Part 2

It was--I don't know what it was!-- The sweetest, sorriest smell of all. It crept in smoke-rings over the grass, And hung, and would not rise or fall.

I think the old man must have known What smell it was, but would not say. He shuffled slowly off alone When summer all was burned away.

One day when I'm a very old man Perhaps I'll be as wise as he ... But I am not quite five, you know, And he was _twice_ as old as me.

MAN'S VISION

It was the longest August And the weariest September That ever I remember, That ever I remember!

All the tedious summer I toiled among the city Where nothing fresh and sweet was Or cool or kind or pretty.

Empty all the streets were, Every house was lonely, Nothing human moved there Saving me, me only.

I saw little white things, Things with dreadful faces-- No, they were not children In the empty places.

Haggard, haggard tired things Crossed my gaze and froze it-- Men and women never Looked so, and God knows it.

Somewhere, men and women-- All the children, somewhere! If I asked the heavens The heavens only dumb were.

Oh, the city pave-stones, Common, hard and dusty, Like ignoble grave-stones Of high hopes gone rusty.

Oh, the arid, breathless Days devoid of rumour. Oh, the tedious, deathless, Hateful, humdrum summer ...

I walked out with a leaden brain And a heart half-wild-- And suddenly I saw A Child.

She had brown hands and brown bare knees And a glorious golden skin And eyes overlaid with sun on the sea And laughter's heart within.

She stamped along the pavement With hard and happy feet, I was not done with gazing Till she out-raced the street.

A Child! One Child! But next day, Oh, next day there were _two_! And half-a-score to follow, And so the legion grew.

Children! Children! Children! Come straight from where God is, All the ocean's rhythm Rocking in their bodies,

All the sea-scent, field-scent Blowing from their tresses, In their glad free glances All that Earth expresses,

Sun-kissed, wind-kissed, Rain-kissed bands, Sand-yellow, sturdy legs, Flower-dabbled hands,

Eyes so shining, such loud voices, Such hard, happy feet! Holiday-homing children Flowing through the street.

Laughter's heart beat in The last week of September-- The sweetest I remember! The sweetest I remember!

NEW LIGHT

What light was in me once unguarded was And any wind could blow it any way, A flame in tatters, with all moods for laws, Wildest at midnight, pallidest by day.

A fire too tossed for comfort to the cold, A gleam too blurred for guidance to the dark, Shifting caprice of red and blue and gold Flickering wanly from the troubled spark;

And other times a curl of azure smoke, Like the last puff of incense that is seen To vanish from the brazier, rose to cloak The light until I feared it never had been.

But now the crystal-clear white globe of peace Has closed my spirit in, that it may burn Steadily to the stars, and henceforth cease The wandering way of any wind to turn.

DEDICATION

My body having encountered with a soul, Be it my body's care to cherish whole The thing it holds in trust, nor once deny Ears to receive its faintest ghostly cry, Nor count the large advantage of the hour Aught in the scale beside the tiniest flower Breathed of the spirit, nor make dim its eyes To simple truths with things the world names wise. Knowing too well my body's great unworth Such essence to contain and clothe with earth, I dare not be unworthier than I must Lest this my soul be clogged with this my dust, And that wherefor I owe most gratitude Shall in the end the caging clay elude, More soiled and more despoiled, more dragged and sad Than was the thing from God my body had. Even as flame consumes its husk of coal The self must be consumèd by the soul Till liberate from ash it leaps again, Light seeking light, beyond the vision of men, All that is counted I being cast adrift Before the universe in me can lift Up to its level of divinity: Since therefore it has once befallen me Wondrously for a little space to be The vessel to whose charge the highest is given, Pure as I may I'll render it to heaven.

MORNING-VISION

A sea that shimmers on the brink of light, Emerging over shadow-boundaries Silverly on a sleeping silver shore: Phantom-land still, still silent mystery, Strewn with wan visions of the fading moon, Whereon the wave that wakens barely breathes.

Which gathering soon its sweet surrendering dreams Offers them to the yet invisible fire That sends its fore-glow from below the rim, Till they aspire in little golden vapours And flicker to the pure and passionless skies, The colour of pale melted sapphires--so These driftings of the ocean's moon-trance mount, And through the morning, briefly luminous, Waver, and cease, above a brightening tide.

Then lo! the swift shrill flight of sudden gulls, Up-circling whiteness sprayed against the blue, The sweep of silver breasts and wheeling wings That flash across the newly-risen sun And cleaving through the dazzle of the day Vanish like light dissolved in greater light Or music drowned in heavenlier music.

UNDERWORLD

Here lie I in the underworld of trees, Over my head I have a wave of leaves Through whose loose shimmering weave of mysteries The rays of heaven come in yellow sheaves

Till every leaf is like an amber lamp Lit at the very source of golden light; The netted green has drawn the sun's own stamp And myriad tiny suns are in my sight,

While such a radiant harmony, on wings I hear but see not, seems my world to throng I could believe the only voice that sings Is of the leafage sparkling into song.

