Part 1

This ebook is dedicated to EMMY friend, colleague, mentor, role model who fell off the planet far too soon. ---------------------------------------

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/roadsideharpbook00guinuoft

A ROADSIDE HARP

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By Miss Guiney.

THE WHITE SAIL, AND OTHER POEMS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.

SONGS AT THE START. 16mo, $1.00.

A ROADSIDE HARP. 16mo.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

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A ROADSIDE HARP

A Book of Verses by

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

“_Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet, More oft than to a chamber melody!_”

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin and Company M DCCC XCIII

Copyright, 1893 By Louise Imogen Guiney All Rights Reserved

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

TO DORA AND HESTER SIGERSON

_There in the Druid brake If the cuckoo be awake Again, O take my rhyme! And keep it long for the sake Of a bygone primrose-time; You of the star-bright head That twilight thoughts sequester, You to your native fountains led Like to a young Muse garlanded: Dora, and Hester._

March, 1893.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

_Page_

PETER RUGG the Bostonian 1

A Ballad of Kenelm 8

Vergniaud in the Tumbril 10

Winter Boughs 13

M. A. 1822-1888 13

W. H. 1778-1830 14

The Vigil-at-Arms 14

A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo 15

Spring Nightfall 15

A Friend’s Song for Simoisius 16

Athassel Abbey 17

Florentin 18

Friendship Broken 19

A Song of the Lilac 20

In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm 21

The Cherry Bough 21

Two Irish Peasant Songs 23

The Japanese Anemone 25

Tryste Noel 26

A Talisman 27

Heathenesse 27

For Izaak Walton 28

Sherman: “An Horatian Ode” 29

When on the Marge of Evening 32

Rooks in New College Gardens 32

Open, Time 33

The Knight Errant (Donatello’s Saint George) 34

To a Dog’s Memory 35

A Seventeenth-Century Song 36

On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford 37

The Still of the Year 38

A Foot-note to a Famous Lyric 39

T. W. P. 1819-1892 41

Summum Bonum 41

Saint Florent-le-Vieil 42

Hylas 42

Nocturne 43

The Kings 44

Alexandriana 47

London: Twelve Sonnets.

On First Entering Westminster Abbey 55

Fog 55

St. Peter-ad-Vincula 56

Strikers in Hyde Park 56

Changes in the Temple 57

The Lights of London 58

Doves 58

In the Reading-Room of the British Museum 59

Sunday Chimes in the City 59

A Porch in Belgravia 60

York Stairs 61

In the Docks 61

A ROADSIDE HARP.

POEMS BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

_Peter Rugg the Bostonian_

I

THE mare is pawing by the oak, The chaise is cool and wide For Peter Rugg the Bostonian With his little son beside; The women loiter at the wheels In the pleasant summer-tide.

“And when wilt thou be home, Father?” “And when, good husband, say: The cloud hangs heavy on the house What time thou art away.” He answers straight, he answers short, “At noon of the seventh day.”

“Fail not to come, if God so will, And the weather be kind and clear.” “Farewell, farewell! But who am I A blockhead rain to fear? God willing or God unwilling, I have said it, I will be here.”

He gathers up the sunburnt boy And from the gate is sped; He shakes the spark from the stones below, The bloom from overhead, Till the last roofs of his own town Pass in the morning-red.

Upon a homely mission North unto York he goes, Through the long highway broidered thick With elder-blow and rose; And sleeps in sound of breakers At every twilight’s close.

Intense upon his heedless head Frowns Agamenticus, Knowing of Heaven’s challenger The answer: even thus The Patience that is hid on high Doth stoop to master us.

II

Full light are all his parting dreams; Desire is in his brain; He tightens at the tavern-post The fiery creature’s rein: “Now eat thine apple, six years’ child! We face for home again.”

They had not gone a many mile With nimble heart and tongue, When the lone thrush grew silent The walnut woods among; And on the lulled horizon A premonition hung.

The babes at Hampton schoolhouse, The wife with lads at sea, Search with a level-lifted hand The distance bodingly; And farmer folk bid pilgrims in Under a safe roof-tree.

The mowers mark by Newbury How low the swallows fly, They glance across the southern roads All white and fever-dry, And the river, anxious at the bend, Beneath a thinking sky.

But there is one abroad was born To disbelieve and dare: Along the highway furiously He cuts the purple air. The wind leaps on the startled world As hounds upon a hare;

With brawl and glare and shudder ope The sluices of the storm; The woods break down, the sand upblows In blinding volleys warm; The yellow floods in frantic surge Familiar fields deform.

