Chapter 584

A pride of legs in motion kept Our spirits to their task meanwhile, And what was deepest dreaming slept: The posts that named the swallowed mile; Beside the straight canal the hut Abandoned; near the river's source Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; The roadway missed; were our discourse; At times dear poets, whom some view Transcendent or subdued evoked To speak the memorable, the true, The luminous as a moon uncloaked; For proof that there, among earth's dumb, A soul had passed and said our best. Or it might be we chimed on some Historic favourite's astral crest, With part to reverence in its gleam, And part to rivalry the shout: So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream Of power within to strike without. But most the silences were sweet, Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel It lived in such divine conceit As envies aught we stamp for real.

To either then an untold tale Was Life, and author, hero, we. The chapters holding peaks to scale, Or depths to fathom, made our glee; For we were armed of inner fires, Unbled in us the ripe desires; And passion rolled a quiet sea, Whereon was Love the phantom sail.

Poem: The Hueless Love

Unto that love must we through fire attain, Which those two held as breath of common air; The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.

Midway the road of our life's term they met, And one another knew without surprise; Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.

To them it was revealed how they had found The kindred nature and the needed mind; The mate by long conspiracy designed; The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.

Avowed in vigilant solicitude For either, what most lived within each breast They let be seen: yet every human test Demanding righteousness approved them good.

She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared Abandonment to help if heaved or sank Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, Life rosier were she but less revered.

An arm that never shook did not obscure Her woman's intuition of the bliss - Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, Across the narrow plank - he could abjure.

Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, Was all of earthly in their love untold, Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.

So has there come the gust at South-west flung By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.

Poem: Song In The Songless

They have no song, the sedges dry, And still they sing. It is within my breast they sing, As I pass by. Within my breast they touch a string, They wake a sigh. There is but sound of sedges dry; In me they sing.

Poem: Union In Disseverance

Sunset worn to its last vermilion he; She that star overhead in slow descent: That white star with the front of angel she; He undone in his rays of glory spent

Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest Incomplete, were the light for which he dies, Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.

Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks; Life's full throb over breathless and abased: Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, One, more one than the bridally embraced.

Poem: The Burden Of Strength

If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know Thy part is to uplift the trodden low; Else in a giant's grasp until the end A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.

Poem: The Main Regret

[Written for the Charing Cross Album]

I.

Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician; Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.

II.

Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.

Poem: Alternation

Between the fountain and the rill I passed, and saw the mighty will To leap at sky; the careless run, As earth would lead her little son.

Beneath them throbs an urgent well, That here is play, and there is war. I know not which had most to tell Of whence we spring and what we are.

Poem: Hawarden

When comes the lighted day for men to read Life's meaning, with the work before their hands Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed, Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge; Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge, Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. A splendid image built of man has flown; His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. Ours the great privilege to have had one Among us who celestial tasks has done.

Poem: At The Close

To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st; And that black spot in each embattled host, Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. Now is it red artillery and white steel; Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. So in all times of man's descent insane To brute, did strength and craft combining strike, Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. But at the close he entered Thy domain, Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.

Poem: Forest History

I.

Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in. Heroic who came out; for round them hung A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue, With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:

II.

Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired To his last fastness; overthrown by few. Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. Then man to play devorant straight was fired.

III.

More intimate became the forest fear While pillared darkness hatched malicious life At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.

IV.

In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass, On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, Revealed where lured the swallower byway.

V.

Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound Off walls of distance, left each mounted height. It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite Of humble human being, held the ground.

VI.

Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow The feet sustained by track of feet pursued Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.

VII.

Anon a mason's work amazed the sight, And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode. They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed; Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.

VIII.

What words they taught were nails to scratch the head. Benignant works explained the chanting brood. Their monastery lit black solitude, As one might think a star that heavenward led.

IX.

Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet, Like some gold flower nightly inward curled, Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world, Or played with it, and had their white retreat.

X.

Into big books of metal clasps they pored. They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays. The treasures women are whose aim is praise, Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.

XI.

A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.

