Part 1

“ENGLAND AND YESTERDAY”

“England and Yesterday”

A BOOK OF SHORT POEMS

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

LONDON GRANT RICHARDS 1898

CHISWICK PRESS:—CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

CONTENTS.

PAGE LONDON: SONNETS WRITTEN IN 1889. I. On First Entering Westminster Abbey 3 II. Fog 4 III. Saint Peter-ad-Vincula 5 IV. Strikers in Hyde Park 6 V. Changes in the Temple 7 VI. The Lights of London 8 VII. Doves 9 VIII. In the Reading-Room of the British Museum 10 IX. Sunday Chimes in the City 11 X. A Porch in Belgravia 12 XI. York Stairs 13 XII. In the Docks 14

OXFORD: SONNETS WRITTEN THERE BETWEEN 1890 AND 1895. I. The Tow-Path 17 II. The Old Dial of Corpus 18 III. Ad Antiquarium 19 IV. Rooks in New College Gardens 20 V. On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford 21 VI. On the Same (_continued_) 22 VII. A December Walk 23 VIII. Undertones at Magdalen 24 IX. Port Meadow 25 X. Martyrs’ Memorial 26 XI. A Last View 27 XII. Retrieval 28

LYRICS. A Ballad of Kenelm 31 Two Irish Peasant Songs 33 In a Ruin, after a Thunderstorm 35 To a Child 36 In a Perpendicular Church 37 A Seventeenth-Century Song 37 Columba and the Stork 38 The Chantry 39 April in Govilon 40 On Leaving Winchester 41 On the Cenotaph of the Prince Imperial in Saint George’s Chapel 42 Of Joan’s Youth 43 Passing the Minster 43 The Yew-Tree 44 Shropshire Landscape 45 The Graham Tartan to a Graham 46 In a London Street 46 Athassel Abbey 47 Romans in Dorset 49

LINES ON VARIOUS FLY-LEAVES. To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 53 For Izaak Walton 53 A Footnote to a Famous Lyric 54 A Memory of a Breconshire Valley 56 Writ in my Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion” 57 A Last Word on Shelley 57 An Epitaph for William Hazlitt 58 Emily Brontë 58 Pax Paganica 59 Valediction: R. L. S., 1894 59

LONDON:

SONNETS WRITTEN IN 1889.

_TO HERBERT E. CLARKE._

I.

ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Holy 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 cool enshadowed 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 altar-isle, Above the stormless sea of ended kings.

II.

FOG.

Like bodiless water passing in a sigh, Through 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 horns of Jericho, 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 generous 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, though the dark visor’s down.

III.

S. 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 bitter 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.

IV.

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, Through 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 Her mother’s rote of evil and of change.

V.

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 honour, 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 walled oasis, and where once it was, All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat Echo, and ivy, and the loitering moon.

VI.

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 hasty gleam, London, one moment fallen and forgot. Her booths begin to flare; her gases bright Prick door and window; street and lane 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.

VII.

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, That 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.”

VIII.

IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Praised be the moon of books! that doth above A world of men, the sunken Past behold, And colour spaces else too 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.

IX.

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! Though 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.

X.

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 but have been, for evermore.

XI.

YORK STAIRS.

Many a musing eye returns to thee, Against the formal 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.

XII.

IN THE DOCKS.

Where the bales thunder till the day is done, And the wild sounds with wilder odours 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 colours bound, Away, away from this too thoughtful ground, Sodden with human trespass and despair, Thee only, from the desert, from the storm, A sick mind follows into Eden air.

OXFORD:

SONNETS WRITTEN THERE IN 1890 AND 1895.

_TO LIONEL JOHNSON._

I.

THE TOW-PATH.

Furrow to furrow, oar to oar succeeds, Each length away, more bright, more exquisite; The sister shells that hither, thither flit, Strew the long stream like dropping maple-seeds. A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads, Who with short calls his pace doth intermit: An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sit, Auspicious Pan among the river reeds. West of the glowing hay-ricks, (tawny-black, Where waters by their warm escarpments run), Two lovers, slowly crossed from Kennington, Print in the early dew a married track, And drain the aroma’d eve, and spend the sun, Ere, in laborious health, the crews come back.

II.

THE OLD DIAL OF CORPUS.

Warden of hours and ages, here I dwell, Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook For good unborn; and, towards a willow nook, Pole, princely in the senate and the cell; And doubting the near boom of Osney bell, Turning on me that sweetly subtile look, Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book: Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell. Naught steadfast may I image nor attain Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope After my god, like him, inconstant bright. But sun and shade must unto you remain Alternately a symbol and a hope, Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light.

III.

AD ANTIQUARIUM.

My gentle Aubrey, who in everything Hadst of thy city’s youth so lovely lust, Yet never lineal to her towers august Thy spirit could fix, or perfectly upbring, Sleep, sleep! I ope, not unremembering, Thy comely manuscript, and, interthrust, Find delicate hueless leaves more sad than dust, Two centuries unkissed of any spring. Filling a homesick page beneath a lime, Thy mood beheld, as mine thy debtor’s now, The endless terraces of ended Time, Vague in green twilight. Goodly was release Into that Past where these poor leaves, and thou, Do freshen in the air of eldest peace.

