Poems. Volume 2

THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD

Carols nature, counsel men.Different notes as rook from wrenHear we when our steps begin,And the choice is cast within,Where a robber raven’s taleUrges passion’s nightingale.Hark to the three.  Chimed they in one,Life were music of the sun.Liquid first, and then the caw,Then the cry that knows not law.IAs the birds do, so do we,Bill our mate, and choose our tree.Swift to building work addressed,Any straw will help a nest.Mates are warm, and this is truth,Glad the young that come of youth.They have bloom i’ the blood and sapChilling at no thunder-clap.Man and woman on the thornTrust not Earth, and have her scorn.They who in her lead confide,Wither me if they spread not wide!Look for aid to little things,You will get them quick as wings,Thick as feathers; would you feed,Take the leap that springs the need.IIContemplate the rutted road:Life is both a lure and goad.Each to hold in measure just,Trample appetite to dust.Mark the fool and wanton spin:Keep to harness as a skin.Ere you follow nature’s lead,Of her powers in you have heed;Else a shiverer you will findYou have challenged humankind.Mates are chosen marketwise:Coolest bargainer best buys.Leap not, nor let leap the heart:Trot your track, and drag your cart.So your end may be in wool,Honoured, and with manger full.IIIO the rosy light! it fleets,Dearer dying than all sweets.That is life: it waves and goes;Solely in that cherished RosePalpitates, or else ’tis death.Call it love with all thy breath.Love! it lingers: Love! it nears:Love!  O Love! the Rose appears,Blushful, magic, reddening air.Now the choice is on thee: dare!Mortal seems the touch, but makesImmortal the hand that takes.Feel what sea within thee shamesOf its force all other claims,Drowns them.  Clasp! the world will beHeavenly Rose to swelling sea.

THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH

I chanced upon an early walk to spyA troop of children through an orchard gate:   The boughs hung low, the grass was high;   They had but to lift hands or waitFor fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.They shouted, running on from tree to tree,And played the game the wind plays, on and round.   ’Twas visible invisible glee   Pursuing; and a fountain’s soundOf laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.I could have watched them till the daylight fled,Their pretty bower made such a light of day.   A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! head!’   The rest to comfort her straightwaySeized on a branch and thumped down apples red.The tiny creature flashing through green grass,And laughing with her feet and eyes among   Fresh apples, while a little lass   Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung:That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes,Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;   Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,   Across a heath I walked for hours,And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,When, under a patched channel-bank enriched   With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,   Behold, a family had pitchedTheir camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.Here, too, were many children, quick to scanA new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth:   In many-coloured rags they ran,   Like iron runlets of the heath.Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at seaTipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid   From either ridge unequally),   Lean, swift and voluble, bestridA starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and brokeIn act to follow, but as one they snuffed   Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke   Of provender, its pale flame puffed,And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,   Paused for its bubbling-up supreme:   A dog upright in circle sat,And oft his nose went with the flying steam.I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where nowThe moor-faced sunset broadened with red light;   Threw high aloft a golden bough,   And seemed the desert of the nightFar down with mellow orchards to endow.

