Part 2
I have mine own philosophies,
My way of life------
KNIGHT.
Is thine,
And mine is mine.
SHEPHERD.
Why, now! The man is gone! Pardie!
A silly wage! I trow
His lord that pays him mad as he,
Fools are a crop will grow
Though no man sow.
THE HERB OF GRACE
To all who fain would pass their days
Among old books and quiet ways,
And walk with cool, autumnal pace
The bypaths of tranquillity,
To each his own select desire,
To each his old familiar briar
And silent friend and chattering fire,
Companions in civility.
Outside the world goes rolling by,
And on the trampling and the cry
There comes the long, low mournful sigh
Of night winds roaming vagrantly;
They see too many sullen sights
This side the stars on winter nights;
A kind of hopeless Jacobites. --This brand, indeed, smokes fragrantly.
The perfect mixture's far to seek;
Your pure Virginia, pale and meek,
Requires the passion of Perique,
The Latakian lyrics;
Perfection is the crown that flies
The reaching hands and longing eyes,
And art demands what life denies
To nicotine empirics.
Sirs, you remember Omar's choice,
Wine, verses, and his lady's voice
Making the wilderness rejoice?
It needs one more ingredient.
A boon, the Persian knew not of,
Had made to mellower music move
The lips to wine, if not to love,
A trifle too obedient.
This weed I call the "herb of grace."
My reasons are, as some one says,
"Between me and my fireplace."
Ophelia spoke of rue, you know.
"There's rue for you and there's for me,
But you must wear it differently."
Quite true, of course.--Your pipe I see
Draws hard. They sometimes do, you know.
Alas, if we in fancy's train
To drowse beside our fires are fain,
Letting the world slip by amain,
Uneager of its verities,
Our neighbours will not let us be
At peace with inutility.
They quote us maxims, two or three,
Or similar asperities.
I question not a man may bear
His still soul walled from noisy care,
And walk serene in places where
An ancient wrath is denizen;
The pilgrim's feet may know no ease,
And yet his heart's delight increase,
For all ways that are trod in peace
Lead upward to God's benison.
No less I doubt our age's need
Is some of Izaak Walton's creed.--
Your pardon, gentlemen! I breed
Impatience with a homily.--
Our flag there were a sombre type,
If every star implied a stripe.
I wish you all a wholesome pipe,
And ingle blinking bonnily.
Poor ethics these of mine, I fear,
And yet, when our green leaves and sere
Have dropped away, perhaps we'll hear
These questions answered curiously.
The battered book here on my knees?
Is Herrick, his "Hesperides."
Gold apples from the guarded trees
Are stored here not penuriously.
The poet of the gurgling phrase
And quaint conceits of elder days,
Loved holiness and primrose ways
About in equal quantities,
Wassail and yuletide, feast and fair,
Blown petticoats, a child's low prayer;
A fine, old pagan joy is there;
Some wild-rose muse's haunt it is.
Mine herb of grace, that kindred art
To all who choose "the better part,"
Grant us the old world's childlike heart,
Now grown an antique rarity!
With mayflowers on our swords and shields
We'll learn to babble of green fields
Like Falstaff, whom good humour yields
A place still in its charity.
Visions will come at times; I note
One with a cool, white, delicate throat;
Glory of names that shine remote,
From towers of high endeavouring.
Care not for these, nor care to roam,
Ulysses, o'er the beckoning foam.
"Here rest and call content our home"
Beside our fire's soft wavering.
VERSES FROM "THE CANTICLE OF THE ROAD"
I
On the open road, with the wind at heel
Who is keen of scent and yelping loud,
Stout heart and bounding blood we feel,
Who follow fancy till day has bowed
Her forehead pure to her evening prayer
And drawn the veil on her wind-blown hair.
Free with the hawk and the wind we stride
The open road, and the world is wide
From rim to rim, and the skies hung high,
And room between for a hawk to fly
With tingling wing and lust of the eye.
II
Broad morning, blue morning, oh, jubilant wind!
Lord, Thou hast made our souls to be
Fluent and yearning long, as the sea
Yearns after the moon, and follows her,
With boon of waves and sibilant purr,
Round this world and past and o'er
All waste sea-bottoms and curving shore,
Only once more and again to find
The same sea-bottoms and beaten beach,
The same sweet moon beyond his reach
And drawing him onward as before.
III
Hark, from his covert what a note
The wood thrush whirls from his kingly throat
And the bobolink strikes that silver wire
He stole from the archangelic choir,
From a psaltery played in the glory alone
By an amber angel beneath the throne.
