Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

   This statue of Liberty, busy man,      Here erect in the city square,I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,         Strangely wistful,         And half tristful,      Have turned her from foul to fair;   With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,      Bringing her out of the grimeThat has smeared her during the smokes of winter         With such glumness         In her dumbness,      And aged her before her time.   You have washed her down with motherly care —      Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,To the very hem of the robes that drape her —         All expertly         And alertly,      Till a long stream, black with soot,   Flows over the pavement to the road,      And her shape looms pure as snow:I read you are hired by the City guardians —         May be yearly,         Or once merely —      To treat the statues so?   “Oh, I’m not hired by the Councilmen      To cleanse the statues here.I do this one as a self-willed duty,         Not as paid to,         Or at all made to,      But because the doing is dear.”   Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!      Liberty’s knight divine.What you have done would have been my doing,         Yea, most verily,         Well, and thoroughly,      Had but your courage been mine!   “Oh I care not for Liberty’s mould,      Liberty charms not me;What’s Freedom but an idler’s vision,         Vain, pernicious,         Often vicious,      Of things that cannot be!   “Memory it is that brings me to this —      Of a daughter – my one sweet own.She grew a famous carver’s model,         One of the fairest         And of the rarest: —      She sat for the figure as shown.   “But alas, she died in this distant place      Before I was warned to betakeMyself to her side!.. And in love of my darling,         In love of the fame of her,         And the good name of her,      I do this for her sake.”   Answer I gave not.  Of that form      The carver was I at his side;His child, my model, held so saintly,         Grand in feature,         Gross in nature,      In the dens of vice had died.

THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE

(Lover’s Ditty)

I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,   Of the periwinks’ rockwork lair,Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red —   And the something else seen there.Between the blooms where the sod basked bright,   By the bobbing fuchsia trees,Was another and yet more eyesome sight —   The sight that richened these.I shall seek those beauties in the spring,   When the days are fit and fair,But only as foils to the one more thing   That also will flower there!

THE CHANGE

   Out of the past there rises a week —      Who shall read the years O! —   Out of the past there rises a week      Enringed with a purple zone.   Out of the past there rises a week   When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.   In that week there was heard a singing —      Who shall spell the years, the years! —   In that week there was heard a singing,      And the white owl wondered why.   In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,   And forth from the casement were candles flingingRadiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.   Could that song have a mocking note? —      Who shall unroll the years O! —   Could that song have a mocking note      To the white owl’s sense as it fell?   Could that song have a mocking note   As it trilled out warm from the singer’s throat,And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?   In a tedious trampling crowd yet later —      Who shall bare the years, the years! —   In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,      When silvery singings were dumb;   In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,   Mid murks of night I stood to await her,And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come.   She said with a travel-tired smile —      Who shall lift the years O! —   She said with a travel-tired smile,      Half scared by scene so strange;   She said, outworn by mile on mile,   The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,“O Love, I am here; I am with you!”.. Ah, that there should have come a change!   O the doom by someone spoken —      Who shall unseal the years, the years! —   O the doom that gave no token,      When nothing of bale saw we:   O the doom by someone spoken,   O the heart by someone broken,The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.

Jan. – Feb. 1913.

SITTING ON THE BRIDGE

(Echo of an old song)

   Sitting on the bridge   Past the barracks, town and ridge,At once the spirit seized usTo sing a song that pleased us —As “The Fifth” were much in rumour;It was “Whilst I’m in the humour,   Take me, Paddy, will you now?”   And a lancer soon drew nigh,   And his Royal Irish eye   Said, “Willing, faith, am I,O, to take you anyhow, dears,   To take you anyhow.”   But, lo! – dad walking by,   Cried, “What, you lightheels!  Fie!   Is this the way you roam   And mock the sunset gleam?”   And he marched us straightway home,Though we said, “We are only, daddy,Singing, ‘Will you take me, Paddy?’”   – Well, we never saw from then   If we sang there anywhen,   The soldier dear again,Except at night in dream-time,   Except at night in dream.Perhaps that soldier’s fighting   In a land that’s far away,Or he may be idly plighting   Some foreign hussy gay;Or perhaps his bones are whiting   In the wind to their decay!.   Ah! – does he mind him how   The girls he saw that dayOn the bridge, were sitting singingAt the time of curfew-ringing,“Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?   Paddy, will you now?”

Grey’s Bridge.

THE YOUNG CHURCHWARDEN

When he lit the candles there,And the light fell on his hand,And it trembled as he scannedHer and me, his vanquished airHinted that his dream was done,And I saw he had begun   To understand.When Love’s viol was unstrung,Sore I wished the hand that shookHad been mine that shared her bookWhile that evening hymn was sung,His the victor’s, as he litCandles where he had bidden us sit   With vanquished look.Now her dust lies listless there,His afar from tending hand,What avails the victory scanned?Does he smile from upper air:“Ah, my friend, your dream is done;And ’tis you who have begun   To understand!

“I TRAVEL AS A PHANTOM NOW”

I travel as a phantom now,For people do not wish to seeIn flesh and blood so bare a bough   As Nature makes of me.And thus I visit bodilessStrange gloomy households often at odds,And wonder if Man’s consciousness   Was a mistake of God’s.And next I meet you, and I pause,And think that if mistake it were,As some have said, O then it was   One that I well can bear!

1915.

LINES

TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART’S E-FLAT SYMPHONY

      Show me again the time      When in the Junetide’s prime   We flew by meads and mountains northerly! —Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness,      Love lures life on.      Show me again the day      When from the sandy bay   We looked together upon the pestered sea! —Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking,      Love lures life on.      Show me again the hour      When by the pinnacled tower   We eyed each other and feared futurity! —Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings,      Love lures life on.      Show me again just this:      The moment of that kiss   Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! —Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,      Love lures life on.

Begun November 1898.

“IN THE SEVENTIES”

“Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego.” – JobIn the seventies I was bearing in my breast,         Penned tight,Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic lightOn the worktimes and the soundless hours of restIn the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast         Penned tight.In the seventies when my neighbours – even my friend —         Saw me pass,Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, “Alas,For his onward years and name unless he mend!”In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend      Saw me pass.In the seventies those who met me did not know      Of the visionThat immuned me from the chillings of mis-prisionAnd the damps that choked my goings to and froIn the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know      Of the vision.In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,      Locked in me,Though as delicate as lamp-worm’s lucency;Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy itIn the seventies! – could not darken or destroy it,      Locked in me.

THE PEDIGREE

I         I bent in the deep of night      Over a pedigree the chronicler gave      As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed,The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light         Of the moon in its old age:And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed   Like a drifting dolphin’s eye seen through a lapping wave.II         So, scanning my sire-sown tree,      And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that,         With offspring mapped below in lineage,         Till the tangles troubled me,The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face   Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage

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