master, it is soothly said
• That, as echoes of man's speech
• Far in secret clefts are made,
• So do all men's bodies reach
• Shadows o'er thy sunken beach,—
• Shape or shade
• In those halls pourtrayed of each?

• Ah! might I, by thy good grace
• Groping in the windy stair,
• (Darkness and the breath of space
• 60 Like loud waters everywhere,)
• Meeting mine own image there
• Face to face,
• Send it from that place to her!

• Nay, not I; but oh! do thou,
• Master, from thy shadowkind
• Call my body's phantom now:
• Bid it bear its face declin'd
• Till its flight her slumbers find,
• And her brow
• 70 Feel its presence bow like the wind.

• Where in groves the gracile Spring
• Trembles, with mute orison
• Confidently strengthening,
• Water's voice and wind's as one
• Shed an echo in the sun,
• Soft as Spring,
• Master, bid it sing and moan.

• Song shall tell how glad and strong
• Is the night she soothes alway;
• 80Moan shall grieve with that parched tongue
• Of the brazen hours of day:
• Sounds as of the springtide they,
• Moan and song,
• While the chill months long for May.

• Not the prayers which with all leave
• The world's fluent woes prefer,—
• Not the praise the world doth give,
• Dulcet fulsome whisperer;—
• Let it yield man's love to her,
• 90 And achieve
• Strength that shall not grieve or err.

• Wheresoe'er my sleep befall,
• Both at night-watch, (let it say,)
• And where round the sundial
• The reluctant hours of day,
• Heartless, hopeless of their way,
• Rest and call;—
• There her glance doth fall and stay.

• Suddenly her face is there:
• 100 So do mounting vapours wreathe
• Subtle-scented transports where
• The black firwood sets its teeth.
• Part the boughs and look beneath,—
• Lilies share
• Secret waters there, and breathe.

• Master, bid my shadow bend
• Whispering thus till birth of light,
• Lest new shapes that sleep may send
• Scatter all its work to flight;—
• 110 Master, master of the night,
• Bid it spend
• Speech, song, prayer, and end aright.

• Yet, ah me! if at her head
• There another phantom lean
• Murmuring o'er the fragrant bed,—
• Ah! and if my spirit's queen
• Smile those alien words between,—
• Ah! poor shade!
• Shall it strive, or fade unseen?

• 120Like a vapour wan and mute,
• Like a flame, so let it pass;
• One low sigh across her lute,
• One dull breath against her glass;
• And to my sad soul, alas!
• One salute
• Cold as when death's foot shall pass.

• How should love's own messenger
• Strive with love and be love's foe?
• Master, nay! If thus in her
• 130 Sleep a wedded heart should show,—
• Silent let mine image go,
• Its old share
• Of thy sunken air to know.

• Then, too, let all hopes of mine,
• All vain hopes by night and day,
• Master, at thy summoning sign
• Rise up pallid and obey.
• Dreams, if this is thus, were they:—
• Be they thine,
• 140 And to dreamland pine away.

• (So a chief, who all night lies
• Ambushed where no help appears,—
• 'Mid his comrades' unseen eyes
• Watching for the growth of spears,—
• Like their ghosts, as morning nears,
• Sees them rise,
• Ready without sighs or tears.)

• Yet from old time, life, not death,
• Master, in thy rule is rife:
• 150Lo! through thee, with mingling breath,
• Adam woke beside his wife.
• O Love bring me so, for strife,
• Force and faith,
• Bring me so not death but life!

• Yea, to Love himself is pour'd
• This frail song of hope and fear.
• Thou art Love, of one accord
• With kind Sleep to bring her near,
• Still-eyed, deep-eyed, ah how dear!
• 160 Master, Lord,
• In her name implor'd, O hear!

   

• In our Museum galleries
• To-day I lingered o'er the prize
• Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
• Her Art for ever in fresh wise
• From hour to hour rejoicing me.
• Sighing I turned at last to win
• Once more the London dirt and din;
• And as I made the swing-door spin
• And issued, they were hoisting in
• 10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.

• A human face the creature wore,
• And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
• And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
• 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
• A dead disbowelled mystery;
• The mummy of a buried faith
• Stark from the charnel without scathe,
• Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
• Such fossil cerements as might swathe
• 20 The very corpse of Nineveh.

• The print of its first rush-wrapping,
• Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
• What song did the brown maidens sing,
• From purple mouths alternating,
• When that was woven languidly?
• What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,
• What songs has the strange image heard?
• In what blind vigil stood interr'd
• For ages, till an English word
• 30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?

• Oh when upon each sculptured court,
• Where even the wind might not resort,—
• O'er which Time passed, of like import
• With the wild Arab boys at sport,—
• A living face looked in to see:—
• Oh seemed it not—the spell once broke—
• As though the carven warriors woke,
• As though the shaft the string forsook,
• The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
• 40 And there was life in Nineveh?

• On London stones our sun anew
• The beast's recovered shadow threw.
• (No shade that plague of darkness knew,
• No light, no shade, while older grew
• By ages the old earth and sea.)
• Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
• Such proof to make thy godhead known?
page: 29  
• From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;
• And still thy shadow is thine own
• 50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.

• That day whereof we keep record,
• When near thy city-gates the Lord
• Sheltered his Jonah with a gourd,
• This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd
• Even thus this shadow that I see.
• This shadow has been shed the same
• From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
• For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,
• The last, while smouldered to a name
• 60 Sardanapalus' Nineveh.

• Within thy shadow, haply, once
• Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
• Smote him between the altar-stones:
• Or pale Semiramis her zones
• Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
• In love for grace, in war for aid:....
• Ay, and who else?.... till 'neath thy shade
• Within his trenches newly made
• Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—
• 70 Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.*

• Now, thou poor god, within this hall
• Where the blank windows blind the wall
• From pedestal to pedestal,
• The kind of light shall on thee fall
• Which London takes the day to be:
• While school-foundations in the act
• Of holiday, three files compact,
• Shall learn to view thee as a fact
• Connected with that zealous tract:
• 80 ‘Rome,—Babylon and Nineveh.’

• Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
• When in some mythic chain of verse,
• Which man shall not again rehearse,
• The faces of thy ministers
• Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
• Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god
• Before whose feet men knelt unshod
• Deem that in this unblest abode
• Another scarce more unknown god
• 90 Should house with him from Nineveh?

• Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
• From which this pigmy pile has grown,
• Unto man's need how long unknown,
• Since thy vast temples, court and cone,
• Rose far in desert history?
• Ah! what is here that does not lie
• All strange to thine awakened eye?
page: 31  
• Ah! what is here can testify
• (Save that dumb presence of the sky)
• 100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?

• Why, of those mummies in the room
• Above, there might indeed have come
• One out of Egypt to thy home,
• An alien. Nay, but were not some
• Of these thine own ‘antiquity?’
• And now,—they and their gods and thou
• All relics here together,—now
• Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
• Isis or Ibis, who or how,
• 110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?

• The consecrated metals found,
• And ivory tablets, underground,
• Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd,
• When air and daylight filled the mound,
• Fell into dust immediately.
• And even as these, the images
• Of awe and worship,—even as these,—
• So, smitten with the sun's increase,
• Her glory mouldered and did cease
• 120 From immemorial Nineveh.

• The day her builders made their halt,
• Those cities of the lake of salt
page: 32  
• Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,
• Made proud with pillars of basalt,
• With sardonyx and porphyry.
• The day that Jonah bore abroad
• To Nineveh the voice of God,
• A brackish lake lay in his road,
• Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
• 130 As then in royal Nineveh.

• The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,
• Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
• To Him before whose countenance
• The years recede, the years advance,
• And said, Fall down and worship me:—
• 'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
• Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
• Where to the wind the salt pools shook,
• And in those tracts, of life forsook,
• 140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!

• Delicate harlot! On thy throne
• Thou with a world beneath thee prone
• In state for ages sat'st alone;
• And needs were years and lustres flown
• Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:
• Whom even thy victor foes must bring,
• Still royal, among maids that sing
• As with doves' voices, taboring
• Upon their breasts, unto the King,—
• 150 A kingly conquest, Nineveh!

• ... Here woke my thought. The wind's slow sway
• Had waxed; and like the human play
• Of scorn that smiling spreads away,
• The sunshine shivered off the day:
• The callous wind, it seemed to me,
• Swept up the shadow from the ground:
• And pale as whom the Fates astound,
• The god forlorn stood winged and crown'd:
• Within I knew the cry lay bound
• 160 Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.