He strikes it twice, and deep, deep, deep,
Where the soul of music lies sleep.--
The rest of his song he learned, Ah me!
From a gay little devil, loose and free,
Making trouble and love in Arcadie.
IV
My brother of the dusty feet
Dragged eastward as my own go west,
Here from the birth of time addressed,
And the manner of your coming set
To this event, that we might meet,
And glance, and pass, and then forget;
We meet no more beneath the sun,
Yet for an instant we were one.
And now once more, as you and I,
In dungeons of ourselves we lie,
And through the grated windows peer;
As though a falling star should shine
A moment in your eyes and mine,
Then darkness there, and silence here.
V
Oh, Fons Bandusiæ, babbling spring,
From what deep wells come whispering!
What message bringest thou, what spells
From buried mountain oracles,
Thou limpid, lucid mystery?
Nay, this one thing I read in thee,
That saint or sinner, wise or fool,
Who dips hot lips within thy pool,
Or last or first, or best or worst,
Thou askest only that he thirst,
And givest water pure and cool.
VI
A draught of water from the spring,
An apple from the wayside tree,
A bit of bread for strengthening,
A pipe for grace and policy;
And so, by taking time, to find
A world that's mainly to one's mind;
Some health, some wit in friends a few,
Some high behaviours in their kind,
Some dispositions to be true.
FAUSTINE
She muses while the sunbeams creep
In slanting piers of light,
She muses while the shadows sleep
About the fire at night;
Hers is the vestal's waiting air,
The silence sweet and weird;
More wisdom nestles in her hair
Than crouched in Nestor's beard;
Troops of to-morrows cross her thought
In happy Junes and Mays,
And files of slow Septembers fraught
With priceless yesterdays;
And all her hours a thronging host
With visitations fill;
She gazes on each tranquil ghost
With eyes more tranquil still.
SOMETIME IT MAY BE
Sometime it may be you and I
In that deserted yard shall lie,
Where memories fade away,
Caring no more for our old dreams,
Busy with new and alien themes,
As saints and sages say.
But let our graves be side by side,
That passers-by at even-tide
May pause a moment's space:
"Ah, they were lovers who lie here!
Else why these low graves laid so near
In this forgotten place?"
WHEN ALL THE BROOKS HAVE RUN AWAY
When all the brooks have run away,
When the sea has left its place,
When the dead earth to night and day
Turns round a stony face,
Let other planets hold the strife
And burden now it bears,
The toil of ages, lifting life
Up those unnumbered stairs,
Out of that death no eye has seen
To something far and high;
But underneath the stairs, Faustine,
How melancholy lie
The broken shards and left behind,
The frustrate and unfit,
Who sought the infinite and kind,
And found the infinite.
ONE HOUR
The sun shall go darkly his way, the skies
Be lampless of stars, and the moon with sighs
Of her years complain,
And you and I in the waste shall meet
Of a downward gulf with hurrying feet,
And remember then
Only this shy, encircled place,
Only this hour's dimpled grace--
And smile again.
HEIRS OF TIME
Who grieves because the world is old,
Or cares how long it last,
If no grey threads are in our gold,
The shade our marbles cast,
We may not see it creeping near;
Time's heirs are you and I,
And freely spend each minted year
For anything 'twill buy.
WHO MAY WITH THE SHREWD HOURS STRIVE?
Who may with the shrewd Hours strive?
Too thrifty dealers they,
That with the one hand blandly give,
With the other take away,
With here and there some falling flake,
Some dust of gold, between
The hands that give and hands that take
Slipped noiseless and unseen.
Ah, comedy of bargainings,
Whose gain of years is found
A little silt of golden things
Forgotten on the ground!
LET ME NO MORE A MENDICANT
Let me no more a mendicant
Without the gate
Of the world's kingly palace wait;
Morning is spent,
The sentinels change and challenge in the tower,
Now slant the shadows eastward hour by hour.
Open the door, O Seneschal! Within
I see them sit,
The feasters, daring destiny with wit,
Casting to win
Or lose their utmost, and men hurry by
At offices of confluent energy.
Let me not here a mendicant
Without the gate
Linger from dayspring till the night is late,
And there are sent
All homeless stars to loiter in the sky,
And beggared midnight winds to wander by.
CURARE SEPULTOS
_Id cinerem aut Manis credis curare sepultos?_
"Do you think their spirits care
For their ashes and their tombs?"
Do you think they are aware,
That the tended roses are all gone with their perfumes,
That the footsteps of the mourners no longer linger
there,
Where the field flower only blooms?
