Loss

In the youth of the year, when the birds were building,
    When the green was showing on tree and hedge,
And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding
    The world from zenith to outermost edge,
My soul grew sad and longingly lonely!
    I sighed for the season of sun and rose,
And I said, "In the Summer and that time only
    Lies sweet contentment and blest repose."

With bee and bird for her maids of honour
    Came Princess Summer in robes of green.
And the King of day smiled down upon her
    And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen.
Fruit of their union and true love's pledges,
    Beautiful roses bloomed day by day,
And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges
    Like royal children in sportive play.

My restless soul for a little sea...

    Perhaps the sky once was shadows,
    the moon lisped 'mongst April's song.
    Now, those warm lips ease
    departing sorrow
    like pressed flowers
    emptied from hallowed ground.

Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood;
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors
I come by nightly custom to this room,
And even on sultry afternoons I come
Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.

Empty, unless for a huge bed of state
Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry
(A puppet theatre where malignant fancy
Peoples the wings with fear). At my right hand
A ravelled bell-pull hangs in readiness
To summon me from attic glooms above
Service of elder ghosts; here at my left
A sullen pier-glass cracked from side to side
Scorns to present the face as do new mirrors
With a lying flush, but shows it melancholy
And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.<...

Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,
To find that the utmost reward
Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white
And is not shattered into dyes,
The light forever is morning light;
The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angle hosts with freshness go,
And seek with laughter what to brave;
And binding all is the hushed snow
Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
In streams ...

Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,
Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.
And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold
The guarded heart against excess of rain.
Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays
With paints and clays,
And strings in many keys -
Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood
Of sun-shine where there is no breeze.
So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood,
Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite -
Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.
From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought
From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair,
Eyes, lips and hands and voice,
As if the stored up thought
From the earth sphere
Had given down the being of your choice
Conjured by the dream long sought.

  ...

All through the summer night, down the long lane in flower,
            The moon-white lane,
All through the summer night,--dim as a shower,
            Glimmer and fade the Twain:
Over the cricket hosts, throbbing the hour by hour,
            Young voices bloom and wane.

Down the long lane they go, and past one window, pale
            With visions silver-blurred;
Stirring the heart that waits,--the eyes that fail
            After a spring deferred.
Query, and hush, and Ah!--dim through a moon-lit veil,
            The same one word.

Down the long lane, entwined with all the fragrance there;
            The lane in flower somehow
With youth, and plighted hands, and star-strewn air,
            And muted 'Thee' and 'Thou':--
All the wild bloom an...

    SCENE: A moonlit glade on a summer midnight


    THE POET

    What consummation of the toiling moon
    O'ercomes the midnight blue with violet,
    Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green,
    Edgèd and strong by day, is dull and faint
    Beneath the moon's all-dominating mood,
    That in this absence of the impassioned sun,
    Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color
    The live and vivid aspect of the world -
    Subdued as with the great expectancy
    Which blurs beginning features of a dream,
    Things and events lost 'neath an omening
    Of central and oppressive bulk to come.
    Here were the theatre of a miracle,
    If such, within a world long alienate
    From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic yea...

Trees and the menace of night;
Then a long, lonely, leaden mere
Backed by a desolate fell
As by a spectral battlement; and then,
Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,
A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky,
So beggared, so incredibly bereft
Of starlight and the song of racing worlds
It might have bellied down upon the Void
Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.

Hist!    In the trees fulfilled of night
(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)
Is it the hurry of the rain?
Or the noise of a drive of the Dead
Streaming before the irresistible Will
Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land
Between their place and ours?

Like the forgetfulness
Of the work-a-day world made visible,
A mist falls from the melancholy sky:

That I were Keats! And with a golden pen
Could for all time preserve these golden days
In rich and glowing verse, for poorer men,
Who felt their wonder, but could only gaze
With silent joy upon sweet Autumn's face,
And not record in any wise its grace!
Alas! But I am even dumb as they -
I cannot bid the fleeting hours stay,
Nor chain one moment on a page's space.

That I were Grieg! Then, with a haunting air
Of murmurs soft, and swelling, grand refrains
Would I express my love of Autumn fair
With all its wealth of harvest, and warm rains:
And with fantastic melodies inspire
A memory of each mad sunset's fire
In which the day goes slowly to its death
As through the fragrant woods dim Evening's breath
Doth soothe to sleep the drowsy songbirds' choir.

The rose to the wind has yielded: all its leaves
Lie strewn on the graveyard grass, and all their light
And colour and fragrance leave our sense and sight
Bereft as a man whom bitter time bereaves
Of blossom at once and hope of garnered sheaves,
Of April at once and August. Day to night
Calls wailing, and life to death, and depth to height,
And soul upon soul of man that hears and grieves.
Who knows, though he see the snow-cold blossom shed,
If haply the heart that burned within the rose,
The spirit in sense, the life of life be dead?
If haply the wind that slays with storming snows
Be one with the wind that quickens? Bow thine head,
O Sorrow, and commune with thine heart: who knows?