• And as I turned, my sense half shut
• Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
• Go past as marshalled to the strut
• Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
• It seemed in one same pageantry
• They followed forms which had been erst;
• To pass, till on my sight should burst
• That future of the best or worst
• When some may question which was first,
• 170 Of London or of Nineveh.

• For as that Bull-god once did stand
• And watched the burial-clouds of sand,
• Till these at last without a hand
• Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
• And blinded him with destiny:—
• So may he stand again; till now,
• In ships of unknown sail and prow,
page: 34  
• Some tribe of the Australian plough
• Bear him afar,—a relic now
• 180 Of London, not of Nineveh!

• Or it may chance indeed that when
• Man's age is hoary among men,—
• His centuries threescore and ten,—
• His furthest childhood shall seem then
• More clear than later times may be:
• Who, finding in this desert place
• This form, shall hold us for some race
• That walked not in Christ's lowly ways,
• But bowed its pride and vowed its praise
• 190 Unto the God of Nineveh.

• The smile rose first,—anon drew nigh
• The thought:... Those heavy wings spread high
• So sure of flight, which do not fly;
• That set gaze never on the sky;
• Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;
• Its crown, a brow-contracting load;
• Its planted feet which trust the sod:...
• (So grew the image as I trod:)
• O Nineveh, was this thy God,—
• 200 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?

   

• Mother of the Fair Delight,
• Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight,
• Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
• Thyself a woman-Trinity,—
• Being a daughter borne to God,
• Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
• And wife unto the Holy Ghost:—
• Oh when our need is uttermost,
• Think that to such as death may strike
• 10Thou once wert sister sisterlike!
• Thou headstone of humanity,
• Groundstone of the great Mystery,
• Fashioned like us, yet more than we!

• Mind'st thou not (when June's heavy breath
• Warmed the long days in Nazareth,)
• That eve thou didst go forth to give
• Thy flowers some drink that they might live
Transcribed Footnote (page 35):

* This hymn was written as a prologue to a series of designs.

Art still identifies herself with all faiths for her own purposes:

and the emotional influence here employed demands above all an

inner standing-point.

page: 36  
• One faint night more amid the sands?
• Far off the trees were as pale wands
• 20Against the fervid sky: the sea
• Sighed further off eternally
• As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
• Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
• As of a day to which all days
• Were footsteps in God's secret ways:
• Until a folding sense, like prayer,
• Which is, as God is, everywhere,
• Gathered about thee; and a voice
• Spake to thee without any noise,
• 30Being of the silence:—‘Hail,’ it said,
• ‘Thou that art highly favourèd;
• The Lord is with thee here and now;
• Blessed among all women thou.’

• Ah! knew'st thou of the end, when first
• That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd?—
• Or when He tottered round thy knee
• Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee?—
• And through His boyhood, year by year
• Eating with Him the Passover,
• 40Didst thou discern confusedly
• That holier sacrament, when He,
• The bitter cup about to quaff,
• Should break the bread and eat thereof?—
• Or came not yet the knowledge, even
• Till on some day forecast in Heaven
page: 37  
• His feet passed through thy door to press
• Upon His Father's business?—
• Or still was God's high secret kept?

• Nay, but I think the whisper crept
• 50Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
• Things common to the course of day,
• Awed thee with meanings unfulfill'd;
• And all through girlhood, something still'd
• Thy senses like the birth of light,
• When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
• Or washed thy garments in the stream;
• To whose white bed had come the dream
• That He was thine and thou wast His
• Who feeds among the field-lilies.
• 60O solemn shadow of the end
• In that wise spirit long contain'd!
• O awful end! and those unsaid
• Long years when It was Finishèd!

• Mind'st thou not (when the twilight gone
• Left darkness in the house of John,)
• Between the naked window-bars
• That spacious vigil of the stars?—
• For thou, a watcher even as they,
• Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
• 70Thou wroughtest raiment for His poor;
• And, finding the fixed terms endure
• Of day and night which never brought
page: 38  
• Sounds of His coming chariot,
• Wouldst lift through cloud-waste unexplor'd
• Those eyes which said, ‘How long, O Lord?’
• Then that disciple whom He loved,
• Well heeding, haply would be moved
• To ask thy blessing in His name;
• And that one thought in both, the same
• 80Though silent, then would clasp ye round
• To weep together,—tears long bound,
• Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
• Yet, ‘Surely I come quickly,’—so
• He said, from life and death gone home.
• ‘Amen; even so, Lord Jesus, come!’

• But oh! what human tongue can speak
• That day when death was sent to break
• From the tir'd spirit, like a veil,
• Its covenant with Gabriel
• 90Endured at length unto the end?
• What human thought can apprehend
• That mystery of motherhood
• When thy Beloved at length renew'd
• The sweet communion severèd,—
• His left hand underneath thine head
• And His right hand embracing thee?—
• Lo! He was thine, and this is He!

• Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
• That lets me see her standing up
page: 39  
• 100Where the light of the Throne is bright?
• Unto the left, unto the right,
• The cherubim, arrayed, conjoint,
• Float inward to a golden point,
• And from between the seraphim
• The glory issues like a hymn.
• O Mary Mother, be not loth
• To listen,—thou whom the stars clothe,
• Who seest and mayst not be seen!
• Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
• 110Into our shadow bend thy face,
• Bowing thee from the secret place,
• O Mary Virgin, full of grace!

   

• ‘Who owns these lands?’ the Pilgrim said.
• ‘Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.’
• ‘And who has thus harried them?’ he said.
• ‘It was Duke Luke did this:
• God's ban be his!’

• The Pilgrim said: ‘Where is your house?
• I'll rest there, with your will.’
• ‘Ye've but to climb these blackened boughs
• And ye'll see it over the hill,
• 10 For it burns still.’

• ‘Which road, to seek your Queen?’ said he.
• ‘Nay, nay, but with some wound
• You'll fly back hither, it may be,
• And by your blood i'the ground
• My place be found.’

• ‘Friend, stay in peace. God keep thy head,
• And mine, where I will go;
• For He is here and there,’ he said.
• He passed the hill-side, slow,
• 20 And stood below.

• The Queen sat idle by her loom:
• She heard the arras stir,
• And looked up sadly: through the room
• The sweetness sickened her
• Of musk and myrrh.

• Her women, standing two and two,
• In silence combed the fleece.
• The pilgrim said, ‘Peace be with you,
• Lady;’ and bent his knees.
• 30 She answered, ‘Peace.’

• Her eyes were like the wave within;
• Like water-reeds the poise
• Of her soft body, dainty thin;
• And like the water's noise
• Her plaintive voice.

• For him, the stream had never well'd
• In desert tracts malign
• So sweet; nor had he ever felt
• So faint in the sunshine
• 40 Of Palestine.

• Right so, he knew that he saw weep
• Each night through every dream
• The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
• With visages supreme
• Not known to him.

• ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘your lands lie burnt
• And waste: to meet your foe
• All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
• Say that it shall be so,
• 50 And I will go.’

• She gazed at him. ‘Your cause is just,
• For I have heard the same:’
• He said: ‘God's strength shall be my trust.
• Fall it to good or grame,
• 'Tis in His name.’

• ‘Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
• Why should you toil to break
• A grave, and fall therein?’ she said.
• He did not pause but spake:
• 60 ‘For my vow's sake.’

• ‘Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
• Not to God's will?’ ‘My vow
• Remains: God heard me there as here,’
• He said with reverent brow,
• ‘Both then and now.’

• They gazed together, he and she,
• The minute while he spoke;
• And when he ceased, she suddenly
• Looked round upon her folk
• 70 As though she woke.

• ‘Fight, Sir,’ she said: ‘my prayers in pain
• Shall be your fellowship.’
• He whispered one among her train,—
• ‘To-night thou'lt bid her keep
• This staff and scrip.’

• She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
• About his body there
• As sweet as her own arms he felt.
• He kissed its blade, all bare,
• 80 Instead of her.

• She sent him a green banner wrought
• With one white lily stem,
• To bind his lance with when he fought.
• He writ upon the same
• And kissed her name.

• She sent him a white shield, whereon
• She bade that he should trace
• His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
• And in a golden space
• 90 He kissed her face.

• Right so, the sunset skies unseal'd,
• Like lands he never knew,
• Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
• Lay open out of view
• To ride into.