IV.

ROOKS IN NEW COLLEGE GARDENS.

Through rosy cloud, and over thorny towers, Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled, From Isis’ valley border, hundred-hilled, The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers: Not for men only, and their musing hours, By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build These dewy spaces early sown and stilled, These dearest inland melancholy bowers. Blest birds! A book held open on the knee Below, is all they guess of Adam’s blight: With surer art the while, and simpler rite, They follow Truth in some monastic tree, Where breathe against their docile breasts, by night, The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity.

V.

ON THE PRE-REFORMATION CHURCHES ABOUT OXFORD.

Imperial Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green, And Templar Sandford in the boatman’s call, And sweet-belled Appleton, and Marcham wall That dost upon adoring ivies lean; Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall; Clear Cassington that soars perpetual; Holton and Hampton Poyle, and towers between: If one of all in your sad courts that come, Belovèd and disparted! be your own, Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures Some memory of a great communion known At home in quarries of old Christendom,— Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours.

VI.

ON THE SAME (CONTINUED).

Is this the end? Is this the pilgrim’s day For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? Rather, from grass and air and many spheres, In prophecy his spirit sinks away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested, the believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say: “Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty”? or, with kisses lain For witness on her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: “O banished light so nigh! Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest: Even here remember me when thou shalt reign.”

VII.

A DECEMBER WALK.

Whithersoever cold and fair ye flow, Calm tides of moonlit midnight, bear my mind! Past Christchurch gate, with leafy frost entwined, And Merton in a huge tiara’s glow, And groves in bridal gossamers below Saint Mary’s armoured spire; and whence aligned In altered eminence for dawn to find, Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow. White sacraments of weather, shine on me! Upbear my footfall, and my fancy sift, Lest either blemish an ensainted ground Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound, On recollected wing mine angel drift Across new spheres of immortality.

VIII.

UNDERTONES AT MAGDALEN.

Fair are the finer creature-sounds; of these Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop Susurrant in the garth from weeds atop; And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries Of wrens in council from a hundred leas; And Cherwell fish in laughter fain to stop The water-plantain’s way; and deer that crop Delicious herbage under choral trees. The cry for silver and gold in Christendom Without, threads not her silence and her dark. Only against the isolate Tower there break Low rhythmic rumours of good men to come: Invasive seas of hushed approach, that make Memorial music, would the ear but hark.

IX.

PORT MEADOW.

The plain gives freedom. Hither, from the town, How oft a dreamer and a book of yore Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more From Cowley border surge the game’s renown; But bade the vernal sky with spices drown His head by Plato’s in the grass, before Yon oar that’s never old, the sunset oar, At Medley Lock was lain in music down! So seeming far the confines and the crowd, The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire, From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven, Go happier than the inly-moving cloud That lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire, Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven.

X.

MARTYRS’ MEMORIAL.

Such natural debts of love our Oxford knows, So many ancient dues undesecrate, I marvel how the landmark of a hate For witness unto future time she chose; How out of her corroborate ranks arose The three, in great denial only great, For Art’s enshrining! . . Thus, averted straight, My soul to seek a holier captain goes: That sweet adventurer whom Truth befell Whenas the synagogues were watching not; Whose crystal name on royal Oriel Hangs like a shield; who to an outland spot Led hence, beholds his Star; and counts it well Of all his dear domain to live forgot.

XI.

A LAST VIEW.

Where down the glen, across the shallow ford, Stretches the open aisle from scene to scene, By halted horses silently we lean, Gazing enchanted from our steeper sward. How yon low loving skies of April hoard An hundred pinnacles, and how with sheen Of spike and ball her languid clouds between, Grey Oxford grandly rises riverward! Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls, Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls; Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar. Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well: And powers that aye aglow in you, impel Our quickening spirits from the slime we are.

XII.

RETRIEVAL.

Stars in the bosom of thy triple tide, June air and ivy on thy gracile stone, O glory of the West, as thou wert sown, Be perfect: O miraculous, abide! And still, for greatness flickering from thy side, Eternal alchemist, upraise, enthrone True heirs in true succession, later blown From that same seed of fire which never died. Nor love shall lack her solace, to behold Ranged to the morrow’s melancholy verge, Thy lights uprisen in Thought’s disclosing spaces; And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old, In radiant broad tumultuary surge For ever, the young voices, the young faces.

LYRICS.

_TO DORA SIGERSON SHORTER_

AND

_CLEMENT SHORTER._

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!

TWO IRISH PEASANT SONGS.

I. IN LEINSTER.

I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while. Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile, Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all, Why from me that’s young should the wild tears fall?

The shower-stricken earth, the earth-coloured streams, They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams, And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall, It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall.

The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill, And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still; But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call, The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!

II. IN ULSTER.

’Tis the time o’ the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch, The green, like a breaker, rolls steady up the branch, And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves; And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall, And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall.

’Tis the time o’ the year the marsh is full of sound, And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground. The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars, The daisy takes the middle field, and spangles it with stars, And down the bank into the lane the primroses do crowd, All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud!

’Tis the time o’ the year, in early light and glad, The lark has a music to drive a lover mad; The downs are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise, Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes, And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep Inclose a place without a wind for little lambs to sleep.