From evening until morning His skill will not avail, And as he cheers his youngest born, His cheek is spectre-pale; For the bonnie mare from courses known Has drifted like a sail!

III

On some wild crag he sees the dawn Unsheathe her scimitar. “Oh, if it be my mother-earth, And not a foreign star, Tell me the way to Boston, And is it near or far?”

One watchman lifts his lamp and laughs: “Ye’ve many a league to wend.” The next doth bless the sleeping boy From his mad father’s end; A third upon a drawbridge growls: “Bear ye to larboard, friend.”

Forward and backward, like a stone The tides have in their hold, He dashes east, and then distraught Darts west as he is told, (Peter Rugg the Bostonian, That knew the land of old!)

And journeying, and resting scarce A melancholy space, Turns to and fro, and round and round, The frenzy in his face, And ends alway in angrier mood, And in a stranger place,

Lost! lost in bayberry thickets Where Plymouth plovers run, And where the masts of Salem Look lordly in the sun; Lost in the Concord vale, and lost By rocky Wollaston!

Small thanks have they that guide him, Awed and aware of blight; To hear him shriek denial It sickens them with fright: “They lied to me a month ago With thy same lie to-night!”

To-night, to-night, as nights succeed, He swears at home to bide, Until, pursued with laughter Or fled as soon as spied, The weather-drenchèd man is known Over the country side!

IV

The seventh noon ’s a memory, And autumn ’s closing in; The quince is fragrant on the bough, And barley chokes the bin. “O Boston, Boston, Boston! And O my kith and kin!”

The snow climbs o’er the pasture wall, It crackles ’neath the moon; And now the rustic sows the seed, Damp in his heavy shoon; And now the building jays are loud In canopies of June.

For season after season The three are whirled along, Misled by every instinct Of light, or scent, or song; Yea, put them on the surest trail, The trail is in the wrong.

Upon those wheels in any path The rain will follow loud, And he who meets that ghostly man Will meet a thunder-cloud, And whosoever speaks with him May next bespeak his shroud.

Tho’ nigh two hundred years have gone, Doth Peter Rugg the more A gentle answer and a true Of living lips implore: “Oh, show me to my own town, And to my open door!”

V

Where shall he see his own town Once dear unto his feet? The psalms, the tankard to the King, The beacon’s cliffy seat, The gabled neighborhood, the stocks Set in the middle street?

How shall he know his own town If now he clatters thro’? Much men and cities change that have Another love to woo; And things occult, incredible, They find to think and do.

With such new wonders since he went A broader gossip copes, Across the crowded triple hills, And up the harbor slopes, Tradition’s self for him no more Remembers, watches, hopes.

But ye, O unborn children! (For many a race must thrive And drip away like icicles Ere Peter Rugg arrive,) If of a sudden to your ears His plaint is blown alive;

If nigh the city, folding in A little lad that cries, A wet and weary traveller Shall fix you with his eyes, And from the crazy carriage lean To spend his heart in sighs:--

“That I may enter Boston, Oh, help it to befall! There would no fear encompass me, No evil craft appall; Ah, but to be in Boston, GOD WILLING, after all!”--

Ye children, tremble not, but go And lift his bridle brave In the one Name, the dread Name, That doth forgive and save, And lead him home to Copp’s Hill ground, And to his fathers’ grave.

_A Ballad of Kenelm_

“In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm King born Lieth under a thorn.”

IT was a goodly child, Sweet as the gusty May; It was a knight that broke On his play, A fair and coaxing knight: “O little liege!” said he, “Thy sister bids thee come After me.

“A pasture rolling west Lies open to the sun, Bright-shod with primroses Doth it run; And forty oaks be nigh, Apart, and face to face, And cow-bells all the morn In the space.

“And there the sloethorn bush Beside the water grows, And hides her mocking head Under snows; Black stalks afoam with bloom, And never a leaf hath she: Thou crystal of the realm, Follow me!”

Uplooked the undefiled: “All things, ere I was born My sister found; now find Me the thorn.” They travelled down the lane, An hour’s dust they made: The belted breast of one Bore a blade.

The primroses were out, The aislèd oaks were green, The cow-bells pleasantly Tinked between; The brook was beaded gold, The thorn was burgeoning, Where evil Ascobert Slew the King.

He hid him in the ground, Nor washed away the dyes, Nor smoothed the fallen curls From his eyes. No father had the babe To bless his bed forlorn; No mother now to weep By the thorn.