• Next day till dark the women pray'd:
• Nor any might know there
• How the fight went: the Queen has bade
• That there do come to her
• 100 No messenger.

• Weak now to them the voice o' the priest
• As any trance affords;
• And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,
• It seemed that the last chords
• Still sang the words.

• ‘Oh what is the light that shines so red?
• 'Tis long since the sun set;’
• Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
• ‘'Twas dim but now, and yet
• 110 The light is great.’

• Quoth the other: ‘'Tis our sight is dazed
• That we see flame i' the air.’
• But the Queen held her brows and gazed,
• And said, ‘It is the glare
• Of torches there.’

• ‘Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?
• All day it was so still;’
• Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid;
• ‘Unto the furthest hill
• 120 The air they fill.’

• Quoth the other; ‘'Tis our sense is blurr'd
• With all the chants gone by.’
• But the Queen held her breath and heard,
• And said, ‘It is the cry
• Of Victory.’

• The first of all the rout was sound,
• The next were dust and flame,
• And then the horses shook the ground:
• And in the thick of them
• 130 A still band came.

• ‘Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,
• Thus hid beneath these boughs?’
• ‘One that shall be thy guest to-night,
• And yet shall not carouse,
• Queen, in thy house.’

• ‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said.
• ‘O changed in little space!’
• She cried, ‘O pale that was so red!
• O God, O God of grace!
• 140 Cover his face.’

• His sword was broken in his hand
• Where he had kissed the blade.
• ‘O soft steel that could not withstand!
• O my hard heart unstayed,
• That prayed and prayed!’

• His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
• Where he had kissed her name.
• ‘O east, and west, and north, and south,
• Fair flew my web, for shame,
• 150 To guide Death's aim!’

• The tints were shredded from his shield
• Where he had kissed her face.
• ‘Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
• Death only keeps its place,
• My gift and grace!’

• Then stepped a damsel to her side,
• And spake, and needs must weep:
• ‘For his sake, lady, if he died,
• He prayed of thee to keep
• 160 This staff and scrip.’

• That night they hung above her bed,
• Till morning wet with tears.
• Year after year above her head
• Her bed his token wears,
• Five years, ten years.

• That night the passion of her grief
• Shook them as there they hung.
• Each year the wind that shed the leaf
• Shook them and in its tongue
• 170 A message flung.

• And she would wake with a clear mind
• That letters writ to calm
• Her soul lay in the scrip; and find
• Only a torpid balm
• And dust of palm.

• They shook far off with palace sport
• When joust and dance were rife;
• And the hunt shook them from the court;
• For hers, in peace or strife,
• 180 Was a Queen's life.

• A Queen's death now: as now they shake
• To chaunts in chapel dim,—
• Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake,
• (Carved lovely white and slim),
• With them by him.

• Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,
• Good knight, before His brow
• Who then as now was here and there,
• Who had in mind thy vow
• 190 Then even as now.

• The lists are set in Heaven to-day,
• The bright pavilions shine;
• Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;
• The trumpets sound in sign
• That she is thine.

• Not tithed with days' and years' decease
• He pays thy wage He owed,
• But with imperishable peace
• Here in His own abode,
• 200 Thy jealous God.

   

• ‘Why did you melt your waxen man,
• Sister Helen?
• To-day is the third since you began.’
• ‘The time was long, yet the time ran,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘But if you have done your work aright,
• Sister Helen,
• 10 You'll let me play, for you said I might.’
• ‘Be very still in your play to-night,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
• Sister Helen;
• If now it be molten, all is well.’
• ‘Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell,
• Little brother.’
• 20 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,
• Sister Helen;
• How like dead folk he has dropped away!’
• ‘Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
• 30 Sister Helen,
• Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!’
• ‘Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
• Sister Helen,
• And I'll play without the gallery door.’
• ‘Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor,
• 40 Little brother,’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Here high up in the balcony,
• Sister Helen,
• The moon flies face to face with me.’
• ‘Aye, look and say whatever you see,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)

• 50‘Outside it's merry in the wind's wake,
• Sister Helen;
• In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.’
• ‘Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
• Sister Helen,
• Three horsemen that ride terribly.’
• 60‘Little brother, whence come the three,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
• Sister Helen,
• And one draws nigh, but two are afar.’
• ‘Look, look, do you know them who they are,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 70 Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Oh, it's Holm of East Holm rides so fast,
• Sister Helen,
• For I know the white mane on the blast.’
• ‘The hour has come, has come at last,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He has made a sign and called Halloo!
• Sister Helen,
• 80 And he says that he would speak with you.’
• ‘Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
• Sister Helen,
• That Holm of Ewern's like to die.’
• ‘And he and thou, and thou and I,
• Little brother.’
• 90 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘For three days now he has lain abed,
• Sister Helen,
• And he prays in torment to be dead.’
• ‘The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
• 100 Sister Helen,
• That you should take your curse away.’
• ‘ My prayer was heard,—he need but pray,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘But he says, till you take back your ban,
• Sister Helen,
• His soul would pass, yet never can.’
• ‘Nay then, shall I slay a living man,
• 110 Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘But he calls for ever on your name,
• Sister Helen,
• And says that he melts before a flame.’
• ‘My heart for his pleasure fared the same,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!)

• 120‘Here's Holm of West Holm riding fast,
• Sister Helen,
• For I know the white plume on the blast.’
• ‘The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
• Sister Helen;
• But his words are drowned in the wind's course.’
• 130‘Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• A word ill heard, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh he says that Holm of Ewern's cry,
• Sister Helen,
• Is ever to see you ere he die.’
• ‘He sees me in earth, in moon and sky,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 140 Earth, moon and sky, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He sends a ring and a broken coin,
• Sister Helen,
• And bids you mind the banks of Boyne.’
• ‘What else he broke will he ever join,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Oh, never more, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He yields you these and craves full fain,
• Sister Helen,
• 150 You pardon him in his mortal pain.’
• ‘What else he took will he give again,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• No more again, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He calls your name in an agony,
• Sister Helen,
• That even dead Love must weep to see.’
• ‘Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
• Little brother!’
• 160 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh it's Holm of Holm now that rides fast,
• Sister Helen,
• For I know the white hair on the blast.’
• ‘The short short hour will soon be past,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He looks at me and he tries to speak,
• 170 Sister Helen,
• But oh! his voice is sad and weak!’
• ‘What here should the mighty Baron seek,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Oh vainly sought, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
• Sister Helen,
• The body dies but the soul shall live.’
• ‘Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
• 180 Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
• Sister Helen,
• To save his dear son's soul alive.
• ‘Nay, flame cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!)

• 190‘He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
• Sister Helen,
• To go with him for the love of God!’
• ‘The way is long to his son's abode,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
• Sister Helen!
• More loud than the vesper-chime it fell.’
• 200‘No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
• Sister Helen;
• Is it in the sky or in the ground?’
• ‘Say, have they turned their horses round,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 210 What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘They have raised the old man from his knee,
• Sister Helen,
• And they ride in silence hastily.’
• More fast the naked soul doth flee,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
• Sister Helen,
• 220 And weary sad they look by the hill.’
• ‘But he they mourn is sadder still,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
• Sister Helen,
• And the flames are winning up apace!’
• ‘Yet here they burn but for a space,
• Little brother!’
• 230 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
• Sister Helen?
• Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’
• ‘A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

   

• ‘O have you seen the Stratton flood
• That's great with rain to-day?
• It runs beneath your wall, Lord Sands,
• Full of the new-mown hay.

• ‘I led your hounds to Hutton bank
• To bathe at early morn:
• They got their bath by Borrowbrake
• Above the standing corn.’

• Out from the castle-stair Lord Sands
• 10 Looked up the western lea;
• The rook was grieving on her nest,
• The flood was round her tree.

• Over the castle-wall Lord Sands
• Looked down the eastern hill:
• The stakes swam free among the boats,
• The flood was rising still.

• ‘What's yonder far below that lies
• So white against the slope?’
• ‘O it's a sail o' your bonny barks
• 20 The waters have washed up.

• ‘But I have never a sail so white,
• And the water's not yet there.’
• ‘O it's the swans o' your bonny lake
• The rising flood doth scare.’

• ‘The swans they would not hold so still,
• So high they would not win.’
• ‘O it's Joyce my wife has spread her smock
• And fears to fetch it in.’

• ‘Nay, knave, it's neither sail nor swans,
• 30 Nor aught that you can say;
• For though your wife might leave her smock,
• Herself she'd bring away.’

