Chapter 2

Mortal child, lay thee where Earth is gift and giver; Midnight owl, witch, or bear Shall disturb thee never!

Softly, softly take thy place, Turn from man thy waning face; Fear not thou must lie alone, Sleep-mates thou shalt have anon.

(Clock of Time none commands, Driveth not the winter floods, Where the silent, tireless sands Run the ages of the gods.)

Thine is not a jealous bed; Pillow here hath every head; All that are and all to be Shall ask a little room of thee.

(Feet of flame, haste nor creep Where the stars are of thy pace; Heart of fire, in shadows sleep, With the sun in thy embrace.)

Babe of Time, old in care, Sweet is Earth, the giver; Owlet, witch, or midnight bear Shall disturb thee never.

HIS ARGUMENT

One time I wooed a maid (dear is she yet!) All in the revel eye of young Love's moon. Content she made me,--ah, my dimpling mate, My Springtime girl, who walked with flower-shoon! But near me, nearer, steals a deep-eyed maid With creeping glance that sees and will not see, And blush that would those yea-sweet eyes upbraid,-- O, might I woo her nor inconstant be! But is not Autumn dreamtime of the Spring? (Yon scarlet fruit-bell is a flower asleep;) And I am not forsworn if yet I keep Dream-faith with Spring in Autumn's deeper kiss. Then so, brown maiden, take this true-love ring, And lay thy long, soft locks where my heart is.

THE CONQUEROR

O Spring, that flutter'st the slow Winter by, To drop thy buds before his frosty feet, Dost thou not grieve to see thy darlings lie In trodden death, and weep their beauty sweet? Yet must thou cast thy tender offering, And make thy way above thy mourned dead, Or frowning Winter would be always king, And thou wouldst never walk with crowned head. So gentle Love must make his venturous way Among the shaken buds of his own pain; And many a hope-blown garland meekly lay Before the chilly season of disdain; But as no beauty may the Spring outglow, So he, when throned, no greater lord doth know.

TO MOINA

There were no heaven but for lovers' eyes; Save in their depths do all Elysiums fade; And gods were dead but for the life that lies In kisses sweet on sweeter altars laid. There were no heroes did not lovers ride, And pyramid high deeds upon new time; Nor tale for feast, or field, or chimney-side, And harps were dumb and song had ne'er a rhyme. Then live, proud heart, in happy fealty, Nor sigh thee more thy dear bonds to remove; Thou art not thrall to liege of mean degree, For all are kings who bear the lance of love; No wight so poor but may his tatters lose, And find his purple if his lady choose.

"THERE'S ROSEMARY"

O love that is not love, but dear, so dear! That is not love because it goes so soon, Like flower born and dead within one moon, And yet is love for that it comes full near The guarded fane where love alone may peer, Ere like young Spring by Summer soon outshone, It trembles into death, but comes anon, As thoughts of Spring will come though Summer's here.

O star full sweet, though one arose more fair, Within my heart I'll keep a heaven for thee Where thou mayst freely come and freely go, Touching with thy pale gold the twilight air Where dream-closed buds could never flower show, Yet fragrant keep the shadowy way for me.

AT THE GRAVE OF HEINE

South-heart of song In winter drest, Death mends thy wrong; That is life's best.

Bird, who didst sing From a bare bough, Call, and what Spring Will answer now!

And haste with her Bud-legacy,-- O, not to share, To take of thee!

Thy night, slow, dark, Yet song-lit shone, Till who did hark Missed not the moon;

When Morning found Thy cold, pierced breast, 'Twas she who moaned, To thy thorn pressed.

_Here lies the thorn-wound of the dawn Through whose high morn the bird sings on._

TO A LOST COMRADE

We found the spring at eager noon, And from one cup we drank; Then on until the forest croon In twilight tangle sank;

The night was ours, the stars, the dawn; The manna crust, bird-shared; And never failed our magic shoon, Whatever way we fared.

If caged at last, ceased not the flow Of sky-gleam through the bars; And where were wounds I only know Tear-kisses hid the scars.

And when, as round the world death-free We wind-embodied roam, I hear the gale that once was thee Cry "Hollo!" I will come.

FOR M. L. P.

Rose Love lay dreaming where I passed, Like flower blown from careless stem; So still I dared to touch at last Her white robe's hem.

