Part 3

Here lies one in the earth who scarce of the earth was moulded, Wise Æthalides’ son, himself no lover of study, Cnopus, asleep, indoors: the young invincible runner. They from the cliff footpath that see on the grave we made him, Tameless, slant in the wind, the bare and beautiful iris, Stop short, full of delight, and shout forth: “See, it is Cnopus Runs, with white throat forward, over the sands to Chalcis!”

VIII

Ere the Ferryman from the coast of spirits Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither, Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it For thy desolate father, for thy sister, Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter.

IX

Jaffa ended, Cos begun Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one Fit to trample out the sun: Who shall think thine ardors are But a cinder in a jar?

X

Me, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping, Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping!

XI

As wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, And mars the golden breakers in the bay, Hurtful and sweet from heaven forever blows Sad thought that roughens all our quiet day;

And elder poets envy while they weep Ion, whom first the gods to covert brought, Here under inland olives laid asleep, Most wise, most happy, having done with thought.

XII

Cows in the narrowing August marshes, Cows in a stretch of water Motionless, Neck on neck overlapped and drooping;

These in their troubled and dumb communion, Thou on the steep bank yonder, Pastora! No more ever to lead and love them,

No more ever. Thine innocent mourners Pass thy tree in the evening Heavily, Hearing another herd-girl calling.

XIII

Praise thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee.

LONDON:

TWELVE SONNETS

_On First Entering Westminster Abbey_

THABOR of England! since my light is short And faint, O rather by the sun anew Of timeless passion set my dial true, That with thy saints and thee I may consort, And wafted in the calm Chaucerian port Of poets, seem a little sail long due, And be as one the call of memory drew Unto the saddle void since Agincourt!

Not now for secular love’s unquiet lease Receive my soul, who rapt in thee erewhile Hath broken tryst with transitory things; But seal with her a marriage and a peace Eternal, on thine Edward’s holy isle, Above the stormy sea of ended kings.

_Fog_

LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, Thro’ palsied streets the fatal shadows flow, And in their sharp disastrous undertow Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky. The towery vista sinks upon the eye, As if it heard the Hebrew bugles blow, Black and dissolved; nor could the founders know How what was built so bright should daily die.

Thy mood with man’s is broken and blent in, City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown The primitive light in which thy life began; Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin, Greater and elder yet the love of man Full in thy look, tho’ the dark visor ’s down.

_St. Peter-ad-Vincula_

TOO well I know, pacing the place of awe, Three queens, young save in trouble, moulder by; More in his halo, Monmouth’s mocking eye, The eagle Essex in a harpy’s claw; Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw Sundown of Scotland: how with treasons lie White martyrdoms; rank in a company Breaker and builder of the eternal law.

Oft as I come, the hateful garden-row Of ruined roses hanging from the stem, Where winds of old defeat yet batter them, Infects me: suddenly must I depart, Ere thought of men’s injustice then and now Add to these aisles one other broken heart.

_Strikers in Hyde Park_

A WOOF reversed the fatal shuttles weave, How slow! but never once they slip the thread. Hither, upon the Georgian idlers’ tread, Up spacious ways the lindens interleave, Clouding the royal air since yester-eve, Come men bereft of time and scant of bread, Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead, Thro’ the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve.

What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so The clear Republic waits the general throe, Along her noonday mountains’ open range. God be with both! for one is young to know The other’s rote of evil and of change.

_Changes in the Temple_

THE cry is at thy gates, thou darling ground, Again; for oft ere now thy children went Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent Some red old alley with a dial crowned; Some house of honor, in a glory bound With lives and deaths of spirits excellent; Some tree rude-taken from his kingly tent Hard by a little fountain’s friendly sound.

O for Virginius’ hand, if only that Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon! Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas, Her peopled oasis, and where it was All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat Echo, and ivy, and the loitering moon.

_The Lights of London_

THE evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot Far down into the valley’s cold extreme, Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not. The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream, From chaos climb with many a sudden gleam, London, one moment fallen and forgot.

Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright Prick door and window; all her streets obscure Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure, Full as a marsh of mist and winking light; Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.

_Doves_

AH, if man’s boast and man’s advance be vain, And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, And the lone Tree foreknow it, and the Dome, The monstrous island of the middle main; If each inheritor must sink again Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?-- I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.

What folly lies in forecasts and in fears! Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls. “God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.”

_In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_

PRAISED be the moon of books! that doth above A world of men, the fallen Past behold, And fill the spaces else so void and cold To make a very heaven again thereof; As when the sun is set behind a grove, And faintly unto nether ether rolled, All night his whiter image and his mould Grows beautiful with looking on her love.

Thou therefore, moon of so divine a ray, Lend to our steps both fortitude and light! Feebly along a venerable way They climb the infinite, or perish quite; Nothing are days and deeds to such as they, While in this liberal house thy face is bright.

_Sunday Chimes in the City_

ACROSS the bridge, where in the morning blow The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain Homeward to drag the black sea-goer’s chain, And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low; Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow, Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain: From Wren’s forgotten belfries, in the rain, Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go.

Forbid not these! Tho’ no man heed, they shower A subtle beauty on the empty hour, From all their dark throats aching and outblown; Aye in the prayerless places welcome most, Like the last gull that up a naked coast Deploys her white and steady wing, alone.

_A Porch in Belgravia_

WHEN, after dawn, the lordly houses hide Till you fall foul of it, some piteous guest, Some girl the damp stones gather to their breast, Her gold hair rough, her rebel garment wide, Who sleeps, with all that luck and life denied Camped round, and dreams how seaward and southwest Blue over Devon farms the smoke-rings rest, And sheep and lambs ascend the lit hillside,

Dear, of your charity, speak low, step soft, Pray for a sinner. Planet-like and still, Best hearts of all are sometimes set aloft Only to see and pass, nor yet deplore Even Wrong itself, crowned Wrong inscrutable, Which cannot not have been for evermore.

_York Stairs_

MANY a musing eye returns to thee, Against the lurid street disconsolate, Who kept in green domains thy bridal state, With young tide-waters leaping at thy knee; And lest the ravening smoke, and enmity, Corrode thee quite, thy lover sighs, and straight Desires thee safe afar, too graceful gate! Throned on a terrace of the Boboli.

Nay, nay, thy use is here. Stand queenly thus Till the next fury; teach the time and us Leisure and will to draw a serious breath: Not wholly where thou art the soul is cowed, Nor the fooled capital proclaims aloud Barter is god, while Beauty perisheth.

_In the Docks_

WHERE the bales thunder till the day is done, And the wild sounds with wilder odors cope; Where over crouching sail and coiling rope, Lascar and Moor along the gangway run; Where stifled Thames spreads in the pallid sun, A hive of anarchy from slope to slope; Flag of my birth, my liberty, my hope, I see thee at the masthead, joyous one!

O thou good guest! So oft as, young and warm, To the home-wind thy hoisted colors bound, Away, away from this too thoughtful ground, Sated with human trespass and despair, Thee only, from the desert, from the storm, A sick mind follows into Eden air.