They are dead. Let none remember;
Let their memories die as they;
Clear the dead leaves of November
For the careless passing footsteps of April and of May;
Be no sign of last night's saddened ember
In the flame we raise to-day.
Not that our hearts are cold,
O dead friends, who were dear to us!
Do we our lips withhold
From fallen stones and low graves piteous,
But only that death's voice is faint and old,
And life's imperious.
TO-MORROW
_Nunc vino pellite curas,_
_Cras ingens iterabimus aequor._
Now drive away your cares with wine
To-morrow on the sea we go.
To-night for us the tapers shine,
To-night the roses blow;
To-morrow shall our steps incline
Where the wild waters flow.
To-morrow! Let to-morrow be
Where all this world's to-morrows are
Where each must follow faithfully
The guiding of his star.
The moment that is given me
Is mine to make or mar.
Drink to me only with your eyes,
And I with mine will pay the debt;
Drink to my moment ere it dies
Divine and fragrant yet:
To each to-night its melodies!
To-morrow to forget!
SNOW
After the singing birds are gone
And the leaves are parched and low,
When the year is old, and the sky is wan,
Then comes the snow.
Hushed are the world's discordant notes
By the soft hand of snow.
Each flake how silently it floats;
How peaceable, how slow!
Ah, when the silver cord is loosed
And the golden bowl is broken,
And the spirit poured on the air unused,
As one has spoken,
After the last faint sob of breath
And the jar of life's outflow,
Over the sunken soul comes death,
Soft, cool, like snow.
BY THE SEA
Ave Maria by the sea,
Whose waves go on forevermore!
And we, the sheltered of the shore,
Have prayed to thee
For those in ships that journey far,
Where all day long their sails are white,
And grey and ghostly in the night
Each ship beneath its star.
Ave Maria! Be our guide.
A watchful star, a port to reach,
Ave Maria! give to each
Some eventide.
Be thou our moon of mystic light,
Across the ocean's gloom and wrath
Showing the lines of a silver path
To watchers in the night.
Ave Maria! From the sea
The constant litanies arise;
The burden of its many sighs
Goes up to thee.
Our lives make murmur and are vain
As ripples bringing tiny shells,
That the great sea behind impels,
And all its waves complain.
IN PORT TO-DAY
Now are harboured ships asleep
Beside their shadows,
Home from the wind-winnowed deep
And unscythed meadows
Of the bright green gliding sea,
From the windward gliding to the lee;
And one ship in port to-day
On the morrow
Southward bound will far away
The swift sea furrow;
Whom the loud Antarctic waits
And frozen citadels with creaking gates.
I have a home, though palmer bound
For holy lands, I pine for it;
I know its sheltering walls around
The hearth and lamp that shine for it,
The door apart;
I shall return on windward seas
By blue shores of Illyria
To find it filled with melodies
From Eden, beyond Syria.
It is your heart.
AS WE GROW OLD
_Tempora labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis._
"Time glides along and we grow old
By process of the silent years,"
More fain the busy hands to fold,
More quiet when a tale is told
Where death appears.
It is not that the feet would shrink
From that dark river, lapping, cold,
And hid with mists from brink to brink;
Only one likes to sit and think,
As one grows old.
WAYFARERS
All honest things in the world we met
With welcome, fair and free;
A little love is with us yet,
A friend, or two, or three;
Of the sun and moon and stars were glad,
Of the waters of river and sea;
We thank Thee, Lord, for the years we've had,
For the years that yet shall be.
These are our brothers, the winds of the airs,
These are our sisters, the flowers;
Be near us at evening and hear our prayers,
O God, in the late, grey hours.
THE HOUSE
Such an house I'll build and own,
When into old contentment grown
With reaping what my youth has sown.
The drooping roof be low and wide,
Curved like a seashell's inner side;
Let vines the patient pillars hide
Of that deep porch and ample shade;
There let no hurrying step invade,
Troubled or anxious or afraid.
I pray that birches very white
May stand athwart the woods at night,
Sweet and slim by late moonlight;
And I desire a beech may be
Not far away from mine and me,
Strong, pure, serene, and matronly;
An oak outspread in ample space,
Strength out of storms met face to face,
In his male girth and wide embrace.
Lest all the years go by in vain
Let the wind only and the rain
Paint my four walls with weather stain,
Nor phantom youth be ever there;
Of time's significance aware,
Time's grey insignia let them bear.
A brook before shall glide along,
And where its narrow waters throng
Make bubble music and low song.
A garden on the rearward side
Shall hold some flowers of civil pride,
And some in meekness dignified.
Within my house all men may see
How goodly four-square beams may be,
How unashamed in honesty.