Rose Love looked up and caught my hand, Though in her eyes the sea-birds were; When o'er my brow there blew a strand Of cold, grey hair.

Rose Love stood up unriddling this, Till shadows in my eyes grew old; Then warmed the lock with sudden kiss; Now flames it gold.

TO SLEEP

O silent lover of a world day-worn, Taking the weary light to thy dusk arms, Stealing where pale forms lie, sun-hurt and torn, Waiting the balm of thy oblivious charms, Make me thy captive ere I guess pursuit, And cast me deep within some dreamless close, Where hopes stir not, and white, wronged lips are mute, And Pain's hot wings fold down o'er hushed woes. And if ere morn thou choosest me to free, Let it not be, dear jailer, through the door That timeward opes, but to eternity Set thou the soul that needs thee nevermore; So I from sleep to death may softly wend As one would pass from gentle friend to friend.

"LE PENSEUR"

Warm in this marble, that is stone no more, Life at wound-pause lifts ear to woundless mind; Backward the ages their slow clew unwind, And step by step, and star by star, lead o'er The trail again, where eyeless passion tore Its red way to a soul. Mist-bound and blind No more, the thinker waits, and God grown kind Flashes a foot-print where He goes before.

Not to be followed! Falls the cloud again; Folds the stern form around the striving doubt, And curve betrays to curve the silent birth That shall be voice to later times and men; While lone in unlit dark, within, without, He sits immortal on a godless earth.

VISION

Look in, O Mystic, on thy lease, Thou tenant soul in God's demesne; Forego the show of eyes that fail, And walk the world that cannot pale, Thine by a sealed and termless lien Within His met eternities.

Yet look thou out from thy still hour With eyes that know and bear His fire; Till kindling on thy wonder's verge The transient days immortal merge In Him fulfilled as worlds expire In nestled love, a song, a flower.

SAFE

My dream-fruit tree a palace bore In stone's reality, And friends and treasure, art and lore, Came in to dwell with me.

But palaces for gods are made; I shrank to man, or less; Gold-barriered, yet chill, afraid, My soul shook shelterless.

I found a cottage in a wood, Warmed by a hearth and maid, And fed and slept, and said 'twas good,-- Ah, love-nest in the shade!

The walls grew close, the roof pressed low, Soft arms my jailers were; My naked soul arose to go, And shivered bright and bare.

No more I sought for covert kind; The blast blew on my head; And lo, with tempest and with wind I felt me garmented.

Here on the hills the writhing storm Cloaks well and shelters me; I wrap me round and I am warm, Warm for eternity.

ON BOSWORTH FIELD

Here, Richard, didst thou fall, caparisoned With kingdoms of thy lust; And here wouldst lie, by Fame's bent gleaners shunned, But came unto thy dust A swaggerer, perdy! Who cried "A horse, a horse!" and straight Thou wert abroad again on kingly feet To tread eternity.

OLD FAIRINGDOWN

Soft as a treader on mosses I go through the village that sleeps; The village too early abed, For the night still shuffles, a gipsy, In the woods of the east, And the west remembers the sun.

Not all are asleep; there are faces That lean from the walls of the gardens; Look sharply, or you will not see them, Or think them another stone in the wall. I spoke to a stone, and it answered Like an aged rock that crumbles; Each falling piece was a word. "Five have I buried," it said, "And seven are over the sea."

Here is a hut that I pass, So lowly it has no brow, And dwarfs sit within at a table. A boy waits apart by the hearth; On his face the patience of firelight, But his eyes seek the door and a far world. It is not the call to the table he waits, But the call of the sea-rimmed forests, And cities that stir in a dream. I haste by the low-browed door, Lest my arms go in and betray me, A mother jealously passing. He will go, the pale dwarf, and walk tall among giants; The child with his eyes on the far land, And fame like a young, curled leaf in his heart.

The stream that darts from the hanging hill Like a silver wing that must sing as it flies, Is folded and still on the breast Of the village that sleeps. Each mute, old house is more old than the other, And each wears its vines like ragged hair Round the half-blind windows. If a child should laugh, if a girl should sing, Would the houses rub the vines from their eyes, And listen and live? A voice comes now from a cottage, A voice that is young and must sing, A honeyed stab on the air, And the houses do not wake.

