But whence came they who for the Saviour Lord
Have long borne witness as the Scriptures teach?
Ages ere Valdo raised his voice to preach
In Gallic ears the unadulterate Word,
Their fugitive Progenitors explored
Subalpine vales, in quest of safe retreats
Where that pure Church survives, though summer heats
Open a passage to the Romish sword,
Far as it dares to follow. Herbs self-sown,
And fruitage gathered from the chestnut wood,
Nourish the sufferers then; and mists, that brood
O'er chasms with new-fallen obstacles bestrown,
Protect them; and the eternal snow that daunts
Aliens, is God's good winter for their haunts.

Through heat and cold, and shower and sun,
Still onward cheerly driving!
There's life alone in duty done,
And rest alone in striving.
But see! the day is closing cool,
The woods are dim before us;
The white fog of the wayside pool
Is creeping slowly o'er us.
The night is falling, comrades mine,
Our footsore beasts are weary,
And through yon elms the tavern sign
Looks out upon us cheery.
The landlord beckons from his door,
His beechen fire is glowing;
These ample barns, with feed in store,
Are filled to overflowing.
From many a valley frowned across
By brows of rugged mountains;
From hillsides where, through spongy moss,
Gush out the river fountains;
From quiet farm-fields, green and low,
And bright with blooming clover;
From vales...

    Tramp, tramp, the grim road, the road from Mons to Wipers
    (I've 'ammered out this ditty with me bruised and bleedin' feet);
    Tramp, tramp, the dim road - we didn't 'ave no pipers,
    And bellies that was 'oller was the drums we 'ad to beat.
    Tramp, tramp, the bad road, the bits o' kiddies cryin' there,
    The fell birds a-flyin' there, the 'ouses all aflame;
    Tramp, tramp, the sad road, the pals I left a-lyin' there,
    Red there, and dead there. . . . Oh blimy, it's a shame!

A-singin' "'Oo's Yer Lady Friend?" we started out from 'Arver,
A-singin' till our froats was dry - we didn't care a 'ang;
The Frenchies 'ow they lined the way, and slung us their palaver,
And all we knowed to arnser was the one word "vang";
They gave us booze and caporal, and...

Found Solitary Among the Hills.


I.

O pansy-violet,
With early April wet,
How frail and pure you look
Lost in this glow-worm nook
Of heaven-holding hills:
Down which the hurrying rills
Fling scrolls of melodies:
O'er which the birds and bees
Weave gossamers of song,
Invisible, but strong:
Sweet music webs they spin
To snare the spirit in.


II.

O pansy-violet,
Unto your face I set
My lips, and - do you speak?
Or is it but some freak
Of fancy, love imparts
Through you unto the heart's
Desire? whispering low
A secret none may know,
But such as sit and dream
By forest-side and stream.


III.

O pansy-violet,
O darling floweret,
Hued like the timid gem
...

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,
The noontides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.

I view the evening bonfires of the sun
On hills where morning rains have hissed;
The eyeless countenance of the mist
Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.

I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
The cauldrons of the sea in storm,
Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm,
And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
The coming of eccentric orbs;
To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
Assemblies meet, and throb,...

'Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,
When yellow begins to show in the leaf,
That your old gamut changed its chime
From those true tones of span so brief! -
That met my beats of joy, of grief,
As rhyme meets rhyme.

So sank I from my high sublime!
We faced but chancewise after that,
And never I knew or guessed my crime. . .
Yes; 'twas the date or nigh thereat -
Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat
And cobweb-time.

She came from the East a fair, young bride,
    With a light and a bounding heart,
To find in the distant West a home
    With her husband to make a start.

He builded his cabin far away,
    Where the prairie flower bloomed wild;
Her love made lighter all his toil,
    And joy and hope around him smiled.

She plied her hands to life's homely tasks,
    And helped to build his fortunes up;
While joy and grief, like bitter and sweet,
    Were mingled and mixed in her cup.

He sowed in his fields of golden grain,
    All the strength of his manly prime;
Nor music of birds, nor brooks, nor bees,
    Was as sweet as the dollar's chime.

She toiled and waited through weary years
    For the fortune that came at length;
But toil and car...

Lines addressed to the daughter of Richard Dalton Williams.



Child of the heart of a child of sweetest song!
The poet's blood flows through thy fresh pure veins;
Dost ever hear faint echoes float along
Thy days and dreams of thy dead father's strains?
        Dost ever hear,
    In mournful times,
        With inner ear,
The strange sweet cadences of thy father's rhymes?

Child of a child of art, which Heaven doth give
To few, to very few as unto him!
His songs are wandering o'er the world, but live
In his child's heart, in some place lone and dim;
    And nights and days
        With vestal's eyes
        And soundless sighs
Thou keepest watch above thy father's lays.

Child of a dreamer of dreams all unfulfilled --
(And t...

On the grey rock of Cashel the mind’s eye
Has called up the cold spirits that are born
When the old moon is vanished from the sky
And the new still hides her horn.

Under blank eyes and fingers never still
The particular is pounded till it is man,
When had I my own will?
Oh, not since life began.

Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent
By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs of wood,
Themselves obedient,
Knowing not evil and good;

Obedient to some hidden magical breath.
They do not even feel, so abstract are they,
So dead beyond our death,
Triumph that we obey.