• Lord Sands has passed the turret-stair,
• The court, and yard, and all;
• The kine were in the byre that day,
• The nags were in the stall.

• Lord Sands has won the weltering slope
• Whereon the white shape lay:
• The clouds were still above the hill,
• 40 And the shape was still as they.

• Oh pleasant is the gaze of life
• And sad is death's blind head;
• But awful are the living eyes
• In the face of one thought dead.

• ‘O Jean, O love! and is it me
• Thy ghost has come to seek?’
• ‘Nay, wait another hour, Lord Sands,—
• Be sure my ghost shall speak.’

• A moment stood he as a stone,
• 50 Then grovelled to his knee.
• ‘O Jean, O Jean my love, O love,
• Rise up and come with me!’
• ‘O once before you bade me come,
• And it's here you have brought me!

• ‘O many's the sweet word of love
• You've spoken oft to me;
• But all that I have from you to-day
• Is the rain on my body.

• ‘And many are the gifts of love
• 60 You've promised oft to me;
• But the gift of yours I keep to-day
• Is the babe in my body.

• ‘O it's not in any earthly bed
• That first my babe I'll see;
• For I have brought my body here
• That the flood may cover me.’

• His face was close against her face,
• His hands of hers were fain:
• O her wet cheeks were hot with tears,
• 70 Her wet hands cold with rain.

• ‘Now keep you well, my brother Hugh,—
• You told me she was dead!
• As wan as your towers be to-day,
• To-morrow they'll be red.

• ‘Look down, look down, my false mother,
• That bade me not to grieve:
• You'll look up when our marriage fires
• Are lit to-morrow eve.

• ‘O more than one and more than two
• 80 The sorrow of this shall see:
• But it's to-morrow, love, for them,—
• To-day's for thee and me.’

• He's drawn her face between his hands
• And her pale mouth to his:
• No bird that was so still that day
• Chirps sweeter than his kiss.

• He's ta'en her by the short girdle
• And by the dripping sleeve:
• ‘Go fetch Sir Jock my mother's priest,—
• 90 You'll ask of him no leave.

• ‘O it's one half-hour to reach the kirk
• And one for the marriage-rite;
• And kirk and castle and castle-lands
• Shall be our babe's to-night.’

• ‘The flood's in the kirkyard, Lord Sands,
• And round the belfry-stair.’
• ‘I bade ye fetch the priest,’ he said,
• ‘Myself shall bring him there.

• ‘It's for the lilt of wedding bells
• 100 We'll have the hail to pour,
• And for the clink of bridle-reins
• The plashing of the oar.’

• Beneath them on the nether hill
• A boat was floating wide:
• Lord Sands swam out and caught the oars
• And backed to the hill-side.

• He's wrapped her in a green mantle,
• And set her softly in;
• Her hair was wet upon her face,
• 110 Her face was grey and thin;
• And ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘lie still, my babe,
• It's out you must not win!’

• But woe's my heart for Father John!
• As hard as he might pray,
• There seemed no help but Noah's ark
• Or Jonah's fish that day.

• The first strokes that the oars struck
• Were over the broad leas;
• The next strokes that the oars struck
• 120 They pushed beneath the trees;

• The last stroke that the oars struck,
• The good boat's head was met,
• And there the door of the kirkyard
• Stood like a ferry-gate.

• He's set his hand upon the bar
• And lightly leaped within:
• He's lifted her to his left shoulder,
• Her knees beside his chin.

• The graves stood deep beneath the flood
• 130 Under the rain alone;
• And when the foot-stone made him slip,
• He held by the head-stone.

• The empty boat thrawed i' the wind,
• Against the postern tied.
• ‘Hold still, you've brought my love with me,
• You shall take back my bride.’

• And ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘on men's shoulders
• I well had thought to wend,
• And well to travel with a priest,
• 140 But not to have cared or ken'd.

• ‘And oh!’ she said, ‘it's well this way
• That I thought to have fared,—
• Not to have lighted at the kirk
• But stopped in the kirkyard.

• ‘For it's oh and oh I prayed to God,
• Whose rest I hoped to win,
• That when to-night at your board-head
• You'd bid the feast begin,
• This water past your window-sill
• 150 Might bear my body in.’

• Now make the white bed warm and soft
• And greet the merry morn.
• The night the mother should have died
• The young son shall be born.

   

• The shadows fall along the wall,
• It's night at Haye-la-Serre;
• The maidens weave since day grew eve,
• The lady's in her chair.

• O passing slow the long hours go
• With time to think and sigh,
• When weary maidens weave beneath
• A listless lady's eye.

• It's two days that Earl Simon's gone
• 10 And it's the second night;
• At Haye-la-Serre the lady's fair,
• In June the moon is light.

• O it's ‘Maids, ye'll wake till I come back,’
• And the hound's i' the lady's chair:
• No shuttles fly, the work stands by,
• It's play at Haye-la-Serre.

• The night is worn, the lamp's forlorn,
• The shadows waste and ail;
• There's morning air at Haye-la-Serre,
• 20 The watching maids look pale.

• O all unmarked the birds at dawn
• Where drowsy maidens be;
• But heard too soon the lark's first tune
• Beneath the trysting-tree.

• ‘Hold me thy hand, sweet Dennis Shand,
• Says the Lady Joan de Haye,
• ‘That thou to-morrow do forget
• To-day and yesterday.

• ‘O it's the autumn nights are chill,
• 30 The winter nights are long,
• And my lord'll bide at home o' nights
• As long as the swallow's gone.

• ‘This summer he'll not be forth again
• And not again till spring;
• The wind is cold to him that's old
• And the frost withering.

• ‘We've all to fear; there's Maud the spy,
• There's Ann whose face I scor'd,
• There's Blanch tells Huot everything,
• 40 And Huot loves my lord.

• ‘But O and it's my Dennis'll know,
• When my eyes look weary dim,
• Who finds the gold for his girdle-fee
• And who keeps love for him.’

• The morrow's comeand the morrow-night,
• It's feast at Haye-la-Serre,
• And Dennis Shand the cup must hand
• Beside Earl Simon's chair.

• And still when the high pouring's done
• 50 And cup and flagon clink,
• Till his lady's lips have touched the brim
• Earl Simon will not drink.

• ‘But it's ‘Joan my wife,’ Earl Simon says,
• ‘Your maids are white and wan,’
• And it's ‘O,’ she says, ‘they've watched the night
• With Maud's sick sister Ann.’

• But it's, ‘Lady Joan and Joan my bird,
• Yourself look white and wan.’
• And it's, ‘O, I've walked the night myself
• 60 To pull the herbs for Ann:

• And some of your knaves were at the hutch
• And some in the cellarage,
• But the only one that watched with us
• Was Dennis Shand your page.

• ‘Look on the boy, sweet honey lord,
• And mark his drooping e'e:
• The rosy colour's not yet back
• That paled in serving me.’

• O it's, ‘Wife, your maids are foolish jades,
• 70 And you're a silly chuck,
• And the lazy knaves shall get their staves
• About their ears for luck:

• ‘But Dennis Shand may take the cup
• And pour the wine to his hand;
• Wife, thou shalt touch it with thy lips,
• And drink thou, Dennis Shand!’

   

• Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
• Yet though its splendour swoon
• Into the silence languidly
• As a tune into a tune,
• Those eyes unravel the coiled night
• And know the stars at noon.

• The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
• In truth rich prize it were;
• And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
• 10 With magic stillness there;
• And he were rich who should unwind
• That woven golden hair.

• Around her, where she sits, the dance
• Now breathes its eager heat;
• And not more lightly or more true
• Fall there the dancer's feet
• Than fall her cards on the bright board
• As 'twere an heart that beat.

• Her fingers let them softly through,
• 20 Smooth polished silent things;
• And each one as it falls reflects
• In swift light-shadowings,
• Crimson and purple, green and blue,
• The great eyes of her rings.

• Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
• Those gems upon her hand;
• With me, who search her secret brows;
• With all men, bless'd or bann'd.
• We play together, she and we,
• 30 Within a vain strange land:

• A land without any order,—
• Day even as night, (one saith,)—
• Where who lieth down ariseth not
• Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
• A land of darkness as darkness itself
• And of the shadow of death.

• What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
• The heart, that doth but crave
• Yet more, being fed; the diamond,
• 40 Skilled to make base seem brave;
• The club, for smiting in the dark;
• The spade, to dig a grave.