To-day within my soul I may contain As much melodic light as one fine leaf Receives from heaven and gives out again Into an underworld grown dim with grief.

A SONG

It means so little to you To sing a note as you pass, To smile your thanks to the day For donning its cloudless blue And then to go your way, And leave behind in the grass The print of your little shoe Or a petal dropt from your rose And your touch on the vine that grows Over my cottage door: It is nothing at all to you.

But to me, it is alms to the poor, And the light of day to the blind, And hope to the desolate; Though you never have once glanced through The window where, half-defined, Half-hidden, I watch and wait-- For it means so little to you.

EARTH AND THE WORLD

Skies that smile and slumber overspread with peace, Quiet shores divinely hushed by kissing seas, Corn-meads like the Mother's breast swelling and at ease, All these hold me, fold me, that was not born of these.

_I was born of the city's din Where the World winds out and in The endless ways man's hands do spin, And men and women strive and sin To win--I know not what to win._

Silver feet of twilight stepping from the East, Golden wings of morning pointing to the South, Globëd noon that half a-swoon Discontains its ecstasy, spills its ineffable feast, And flings about the shining air invisibly a wreath, Scent of pine and flower and brine Sweet and sweeter than the breath Of the Belovèd's mouth.

_O but O the city's mood Restlessly divides my blood Until the greater half doth crave All at once to plunge and lave Underneath the murky wave And commingle with the flood: And my brow desires the crown Of the chimney-smoke-wreaths brown, And my foot upon the pave Aches to tramp it up and down To the discord of the town._

Sunk in this large retirement where God's presence flows And I can add no drop to His seas, no speck to His skies, I might yield myself to His shadow for ever on my eyes And the vision of Him for ever at peace in my peaceful soul, Till one still-breathing dusk when the West was a golden rose I might float out on the tides and over the Brim To Him:-- And consummate the whole.

_O but to touch the Brim And never have sought to swim!_

Out here God says all, does all. But there in the city's hum Units, whereof I am, have their thing to do and say. My individual note I would sing ere I go the Way. Finite was I created. The Infinite strikes me dumb.

O changeless earth! O changeful world! I will arise! Here stands the immutable Is. Yonder the Might Be lies. What Is I cannot achieve, what Might Be perhaps I can If but to my finite powers the Infinite give the nod: All's possible here to God, all's possible there to Man, And I was born in the city, I am Man, I am not God.

THE MAID'S IDYLL

I.

Night was warm and still, Moon a dusky red, Crickets chirped all up the hill, And I wished me dead.

"For what use alive to be And never live?" I said, Lifting arms to let free The plaits about my head.

"Have parents kind enow, Lack nor roof nor bread, Day goes I scarce know how Till day be sped,

"Each drags by so like to each Weighted with lead, Always something needing speech In my soul unsaid,

"Something in my soul unsung, Something unfed-- _Must_ be eased while still I'm young And unwitherèd."

Crickets chirruped strangely shrill, Smooth lay my bed, Moon was hot upon the hill, And I wished me dead.

II.

Over garden and garth and meadow Lo! I see a slipping shadow Swift as any swallow-- Hist, strange shadow! I'll up and follow.

Neither meadow nor garth nor garden Has in the sweet close nights its warden: Oh, yet now I doubt me! Eyes and whispers do seem about me.

Yet though the stars high-strewn, a litter Of lights that shake for fear as they glitter, All be lamps of danger-- I will speak with you, shadow-stranger!

III.

Brown boy, brown boy, What do you here In the orchard all in rags At midnight very near? _Brown boy, I never saw Eyes so clear._

Brown boy, brown boy, Bare are your feet-- Say I fetched the watch-dog out Could they run fleet? _Brown boy, I never heard Voice so sweet._

Brown boy, brown boy, Where's your alarm? Say I fetched my mother out Sure you'd come to harm! _Brown boy, I never felt Hands so warm._

Brown boy, brown boy, Stealing's very wrong! If I fetched my father out Your skin weren't worth a song. _Brown boy, I never knew Hearts beat so strong._

IV.

He said, three apples I came to steal, Red and russet and golden peel, For I've walked the day and never a meal.

Give me, he said, your russet hair Once for my lips, and it's little I care Though your apples rot as they ripen there.

Twice to save me, he said, from sin, Give me your beautiful golden skin That I may kiss it from forehead to chin.

Nay, and lest hunger still gnaw, he said, Give me, belovèd, your mouth's dear red: Though I starve in the dawn I will still be fed.

V.

What's the road you travel "Sand, chalk, and gravel, Green grass and paving-stone, Always alone.

"Hard and easy faring, Freedom unsparing, Where ant has crept or bird flown To me is known.

