Identity

Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak,
Lives not within the humor of the eye; -
Not being but an outward phantasy,
That skims the surface of a tinted cheek, -
Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,
As if the rose made summer, - and so lie
Amongst the perishable things that die,
Unlike the love which I would give and seek:
Whose health is of no hue - to feel decay
With cheeks' decay, that have a rosy prime.
Love is its own great loveliness alway,
And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

Blessings there are of cradle and of clan,
Blessings that fall of priests' and princes' hands;
But never blessing full of lives and lands,
Broad as the blessing of a lonely man.

Though that old king fell from his primal throne,
And ate among the cattle, yet this pride
Had found him in the deepest grass, and cried
An 'Ecce Homo' with the trumpets blown.

And no mad tyrant, with almighty ban,
Who in strong madness dreams himself divine,
But hears through fumes of flattery and of wine
The thunder of this blessing name him man.

Let all earth rot past saints' and seraphs' plea,
Yet shall a Voice cry through its last lost war,
'This is the world, this red wreck of a star,
That a man blessed beneath an alder-tree.'

        We were driving home from the "Patriarchs'"
            Molly Lefévre and I, you know;
        The white flakes fluttered about our lamps;
            Our wheels were hushed in the sleeping snow.

        Her white arms nestled amid her furs;
            Her hands half-held, with languid grace,
        Her fading roses; fair to see
            Was the dreamy look in her sweet, young face.

        I watched her, saying never a word,
            For I would not waken those dreaming eyes.
        The breath of the roses filled the air,
            And my thoughts were many, and far from wise.

        At last I said to her, bending near,
            "Ah, Molly Lefévre, how sweet 'twould be,
        To ride on dreaming, all our lives,
          ...

Far as the eye can see the land is grey,
And desolation sits among the stones
Looking on ruin who, from rocks like bones,
Stares with a dead face at the dying day.
Mounds, where the barberry and bay hold sway,
Show where homes rose once; where the village crones
Gossiped, and man, with many sighs and groans,
Laboured and loved and went its daily way.
Only the crow now, like a hag returned,
Croaks on the common that its hoarse voice mocks.
Meseems that here the sorrow of the earth
Has lost herself, and, with the past concerned,
Sits with the ghosts of dreams that haunt these rocks,
And old despairs to which man's soul gave birth.

When to that house I came which, long ago,
My heart had builded of its joy and woe,
Upon its threshold, lo! I paused again,
Dreading to enter; fearing to behold
The place wherein my Love had lived of old,
And where my other self lay dead and slain.

I feared to see some shape, some Hope once dear,
Behind the arras dead; some face of Fear,
With eyes accusing, that would sear my soul,
Taking away my manhood and my strength
With heartbreak memories.... And yet, at length,
Again I stood within that house of dole.

Sombre and beautiful with stately things
The long hall lay; and by the stairs the wings
Of Life and Love rose marble and unmarred:
And all the walls, hung grave with tapestry,
Gesticulated sorrow; gazed at me,
Strange speculation in their ...

I.

Mourning on earth, as when dark hours descend,
Wide-winged with plagues, from heaven; when hope and mirth
Wane, and no lips rebuke or reprehend
Mourning on earth.

The soul wherein her songs of death and birth,
Darkness and light, were wont to sound and blend,
Now silent, leaves the whole world less in worth.

Winds that make moan and triumph, skies that bend,
Thunders, and sound of tides in gulf and firth,
Spake through his spirit of speech, whose death should send
Mourning on earth.

II.

The world's great heart, whence all things strange and rare
Take form and sound, that each inseparate part
May bear its burden in all tuned thoughts that share
The world's great heart

The fountain forces, whence like steeds that start...

Happy are they and charmed in life
Who through long wars arrive unscarred
At peace. To such the wreath be given,
If they unfalteringly have striven--
In honor, as in limb, unmarred.
Let cheerful praise be rife,
And let them live their years at ease,
Musing on brothers who victorious died--
Loved mates whose memory shall ever please.

And yet mischance is honorable too--
Seeming defeat in conflict justified
Whose end to closing eyes is hid from view.
The will, that never can relent--
The aim, survivor of the bafflement,
Make this memorial due.

I would have taken Golden Stars from the sky for your necklace,
I would have shaken rose-leaves for your rest from all the rose-trees.

But you had no need; the short sweet grass sufficed for your slumber,
And you took no heed of such trifles as gold or a necklace.

There is an hour, at twilight, too heavy with memory.
There is a flower that I fear, for your hair had its fragrance.

I would have squandered Youth for you, and its hope and its promise,
Before you wandered, careless, away from my useless passion.

But what is the use of my speech, since I know of no words to recall you?
I am praying that Time may teach, you, your Cruelty, me, Forgetfulness.

Autumn is dark on the mountains;
grey mist rests on the hills. The
whirlwind is heard on the heath. Dark
rolls the river through the narrow plain.
A tree stands alone on the hill, and
marks the grave of Connal. The leaves
whirl round with the wind, and strew
the grave of the dead. At times are
seen here the ghosts of the deceased,
when the musing hunter alone stalks
slowly over the heath.

Who can reach the source of thy
race, O Connal? and who recount thy
Fathers? Thy family grew like an oak
on the mountain, which meeteth the
wind with its lofty head. But now it
is torn from the earth. Who shall supply
the place of Connal?