XII.

Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew: And inmost spots of ancient horror shone As temples under beams of trials bygone; For in them sang brave times with God in view.

XIII.

Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green, Like night's first little stars through clearing showers. Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.

XIV.

Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance; For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.

XV.

It might be that two errant lords across The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry They charged forthwith, the better man to try. One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.

XVI.

Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain, The robbers into gruesome durance drew. Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue! She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.

XVII.

As we, that ere the worst her hero haps, Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den: A toady cave beside an ague fen, Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.

XVIII.

By daylight now the forest fear could read Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went. Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.

XIX.

Right loud the bugle's hallali elate Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors; And deftest hand was he from foreign wars, But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.

XX.

Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke; At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last. To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast, With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.

XXI.

The city urchin mooned on forest air, On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick For thinking that his dearer home was there.

XXII.

Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring, But held in ear it had a chilly clang.

XXIII.

Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time; Some warning haunted any sound prolonged, As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged To hear an axe and see a township climb.

XXIV.

The forest's erewhile emperor at eve Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. At midnight a small people danced the dales, So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve

XXV.

Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats, Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. The pensioned forester beside his crutch, Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.

XXVI.

Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart; Devourer, and insensibly devoured; In whom the city over forest flowered, The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart.

XXVII.

There found he in new form that Dragon old, From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught How blindly each its antidote besought; For either's breath the needs of either told.

XXVIII.

Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone, He showed what charm the human concourse works: Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.

XXIX.

Our conquest these: if haply we retain The reverence that ne'er will overrun Due boundaries of realms from Nature won, Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane.

Poem: A Garden Idyl

With sagest craft Arachne worked Her web, and at a corner lurked, Awaiting what should plump her soon, To case it in the death-cocoon. Sagaciously her home she chose For visits that would never close; Inside my chalet-porch her feast Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.

The finished structure, bar on bar, Had snatched from light to form a star, And struck on sight, when quick with dews, Like music of the very Muse. Great artists pass our single sense; We hear in seeing, strung to tense; Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, To think such beauty means a trap. But Nature's genius, even man's At best, is practical in plans; Subservient to the needy thought, However rare the weapon wrought. As long as Nature holds it good To urge her creatures' quest for food Will beauty stamp the just intent Of weapons upon service bent. For beauty is a flower of roots Embedded lower than our boots; Out of the primal strata springs, And shows for crown of useful things

Arachne's dream of prey to size Aspired; so she could nigh despise The puny specks the breezes round Supplied, and let them shake unwound; Assured of her fat fly to come; Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; Who takes the fatal odds in fight, And gives repast an appetite, By plunging, whizzing, till his wings Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, A shrouded lump, for her to see Her banquet in her victory.

This matron of the unnumbered threads, One day of dandelions' heads Distributing their gray perruques Up every gust, I watched with looks Discreet beside the chalet-door; And gracefully a light wind bore, Direct upon my webster's wall, A monster in the form of ball; The mildest captive ever snared, That neither struggled nor despaired, On half the net invading hung, And plain as in her mother tongue, While low the weaver cursed her lures, Remarked, "You have me; I am yours."

Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, Her dream of size she saw, agape. Midway the vast round-raying beard A desiccated midge appeared; Whose body pricked the name of meal, Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal; Provocative of dread and wrath, Contempt and horror, in one froth, Inextricable, insensible, His poison presence there would dwell, Declaring him her dream fulfilled, A catch to compliment the skilled; And she reduced to beaky skin, Disgraceful among kith and kin

Against her corner, humped and aged, Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, Beyond disgust or hope in guile. Ridiculously volatile He seemed to her last spark of mind; And that in pallid ash declined Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, Wherein throughout her frame she felt That he, the light wind's libertine, Without a scoff, without a grin, And mannered like the courtly few, Who merely danced when light winds blew, Impervious to beak and claws, Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; Of whom, as actors in old scenes, Had grannam weavers warned their weans, With word, that less than feather-weight, He smote the web like bolt of Fate.

