Identity

Another tattered rhymster in the ring,
With but the old plea to the sneering schools,
That on him too, some secret night in spring
Came the old frenzy of a hundred fools

To make some thing: the old want dark and deep,
The thirst of men, the hunger of the stars,
Since first it tinged even the Eternal's sleep,
With monstrous dreams of trees and towns and mars.

When all He made for the first time He saw,
Scattering stars as misers shake their pelf.
Then in the last strange wrath broke His own law,
And made a graven image of Himself.

My many cares and much distress
Has made me like a wilderness;
Or, discompos'd, I'm like a rude
And all confused multitude:
Out of my comely manners worn,
And, as in means, in mind all torn.

Young love, all rainbows in the lane,
    Brushed by the honeysuckle vines,
Scattered the wild rose in a dream:
    A sweeter thing his arm entwines.

Ah, redder lips than any rose!
    Ah, sweeter breath than any bee
Sucks from the heart of any flower;
    Ah, bosom like the Summer sea!

A fairy creature made of dew
    And moonrise and the songs of birds,
And laughter like the running brook,
    And little soft, heart-broken words.

Haunted as marble in the moon,
    Her whiteness lies on young love's breast.
And living frankincense and myrrh
    Her lips that on his lips are pressed.

Her eyes are lost within his eyes,
    His eyes in hers are fathoms deep;
Death is not stiller than these twain
    That smile as in a magic...

HE

Let us be friends.    My life is sad and lonely,
While yours with love is beautiful and bright.
Be kind to me:    I ask your friendship only.
No Star is robbed by lending darkness light.

SHE

I give you friendship as I understand it,
A sentiment I feel for all mankind.

HE

Oh, give me more; may not one friend command it?

SHE

Look in the skies, 'tis there the star you'll find;
It casts its beams on all with equal favour.

HE

I would have more than what all men may claim.

SHE

Then your ideas of friendship strongly savour
Of sentiments which wear another name.

HE

May not one friend receive more than another?

SHE

Not man from woman and still remain a ...

In those old days you were called beautiful,
But I have worn the beauty from your face;
The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek
With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes
Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on
Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.
Even your voice is altered when you speak,
Or is grown mute with old anxiety
For me.

Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns
Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight,
And then under the flame a glowing dome
Deepens slowly into blood-like light:--
So did you flame and in flame take delight,
So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.
But I still warm me and make there my home,
Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly
For me.

Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull,
...

    This Poem, Dedicated to His Mother.


    To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend,
    As with the gentle fading of the year
    Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end
    Unquestioning draw near,
    Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,
    Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.

    But for June's heart there is no comforting
    When her full-throated rose
    Still quick with buds, still thrilling to the air,
    By some stray wind is tossed,
    Her swelling grain that goes
    Heavy to harvesting
    In a black gale is lost,
    And her round grape that purpled to the wine
    Is pinched by some chance frost.
    Ah, then cry out for that lost, lovely rose,
    For the stricken wheat, ...

Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;

Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagle’s secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;

Know all the deathy seeds that still
Queen Helen’s beauty, Caesar’s will,
And slay them even as they kill;

Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And...

I plod and peer amid mean sounds and shapes,
I hunt for dusty gain and dreary praise,
And slowly pass the dismal grinning days,
Monkeying each other like a line of apes.

What care? There was one hour amid all these
When I had stripped off like a tawdry glove
My starriest hopes and wants, for very love
Of time and desolate eternities.

Yea, for one great hour's triumph, not in me
Nor any hope of mine did I rejoice,
But in a meadow game of girls and boys
Some sunset in the centuries to be.

Underneath their eider-robe
Russet swede and golden globe,
Feathered carrot, burrowing deep,
Steadfast wait in charmed sleep;
Treasure-houses wherein lie,
Locked by angels' alchemy,
Milk and hair, and blood, and bone,
Children of the barren stone;
Children of the flaming Air,
With his blue eye keen and bare,
Spirit-peopled smiling down
On frozen field and toiling town -
Toiling town that will not heed
God His voice for rage and greed;
Frozen fields that surpliced lie,
Gazing patient at the sky;
Like some marble carven nun,
With folded hands when work is done,
Who mute upon her tomb doth pray,
Till the resurrection day.

Eversley, 1845.

Beyond the night, down o'er the labouring East,
I see light's harbinger of dawn released:
Upon the false gleam of the ante-dawn,
Lo, the fair heaven of day-pursuing morn!

Beyond the lampless sleep and perishing death
That hold my heart, I feel my new life's breath,
I see the face my spirit-shape shall have
When this frail clay and dust have fled the grave.