There shall my day to evening creep,
Though downward, yet, as rivers sweep
By winding ways to the great deep.
SONNETS
THE HILLS
Consider the large heavenward hills, their ease,
Their genial age, their wisdom. More and more
I lift mine eyes unto the hills which bore
Of old their brunt of battle, and have peace.
These are the scars were ground across their knees
When the earth shuddered and the ice came on.
The hills have heaved and shouted and made moan
For the hot fire that bit their arteries.
Gentle and strong, old veterans of war,
Now humble with each flower and woven nest,
Friends of the sun and moon and morning star,
And fain of the mad north wind's biting jest;
My counsellors at unwritten law they are,
Teachers of lore and laughter, labour and rest.
WORDSWORTH
Not for a kindred reason thee we praise
With those, who in their minstrelsy are lords
Of elfin pipe and witchery of words,
Masters of life, who thread its tangled maze,
And on strange corners turn their curious gaze;
Nor those that delve for jewels in the hoards
Of old philosophies, of love's soft ways
Sing variously, or chaunt of clashing swords.
Rather for sympathy with the silent laws,
Which are themselves but sympathies; that the worn
Fine here a "still Saint Mary's Lake"; because
"The world is too much with us," and through thee
"Old Triton" sometimes blows on "wreathed horn"
A fitful note, clear from infinity.
THE WATER-LILY
Our boat drifts idly on the listless river
And water-lilies brush its bulging side,
In feeble wavings while the waters quiver
Like the pale sleeper's pulse before he died.
Reach me that water-lily floating near;
Its sullen roots give way with dull regret,
And now it lies across your fingers, dear,
Long, glistening in the sunlight, green and wet.
See the gold heart emerging from the dew,
Folded in petals of the purest white!
Look! through this stem in silent hours it drew
Its fragrance from deep waters out of sight,
And found among the river oozes cold,
This perfume and this whiteness and this gold.
THE THRUSH
I heard a wood thrush singing late and long
In the warm silence of the afternoon,
And drew more near to hear his secret croon
And intimate close confidence of song,
But at the noisy tread of my rude feet
The music ceased, the phantom voice was gone,"
And far away I heard him, in the sweet,
Serene recesses singing, and alone.
The law is written on the evening skies,
The wood thrush sings its beauty and despair;
Thou shalt not trespass where the loveliest lies,
Nor use the holiest place for common prayer,
And surely as God liveth, to the eyes
Of him who lifts the veil, He is not there.
THE ROMAN WAY
I
Being so weary then we turned aside
From the straight road and Roman Way that goes
Too straightly upward, on what breathless snows
Its measured lines' austerity descried.
"Captain, too stern this granite road!" we cried,
And "For whose right in militant array
Are led the sons of men this Roman Way?"
But the slow avalanche alone replied.
Therefore we turned aside, and day by day
Men passed us with set faces to the road,
And crying, "The Eternal City!" went their way,
While in the pleasant valley we abode
With all its dewy herbage and the fleet
Running of rivulets with silken feet.
II
And we had large experience with the stars
And sweet acquaintance with the clovered sods,
The seasons were our epics, filled with wars,
And heroes' councils and untroubled gods.
The groves elegiac, rivers pastoral,
Meadows athrill with sudden tragedies,
With loves of larks aloft and lyrical,
And busy comedy of the citizen bees.
Still of their genial fellowship who wait
The spring's incoming as a marriage morn
Whom fall and winter winds will make elate
As bugles a young hunter, we were borne
Along the casual current of each day
Apart from those who trod the Roman Way.
III
And in the main of living we were glad
That we had left the highway and had grown
To wear our tolerance as a silken gown
And smile at those who went in armour clad;
And old age came upon us, grey and sad,
Stealthy and slow, and passed and passed again
The onward faces of swift journeying men,
Keen with the life of some large Iliad.
Now--for our heads are stricken, our lives are
As flowers sodden in the winter rain--
We, who alive are dead--and whether far
Beyond the snows are blissful births of pain,
Or Rome, or Caesar, we know not--we say,
"There is one way of life, the Roman Way."
FOLLY
Blithe little maid with lifted lips,
Red as a bunch of holly,
What! May I hold your finger tips,
Dear little sweetheart, Folly?
List to a whisper in your ear,
Pink little ear, dear Folly,
While you were gone some one was here,
The Lady Melancholy.
Yes, and she sat in your old place,
This Lady Melancholy.
Ah, well! but she had a lovely face,
Sweet as your face, sweet Folly.
