Part 2

WAS a Soule from farre away Stood wistful in the Hay, And of the Babe a-sleeping hadde a sight: Neither reck'd hee any more Men behind him and before, Nor a thousand busie Winges, flitting light: But in middle of the night This few-worded wight (_Yule! Yule!_) Bespake Our Ladye bright:

"Fill mee, ere my corage faints, With the lore of all the Saints: Harte to harte against my Brother let mee be. By the Fountaines that are His I wo'd slumber where Hee is: Prithee, Mother, give the other Brest to mee!" The Soule that none co'd see She hath taken on her knee: (_Yule! Yule!_) Sing prayse to Our Ladye.

V

_The Ox and the Ass, Tell aloud of them: Sing their pleasure as it was In Bethlehem._

STILL as blowing rose, sudden as a sword, Maidenly the Maiden bare Jesu Christ the Lord; Yet for very lowlihood, such a Guest to greet, Goeth in a little swoon while kissing of His feet.

Mary, drifted snow on the earthen floor, Joseph, fallen wondrous weak now he would adore,-- (Oh, the surging might of love! Oh, the drowning bliss!) Both are rapt to Heaven and lose their human Heaven that is.

From the Newly Born trails a lonely cry. With a mind to heed, the Ox turns a glowing eye; In the empty byre the Ass thinks her heart to blame: Up for comforting of God the beasts of burden came,

Softly to inquire, thrusting as for cheer There between the tender hands, furry faces dear. Blessing on the honest coats! tawny coat and grey Friended Our Delight so well when warmth had strayed away.

Crooks are on the sill; sceptres sail the wave; All the hopes of all the years are thronging to the Cave. Mother slept not long, nor long Father's sense was dim, But another twain the while stood parent-wise to Him.

_The Ox and the Ass, Be you glad for them Such a moment came to pass In Bethlehem!_

_On Leaving Winchester_

WINTON, my window with a mossy marge, My lofty oriel, whence the soul hath sight Of passionate yesterdays, all gold and large, Arisen to enrich our narrow night: Though others bless thee, who so blest before Hath pastured from the violent time apart, And laved in supersensual light the heart Alone with thy magnificent No More?

Sweet court of roses now, sweet camp of bees! The hills that lean to thy white bed at dawn Hear, for the clash of raging dynasties, Laughter of boys about a branchy lawn. Hast thou a stain, let ivy cover all; Nor seem of greatness disinhabited While spirits in their wonted splendour tread From close to close, by Wolvesey's idle wall.

Bright fins against thy lucid waters leap, And nigh thy towers the nesting ring-doves dwell; Be lenient winter, and long moons, and sleep Upon thee; but on me the sharp Farewell. Happy art thou, O clad and crowned with rest! Happy the shepherd (would that I were he!) Whose early way is step for step with thee, Whose old brow fades on thine immortal breast.

_Cobwebs_

WHO would not praise thee, miracle of Frost? Some gesture overnight, some breath benign, And lo! the tree's a fountain all a-shine, The hedge a throne of unimagined cost; In wheel and fan along a wall embossed, The spider's humble handiwork shows fine With jewels girdling every airy line: Though the small mason in the cold be lost.

Web after web, a morning snare of bliss Starring with beauty the whole neighbourhood, May well beget an envy clean and good. When man goes too into the earth-abyss, And God in His altered garden walks, I would My secret woof might gleam so fair as this.

_Astræa_

SINCE I avail no more, O men! with you, I will go back unto the gods content; For they recall me, long with earth inblent, Lest lack of faith divinity undo. I served you truly while I dreamed you true, And golden pains with sovereign pleasure spent: But now, farewell! I take my sad ascent, With failure over all I nursed and knew.

Are ye unwise, who would not let me love you? Or must too bold desires be quieted? Only to ease you, never to reprove you, I will go back to heaven with heart unfed: Yet sisterly I turn, I bend above you, To kiss (ah, with what sorrow!) all my dead.