There fell upon that place A shaft of heavenly light; The thorn in Mercia spake Ere the night: “Beyond, a sister sees Her crownèd period, But at my root a lamb Seeth God.”

Unto each, even so. As dew before the cloud, The guilty glory passed Of the proud. Boy Kenelm has the song, Saint Kenelm has the bower; His thorn a thousand years Is in flower!

_Vergniaud in the Tumbril_

I

THE wheels are silent, the cords are slack, The terrible faces are surging back. France, they too love thee! bid that keep plain;

The wrath and carnage I stayed afar Colleagues of my white conscience are: Accept my slayers, accept me slain!

Shed for days, in its olden guise The quiet delicate snake-skin lies To cheat a boy on his woodland stroll:

What if he crush it? Others see Beauty’s miracle under a tree Supple in mail, and adroit, and whole;

The shaper rid of a shape, and thence (Growth of an outgrown excellence), Mounted with infinite might and speed,

Freed like a soul to the heaven it dreamed; Over life that was, and death that seemed A victory and a revenge indeed!

As the serpent moves to the open spring, The while a mock, a delusive thing Sole in sight of the crowd may be,

So ye, my martyrs, arise, advance! For what is left at the feet of France It is our failure, it is not we.

II

Not to ourselves our strength we brought: Inexpiable the Hand that wrought In us the ruin of no redress,

The storm, the effort, the pang, the fire, The premonition, the vast desire, The primal passion of righteousness!

Scarce by the pitiful thwarted plan, The haste, or the studious fears of man Drawing a discord from best delight,

The measure is meted of God most wise; Nor the future, with her adjusted eyes, Shall speak us false in our dying fight.

But e’en to me now some use is clear In the builded truth down-beaten here For any along the way to spurn,

Since ever our broken task may stand Disaster’s college in one saved land, Whence many a stripling state shall learn.

Out of the human shoots the divine: Be the Republic our only sign, For whose life’s glory our lives have been

Ambassadors on a noble way Tempest-driven, and sent astray The first and the final good between.

Close to the vision undestroyed, The hope not compassed and yet not void, We perish so; but the world shall mark

On the hilltop of our work we died, With joy of the groom before the bride, With a dawn-cry thro’ the battle’s dark.

III

O last save me on the scaffold’s round! Take heart, that after a thirst profound The cup of delicious death is near,

And whoso hold it, or whence it flow, O drink it to France, to France! and know For the gift thou givest, thou hast her tear.

True seed thou wert of the sunnier hour, Honorable, and burst to flower Late in a hell-pit poison-walled:

Farewell, mortality lopped and pale, Thou body that wast my friend! and Hail, Dear spirit already!... My name is called.

_Winter Boughs_

HOW tender and how slow, in sunset’s cheer, Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! A broidery of northern seaweed, laid Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear. Frost, and sad light, and windless atmosphere Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made Beauty more sweet than summer’s builded shade, Whose green domes fall, to bring this wonder here. O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, With not a plume, gay in the jousts before, Left for the Archer! so, in evening’s eye, So stilled, so lifted, let your lover die, Set in the upper calm no voices rouse, Stript, meek, withdrawn, against the heavenly door.

_M. A. 1822-1888_

GOOD oars, for Arnold’s sake By Laleham lightly bound, And near the bank, O soft, Darling swan! Let not the o’erweary wake From this his natal ground, But where he slumbered oft, Slumber on.

_W. H. 1778-1830_

BETWEEN the wet trees and the sorry steeple, Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt, Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;

Beauty ’s a sinking light, ah, none too faithful; But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer, Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.

Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit, Safe also on our earth, begetting ever Some one love worth the ages and the nations!

Nothing falls under to thine eyes eternal. Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches.

_The Vigil-at-Arms_

KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting Till morning break, and all the bugles play; Unto the One aware from everlasting Dear are the winners: thou art more than they.

Forth from this peace on manhood’s way thou goest, Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail; Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest, O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail!

_A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo_

LET thoughts go hence as from a mountain spring, Of the great dust of battle clean and whole, And the wild birds that have no nest nor goal Fold in a young man’s breast their trancèd wing; For thou art made of purest Light, a thing Art gave, beyond her own devout control; And Light upon thy seeing, suffering soul Hath wrought a sign for many journeying; Our sign. As up a wayside, after rain, When the blown beeches purple all the height And clouds sink to the sea-marge, suddenly The autumn sun (how soft, how solemn-bright!) Moves to the vacant dial, so is lain God’s meaning Hand, thou chosen, upon thee.