• And do you ask what game she plays?
• With me 'tis lost or won;
page: 75  
• With thee it is playing still; with him
• It is not well begun;
• But 'tis a game she plays with all
• Beneath the sway o' the sun.

• Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
• 50 The card that followeth:
• Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
• As ebbs thy daily breath:
• When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
• And know she calls it Death.

   

• She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
• At length her eyes were in the shade
• Of weary lids; her arms, uplaid,
• Covered her bosom, I believe.

• Our mother, who had leaned all day
• Over the bed from chime to chime,
• Then raised herself for the first time,
• And as she sat her down, did pray.

• Her little work-table was spread
• 10 With work to finish. For the glare
• Made by her candle, she had care
• To work some distance from the bed.

• Without, there was a cold moon up,
• Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
• The hollow halo it was in
• Was like an icy crystal cup.

• Through the small room, with subtle sound
• Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
• And reddened. In its dim alcove
• 20The mirror shed a clearness round.

• I had been sitting up some nights,
• And my tired mind felt weak and blank;
• Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank
• The stillness and the broken lights.

• Twelve struck. That sound, which all the years
• Hear in each hour, crept off; and then
• The ruffled silence spread again,
• Like water that a pebble stirs.

• Our mother rose from where she sat:
• 30 Her needles, as she laid them down,
• Met lightly, and her silken gown
• Settled: no other noise than that.

• ‘Glory unto the Newly Born!’
• So, as said angels, she did say;
• Because we were in Christmas Day,
• Though it would still be long till morn.

• Just then in the room over us
• There was a pushing back of chairs,
• As some who had sat unawares
• 40So late, now heard the hour, and rose.

• With anxious softly-stepping haste
• Our mother went where Margaret lay,
• Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they
• Have broken her long watched-for rest!

• She stooped an instant, calm, and turned;
• But suddenly turned back again;
• And all her features seemed in pain
• With woe, and her eyes gazed and yearned.

• For my part, I but hid my face,
• 50 And held my breath, and spake no word:
• There was none spoken; but I heard
• The silence for a little space.

• Our mother bowed herself and wept:
• And both my arms fell, and I said,
• ‘God knows I knew that she was dead.’
• And there, all white, my sister slept.

• Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
• A little after twelve o'clock
• We said, ere the first quarter struck,
• 60‘Christ's blessing on the newly born!’

   

• ‘How should I your true love know
• From another one?’
• ‘By his cockle-hat and staff
• And his sandal-shoon.’

• ‘And what signs have told you now
• That he hastens home?’
• ‘Lo! the spring is nearly gone,
• He is nearly come.’

• ‘For a token is there nought,
• 10 Say, that he should bring?’
• ‘He will bear a ring I gave
• And another ring.’

• ‘How may I, when he shall ask,
• Tell him who lies there?’
• ‘Nay, but leave my face unveiled
• And unbound my hair.’

• ‘Can you say to me some word
• I shall say to him?’
• ‘Say I'm looking in his eyes
• 20 Though my eyes are dim.’

   

• Christ sprang from David shepherd, and even so
• From David king; being born of high and low.

• The shepherd lays his crook, the king his crown,
• Here at Christ's feet, and high and low bow down.

• And high and low, Christ's self is shown here; even
• Christ the Good Shepherd, Christ the King of Heaven.

   

• Tell me now in what hidden way is
• Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
• Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
• Neither of them the fairer woman?
• Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
• Only heard on river and mere,—
• She whose beauty was more than human?...
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

• Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
• 10 For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
• Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
• (How dire, O Love, thy sway hath been!)
• And where, I pray you, is the Queen
• Who willed that Buridan should steer
• Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine?...
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

• White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
• With a voice like any mermaiden,—
• Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
• 20 And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
page: 86  
• And that good Joan whom Englishmen
• At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
• Mother of God, where are they then?...
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

• Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
• Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
• Except with this for an overword,—
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

   

• Death, of thee do I make my moan,
• Who hadst my lady away from me,
• Nor wilt assuage thine enmity
• Till with her life thou hast mine own;
• For since that hour my strength has flown.
• Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,
• Death?

• Two we were, and the heart was one;
• Which now being dead, dead I must be,
• 10 Or seem alive as lifelessly
• As in the choir the painted stone,
• Death!

   

• John of Tours is back with peace,
• But he comes home ill at ease.

• ‘Good-morrow, mother.’ ‘Good-morrow, son;
• Your wife has borne you a little one.’

• ‘Go now, mother, go before,
• Make me a bed upon the floor;

• ‘Very low your foot must fall,
• That my wife hear not at all.’

• As it neared the midnight toll,
• 10John of Tours gave up his soul.

• ‘Tell me now, my mother, my dear,
• What's the singing that I hear?’

• ‘Daughter, it's the priests in rows
• Going round about our house.’

• ‘Tell me though, my mother, my dear,
• What's the knocking that I hear?’

• ‘Daughter, it's the carpenter
• Mending planks upon the stair.’

• ‘Well, but tell, my mother, my dear,
• 20What's the crying that I hear?’

• ‘Daughter, the children are awake,
• Crying with their teeth that ache.’

• ‘Nay, but say, my mother, my dear,
• Why do you stand weeping here?’

• ‘Oh! the truth must be said,—
• It's that John of Tours is dead.’

• ‘Mother, let the sexton know
• That the grave must be for two;

• ‘Aye, and still have room to spare,
• 30For you must shut the baby there.’

   

• Inside my father's close,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• Sweet apple-blossom blows
• So sweet.

• Three king's daughters fair,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• They lie below it there
• So sweet.

• ‘Ah!’ says the eldest one,
• 10 (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘I think the day's begun
• So sweet.’

• ‘Ah!’ says the second one,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘Far off I hear the drum
• So sweet.’

• ‘Ah!’ says the youngest one,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘It's my true love, my own,
• 20 So sweet.

• ‘Oh! if he fight and win,’
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘I keep my love for him,
• So sweet:
• Oh! if he lose or win,
• He hath it still complete.’

   

• I.
• Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost
• bough,
• A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot,
• somehow,—
• Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it
• till now.

• II.
• Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found,
• Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and
• wound,
• Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.

       

• The changing guests, each in a different mood,
• Sit at the roadside table and arise:
• And every life among them in likewise
• Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
• What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
• How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
• Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
• Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

• May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
• 10 In separate living souls for joy or pain?
• Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
• Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
• And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
• Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

   

• As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
• Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
• The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
• Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
• With the whole truth in words, lest heaven should ope;
• Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
• In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
• Together, within hopeless sight of hope
• For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
• 10 When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
• After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
• Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
• Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
• Follow the desultory feet of Death?

   

• Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
• Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
• But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
• In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
• (And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
• Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
• The stations of my course should loom unsought,
• As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

• But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
• 10 And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
• Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
• Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
• As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
• That the same goal is still on the same track.

   

• The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
• Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
• Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
• Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
• Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
• Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
• Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when thou,
• O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

• How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
• 10 Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
• Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
• Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
• Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
• Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

   

• This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
• In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
• And I have loitered in the vale too long
• And gaze now a belated worshipper.
• Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
• So journeying, of his face at intervals
• Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
• A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

• And now that I have climbed and won this height,
• 10 I must tread downward through the sloping shade
• And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
• Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
• And see the gold air and the silver fade
• And the last bird fly into the last light.

       

• Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
• Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
• Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
• May pour for thee this yellow wine, brim-high,
• Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
• We'll hear no hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
• Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

• Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
• 10 My own high-bosomed lady, who increase
• Vain gold, vain lore, in reach of our true wealth!
• Eleven long days they toil; upon the twelfth
• They die not,—never having lived,—but cease;
• And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

   

• Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
• Is not the day which God's word promiseth
• To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
• Now while we speak, the sun sets forth: Can I
• Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
• Perchance even at this moment quickeneth
• The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
• Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
• 10 And dost thou prate of that which man shall do?
• Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
• Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
• Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
• Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

   

• Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Stretching thyself i' the sun upon the shore,
• Thou say'st: ‘Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
• Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
• Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
• Even I, am he whom it was destined for.’
• How should this be? Art thou then so much more
• Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

• Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
• 10 Unto the horizon-brim look thou with me;
• Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
• Miles and miles distant though the horizon be,
• And though thy thought sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
• Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

   

• I said: ‘Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be
• Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
• But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
• Sees in the stream its own fecundity
• And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
• At the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
• And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
• And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?’

• I say: ‘Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun
• 10 Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
• Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
• And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
• Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
• And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.’