CONCERNING TABITHA'S DANCING OF THE MINUET
Tabitha, sweet Tabitha, I never can forget,
Nor how the music sounded, nor how our glances met,
When underneath the swinging lamps we danced the
minuet.
The stately bow, the dainty poise, and in the music
slips.
Did she linger for a moment, while I held her finger
tips,
And wondered if she'd ever let me touch them to my
lips?
And Tabitha wore powdered hair and dressed in quaint
brocade,
A tiny patch on either cheek just where the dimple
played;
The little shoe I noticed too, and clocks, I am afraid.
The music ceased. I led her softly smiling to the door.
A pause, a rustling courtesy down almost to the floor,
And Tabitha, sweet Tabitha, mine eyes beheld no more.
I've trod in many measures since with widow, wife, and
maid,
In every kind of satin, silk, and spangled lace arrayed,
And through it all have heard the fall of Tabitha's
brocade.
AN IDYL OF THE WOOD
Janet and I went jesting
To the wood, to the wood,
In a visionary, questing,
Idle mood.
"Ah! my heart," I said, "it teaches
I shall find among the beeches
A white nymph in the green reaches
Of the wood."--
"Oh, you will! Then I'll discover,
In the wood, in the wood,
A fairy prince and lover,
Or as good.
He shall kneel and-------"
"Now I spy light!
She shall meet me in the shy light
Of the twittering leaves and twilight
Of the wood,
"And I'll say, 'Here love convinces
Of his powers, of his powers.'"--
"And he'll say, 'Thou shalt be Princess
Of the Flowers.'"--
"And I'll whisper, 'Though thou shinest
As a goddess, love's divinest,
Loveless, lovely, lo! thou pinest
In thy bowers.'"--
And she laughed, with, "Farewell, poet,"--
And I said, "Farewell, maid.
Seek love alone, alone, and know it
Unafraid."--
Was it hours I went unwitting,
Fancy into fancy fitting,
Pallid flowers, and dim birds flitting,
As I strayed?
Till at length, where in profusion
Low and wet, wild and wet,
Fern and branch in shy confusion
Wooed and met,
There I saw her, lifting, peeping--
"Dryad?"--"Prince?"--come whispering, creeping.
Then her eyes were lit and leaping. 'Twas Janet!
Lit and leaping with suggestions.
"Why, it's you!"--"Why, it's you!"
"Yes, but, Jenny, now the question's,
Is it true?
Am I princely to your seeming?
You the dryad of my dreaming,
Born of beech leaves and the gleaming
Of the dew?"
And we put it to the testing
Of a kiss, of a kiss,
And the jesting and the questing
Came to this.
"Tested, tried, and proven neatly,
I should call it true completely."
And Janet said softly, sweetly,.
"So it is."
Oh, the glamour and the glimmer
Of the wood, of the wood,
Where the shadow and the shimmer
Smile and brood,
Where the lips of love laugh folly,
And the eyes of love are holy,
In the radiant melancholy
Of the wood!
PHYLLIS AND CORYDON
Phyllis took a red rose from the tangles of her hair,--
Time, the Golden Age; the place, Arcadia, anywhere,--
Phyllis laughed, the saucy jade: "Sir Shepherd, wilt
have this,
Or"--Bashful god of skipping lambs and oaten reeds!
--"a kiss?"
Bethink thee, gentle Corydon! A rose lasts all night
long,
A kiss but slips from off your lips like a thrush's
evening song.
A kiss that goes, where no one knows! A rose, a
crimson rose!
Corydon made his choice and took--Well, which do
you suppose?
MAYING
_Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed!_--Herrick.
_And Phillida with garlands gaye
Was made the lady of the Maye._--Nicholas Breton.
Come, Phillida, come! for the hours are fleet,
And sweet are the soft meadow murmurs, and sweet
Are the merry May flowers that long for thy feet.
Come, Phillida, come!
They are waiting to make thee their Lady of May,
And have twined in the midst of the marigolds gay
A little red flower; for pity, they say;
Thou knowest for whom.
And lovers are sighing among the green brake,
And birds in their flying soft madrigals make.
Hark! hear the girls crying, and all for thy sake.
Come, Phillida, come!
TWO LITTLE MAIDS
Two little maids went roaming, roaming,
All in the fields alone.
"Suppose that a boy were coming, coming,
Over the fields," said one, said one,
To the other little maid said one.
Then the second little maid fell dreaming, dreaming.
"He'll bring me a rose," said she.
"He won't! You are always scheming, scheming,
As horrid as you can be!" Dear me!
As horrid as she could be.
Two little maids in a fury, fury,
No little boy in view,