"The sun's way, the rain's way, Joy's way and pain's way, As many ways as wind has blown All are my own."

[Symbol: star]

Love, the future why weigh? Your way is my way, Neither grass nor city stone Walk more alone.

Will not bitter faring Better by sharing? Every pain you've ever known I'll make my own,

Beside you free of care foot, Hungry and barefoot, Glad, gay, great-hearted grown, And never alone!

VI.

I know not whether I would laugh or weep, Whether great sorrow or great gladness fill me, Only that life has suddenly grown deep, And from their dim and dreamful caverns springing The golden-eyed imaginings of sleep Like glorious birds given full freedom sweep The world about our heads with strange wild singing ... Though it do kill me, Boy, I will love you, only so you will me....

VII.

Suppose no other night is like to this? Suppose the coming light Rives lance-like from the heart even of this night Its mysteries?

You have put sudden bloom upon my soul, And you have made to lift My wingless spirit that did faintly drift And saw no goal:

Have made me know the dazzle of a star Crowns all this common earth Which is a planet shooting light from birth As yonder are.

These things, this bright new wisdom, could be given Only of you to me: The virtue's God's alone, who bade it be, To unmake heaven:

So if you, sole destroyer, being sole giver, Go ere you try your pow'rs, All this may still be infinitely ours To guard for ever.

VIII.

Is morning in the sky? Is not the moon still high?

A little wing of light Flutters against the night.

You scarce have seen my face, Your own's a shadowed place,

But your voice I still will know In a million years or so,

Say Welcome to your breath In some abyss of death,

Meet in the black eclipse Of unborn worlds your lips,

Or know by its thrilling pain This pulse of your heart again.

The moon is very low, Soon all this grey will glow--

Go now, before the red, And do not turn your head.

WÊLAND AND THE SWAN-GIRLS

Three white swans flew in the sky (Are you heeding, Wêland-Smith?) Three white swans flew in the sky Till they did a blue lake spy, Then the three to earth did fly And they laid their plumage by. (Are you watchful, Wêland-Smith?)

When they stood of plumage bare (What's your eye say, Wêland-Smith?) When they stood of plumage bare Three white maidens rose up there. Earthly maids have not such rare Rose-flushed limbs, such yellow hair, Earthly maids are not so fair-- (What's your heart say, Wêland-Smith?)

These three maidens did begin (What the ending, Wêland-Smith?) These three maidens did begin By the lakeside flax to spin, And a low-hummed song did win Thro' their threads all fine and thin, Stealing, flashing out and in. (Was it magic, Wêland-Smith?)

When the golden flax was spun (Threads of fate for Wêland-Smith!) When the golden flax was spun: "Sisters," said the youngest one, "See the ripples of the sun Spinning where the waters run! Let's unravel them till none Rests to mock what we have done." (Tense with hope lay Wêland-Smith.)

From the blue lake's flowery brim (Still your breathing, Wêland-Smith!) From the sweet lake's flowering brim These three maids did dive and swim. Oh, the flash of pearly limb Visioned through the waters dim! (Steal your moment, Wêland-Smith!)

Said the youngest Valkyr-Maid (Did she hear you, Wêland-Smith?) Said the youngest Valkyr-Maid: "Sisters, I am grown afraid! Three men hide within the shade-- Quick! before we be betrayed!" (Quicker yet was Wêland-Smith.)

Three men stood upon the bank (Egil, Slagfinn, Wêland-Smith) Three men stood upon the bank, In their hands the plumage lank. "What prank's this?" the youngest drank Breath to ask that triple rank. Wêland said: "This is no prank." (Strong and grave was Wêland-Smith.)

Egil lifted up his hand, (Not as yet stirred Wêland-Smith) Egil-Archer raised his hand, Slagfinn only looked command, And their maidens came to land, And the four passed down the strand. (Patient still was Wêland-Smith.)

Then the youngest of the brood, (Ay, and fairest, Wêland-Smith!) Then the fairest of the brood Spoke to him from where she stood: "Brown young Smith, your eyes are good-- Spare my immortal maidenhood." But the swan-girl's melting mood All the stronglier swayed and wooed Every impulse of his blood Till desire was at full flood-- ('Ware of drowning, Wêland-Smith!)

"What reck I of prayer and plea?" (So made answer Wêland-Smith.) "What reck I of prayer and plea? By this plumage held in fee, Swan-girl, you belong to me, Swan-girl, you shall follow me, Ay, and be true wife to me." (Warm of voice was Wêland-Smith.)

"Render me my white swan-wings!" (Still she strove with Wêland-Smith.) "Render me my white swan-wings And I'll teach you cunning things From the craft-wise fount that springs Where iron Thor his hammer swings. Smith, when your red anvil sings, Fashioning you magic rings, Swords for hero-happenings, Crowns more meet for gods than kings-- You'll not grudge my white swan-wings." (Plied she thuswise Wêland-Smith.)