_The Yew-Tree_

AS I came homeward At merry Christmas, By the old Church tower Through the Churchyard grass,

And saw there circled With graves all about, The Yew-tree paternal, The Yew-tree devout,

Then this hot life-blood Was hard to endure, O Death! so I loved thee, The sole love sure.

For stars slip in heaven, They wander, they break; But under the Yew-tree Not one heartache.

And ours, what failure Renewed and avowed! But ah, the long-buried Is leal, and is proud.

* * * * *

At eve, o'erlooking The smooth chilly tide, With age-hidden meaning The Yew-tree sighed,

By the square grey tower, In the short grey grass, As I came homeward At merry Christmas.

_Ten Colloquies_

I. THE SEARCH

"WHY dost thou hide from these Out along the hills halloaing? Why hast forbade Thy face, O goddess! to thy votaries?"

"_Unasking and unknowing Is he whom I make glad, Like Dian grandly going To the sleeping shepherd-lad. Men that pursue learn not To follow is my lot._"

"Happiness, secret one, Heartbeat of the April weather, Where art thou found? Tell; lest I err too, yonder in the sun."

"_Call in thine eye from ether, Thy feet from far ground; Seek Honour in this heather, With austere purples wound. Serve her: she will reveal Me, hound-like at thy heel._"

II. FACT AND THE MYSTIC

"GOOD-MORROW, Symbol."--"_Call me not The name I neither love nor merit._" --"That grave eternal name inherit, Thine ever, though all men forgot."

"_Mistake me not; secure and free From rock to rock my falchion passes: But Symbols trail through grey morasses The tattered shows of faëry._"

"My Symbol thou, of phantom blood, With starlight from thy temples raying; Along thy floated body playing Are withering wings, and wings in bud."

"_Alas, thine eye with clay is sealed._" --"Symbol, before the clay's denial, While yet I had a god's espial, I saw thee in a solar field!"

"_Nay: I am Fact._"--"Then lose thy praise; And lest to-day no song behoove thee, Lest mine impeach thee, or reprove thee, Ah, Symbol, Symbol! go thy ways."

III. THE POET'S CHART

"WHERE shall I find my light?"

"_Turn from another's track: Whether for gain or lack, Love but thy natal right. Cease to follow withal, Though on thine up-led feet Flakes of the phosphor fall. Oracles overheard Are never again for thee, Nor at a magian's knee Under the hemlock tree, Burns the illumining word._"

"Whence shall I take my law?"

"_Neither from sires nor sons, Nor the delivered ones, Holy, invoked with awe. Rather, dredge the divine Out of thine own poor dust, Feebly to speak and shine. Schools shall be as they are: Be thou truer, and stray Alone, intent, and away, In a savage wild to obey Some dim primordial star._"

IV. OF THE GOLDEN AGE

"RECALL for me, recall The time more true and ample; The world whereon I trample, How tortuous and small! Behold, I tire of all.

"Once, gods in jewelled mail Through greenwood ways invited; There how the moon is blighted, And mosses long and pale On lifeless cedars trail."

"_Child, keep this good unrest: But give to thine own story Simplicity with glory; To greatness dispossessed, Dominion of thy breast._

"_In abstinence, in pride, Thou, who from Folly's boldest Thy sacred eye withholdest, Another morn shalt ride At Agamemnon's side._"

V. ON TIME'S THRESHOLD

"_See: brood: remember: this thy function only; Neither to have nor do is meet for thee._" "Ah, earth's a palace where I must go lonely!" "_Nay: earth's a dungeon which thou passest, free._"

VI. WOOD-PIGEONS

"I CANNOT soar beside, but must for ever suffer Blue air athrill with thee to lap against my breast, And dream it is thy wing." --"_Dear, sighs about thee hover: Among the dewy leaves my longing is thy guest. Yet, lone and far apart, shall we no joy discover To travel the same sky, and by one sea to rest? Say, mate in all this world?_" --"Ah, mute forbidden lover, Ah, song I shall not hear!" --"_Ah, sweet unbuilded nest!_"