I look through the leaf-blowzed window, And start as a gazer who, passing a death-vault, Sees life sitting hopeful within. She is young, but a woman, round-breasted, Waiting the peril of Eve; And she makes the shadows about her sweet As the glooms that play in a pine-wood. She sits at a harpsichord (old as the walls are), And longing flows in the trickling, fairy notes Like a hidden brook in a forest Seeking and seeking the sun.

I have watched a young tree on the edge of a wood When the mist is weaving and drifting. Slowly the boughs disappear and the leaves reach out Like the drowning hands of children, Till a grey blur quivers cold Where the green grace drank of the sun. So now, as I gaze, the morrows Creep weaving and winding their mist Round the beauty of her who sings. They hide the soft rings of her hair, Dear as a child's curling fingers; They shut out the trembling sun of eyes That are deep as a bending mother's; And her bridal body is scarfed with their chill.

For old and old is the story; Over and over I listen to murmurs That are always the same in these towns that sleep; Where grey and unwed a woman passes, Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world She holds with grief and silence; And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered Mumbles the tale by her affable gate; How the lad must go, and the girl must stay, Singing alone to the years and a dream; Then a letter, a rumour, a word From the land that reaches for lovers And gives them not back; And the maiden looks up with a face that is old; Her smile, as her body, is evermore barren, Her cheek like the bark of the beech-tree Where climbs the grey winter.

Now have I seen her young, The lone girl singing, With the full round breast and the berry lip, And heart that runs to a dawn-rise On new-world mountains. The weeping ash in the dooryard Gathers the song in its boughs, And the gown of dawn she will never wear. I can listen no more; good-bye, little town, old Fairingdown. I climb the long, dark hillside, But the ache I have found here I cannot outclimb. O Heart, if we had not heard, if we did not know There is that in the village that never will sleep!

THE KISS

I stole into the secret room Where Love lay dying; Mystic and faint perfume Met me like sighing; As heaven had cast a still-born star He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand Nerveless of high command Where once the lord-veins sped their fire.

And I had thought me glad To let him go. "He reaps His own," I pious said. But this, ah, this Unpleading helplessness! "Give me thy death," I cried, And took it from his lips. The windows burst them wide. The sun came in; And Love high at my side Stood sovereign.

YOUTH

He hears the hour's low hint and springs To the chariot-side of Truth, while fast The wild car swings Through dust and cloud; And the watchful elders, prophet-proud, Give o'er his bones To the wracking stones-- But he has passed!

A weft of sky, and castles stare High from a wizard shore, Sun-arrowed, tower-strong; Gold parapets in air Down-pour, down-pour Sea-falls of peri song; Then earth, the dragon's lair; Cave eyes and burning breath; And the lance the Grail lords bore This day flies swift and fair, This day of the dragon's death.

Must doff the wind-wreath, find thee lone? Put on meek age's hood? Feel but the frost within the dawn? Wrap courage in a swaddling mood? His bare throat flings All-powered nay; The world, his vast, unfingered lyre, Stirs in her thousand strings; Lit with redemptive flame Burns miracle desire, And dedicated day Is long as freedom's dream.

Youth of the lance, youth of the lyre, How far, how far shalt go? Where will the halting be? Sun-courier, whose roads of fire Bridge God's delay, The hearts that know thee, ah, they know, Ageless in clay, Sole immortality!

TO MIRIMOND

(HER BIRTHDAY, IN DECEMBER)

Dost think that Time, to whom stars vainly sue, Will for thy beauty keep one fixed place? Or that he may, o'er-weighed with seasons due, Forget one Spring where veinlet tendrils lace Rose over rose to make this flower, thy face? Look round thee now, dear dupe of sweet hey-day! Of what once blooming joy canst thou find trace Save in the bosom of a cold decay? What violet of Summer's yester sway Usurps these clouds to throne her slender moon? Look on the wrinkling year, the shrunken way, The wintry bier of all that gaudy shone, And gather love ere loveliness wear pall, If thou, when all is gone, wouldst still have all.

SOROLLA

"I am fleet," said the joy of the sun, Trembling then on the breast Of the summer, white, still; "I am fleet, I am gone!" Smiling came one With brush and a will, Undelaying, unpressed, And the glancing gold of the tremulous sun Lingers for man, inescapable, won.