"What reck I of promises?" (So made answer Wêland-Smith.) "What reck I of promises? When I need such things as these You shall teach me, if I please, Wife of mine, upon your knees. Mine you are beyond release." (Firm of voice was Wêland-Smith.)

"Back I take all promise and pray'r!" (Proudly faced she Wêland-Smith.) "Back I take all promise and pray'r! Hear, you worm of earth! that dare With base cunning seek to snare Me, a Valkyr of the air: Such as I are slow to spare Who our god-given rights impair-- Render me my plumage fair Lest I blast you standing there!" (Fiercely faced she Wêland-Smith.)

"What reck I of passion and pride?" (So made answer Wêland-Smith.) "What reck I of passion and pride? Witless woman-words fly wide. Woman, you are Wêland's bride, 'Shall come meekly to his side, And he will not be denied." (Stern of voice was Wêland-Smith.)

Thro' the lake the swan-girl white, (Ah, be gentle, Wêland-Smith!) Thro' the lake the swan-girl white Slipped, and came with footfall light Till beside him in full sight Stood she beautiful and bright, Saying with neither fear nor spite: "I am here for your delight." (So she greeted Wêland-Smith.)

"Nay, but hear me ere we go, (As I love you, Wêland-Smith!) Nay, but hear me ere we go Hence to lay my godhead low Since my lord will have it so. Weigh the balance, lord, and know That if we twain wedded show All your streams of fate do flow Henceforth from the tides of woe-- (Woe, O woe to Wêland-Smith!)

"Full seven years you shall me hold, (Seven years' bliss for Wêland-Smith!) Full seven years you shall me hold. When the seventh year is told, Like a parchment read and scrolled-- Ah, but, lord, inscribed in gold!-- That we may no more unfold (Only think on, Wêland-Smith),

"I shall know a strange unrest, (Dread the eighth year, Wêland-Smith!) I shall know a strange unrest, Be of old desires possessed, Passionate to ride the crest Of the storm, North, South, East, West-- Ay, and by your strong arm pressed Win no sleep more on your breast. (Sound tho' _you_ sleep, Wêland-Smith.)

"In the ninth year I shall hear, (Will you hear, too, Wêland-Smith?) In the ninth year I shall hear Iron Thor's thunder very near Like a summons in my ear-- I shall leap for helm and spear And shall pass in the ninth year! Wêland! woe for Wêland! drear Stands his future all too clear, Yet I may not read it here. Cast me from you, lord, with fear! (I have warned you, Wêland-Smith.)"

"What reck I of hurt and harm?" (Sweet of voice was Wêland-Smith.) "What reck I of hurt and harm? I hold you by a seven-years' charm, My bride and my belovèd, warm Within the hollow of my arm!" (_Go seven years happy, Wêland-Smith, But Fate shall not be striven with._)

✶

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This series of books is being produced in connection with _Orpheus_, a quarterly magazine of mystical art. The magazine contains pictures, poems, articles and stories. At present (April, 1911) fourteen numbers have appeared, but the first three issues are out of print. Subscription (post free), 4/8 per annum.

THE ORPHEUS SERIES.

I. THE HERO IN MAN: by A. E., with introduction by Clifford Bax. _Second edition_ (first edition, 1,000 copies, sold out in fourteen months). Printed on Dutch hand-made paper. 6_d._ net.

II. SEAFOAM AND FIRELIGHT: a book of Celtic poems, by Dermot O'Byrne, with cover-design by A. Bowmar-Porter. 1/2 net (boards), 8_d._ net (paper).

III. TWENTY CHINESE POEMS, paraphrased by Clifford Bax, and accompanied by _four Illustrations in Colour_ by Arthur Bowmar-Porter. 2/6 net.

IV. FROM GARDENS IN THE WILDERNESS: a book of prose and verse, by Gwendolen Bishop. 2/6 net (boards), 5/- net (in Persian leather).

V. DREAM-SONGS FOR THE BELOVÈD: by Eleanor Farjeon (author of _Pan-Worship_). 2/6 net.

VI. SOLAR SYMBOLS AND THEIR MEANING: by Avola. 6_d._ net.

VII. THE RENEWAL OF YOUTH: by A. E. 6_d._ net.

_In Preparation._

VIII. GREEN-MAGIC AND THE SISTERS: by Dermot O'Byrne. (Two studies of romantic life in the West of Ireland to-day.)

IX. POEMS DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL: by Clifford Bax, with title-page and end-paper designs by Diana Read.

✶

LONDON: WOMEN'S PRINTING SOCIETY, LTD., BRICK ST. PICCADILLY.

Transcriber's Note

Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been repaired.

End of Project Gutenberg's Dream-Songs for the Belovèd, by Eleanor Farjeon