EARTH AND MAN

IOn her great venture, Man,Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breastWhich is his well of strength, his home of rest,And fair to scan.IIMore aid than that embrace,That nourishment, she cannot give: his heartInvolves his fate; and she who urged the startAbides the race.IIIFor he is in the listsContentious with the elements, whose dowerFirst sprang him; for swift vultures to devourIf he desists.IVHis breath of instant thirstIs warning of a creature matched with strife,To meet it as a bride, or let fall lifeOn life’s accursed.VNo longer forth he boundsThe lusty animal, afield to roam,But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnomeStrange themes propounds.VIBy hunger sharply spedTo grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews,An infant’s head.VIIAnd ever that old taskOf reading what he is and whence he came,Whither to go, finds wilder letters flameAcross her mask.VIIIShe hears his wailful prayer,When now to the Invisible he ravesTo rend him from her, now of his mother cravesHer calm, her care.IXThe thing that shudders mostWithin him is the burden of his cry.Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eyeThe eyeless Ghost.XOr sometimes she will seemHeavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white,Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight,With gold-buds dim.XIOnce worshipped Prime of Powers,She still was the Implacable: as a beast,She struck him down and dragged him from the feastShe crowned with flowers.XIIHer pomp of glorious hues,Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile,Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhileWith symbol-clues.XIIIThe mystery she holdsFor him, inveterately he strains to see,And sight of his obtuseness is the keyAmong those folds.XIVHe may entreat, aspire,He may despair, and she has never heed.She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need,Not his desire.XVShe prompts him to rejoice,Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud.He deems her cherishing of her best-endowedA wanton’s choice.XVIAlbeit thereof he has foundFirm roadway between lustfulness and pain;Has half transferred the battle to his brain,From bloody ground;XVIIHe will not read her good,Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures;Through that old devil of the thousand lures,Through that dense hood:XVIIIThrough terror, through distrust;The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live:Through all that makes of him a sensitiveAbhorring dust.XIXBehold his wormy home!And he the wind-whipped, anywhither waveCrazily tumbled on a shingle-graveTo waste in foam.XXTherefore the wretch inclinedAfresh to the Invisible, who, he saith,Can raise him high: with vows of living faithFor little signs.XXISome signs he must demand,Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few,To satisfy the senses it is true,And in his hand,XXIIThis miracle which savesHimself, himself doth from extinction clutch,By virtue of his worth, contrasting muchWith brutes and knaves.XXIIIFrom dust, of him abhorred,He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth.‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth!Me take, dear Lord!’XXIVShe hears him.  Him she owesFor half her loveliness a love well wonBy work that lights the shapeless and the dun,Their common foes.XXVHe builds the soaring spires,That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws,Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws,Her purest fires.XXVIThrough him hath she exchanged,For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown,Her haggard quarry-features and thick frownWhere monsters ranged.XXVIIAnd order, high discourse,And decency, than which is life less dear,She has of him: the lyre of language clear,Love’s tongue and source.XXVIIIShe hears him, and can hearWith glory in his gains by work achieved:With grief for grief that is the unperceivedIn her so near.XXIXIf he aloft for aidImploring storms, her essence is the spur.His cry to heaven is a cry to herHe would evade.XXXNot elsewhere can he tend.Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins;Those her revulsions from the skull that grinsTo ape his end.XXXIAnd her desires are thoseFor happiness, for lastingness, for light.’Tis she who kindles in his haunting nightThe hoped dawn-rose.XXXIIFair fountains of the darkDaily she waves him, that his inner dreamMay clasp amid the glooms a springing beam,A quivering lark:XXIIIThis life and her to knowFor Spirit: with awakenedness of gleeTo feel stern joy her origin: not heThe child of woe.XXXIVBut that the senses stillUsurp the station of their issue mind,He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind:As yet he will;XXXVAs yet he will, she prays,Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;—The glutton for her fruits, the wily elfIn shifting rays;—XXXVIThat captain of the scorned;The coveter of life in soul and shell,The fratricide, the thief, the infidel,The hoofed and horned;—XXXVIIHe singularly doomedTo what he execrates and writhes to shun;—When fire has passed him vapour to the sun,And sun relumed,XXXVIIIThen shall the horrid pallBe lifted, and a spirit nigh divine,‘Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,’Will hear her call.XXXIXWhence looks he on a landWhereon his labour is a carven page;And forth from heritage to heritageNought writ on sand.XLHis fables of the Above,And his gapped readings of the crown and sword,The hell detested and the heaven adored,The hate, the love,XLIThe bright wing, the black hoof,He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined,And never unfaith clamouring to be coinedTo faith by proof.XLIIShe her just Lord may view,Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearnedWith all her gifts to reach the light discernedHer spirit through.XLIIIIThen in him time shall runAs in the hour that to young sunlight crows;And—‘If thou hast good faith it can repose,’She tells her son.XLIVMeanwhile on him, her chiefExpression, her great word of life, looks she;Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree,Or dated leaf.