This muted drama, hour by hour, I watched amid a world in flower, Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade, And still along the garden-run The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance Her visitor performed a dance; She puckered thinner; he the same As when on that light wind he came.

Next day was told what deeds of night Were done; the web had vanished quite; With it the strange opposing pair; And listless waved on vacant air, For her adieu to heart's content, A solitary filament.

Poem: Foresight And Patience

Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain, Are they who point our pathway and sustain. They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired. When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.

To see Life's formless offspring and subdue Desire of times unripe, we have these two, Whose union is right reason: join they hands, The world shall know itself and where it stands; What cowering angel and what upright beast Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers. When these two meet, a point of time is ours.

As in a land of waterfalls, that flow Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, Some eddies near the brink borne swift along, Will capture hearing with the liquid song, So, while the headlong world's imperious force Resounded under, heard I these discourse.

First words, where down my woodland walk she led, To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:

- Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, When still I find you in this mire alone.

- The few steps taken at a funeral pace By men had slain me but for those you trace.

- Look I once back, a broken pinion I: Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!

- Needs must you drink of me while here you live, And make me rich in feeling I can give.

- A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: Yet must I read my sister for the How. My daisy better knows her God of beams Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems. She hath the secret never fieriest reach Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.

- Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, My semblance when I have you not as now. The quiet creatures who escape mishap Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap: A picture of the settled peace desired By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired. I listen at their breasts: is there no jar Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, And such a picture as the piercing mind Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned Are my true pupils while the world is brute. What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, Stronger impels the motion of my heart. I am not Resignation's counterpart. If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word, Content, but how to savour hope deferred. We come of earth, and rich of earth may be; Soon carrion if very earth are we! The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce; Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat," Like other corpses, but without death's plea.

- My sister calls for battle; is it she?

- Rather a world of pressing men in arms, Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms Each drowsy malady and coiling vice With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price! No home is here for peace while evil breeds, While error governs, none; and must the seeds You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!

- My sober little maid, when we meet first, Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst. So can I not of her till circumstance Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march, As to band-music under Victory's arch. Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then The beauty of frank animals had men.

- Observe them, and down rearward for a term, Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm. Thence look this way, across the fields that show Men's early form of speech for Yes and No. My sister a bruised infant's utterance had; And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad. I knew my home where I had choice to feel The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.

- Speak of this Age.

- When you it shall discern Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.

- For neither of us has it any care; Its learning is through Science to despair.

- Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not With evil, casts the burden of its lot. This Age climbs earth.

- To challenge heaven.

- Not less The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness! That know I, though the echoes of it wail, For one step upward on the crags you scale. Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, Which means our soul asleep or body's lust, Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat A temperate common music, sunlike heat The happiness not predatory sheds!

- But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads, Now rages to outdo a horny Past. Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast Are thrown by every novel light upraised. The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells. Combustibles on hot combustibles Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire The mountain-torrent of infernal ire And leave the track of devils where men built. Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud, If drops the chillness of a passing cloud, To conscience, reason, human love; in vain: None save they but the souls which them contain. No extramural God, the God within Alone gives aid to city charged with sin. A world that for the spur of fool and knave, Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save? But men who ply their wits in such a school, Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.

- Much have I studied hard Necessity! To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we May deem the harshness of her later cries In labour a sure goad to prick the wise, If men among the warnings which convulse, Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse. Long ere the rising of this Age of ours, The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers. Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring, And are as lasting as the parent thing. Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill, They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will.

Behold such army gathering: ours the spur, No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer. Not fool or knave is now the enemy O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery! A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach. Now must the brother soul alive in each, His traitorous individual devildom Hold subject lest the grand destruction come. Dimly men see it menacing apace To overthrow, perchance uproot the race. Within, without, they are a field of tares: Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares, And wherefore warrior service they must yield, Shines visible as life on either field. That is my comfort, following shock on shock, Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock. Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night, Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight, Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect, The human and Satanic intellect, Determined for their uses to control What forces on the earth and under roll, Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land. They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are: Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.