II

On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw
A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw,
A Buddha, hand at rest,
Hand lifted up that blest;

    We paused to say good-by,
    As we thought for a little while,
    Alone in the car, in the corner
    Around the turn of the aisle.

    A quiver came in your voice,
    Your eyes were sorrowful too;
    'Twas over - I strode to the doorway,
    Then turned to wave an adieu.

    But you had not come from the corner,
    And though I had gone so far,
    I retraced, and faced you coming
    Into the aisle of the car.

    You stopped as one who was caught
    In an evil mood by surprise. -
    I want to forget, I am trying
    To forget the look in your eyes.

    Your face was blank and cold,
    Like Lot's wife turned to salt.
    I suddenly trapped and discovered
    Your soul in a hidden fault.

    Your e...

for J.G.F.

I'll strike you without rage or hate
The way a butcher strikes his block,
The way that Moses smote the rock!
So that your eyes may irrigate

My dry Sahara, I'll allow
The tears to flow of your distress.
Desire, that hope embellishes,
Will swim along the overflow

As ships set out for voyaging,
And like a drum that beats the charge
In my infatuated heart
The echoes of your sobs will ring!

But am I not a false accord
Within the holy symphony,
Thanks to voracious Irony
Who gnaws on me and shakes me hard?

She's in my voice, in all I do!
Her poison flows in all my veins!
I am the looking-glass of pain
Where she regards herself, the shrew!

I am the wound, and rapier!
I am the cheek, I am the ...

I.

The mellow smell of hollyhocks
And marigolds and pinks and phlox
Blends with the homely garden scents
Of onions, silvering into rods;
Of peppers, scarlet with their pods;
And (rose of all the esculents)
Of broad plebeian cabbages,
Breathing content and corpulent ease.

II.

The buzz of wasp and fly makes hot
The spaces of the garden-plot;
And from the orchard, where the fruit
Ripens and rounds, or, loosed with heat,
Rolls, hornet-clung, before the feet,
One hears the veery's golden flute,
That mixes with the sleepy hum
Of bees that drowsily go and come.

III.

The podded musk of gourd and vine
Embower a gate of roughest pine,
That leads into a wood where day
Sits, leaning o'er a forest pool,
Watch...

The Lovers took within this ancient grove
Their last embrace; beside those crystal springs
The Hermit saw the Angel spread his wings
For instant flight; the Sage in yon alcove
Sate musing; on that hill the Bard would rove,
Not mute, where now the linnet only sings:
Thus everywhere to truth Tradition clings,
Or Fancy localises Powers we love.
Were only History licensed to take note
Of things gone by, her meagre monuments
Would ill suffice for persons and events:
There is an ampler page for man to quote,
A readier book of manifold contents,
Studied alike in palace and in cot.

When I was but a little boy
Who hunted in the wood
To scare or mangle or destroy
A freakish elemental joy
That tasted life and found it good

I hardly heard the awful ban
That mutters round the free,
But followed where the waters ran,
And wondered when the pipe of Pan
Shook silence with its minstrelsy.

Where sun-spray glittered on my limbs
I danced, and laughed, and trilled
My happy incoherent hymns,
Sped only by the whirling whims
With which my eager heart was filled.

The wind was glad and so was I;
My soul lay open wide,
Reflecting all the starry sky;
The swallows called to me to fly;
I dreamed of how the fishes glide.

But while my errant feet were set
On mosses cool and sweet,
The great grey phantoms broo...

I thought, before my sunlit twentieth year,
That I knew Love, and Death that goes with it;
And my young broken heart in little songs,
Dew-like, I poured, and waited for my end
Wildly - and waited - being then nineteen.
I walked a little longer on my way,
Alive, 'gainst expectation and desire,
And, being then past twenty, I beheld
The face of all the faces of the world
Dewily opening on its stem for me.
Ah! so it seemed, and, each succeeding year,
Thus hath some woman blossom of the divine
Flowered in my path, and made a frail delay
In my true journey - to my home in thee.

October 27, 1911.

Silent I sat, dejected, and alone,
Making in thought the public woes my own,
When, first, arose the image in my breast
Of England's sufferings by that scourge, the pest.[3]
How death, his fun'ral torch and scythe in hand,
Ent'ring the lordliest mansions of the land,
Has laid the gem-illumin'd palace low,
And level'd tribes of Nobles at a blow.
I, next, deplor'd the famed fraternal pair[4]
Too soon to ashes turn'd and empty air,    
The Heroes next, whom snatch'd into the skies
All Belgia saw, and follow'd with her sighs;
But Thee far most I mourn'd, regretted most,
Winton's chief shepherd and her worthiest boast;
Pour'd out in tears I thus complaining said--
Death, next in pow'r to Him who rules the Dead!
Is't not enough that all the wood...

O sweet To-morrow! -
After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray -
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon -
Anon!

Doff the black token,
Don the red shoon,
Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
To-morrow shines soon -
Shines soon!

A little book, this grim November day,
Wherein, O tired heart, to creep away, -
    Come drink this wine and wear this fadeless rose,
    Nor heed the world, nor what the world shall say.

A thousand gardens - yet to-day there blows
In all their wintry walks no single rose,
    But here with Omar you shall find the Spring
    That fears no Autumn and eternal glows.

So on the song-soft petals of his rhyme
Pillow your head, as in some golden clime,
    And let the beauty of eternity
Smooth from your brow the little frets of time.