A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT

ISee the sweet women, friend, that lean beneathThe ever-falling fountain of green leavesRound the white bending stem, and like a wreathOf our most blushful flower shine trembling through,To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves:   Is one for me? is one for you?II—Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place,And you shall choose among us which you will,Without the idle pastime of the chase,If to this treaty you can well agree:To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil.   He who’s for us, for him are we!III—Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth,A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells,And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earthIn the first plucking of them, past us flewTo labour, singing rustic ritornells:   Had they a cause? are they of you?IV—Sirs, they are as unthinking armies areTo thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs.When they know men they know the state of war:But now they dream like sunlight on a sea,And deem you hold the half of happy pairs.   He who’s for us, for him are we!V—Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames;Judicial in the robe and wig; secureAs venerated portraits in their frames;And they denounced some insurrection newAgainst sound laws which keep you good and pure.   Are you of them? are they of you?VI—Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes,And by as much: let them together chime:It is an ancient bell within their throats,Pulled by an aged ringer; with what gleeBefits the yellow yesterdays of time.   He who’s for us, for him are we!VII—Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit;Dowered of all favours and all blessed thingsWhereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit;Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew,Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings?   Who is for love must be for you.VIII—The manners of the market, honest sirs,’Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares.You flatter us, or perchance our millinersYou flatter; so this vain and outworn SheMay still be the charmed snake to your soft airs!   A higher lord than Love claim we.IX—One day, dear lady, missing the broad track,I came on a wood’s border, by a mead,Where golden May ran up to moted black:And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review,With Love before her throne in act to plead.   Take him for me, take her for you.X—Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known.Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt:She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throneThe shadow of his back froze witheringly,And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt.   O not such slaves of Love are we!XI—Love, lady, like the star above that lanceOf radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud,Sad as the last line of a brave romance!—Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threwBeams of fresh fire, while Beauty waned and bowed.   Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you.XII—Called she not for her mirror, sir?  Forth ranHer women: I am lost, she cried, when lo,Love in the form of an admiring manOnce more in adoration bent the knee,And brought the faded Pagan to full blow:   For which her throne she gave: not we!XIII—My version, madam, runs not to that end.A certain madness of an hour half past,Caught her like fever; her just lord no friendShe fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grewThe prim acerbity, sweet Love’s outcast.   Great heaven ward off that stroke from you!XIV—Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous:How generous likewise that you do not nameOffended nature!  She from all of usCouched idle underneath our showering tree,May quite withhold her most destructive flame;   And then what woeful women we!XV—Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youthMay run to drought in visionary schemes:And a late waking to perceive the truth,When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu,Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams:   And that may be in store for you.XVI—O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t in the skies,Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours?But O the truth, the truth! the many eyesThat look on it! the diverse things they see,According to their thirst for fruit or flowers!   Pass on: it is the truth seek we.XVII—Lady, there is a truth of settled lawsThat down the past burns like a great watch-fire.Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause,Whetting its edge to cut the race in two,Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre,   Much honour and much glory you!XVIII—Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride,And not as cat and serpent and poor slave,Wherewith we walked in union by your side?Spare to false womanliness her delicacy,Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave:   In our defence thus chained are we.XIX—Yours, madam, were the privileges of lifeProper to man’s ideal; you were the markOf action, and the banner in the strife:Yea, of your very weakness once you drewThe strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark:   Wrapped in a robe of flame were you!XX—Your friend looks thoughtful.  Sir, when we were chill,You clothed us warmly; all in honour! whenWe starved you fed us; all in honour still:Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably!Deep is the gratitude we owe to men,   For privileged indeed were we!XXI—You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad,But come in the red struggle of our growth.Alas, that I should have to say it! badIs two-sexed upon earth: this which you do,Shows animal impatience, mental sloth:   Man monstrous! pining seraphs you!XXII—I fain would ask your friend . . . but I will askYou, sir, how if in place of numbers vague,Your sad exceptions were to break that maskThey wear for your cool mind historically,And blaze like black lists of a present plague?   But in that light behold them we.XXIII—Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world,Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roofAnd drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curledIn his hard-earned oblivion!  You are few,Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof,   I have lived, and have known none like you.XXIV—We may be blind to men, sir: we embraceA future now beyond the fowler’s nets.Though few, we hold a promise for the raceThat was not at our rising: you are freeTo win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes.   