   

• What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
• None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
• Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
• These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
• Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
• Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
• Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves
• Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

• Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit,
• 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
• Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
• And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
• To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife,
• The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

   

• The lost days of my life until to-day,
• What were they, could I see them on the street
• Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
• Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
• Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
• Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
• Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
• The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?

• I do not see them here; but after death
• 10 God knows I know the faces I shall see,
• Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
• ‘I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?’
• ‘And I—and I—thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,)
• ‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’

   

• When first that horse, within whose populous womb
• The birth was Death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
• Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
• Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
• She whispered, ‘Friends, I am alone; come, come!’
• Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
• And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
• His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

• The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
• 10 There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
• Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
• Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . .
• Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
• Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

   

• Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
• Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
• Is caught from out his chariot by the hair,
• So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
• Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
• Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
• It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
• Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled,
• Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
• 10 Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.
• Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
• Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
• Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
• For certain years, for certain months and days.

   

• As when two men have loved a woman well,
• Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
• Since not for either this strait marriage-sheet
• And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;
• Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
• At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
• Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
• The two lives left that most of her can tell:—

• So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
• 10 The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
• And Peace before their faces perished since:
• So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
• They roam together now, and wind among
• Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

   

• Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
• From life; and mocking pulses that remain
• When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
• Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
• And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
• On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
• And longed-for woman longing all in vain
• For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
• And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
• 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
• None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
• Beholding these things, I behold no less
• The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
• The shame that loads the intolerable day.

   

• Around the vase of Life at your slow pace
• He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
• And all its sides already understands.
• There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
• Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;
• Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
• Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
• A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.

• And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
• 10 With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
• With watered flowers for buried love most fit;
• And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
• Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
• Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.

       

• To-day Death seems to me an infant child
• Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
• Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
• If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
• To find no terrors in a face so mild,—
• If haply so my weary heart might be
• Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
• O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.

• How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
• 10 Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand
• Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
• What time with thee indeed I reach the strand
• Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
• And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

   

• And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
• With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
• I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
• And in fair places found all bowers amiss
• Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
• While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
• Ah! Life, and must I have from thee at last
• No smile to greet me and no babe but this?

• Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
• 10 Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
• And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair;
• These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
• With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there:
• And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?

   

• Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
• I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
• Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
• Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
• Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
• Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
• Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
• Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

• Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
• 10 One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
• Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,—
• Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
• Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
• Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

   

• Andromeda, by Perseus saved and wed,
• Hankered each day to see the Gorgon's head:
• Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
• And mirrored in the wave was safely seen
• That death she lived by.

• Let not thine eyes know
• Any forbidden thing itself, although
• It once should save as well as kill: but be
• Its shadow upon life enough for thee.

   

• Consider the sea's listless chime:
• Time's self it is, made audible,—
• The murmur of the earth's own shell.
• Secret continuance sublime
• Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
• No furlong further. Since time was,
• This sound hath told the lapse of time.

• No stagnance that death wins: it hath
• The mournfulness of ancient life,
• 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
• As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
• Its painful pulse is in the sands.
• Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
• Grey and not known, along its path.

   

• These little firs to-day are things
• To clasp into a giant's cap,
• Or fans to suit his lady's lap.
• From many winters many springs
• Shall cherish them in strength and sap,
• Till they be marked upon the map,
• A wood for the wind's wanderings.

• All seed is in the sower's hands:
• And what at first was trained to spread
• 10 Its shelter for some single head,—
• Yea, even such fellowship of wands,—
• May hide the sunset, and the shade
• Of its great multitude be laid
• Upon the earth and elder sands.

   

• I plucked a honeysuckle where
• The hedge on high is quick with thorn,
• And climbing for the prize, was torn,
• And fouled my feet in quag-water;
• And by the thorns and by the wind
• The blossom that I took was thinn'd,
• And yet I found it sweet and fair.

• Thence to a richer growth I came,
• Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,
• 10 The honeysuckles sprang by scores,
• Not harried like my single stem,
• All virgin lamps of scent and dew.
• So from my hand that first I threw,
• Yet plucked not any more of them.

   

• The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
• Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
• I had walked on at the wind's will,—
• I sat now, for the wind was still.

• Between my knees my forehead was,—
• My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
• My hair was over in the grass,
• My naked ears heard the day pass.

• Mine eyes, wide open, had the run
• 10Of some ten weeds to fix upon,
• Among the which, out of the sun,
• The woodspurge bloomed, three cups in one.

• From perfect grief there need not be
• Knowledge or even memory:
• One thing then learnt remains to me,—
• The woodspurge has a cup of three.

   

• Between the hands, between the brows,
• Between the lips of Love-Lily,
• A spirit is born whose birth endows
• My blood with fire to burn through me;
• Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
• Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
• At whose least touch my colour flies,
• And whom my life grows faint to hear.

• Within the voice, within the heart,
• 10 Within the mind of Love-Lily,
• A spirit is born who lifts apart
• His tremulous wings and looks at me;
• Who on my mouth his finger lays,
• And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
• That Eden of Love's watered ways
• Whose winds and spirits worship her.

• Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
• Kisses and words of Love-Lily,—
• Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
• 20 Till riotous longing rest in me!
• Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
• But find in her its gracious goal,
• Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
• Nor Love her body from her soul.

   

• Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er
• It be, a holy place:
• The thought still brings my soul such grace
• As morning meadows wear.

• Whether it still be small and light,
• A maid's who dreams alone,
• As from her orchard-gate the moon
• Its ceiling showed at night:

• Or whether, in a shadow dense
• 10 As nuptial hymns invoke,
• Innocent maidenhood awoke
• To married innocence:

• There still the thanks unheard await
• The unconscious gift bequeathed,
• And there my soul this hour has breathed
• An air inviolate.

   

• In a soft-complexioned sky,
• Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
• Have you seen Aurora fly
• At the break of day?
• So my maiden, so my modest may
• Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
• Lifts to look my way.

• Where the inmost leaf is stirred
• With the heart-beat of the grove,
• 10 Have you heard a hidden bird
• Cast her note above?
• So my lady, so my lovely love,
• Echoing Cupid's prompted word,
• Makes a tune thereof.

• Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
• In the moon-wrack's ebb and tide,
• Venus leap forth burning white,
• Dian pale and hide?
• So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride,
• 20 One sweet night, when fear takes flight,
• Shall leap against my side.

   

• I have been here before,
• But when or how I cannot tell:
• I know the grass beyond the door,
• The sweet keen smell,
• The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

• You have been mine before,—
• How long ago I may not know:
• But just when at that swallow's soar
• Your neck turned so,
• 10Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

• Then, now,—perchance again!....
• O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
• Shall we not lie as we have lain
• Thus for Love's sake,
• And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?

   

• A little while a little love
• The hour yet bears for thee and me
• Who have not drawn the veil to see
• If still our heaven be lit above.
• Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
• Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
• And I have heard the night-wind cry
• And deemed its speech mine own.

• A little while a little love
• 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
• Whose bower is not yet ruinous
• Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
• Only across the shaken boughs
• We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
• And deep in both our hearts they rouse
• One wail for thee and me.

• A little while a little love
• May yet be ours who have not said
• The word it makes our eyes afraid
• 20To know that each is thinking of.
• Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
• In smiles a little season yet:
• I'll tell thee, when the end is come
• How we may best forget.

   

• Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
• Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
• Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
• Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
• Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
• Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
• Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
• Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.

• What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
• 10 This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
• Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
• Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
• Deep in warm pillows, (the sun's bed is colder!)
• Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
• My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
• My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.

• What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,—
• My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
• Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—
• 20 Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
page: 126  
• Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
• The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
• Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
• The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.

• Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
• One day when all days are one day to me?—
• Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power,’—
• Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
• Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
• 30 So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
• Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way....
• Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal shall we meet?

   

• I did not look upon her eyes,
• (Though scarcely seen, with no surprise,
• 'Mid many eyes a single look,)
• Because they should not gaze rebuke,
• Thenceforth, from stars in sky and brook.

• I did not take her by the hand,
• (Though little was to understand
• From touch of hand all friends might take,)
• Because it should not prove a flake
• 10Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.

• I did not listen to her voice,
• (Though none had noted, where at choice
• All might rejoice in listening,)
• Because no such a thing should cling
• In the sea-wind at evening.

• I did not cross her shadow once,
• (Though from the hollow west the sun's
• Last shadow runs along so far,)
• Because in June it should not bar
• 20My ways, at noon when fevers are.

• They told me she was there: but I,
• Who saw her not, did fear and fly
• The means brought nigh of seeing her.
• Thus must this day be bitterer,
• I felt; yet did not speak nor stir.