VII. PREDICAMENTS

"IF the gods ruin send?"-- "_Make that thy bride and friend._"

"If the gods cheat?"--"_They say The one true word alway._"

"If for some loss I pine?" "--_The past is theirs, yet thine._"

"If I sue not?"--"_Vain cares! The morrow's thine, not theirs._"

VIII. THE CO-ETERNAL

"_Is it thou, silly heart, Not prone on thy pallet, but grieving apart?_" --"Natal Star, even so." "_I miss thee to-night, while thou smoulderest low._" --"Live in beauty! but I For bloodshed of spirit, here dwindle and die."

"_Are we two not the same, By law everlasting one mystical flame? Aloft if I burn, Every ray of my light be thy stair of return: Up, up! to our lot Where warfare and time and the body are not._"

IX. STERN APHRODITE

"IOLE is coy with me, Goddess! for a month I suffer Knowing not how far I be: Teach me softer arts, or rougher, Well to sail that sea."

"_Fie: how long could Love divine Venturing, abstain from answer, Nor look landward for a sign! Niggard, take of thine entrancer Shipwreck in the brine._"

X. THE JUBILEE

"_Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure! We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure, All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure._"

"Welcome, equal powers benign, quit of ancient madness! Dance with me beneath the vine, not ungentle Sadness; Link your little hand in mine soberly, my Gladness."

_Winter Boughs_

HOW tender and how slow, in sunset cheer, Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! A broidery of ebon 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 fallen, leave this wonder here.

O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, With not a plume, gay in the joust 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.

_W.H._

_A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_

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!

Falleth no thing that was to thee 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 every bugle 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 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, That one inexorable thing!)

In rocky hollows cool and deep, The honey-bees unrifled sleep; The early moon from Ida steep Comes to the empty wrestling-ring;

Upon the widowed wind recede No echoes of the shepherd's reed; And children without laughter lead The war-horse to the watering;

With footstep separate and slow The father and the mother go, Not now upon an urn they know To mingle tears for comforting.

Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! What to the lovely hast thou done, That nevermore a maid may run With him across the flowery Spring?

The world to me has nothing dear Beyond the namesake river here: Oh, Simois is wild and clear! And to his brink my heart I bring;

My heart, if only this might be, Would stay his waters from the sea, To cover Troy, to cover me, To haste the hour of perishing. (Alas, alas, That one inexorable thing!)

_To an Ideal_

THAT I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height: All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light! No pleasure born of time for me, Who in you touch eternity. If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight.

You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine, The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine. More lovely here, to wakened blood, Sparse leaf and hesitating bud, Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine.

Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too, Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue. Because man's cry, by night and day, Cried not for God, I broke away. On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you.

_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 valour: 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.

_Beati Mortui_

BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead Not passed, but perfected: Who tower up to mystical full bloom From self, as from a known alchemic tomb; Who out of wrong Run forth with laughter and a broken thong; Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant Of peace anticipant; Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now, Unbound from foot to brow, Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful As sun-born colours of a forest pool Where Autumn sees The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees.

Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost As any chantry ghost, How sight of these, in hermitage or mart, Makes glad a wistful heart! For life's apologetics read most true In spirits risen anew, Like larks in air To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair, And who from yonder parapet Scorn every mortal fret, And rain their sweet bewildering staves Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves.

If thus to have trod and left the wormy way Makes men so wondrous gay, So stripped and free and potently alive, Who would not his infirmity survive, And bathe in victory, and come to be As blithe as ye, Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give; Turn not away, too fugitive: But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street, And sit with us at meat, And of your courtesy, on us unwise Fix oft those purer eyes, Till in ourselves who love them dwell The same sure light ineffable: Till they who walk with us in after years Forgetting time and tears (As we with you), shall sing all day instead: "How blessed are the Dead!"