Beyond the night, the death of doubt, defeat,
Rise dawn and morn, and life with light doth meet,
For the great Cause, too, - sure as the sun yon ray
Shoots up to strike the threatening clouds and say;
"I come, and with me comes the victorious Day!"

                            * * * * *

When I was young, the muse I wors...

O dwellers in the stately towns,
What come ye out to see?
This common earth, this common sky,
This water flowing free?

As gayly as these kalmia flowers
Your door-yard blossoms spring;
As sweetly as these wild-wood birds
Your caged minstrels sing.

You find but common bloom and green,
The rippling river's rune,
The beauty which is everywhere
Beneath the skies of June;

The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn plumes
Of old pine-forest kings,
Beneath whose century-woven shade
Deer Island's mistress sings.

And here are pictured Artichoke,
And Curson's bowery mill;
And Pleasant Valley smiles between
The river and the hill.

You know full well these banks of bloom,
The upland's wavy line,
And how the sunshine tips ...

Through the open door of dreamland
Came a ghost of long ago, long ago.
When I wakened, all unheeding
Was the phantom to my pleading;
For he would not turn and go,
But beside me all the day,
In my work and in my play,
Trod this ghost of long ago, long ago.

Not a vague and pallid phantom
Was this ghost that came to me, followed me:
Though he rose from regions haunted,
Though he came unbid, unwanted,
He was very fair to see.
Like the radiant sun in space
Was the halo round the face
Of that ghost that came to me, followed me.

And he wore no shroud or cere-cloth
As he wandered at my side, close beside:
He was clothed in royal splendour
And his eyes were deep and tender,
While he walked in stately pride;
And he seemed like some g...

Like the vulture
Who on heavy morning clouds
With gentle wing reposing
Looks for his prey,
Hover, my song!

For a God hath
Unto each prescribed
His destined path,
Which the happy one
Runs o'er swiftly
To his glad goal:
He whose heart cruel
Fate hath contracted,
Struggles but vainly
Against all the barriers
The brazen thread raises,
But which the harsh shears
Must one day sever.

Through gloomy thickets
Presseth the wild deer on,
And with the sparrows
Long have the wealthy
Settled themselves in the marsh.

Easy 'tis following the chariot
That by Fortune is driven,
Like the baggage that moves
Over well-mended highways
After the train of a prince.

But who stands there apart?
In ...

Heart-sick of his journey was the Wanderer;
Footsore and sad was he;
And a Witch who long had lurked by the wayside,
Looked out of sorcery.

'Lift up your eyes, you lonely Wanderer,'
She peeped from her casement small;
'Here's shelter and quiet to give you rest, young man,
And apples for thirst withal.'

And he looked up out of his sad reverie,
And saw all the woods in green,
With birds that flitted feathered in the dappling,
The jewel-bright leaves between.

And he lifted up his face towards her lattice,
And there, alluring-wise,
Slanting through the silence of the long past,
Dwelt the still green Witch's eyes.

And vaguely from the hiding-place of memory
Voices seemed to cry;
'What is the darkness of one brief life-time
To ...

'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours.
Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.

'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
But the heritors?--

Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.

'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'

When I heard the Earth-song
...

Before the statue of a giant Hun,
There stood a dwarf, misshapen and uncouth.
His lifted eyes seemed asking:    'Why, in sooth,
Was I not fashioned like this mighty one?
Would God show favour to an older son
    Like earthly kings, and beggar without ruth
    Another, who sinned only by his youth?
Why should two lives in such divergence run?'

Strange, as he gazed, that from a vanished past
    No memories revived of war and strife,
    Of misused prowess, and of broken law.
That old Hun's spirit, in the dwarf re-cast,
    Lived out the sequence of an earthly life.
    IT WAS THE STATUE OF HIMSELF HE SAW!

O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
“Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!”
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,
O welcome guest, though unexpected here:
Who bidst me honour with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.
I will obey, not willingly alone,
But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my re...

Senlin, alone before us, played a music.
Was it himself he played? . . . We sat and listened,
Perplexed and pleased and tired.
‘Listen!’ he said, ‘and you will learn a secret,
Though it is not the secret you desired.
I have not found a meaning that will praise you!
Out of the heart of silence comes this music,
Quietly speaks and dies.
Look! there is one white star above black houses!
And a tiny man who climbs toward the skies!
Where does he walk to? What does he leave behind him?
What was his foolish name?
What did he stop to say, before he left you
As simply as he came?
“Death?” did it sound like, “love and god, and laughter,
Sunlight, and work, and pain . . .?”
No, it appears to me that these were symbols
Of simple truths he found no way to explain.