• So nightly shall the crows troop home
• One less; one less the wailings come
• From tongues of foam that chafe the sand;
• One less, from sleep's dumb quaking land,
• 30The dreams shall at my bed's foot stand.

   

• Along the grass sweet airs are blown
• Our way this day in Spring.
• Of all the songs that we have known
• Now which one shall we sing?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love? why, so!—
• Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.

• The grove is all a pale frail mist,
• The new year sucks the sun.
• 10Of all the kisses that we kissed
• Now which shall be the one?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
• For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!

• The branches cross above our eyes,
• The skies are in a net:
• And what's the thing beneath the skies
• We two would most forget?
• Not birth, my love, no, no,—
• 20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
• The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.

   

• So it is, my dear.
• All such things touch secret strings
• For heavy hearts to hear.
• So it is, my dear.

• Very like indeed:
• Sea and sky, afar, on high,
• Sand and strewn seaweed,—
• Very like indeed.

• But the sea stands spread
• 10As one wall with the flat skies,
• Where the lean black craft like flies
• Seem well-nigh stagnated,
• Soon to drop off dead.

• Seemed it so to us
• When I was thine and thou wast mine,
• And all these things were thus,
• But all our world in us?

• Could we be so now?
• Not if all beneath heaven's pall
• 20 Lay dead but I and thou,
• Could we be so now!

   

• As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
• The mother looks upon the newborn child,
• Even so my lady stood at gaze and smiled
• When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
• Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
• And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
• Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
• Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst.

• Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
• 10 Together, as his fullgrown feet now range
• The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:
• Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
• Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
• Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.

   

• O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
• Unto my lips dost evermore present
• The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
• Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who without speech hast owned him, and intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

   

• When do I see thee most, beloved one?
• When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
• Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
• The worship of that Love through thee made known
• Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
• Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
• Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
• And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

• O love, my love! if I no more should see
• 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
• Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
• How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
• The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
• The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

   

• What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
• Or seizure of malign vicissitude
• Can rob this body of honour, or denude
• This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
• For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
• With these my lips such consonant interlude
• As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
• The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

• I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
• 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
• A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
• A god when all our life-breath met to fan
• Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
• Fire within fire, desire in deity.

   

• At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
• And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
• From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
• So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
• Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
• Of married flowers to either side outspread
• From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
• Moaned to each other where they lay apart.

• Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
• 10 And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
• Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
• Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
• Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
• He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

   

• To all the spirits of love that wander by
• Along the love-sown fallowfield of sleep
• My lady lies apparent; and the deep
• Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
• The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
• Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
• When Fate's one day doth from his harvest reap
• The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.

• First touched, the hand now warm beneath my neck
• 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
• Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
• Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
• And next the heart that trembled for its sake
• Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.

   

• Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone,
• And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
• In idle scornful hours he flings away;
• And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
• Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
• Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
• Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
• And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.

• My lady only loves the heart of Love:
• 10 Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
• His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
• There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of
• Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowing hair above,
• Seals with thy mouth his immortality.

   

• Love brought to us a white-stoled harp-player
• Even as my lady and I lay all alone;
• Saying: ‘Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
• Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
• Only my strains are to my servants dear.’
• Then said I: ‘Through thy music's passionate tone
• Even now, Lord Love, I heard this harp make moan,
• And still methought the note was deep and clear.’

• Then said my lady: ‘Even as thou art Love,
• 10 Lo, this is Worship this man hath for me.
• Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
• But where wan water rests within the grove
• And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
• This harp still makes my name its voluntary.’

   

• O Lord of all compassionate control,
• O Love! let this my Lady's picture glow
• Under my hand to praise her name, and show
• Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
• That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
• Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw
• And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
• The very sky and sea-line of her soul.

• Lo! it is done. Above the long lithe throat
• 10 The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss,
• The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
• Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
• That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
• They that would look on her must come to me.

   

• Have you not noted, in some family
• Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,
• How still they own their fragrant bond, though fed
• And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
• How to their father's children they shall be
• In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
• Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
• And in a word complete community?

• Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
• 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
• One nearer kindred than birth hinted of.
• O born with me somewhere that men forget,
• And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
• Known for my life's own sister well enough!

   

• I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
• Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
• And round him ladies thronged in close pursuit,
• Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
• And from one hand the petal and the core
• Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
• Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
• Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

• At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
• 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
• And as I took them, at her touch they shone
• With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame,
• And then Love said: ‘Lo! when the hand is hers,
• Follies of love are love's high ministers.’

   

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
• That wings from far his gradual way along
• The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
• Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
• But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
• Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
• Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong,
• Through our contending kisses oft unheard.

• What of that hour at last, when for her sake
• 10 No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
• When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
• The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
• And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
• Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?

   

• ‘When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
• Which once was all the life years held for thee,
• Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
• Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
• How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
• Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
• Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
• Make them of buried troth remembrancers?’

• ‘Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
• 10 Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
• Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
• Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
• In these the culminant changes which approve
• The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?’

   

• ‘Thou Ghost,’ I said, ‘and is thy name To-day?—
• Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!—
• And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?’
• While yet I spoke, the silence answered: ‘Yea,
• Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
• And each beforehand makes such poor avow
• As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
• Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away.’

• Then cried I: ‘Mother of many malisons,
• 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!’
• But therewithal the tremulous silence said:
• ‘Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
• Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
• And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.’

   

• Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
• O night desirous as the nights of youth!
• Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
• Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
• Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
• What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
• And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
• Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?

• Nay, night! Would vain Love counterfeit in thee
• 10 Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
• Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
• O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
• A thicket hung with masks of mockery
• And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

   

• Because our talk was of the cloud-control
• And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
• Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate
• And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal:
• But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
• Of joy, which its own hours annihilate,
• Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late,
• And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.

• Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
• 10 To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
• Which memory haunts and whither sleep may roam,—
• They only know for whom the roof of Love
• Is the still-seated secret of the grove,
• Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.

   

• What shall be said of this embattled day
• And armed occupation of this night
• By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight
• Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
• Of the live hours of death what shalt thou say,—
• As every sense to which she dealt delight
• Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height
• To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?

• Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
• 10 Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
• Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
• Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
• Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
• And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.

   

• The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
• Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
• But breathless with averted eyes elate
• She sits, with open lips and open ears,
• That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
• Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
• A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
• And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.

• But now, whatever while the soul is fain
• 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
• The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain;
• No breath of song,—thy voice alone is there,
• O bitterly beloved! And all her gain
• Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

   

• There came an image in Life's retinue
• That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
• Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
• O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
• Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
• Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
• Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
• When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.

• But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
• 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
• Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
• And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
• And said to me, ‘Behold, there is no breath:
• I and this Love are one, and I am Death.’

       

• I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
• Leaning across the water, I and he;
• Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
• But touched his lute wherein was audible
• The certain secret thing he had to tell:
• Only our mirrored eyes met silently
• In the low wave; and that sound came to be
• The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

• And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
• 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
• He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
• Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
• And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
• Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.

   

• And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
• So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
• As souls disused in death's sterility
• May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
• And I was made aware of a dumb throng
• That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
• All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
• The shades of those our days that had no tongue.

• They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
• 10 While fast together, alive from the abyss,
• Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
• And pity of self through all made broken moan
• Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’
• And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—

   

• ‘O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
• That walk with hollow faces burning white;
• What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
• What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
• Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
• Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
• Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
• Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!

• Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
• 10 With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
• Alas! if ever such a pillow could
• Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
• Better all life forget her than this thing,
• That Willowwood should hold her wandering!’

   

• So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway
• Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
• The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
• As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
• Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

• Only I know that I leaned low and drank
• 10A long draught from the water where she sank,
• Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
• And as I drank I know I felt Love's face
• Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
• Till both our heads were in his aureole.

   

• The hour which might have been yet might not be,
• Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
• Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
• Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
• Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
• It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
• The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
• His hours elect in choral consonancy.

• But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
• 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
• With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
• Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
• And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
• ‘I am your child: O parents, ye have come!’

       

• Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
• The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
• Infinite imminent Eternity?
• And does the death-pang by man's seed sustain'd
• In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
• Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he
• Blesses the dead with his hand silently
• To his long day which hours no more offend?

• Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
• 10 Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
• Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
• Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
• Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
• Amid the bitterness of things occult.

   

• Water, for anguish of the solstice:—nay,
• But dip the vessel slowly,—nay, but lean
• And mark how at its verge the wave sighs in
• Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away
• The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
• Now trails the hand upon the viol-string
• That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
• Sad with the whole of pleasure. Her eyes stray
• In sunset; from her mouth the pipe doth creep
• 10 And leaves it pouting; shadowed here, the grass
• Is cool against her naked side. Let be:—
• Do not now speak unto her, lest she weep.
• Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,—
• Life touching lips with Immortality.