_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-sodden 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 hedgerow to 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 rocks 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 tender lambs to sleep.

'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height To watch from my harrow the dance of going light; And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail, Hey, but there's many a March for me, and many and many a lass!-- I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass.

_The Japanese Anemone_

ALL summer the breath of the roses around Exhales with a delicate passionate sound; And when from a trellis, in holiday places, They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces, A lad in the lane must slacken his paces.

Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower: But low by the wall is my odourless flower, So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her, That poet or bee should delay there and hover; For she is a silence, and therefore I love her.

And never a mortal by morn or midnight Is called to her hid little house of delight; And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden, Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden, Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden.

While ardours of roses contend and increase, Methinks she has found how noble is peace, Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever, Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver, And dead long ago, being lovely for ever.

_Orisons_

ORANGE and olive and glossed bay-tree, And air of the evening out at sea, And out at sea on the steep warm stone, A little bare diver poising alone.

Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves, Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves, "I am!" he cries to his glorying heart, And unto he knows not what: "THOU art!"

He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone: He will climb to the golden ledge anon. Perfecter rite can none employ, When the god of the isle is good to a boy.

_The Inner Fate: a Chorus_

NOT weak with eld The stars beheld Proud Persia coming to her doom; Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed, The long luxurious galleys lost Their souls at Actium.

Not outer arts Of hostile hearts Seduced the arm of France to be The wreckage of his wars at last, The orphan of the kingdoms, cast Upon the mothering sea.

Man evermore doth work his will, And evermore the gods are still, Applauding him alone who stands Too just for Heaven-accusing groans, But in his house of havoc owns The doing of his hands: Transgressor, yet divinely taught To suffer all, blaspheming naught, When fair-begun must foul conclude: Himself progenitor of death Who breeds, within, the only breath Can kill beatitude.

_The Acknowledgment_

SINCE first I knew it our divine employ To beat beyond the reach of soiling care, As at Philippi, well of doom aware, The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy; Since first my soul so jealous was of joy, That any facile linden-bloom in air, Or fall of water on a wildwood stair, Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy; Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled Long, long, at such august amends up-piled, Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup, On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child, Immortals! unto You will drink it up.

_By the Trundle-bed_

LOST love, be never beyond Love's calling! For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet As fontal water in Arden falling, As first-mown hay in the April heat:

To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden, And bring to bloom in the outer cold, Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden, Our son that is like you, and six years old;

And lest his worth be the worth unreal, To ward him not from the mortal blast, But suffer your own, through a long ordeal, Verily like you to be at the last,

And hear men murmur, if so he merit In your old place with your look to arise: "The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?-- You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes."

_Arboricide_

A WORD of grief to me erewhile: _We have cut the oak down, in our isle._

And I said: "Ye have bereaven The song-thrush and the bee, And the fisher-boy at sea Of his sea-mark in the even; And gourds of cooling shade, to lie Within the sickle's sound; And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye Of sleep on duty's ground; And poets of their tent And quiet tenement. Ah, impious! who so paid Such fatherhood, and made Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade."

For the hewn oak a century fair, A wound in earth, an ache in air.

And I said: "No pillared height With a summer daïs over, Where a dryad fled her lover Through the long arcade of light; Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more, Since the loud leaves are gone, Between the shorn cliff and the shore, Pan's organ antiphon. Some nameless envy fed This blow at grandeur's head: Some breathed reproach, o'erdue, Degenerate men, ye drew! Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew."

_The Cherry Bough_

IN a new poet's and a new friend's honour, 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. Oh, naught is absent,

Oh, 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 revel 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!

Since, long ago, in other gentler weather, Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it (Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother Glad with your gladness),

What has befallen in the world of wonder, That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour, And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty, Are sapped and rotten?

Alas! When my young guests have done with singing, I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory, And hold it high among them, and say after: "O my poor Ovid,

"Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember For the clear time when we were boys together, These tears at home are shed; and with you also Your bough is dying."

_The Wild Ride_