Oh, gaily sings the bird! and the wattle-boughs are stirr’d
And rustled by the scented breath of spring;
Oh, the dreary wistful longing! Oh, the faces that are thronging!
Oh, the voices that are vaguely whispering!

Oh, tell me, father mine, ere the good ship cross’d the brine,
On the gangway one mute hand-grip we exchang’d;
Do you, past the grave, employ, for your stubborn, reckless boy,
Those petitions that in life were ne’er estranged?

Oh, tell me, sister dear, parting word and parting tear
Never pass’d between us; let me bear the blame,
Are you living, girl, or dead? bitter tears since then I’ve shed
For the lips that lisp’d with mine a mother’s name.

Oh, tell me, ancient friend, ever ready to defend,
In our boyhood, at the base of life’s long hill,

        Oh, you who read some song that I have sung,
        What know you of the soul from whence it sprung?

        Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud
        His secret thought unto the listening crowd?

        Go take the murmuring sea-shell from the shore:
        You have its shape, its color and no more.

        It tells not one of those vast mysteries
        That lie beneath the surface of the seas.

        Our songs are shells, cast out by-waves of thought;
        Here, take them at your pleasure; but think not

        You've seen beneath the surface of the waves,
        Where lie our shipwrecks and our coral caves.

Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

‘The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died, you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .’

He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors...

Talk not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.

On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines
Lay their long shafts of shadow: the small rill,
Singing a pleasant song of summer still,
A line of silver, down the hill-slope shines.

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum of bees,
In the thin grass the crickets pipe no more;
But still the squirrel hoards his winter store,
And drops his nut-shells from the shag-bark trees.

Softly the dark green hemlocks whisper: high
Above, the spires of yellowing larches show,
Where the woodpecker and home-loving crow
And jay and nut-hatch winter’s threat defy.

O gracious beauty, ever new a...

    Life ne'er exulted in so rich a prize
    As Burnet, lovely from her native skies;
    Nor envious death so triumph'd in a blow,
    As that which laid th' accomplish'd Burnet low.

    Thy form and mind, sweet maid, can I forget?
    In richest ore the brightest jewel set!
    In thee, high Heaven above was truest shown,
    As by his noblest work, the Godhead best is known.

    In vain ye flaunt in summer's pride, ye groves;
        Thou crystal streamlet with thy flowery shore,
    Ye woodland choir that chant your idle loves,
        Ye cease to charm, Eliza is no more!

    Ye heathy wastes, immix'd with reedy fens;
        Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd;
    Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens,
        To you I fly, ...

Why do not all fresh maids appear
To work love's sampler only here,
Where spring-time smiles throughout the year?
Are not here rosebuds, pinks, all flowers
Nature begets by th' sun and showers,
Met in one hearse-cloth to o'erspread
The body of the under-dead?
Phil, the late dead, the late dead dear,
O! may no eye distil a tear
For you once lost, who weep not here!
Had Lesbia, too-too kind, but known
This sparrow, she had scorn'd her own:
And for this dead which under lies
Wept out her heart, as well as eyes.
But, endless peace, sit here and keep
My Phil the time he has to sleep;
And thousand virgins come and weep
To make these flowery carpets show
Fresh as their blood, and ever grow,
Till passengers shall spend their doom:
Not Virgil's gnat...

When these eyes, long dimmed with weeping,
In the silent dust are sleeping;
When above my narrow bed
The breeze shall wave the thistle's head--
                    Thou wilt think of me, love!

When the queen of beams and showers
Comes to dress the earth with flowers;
When the days are long and bright,
And the moon shines all the night--
                    Thou wilt think of me, love!

When the tender corn is springing,
And the merry thrush is singing;
When the swallows come and go,
On light wings flitting to and fro--
                    Thou wilt think of me, love!

When laughing childhood learns by rote
The cuckoo's oft-repeated note;
When the meads are fresh and green,
And the hawthorn buds are seen--
                    Thou...

'Upstairs in the large closet, child,
    This side the blue-room door,
Is an old Bible, bound in leather,
    Standing upon the floor;

'Go with this taper, bring it me;
    Carry it on your arm;
It is the book on many a sea
    Hath stilled the waves' alarm.'

Late the hour, dark the night,
    The house is solitary,
Feeble is a taper's light
    To light poor Ann to see.

Her eyes are yet with visions bright
    Of sylph and river, flower and fay,
Now through a narrow corridor
    She takes her lonely way.

Vast shadows on the heedless walls
    Gigantic loom, stoop low:
Each little hasty footfall calls
    Hollowly to and fro.

In the dim solitude her heart
    Remembers tearlessly
White winters when h...