   

• Scarcely, I think; yet it indeed may be
• The meaning reached him, when this music rang
• Clear through his frame, a sweet possessive pang,
• And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea.
• But I believe that, leaning tow'rds them, he
• Just felt their hair carried across his face
• As each girl passed him; nor gave ear to trace
• How many feet; nor bent assuredly
• His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought
• 10 To know the dancers. It is bitter glad
• Even unto tears. Its meaning filleth it,
• A secret of the wells of Life: to wit:—
• The heart's each pulse shall keep the sense it had
• With all, though the mind's labour run to nought.

       

• A remote sky, prolonged to the sea's brim:
• One rock-point standing buffeted alone,
• Vexed at its base with a foul beast unknown,
• Hell-birth of geomaunt and teraphim:
• A knight, and a winged creature bearing him,
• Reared at the rock: a woman fettered there,
• Leaning into the hollow with loose hair
• And throat let back and heartsick trail of limb.

• The sky is harsh, and the sea shrewd and salt:
• 10 Under his lord the griffin-horse ramps blind
• With rigid wings and tail. The spear's lithe stem
• Thrills in the roaring of those jaws: behind,
• That evil length of body chafes at fault.
• She doth not hear nor see—she knows of them.

   

• Clench thine eyes now,—'tis the last instant, girl:
• Draw in thy senses, set thy knees, and take
• One breath for all: thy life is keen awake,—
• Thou mayst not swoon. Was that the scattered whirl
• Of its foam drenched thee?—or the waves that curl
• And split, bleak spray wherein thy temples ache?
• Or was it his the champion's blood to flake
• Thy flesh?—or thine own blood's anointing, girl?

• Now, silence: for the sea's is such a sound
• 10 As irks not silence; and except the sea,
• All now is still. Now the dead thing doth cease
• To writhe, and drifts. He turns to her: and she,
• Cast from the jaws of Death, remains there, bound,
• Again a woman in her nakedness.

   

• This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
• God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
• Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
• Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
• Profound simplicity of intellect,
• And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
• Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
• Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.

• So held she through her girlhood; as it were
• 10 An angel-watered lily, that near God
• Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
• She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
• At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed:
• Because the fulness of the time was come.

   

• She hath the apple in her hand for thee,
• Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;
• She muses, with her eyes upon the track
• Of that which in thy spirit they can see.
• Haply, ‘Behold, he is at peace,’ saith she;
• ‘Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
• That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
• The wandering of his feet perpetually!’

• A little space her glance is still and coy;
• 10 But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
• Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
• Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell,
• And her far seas moan as a single shell,
• And her grove glow with love-lit fires of Troy.

   

• Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
• (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
• That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
• And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
• And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
• And, subtly of herself contemplative,
• Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
• Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

• The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
• 10 Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
• And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
• Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
• Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent,
• And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

   

• Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
• Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
• Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
• I drew it in as simply as my breath.
• Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
• The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
• By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
• The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.

• This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
• 10 Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee
• By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
• Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
• How passionately and irretrievably,
• In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

   

• What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
• The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
• Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
• In its own likeness make thee half divine?
• Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign
• For ever? and the mien of Pallas be
• A deadly thing? and that all men might see
• In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?

• What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
• 10The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
• Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
• Aye, hug the casket now! Whither they go
• Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know
• If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

   

• ‘Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?
• Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek.
• Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek;
• See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.
• This delicate day of love we two will share
• Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak.
• What, sweet one,—hold'st thou still the foolish freak?
• Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.’

• ‘Oh loose me! See'st thou not my Bridegroom's face
• 10 That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss,
• My hair, my tears He craves to-day:—and oh!
• What words can tell what other day and place
• Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His?
• He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!’

   

• Here meet together the prefiguring day
• And day prefigured. ‘Eating, thou shalt stand,
• Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand,
• With blood-stained door and lintel,’—did God say
• By Moses' mouth in ages passed away.
• And now, where this poor household doth comprise
• At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,—
• Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.

• The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained,
• 10 What shadow of death the Boy's fair brow subdues
• Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
• By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
• He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
• And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.

       

• Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
• Yea, rend Thy garments, wring thine hands, and cry
• From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
• See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
• He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
• Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
• This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
• The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.

• What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
• 10 Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
• On tear makes salt the warm last kiss he gave?
• He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
• Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
• Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.

   

• ‘O Hector, gone, gone, gone! Oh Hector, thee
• Two chariots wait, in Troy long blessed and curs'd;
• And Grecian spear and Phrygian sand athirst
• Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
• Lo! long upon our hearth the brand had we,
• Lit for the roof-tree's ruin: and to-day
• The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
• And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.

• ‘O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
• 10 Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
• Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
• Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
• Within thy curls at last, and while Troy glows
• Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.’

   

• Not that the earth is changing, O my God!
• Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,—
• Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
• Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,—
• Not therefore are we certain that the rod
• Weighs in thine hand to smite the world; though now
• Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
• So many kings:—not therefore, O my God!—

• But because Man is parcelled out in men
• 10 Even thus; because, for any wrongful blow,
• No man not stricken asks, ‘I would be told
• Why thou dost strike;’ but his heart whispers then,
• ‘He is he, I am I.’ By this we know
• That the earth falls asunder, being old.

   

• As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
• And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
• And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
• And the mild fire of precious life wax warm:—
• So I, long bound within the threefold charm
• Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood,
• Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
• How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.

• At length within this book I found pourtrayed
• 10 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
• And simple like a child; with whose clear aid
• I understood. To such a child as this,
• Christ, charging well his chosen ones, forbade
• Offence: ‘for lo! of such my kingdom is.’

   

• And did 'st thou know indeed, when at the font
• Together with thy name thou gav'st me his,
• That also on thy son must Beatrice
• Bend her deep eyes according to her wont,
• Accepting me to be of those that haunt
• The vale of magical sweet mysteries
• Where to the hills her poet's foot-track lies
• And wisdom's living fountain to his chaunt
• Trembles in music? This is that steep land
• 10 Where he that holds his journey stands at gaze
• Tow'rd sunset, when the clouds like a new height
• Seem piled to climb. These things I understand:
• For here, where day still soothes my lifted face,
• Upon thy head, my father, fell the night.

   

• This sunlight shames November where he grieves
• In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
• The day, though bough with bough be over-run:
• But with a blessing every glade receives
• High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
• The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
• As if, being foresters of old, the sun
• Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

• Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;
• 10 Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew;
• Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.
• And here the lost hours the lost hours renew
• While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass,
• Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

   

• Sweet stream-fed glen, why say ‘farewell’ to thee
• Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
• The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
• Nay, do thou rather say ‘farewell’ to me,
• Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
• Than when, where other trees might shade and soothe
• By other streams in fragrant days of youth,
• The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

• And yet farewell! For better shalt thou fare
• 10 When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
• And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
• In hours to come, than when an hour ago
• Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
• And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

   

• Weary already, weary miles to-night
• I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,
• I dogged the flying moon with similes.
• And like a wisp she doubled on my sight
• In ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite;
• And in a globe of film all vapourish
• Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish;—
• Last like a bubble shot the welkin's height
• Where my road turned, and got behind me, and sent
• 10 My wizened shadow craning round at me,
• And jeered, ‘So, step the measure,—one two three!’—
• And if I faced on her, looked innocent.
• But just at parting, halfway down a dell,
• She kissed me for goodnight. So you'll not tell.

   

• She fluted with her mouth as when one sips,
• And gently waved her golden head, inclin'd
• Outside his cage close to the window-blind;
• Till her fond bird, with little turns and dips,
• Piped low to her of sweet companionships.
• And when he made an end, some seed took she
• And fed him from her tongue, which rosily
• Peeped as a piercing bud between her lips.

• And like a child in Chaucer, on whose tongue
• 10 The Blessed Mary laid, when he was dead,
• A grain,—who straightway praised her name in song:
• Even so, when she, a little lightly red,
• Now turned on me and laughed, I heard the throng
• Of inner voices praise her golden head.

   

• This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death
• Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son,
• Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
• Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
• Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
• Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
• Lo! murdered Turpin pleading, with black tongue,
• This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!

• We'll search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
• 10 And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd
• For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
• Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
• Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
• Some tailor's ninth allotment of a ghost.

Stratford-on-Avon.        

---

---

• “e intenerisce il core
• Lo di ch' han detto ai dolci amici adio.”’

THE END.  

---