_Spring Nightfall_

APRIL is sad, as if the end she knew. The maple’s misty red, the willow’s gold Face-deep in nimble water, seem to hold In hope’s own weather their autumnal hue. There is no wind, no star, no sense of dew, But the thin vapors gird the mountain old, And the moon, risen before the west is cold, Pale with compassion slopes into the blue. Under the shining dark the day hath passed Shining; so even of thee was home bereaved, Thou dear and pensive spirit! overcast Hardly at all, but drawn from light to light, Who in the doubtful hour, and unperceived, Rebuked adoring hearts with change and flight.

_A Friend’s Song for Simoisius_

THE breath of dew, and twilight’s grace, Be on the lonely battle-place; And to so young, so kind a face, The long, protecting grasses cling! (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

In rocky hollows cool and deep, The bees our boyhood hunted sleep; The early moon from Ida’s steep Comes to the empty wrestling-ring. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

Upon the widowed wind recede No echoes of the shepherd’s reed, And children without laughter lead The war-horse to the watering. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! What to the loveliest hast thou done, That ne’er with him a maid may run Across the marigolds in spring? (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

With footstep separate and slow The father and the mother go, Not now upon an urn they know To mingle tears for comforting. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

The world to me has nothing dear Beyond the namesake river here: O Simois is wild and clear! And to his brink my heart I bring; (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

My heart no more, if that might be, Would stay his waters from the sea, To cover Troy, to cover me, To save us from the perishing. (Alas, alas, The one inexorable thing!)

_Athassel Abbey_

FOLLY and Time have fashioned Of thee a songless reed; O not-of-earth-impassioned! Thy music ’s mute indeed.

Red from the chantry crannies The orchids burn and swing, And where the arch began is Rest for a raven’s wing;

And up the bossy column Quick tails of squirrels wave, And black, prodigious, solemn, A forest fills the nave.

Still faithfuller, still faster, To ruin give thy heart: Perfect before the Master Aye as thou wert, thou art.

But I am wind that passes In ignorant wild tears, Uplifted from the grasses, Blown to the void of years,

Blown to the void, yet sighing In thee to merge and cease, Last breath of beauty’s dying, Of sanctity, of peace!

Tho’ use nor place forever Unto my soul befall, By no belovèd river Set in a saintly wall,

Do thou by builders given Speech of the dumb to be, Beneath thine open heaven, Athassel! pray for me.

_Florentin_

HEART all full of heavenly haste, too like the bubble bright On loud little water floating half of an April night, Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light, Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea; Whither, thro’ troubled valleys, we also follow thee.

_Friendship Broken_

I

WE chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend, Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak, Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke Strange things and deep as any poet penned, Such truth as never truth again can mend, Whatever arts we win, what gods invoke; It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke: Be what it may, it had a solemn end. Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers, Each a wise sceptic of the other’s star. Silently, as we went our ways alone, The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters, Drew high between us his majestic bar.

II

Mine was the mood that shows the dearest face Thro’ a long avenue, and voices kind Idle, and indeterminate, and blind As rumors from a very distant place; Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase Of the first swallows where the lane ’s inclined, An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind For round Spring’s vision. Ah, some equal grace (The calm sense of seen beauty without sight) Befell thee, honorable heart! no less In patient stupor walking from the dawn; Albeit thou too wert loser of life’s light, Like fallen Adam in the wilderness, Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn.

_A Song of the Lilac_

ABOVE the wall that ’s broken, And from the coppice thinned, So sacred and so sweet The lilac in the wind! And when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart.

In tears it long was buried, And trances wrapt it round; O how they wake it now, The fragrance and the sound! For when by night the May wind blows The lilac-blooms apart, The memory of his first love Is shaken on his heart.

_In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm_

KEEP of the Norman, old to flood and cloud! Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look, That in our common menace, I forsook Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud: Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud, Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook, No more than they by heaven’s assassins cowed.

But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked With the calm kisses of the light delayed, Breathe on me better valor: to subject My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid Lest, ere her fight’s full term, the Architect See downfall of the stronghold that He made.

_The Cherry Bough_

IN a new poet’s and a new friend’s honor, Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting, Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome Here in my garden,

Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses, And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting, One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries. O naught is absent,

O naught but you, kind head that far in prison Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god’s pity Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels Were once so plenty,

Nor dreams, from revels and strange faces turning, How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you, I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden With your rich verses!