He who’s for us, for him are we.XXV—Ah! madam, were they puppets who withstoodYouth’s cravings for adventure to preserveThe dedicated ways of womanhood?The light which leads us from the paths of rue,That light above us, never seen to swerve,   Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you.XXVI—Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we perchanceShall not abandon, though we see not how,Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advanceBeside our lords in any real degree,Unless we move: and to advance is now   A sovereign need, think more than we.XXVII—So push you out of harbour in small craft,With little seamanship; and comes a gale,The world will laugh, the world has often laughed,Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue,When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale,   How swift to the old nest fly you!XXVIII—What thinks your friend, kind sir?  We have escapedBut partly that old half-tamed wild beast’s pawWhereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped:Men, too, have known the cramping enemyIn grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe:   Him our deliverer, await we!XXIX—Delusions are with eloquence endowed,And yours might pluck an angel from the spheresTo play in this revolt whereto you are vowed,Deliverer, lady! but like summer dewO’er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears,   Who see the awakening for you.XXX—Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps not.O sir, delusion mounting like a sunOn a mind blank as the white wife of Lot,Giving it warmth and movement! if this beDelusion, think of what thereby was won   For men, and dream of what win we.XXXI—Lady, the destiny of minor powers,Who would recast us, is but to convulse:You enter on a strife that frets and sours;You can but win sick disappointment’s hue;And simply an accelerated pulse,   Some tonic you have drunk moves you.XXXII—Thinks your friend so?  Good sir, your wit is bright;But wit that strives to speak the popular voice,Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light.Curfew, would seem your conqueror’s decreeTo women likewise: and we have no choice   Save darkness or rebellion, we!XXXIII—A plain safe intermediate way is cleftBy reason foiling passion: you that raveOf mad alternatives to right and leftEcho the tempter, madam: and ’tis dueUnto your sex to shun it as the grave,   This later apple offered you.XXXIV—This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet;Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouthAre little wooed by it; yet we would eat.We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea.We have thirsted long; this apple suits our drouth:   ’Tis good for men to halve, think we.XXXV—But say, what seek you, madam?  ’Tis enoughThat you should have dominion o’er the springsDomestic and man’s heart: those ways, how rough,How vile, outside the stately avenueWhere you walk sheltered by your angel’s wings,   Are happily unknown to you.XXXVI—We hear women’s shrieks on them.  We like your phrase,Dominion domestic!  And that roar,‘What seek you?’ is of tyrants in all days.Sir, get you something of our purityAnd we will of your strength: we ask no more.   That is the sum of what seek we.XXXVII—O for an image, madam, in one word,To show you as the lightning night reveals,Your error and your perils: you have erredIn mind only, and the perils that ensueSwift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels   Address your hopes of safety you!XXXVIII—To err in mind, sir . . . your friend smiles: he may!To err in mind, if err in mind we can,Is grievous error you do well to stay.But O how different from realityMen’s fiction is! how like you in the plan,   Is woman, knew you her as we!XXXIX—Look, lady, where yon river winds its lineToward sunset, and receives on breast and faceThe splendour of fair life: to be divine,’Tis nature bids you be to nature true,Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace,   Reflecting heaven in clearness you.XL—Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes.To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse,Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes,Who is not wholly of the nursery,Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse;   Together shake it off, say we!XLI—Hear, then, my friend, madam!  Tongue-restrained he standsTill words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enrichedWith traceries of the artificer’s hands,Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view.—Do I hear him?  Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched!   Heed him not!  Traitress beauties you!XLII—We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage!—Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast!—Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage.—Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key.—Then are there fresher mornings mounting East   Than ever yet have dawned, sing we!XLIII—False ends as false began, madam, be sure!—What lure there is the pure cause purifies!—Who purifies the victim of the lure?—That soul which bids us our high light pursue.—Some heights are measured down: the wary wise   Shun Reason in the masque with you!XLIV—Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks.Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal;A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks!But could she give more loyal guaranteeThan wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul   Has risen?  Adieu: content are we!XLVThose ladies led their captive to the flood’sGreen edge.  He floating with them seemed the mostFool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds.Happier than I!  Then, why not wiser too?For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast   His comrade over me and you.XLVIHave women nursed some dream since Helen sailedOver the sea of blood the blushing star,That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed,When not possessing her (for such is he!),Might in a wondering season seen afar,   Be tamed to say not ‘I,’ but ‘we’?XLVIIAnd shall they make of Beauty their estate,The fortress and the weapon of their sex?Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate,More queenly than of old, how we must woo,Ere she will melt?  The halter’s on our necks,   Kick as it likes us, I and you.XLVIIICertain it is, if Beauty has disdainedHer ancient conquests, with an aim thus high:If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained.But can she keep her followers without fee?Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry,   He who’s for us, for him are we!

BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE

THE TWO MASKS

IMelpomene among her livid people,Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks,Warned by old contests that one museful rippleAlong those lips of rose with tendril hooksForebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos,Perchance may change of masks midway demand,Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos,The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.IIFor this the Comic Muse exacts of creaturesAppealing to the fount of tears: that theyStrive never to outleap our human features,And do Right Reason’s ordinance obey,In peril of the hum to laughter nighest.But prove they under stress of action’s fireNobleness, to that test of Reason highest,She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre.

ARCHDUCHESS ANNE

I

IIn middle age an evil thing   Befell Archduchess Anne:She looked outside her wedding-ring   Upon a princely man.IICount Louis was for horse and arms;   And if its beacon waved,For love; but ladies had not charms   To match a danger braved.IIIOn battlefields he was the bow   Bestrung to fly the shaft:In idle hours his heart would flow   As winds on currents waft.IVHis blood was of those warrior tribes   That streamed from morning’s fire,Whom now with traps and now with bribes   The wily Council wire.VArchduchess Anne the Council ruled,   Count Louis his great dame;And woe to both when one had cooled!   Little was she to blame.VIAmong her chiefs who spun their plots,   Old Kraken stood the sword:As sharp his wits for cutting knots   Of babble he abhorred.VIIHe reverenced her name and line,   Nor other merit hadSave soldierwise to wait her sign,   And do the deed she bade.VIIIHe saw her hand jump at her side   Ere royally she smiledOn Louis and his fair young bride   Where courtly ranks defiled.IXThat was a moment when a shock   Through the procession ran,And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock,   Yet smiled Archduchess Anne.XNo touch gave she to hound in leash,   No wink to sword in sheath:She seemed a woman scarce of flesh;   Above it, or beneath.XIOld Kraken spied with kennelled snarl,   His Lady deemed disgraced.He footed as on burning marl,   When out of Hall he paced.XII’Twas seen he hammered striding legs,   And stopped, and strode again.Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs,   But Patience must be hen.XIIIToo slow are they for wrath to hatch,   Too hot for time to rear.Old Kraken kept unwinding watch;   He marked his day appear.XIVHe neighed a laugh, though moods were rough   With standards in revolt:His nostrils took the news for snuff,   His smacking lips for salt.XVCount Louis’ wavy cock’s plumes led   His troops of black-haired manes,A rebel; and old Kraken sped   To front him on the plains.XVIThen camp opposed to camp did they   Fret earth with panther clawsFor signal of a bloody day,   Each reading from the Laws.XVII‘Forefend it, heaven!’ Count Louis cried,   ‘And let the righteous plead:My country is a willing bride,   Was never slave decreed.XVIII‘Not we for thirst of blood appeal   To sword and slaughter curst;We have God’s blessing on our steel,   Do we our pleading first.’XIXCount Louis, soul of chivalry,   Put trust in plighted word;By starlight on the broad brown lea,   To bar the strife he spurred.XXAcross his breast a crimson spot,   That in a quiver glowed,The ruddy crested camp-fires shot,   As he to darkness rode.XXIHe rode while omens called, beware   Old Kraken’s pledge of faith!A smile and waving hand in air,   And outward flew the wraith.XXIIBefore pale morn had mixed with gold,   His army roared, and chilled,As men who have a woe foretold,   And see it red fulfilled.XXIIIAway and to his young wife speed,   And say that Honour’s dead!Another word she will not need   To bow a widow’s head.XXIVOld Kraken roped his white moustache   Right, left, for savage glee:—To swing him in his soldier’s sash   Were kind for such as he!XXVOld Kraken’s look hard Winter wears   When sweeps the wild snow-blast:He had the hug of Arctic bears   For captives he held fast.