Here was the din of arms; and
here the groans of the dying. Mournful
are the wars of Fingal! O Connal!

Dear Governor, if my skiff might brave
The winds that lift the ocean wave,
The mountain stream that loops and swerves
Through my broad meadow's channelled curves
Should waft me on from bound to bound
To where the River weds the Sound,
The Sound should give me to the Sea,
That to the Bay, the Bay to thee.

It may not be; too long the track
To follow down or struggle back.
The sun has set on fair Naushon
Long ere my western blaze is gone;
The ocean disk is rolling dark
In shadows round your swinging bark,
While yet the yellow sunset fills
The stream that scarfs my spruce-clad hills;
The day-star wakes your island deer
Long ere my barnyard chanticleer;
Your mists are soaring in the blue
While mine are sparks of glittering dew.

It ma...

(C. F. Rhodes, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902)

When that great Kings return to clay,
Or Emperors in their pride,
Grief of a day shall fill a day,
Because its creature died.
But we, we reckon not with those
Whom the mere Fates ordain,
This Power that wrought on us and goes
Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by vision led
Beyond our guess or reach,
The travail of his spirit bred
Cities in place of speech.
So huge the all-mastering thought that drove,
So brief the term allowed,
Nations, not words, he linked to prove
His faith before the crowd.

It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won,
The granite of the ancient North,
Great spaces washed with sun.

There shall he patient take his seat<...

When Death has crossed my name from out the roll
Of dreaming children serving in this War;
And with these earthly eyes I gaze no more
Upon sweet England's grace - perhaps my soul
Will visit streets down which I used to stroll
At sunset-charmèd dusks, when London's roar
Like ebbing surf on some Atlantic shore
Would trance the ear. Then may I hear no toll

Of heavy bells to burden all the air
With tuneless grief: for happy will I be! -
What place on earth could ever be more fair
Than God's own presence? - Mourn not then for me,
Nor write, I pray, "He gave" - upon my clod -
"His life to England," but "his soul to God."

Isle of Sheppey, 1917.

Love used to carry a bow, you know,
But now he carries a taper;
It is either a length of wax aglow,
Or a twist of lighted paper.

I pondered a little about the scamp,
And then I decided to follow
His wandering journey to field and camp,
Up hill, down dale or hollow.

I dogged the rollicking, gay, young blade
In every species of weather;
Till, leading me straight to the home of a maid
He left us there together.

And then I saw it, oh, sweet surprise,
The taper it set a-burning
The love-light brimming my lady's eyes,
And my heart with the fire of yearning.

When Freedom, on her natal day,
Within her war-rocked cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptized her infant brow in blood;
And, through the storm which round her swept,
Their constant ward and watching kept.
Then, where our quiet herds repose,
The roar of baleful battle rose,
And brethren of a common tongue
To mortal strife as tigers sprung,
And every gift on Freedom's shrine
Was man for beast, and blood for wine!
Our fathers to their graves have gone;
Their strife is past, their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place;
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.
So let it be. In God's own might
We gird us for the coming fight,
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours
In con...

Above the skirts of yellow clouds,
The god-like Sun, arrayed
In blinding splendour, swiftly rose,
And looked athwart the glade;
The sleepy dingo watched him break
The bonds that curbed his flight;
And from his golden tresses shake
The fading gems of Night!
And wild goburras laughed aloud
Their merry morning songs,
As Echo answered in the depths
With a thousand thousand tongues;
The gully-depths where many a vine
Of ancient growth had crept,
To cluster round the hoary pine,
Where scanty mosses wept.

Huge stones, and damp and broken crags,
In wild chaotic heap,
Were lying at the barren base
Of the ferny hillside steep;
Between those fragments hollows lay,
Upfilled with fruitful ground,
Where many a modest floweret grew,
T...

    How desert islands
    in a cartoonist's imagination
    invariably are flat,
    palm-studded
    peopled by a solitary, abject
    yet humorous man.

    In real time, no delight;
    such islets
    are razor hot,
    rock sharp
    treeless, barren
    slabs ... examples
    of art shirking, but
    not shrinking life.

    Three days growth of beard,
    bottle with note on the incoming tide
    comic survivor swimming up
    (tramp steamer in the distance),
    shirts waved in unison
    predictable disappointment et al,
    glum hands to face
    then the inevitable credulity
    splitting retort
    amid plaything for the crabs.

It is not to be thought of that the Flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters, unwithstood,"
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,
That this most famous Stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible Knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

The hand that fashioned me, tuned my ear
    To chord with the major key,
In the darkest moments of life I hear
Strains of courage, and hope, and cheer
    From choirs that I cannot see.
And the music of life seems so inspired
That it will not let me grow sad or tired.

Yet through and under the major strain,
    I hear with the passing of years,
The mournful minor measure of pain,
Of souls that struggle and toil in vain
    For a goal that never nears.
And the sorrowful cadence of good gone wrong,
Breaks more and more into earth's glad song.

And oft in the dark of the night I wake
    And think of sorrowing lives,
And I long to comfort the hearts that ache,
To sweeten the cup that is bitter to take,
    And to strengthen each soul that st...