"Not here, nor yet there," Cried the waves that fled, "Shall ye set us a snare. Motion is breath of us, Stillness is death of us; We live as we run, We pause and are sped!" Laughing came one With brush and a will, And the waves never die and are nevermore still.

"I pass," said the light On the joy-child's face; But softly came one And it leaves not its place. Here Time shall replight His faith with the dawn, And his ages, gaunt grey, Ever cycling, behold Their youth never flown In a world never old, Though they pass and repass with their trailing decay.

"We stay," said the shadows, and hung On the brush of the master; "we are thine own." Fearless he flung The magical chains around them, and said, "Ye too shall be light, and to life bring the sun!" And man delayed By the captive pain's revealing glow Feeleth earth's breathing woe, And his vow is made; "Ye shall pass, ye shadows, yea; And life, as the sun, be free; The God in me saith!" And the shadows go; For joy is the breath Of eternity, And sorrow the sigh of a day.

IN THE BLUE RIDGE

The mountain night is shining, Jim of Tellico, Shining so it hurts the heart to see The gleam upon the laurel leaf, the locust shaking snow To the rippling Nantahala that is laughing up to me, Hurts till the cry comes and the big tears are free. O, why should my heart cry to you that will not hear, Yonder where the ridges lie so still above the town? But the pain that's calling seems to bring you near, As the tears in my eyes bring the stars a-swimming down.

Mother sits and cries, with my baby on her knee; Father curses deep, a-breathing hard your name; But never do I hear and never do I see, I with my head low, working out my shame, Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame; For I hate you then--I hate you, Jim of Tellico, And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin, The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just to lay you in.

But the slow sun passes with its day-long stare, Like a bold eye at the window when the blind Is missing and you mustn't know the eye is there,-- Just shut your heart up close and hide the thing you mind; And comes the blessed twilight calling of its kind, When all the little creatures with soft voices stir, Little hiding things that cry so tremblingly, Till I lay my needle by,--O, how the sweet woods whirr! And fly down to the river that is laughing up to me.

Then the hate goes out o' me with the moonlight creeping in, And the water crooning cool-like in my veins. Who could smell the white azalea thinking then of sin, Or look on laurel buds a-caring for her pains? It's just my heart breaks open and the wild flood rains. O beauty of the moon-mist winding, winding slow, Till the tall lynns quiver vainly up to hold One leafy moment more the breathing, gliding flow Of the loosened wreath of silver lifting into gold!

The moosewood bride is glowing, all her curls awave, The colt's-foot in millions makes the ground like a bed, So sweet-breathed and green now, in winter scarlet brave, And blossom lips of tulip trees are meeting overhead, But never shall a tear fall for their love spent and dead. Doves are building yonder in that clump of maples deep, Do maple leaves come soonest for they love to hide The earliest nest and hear the first faint cheep Telling them of joy too dear, too sweet to bide?

The joy that was my own, Jim, when our birdling came, Telling me that love is never spent and dead,-- Though you left the tears to me, and left to me the shame,-- For the wildwood broke in blossoms round my bed, And the fairest on my bosom laid its stainless head. Can God who made this night His own great heart to please, And made that other night like this a year ago, Be mad at us for loving? I fall upon my knees And beg Him bless you, bless you ever, Jim of Tellico!

YE WHO ARE TO SING

O silence of all silences, where wait Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet! Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate, For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet. No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet, No age-embalmed hour with mummied wing, Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete, As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring From that unfathomed pause one minstrel murmuring.

Yet never earth a lyreless dawn shall know; No moon shall move unharped to her pale home; No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome. No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam; Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there Shall touch and land at last Apollo's mariner.

And soon shall wake that morrow's melody, When men of labour shall be men of dream, With hand seer-guided, knowing Deity That breathes in sonant wood and fluting stream, Shapes too the wheel, the shaft, the shouldering beam, Nor ceased to build when Magian toil began To lift its towered world. What chime supreme Shall turn our tuneless march to music when Sings the achieving God in conscious hearts of men!

And one voice shall be woman's, lifting lay Till all the lark-heights of her being ring; Majestic she shall take the chanted way, And every song-peak's golden bourgeoning Shall thrill beneath her feet that lyric spring From ventured crest to crest. Strong, masterless, She, last in freedom, as the first shall sing, Who, great in freedom, takes by Love her place, Wife, mother,--more, her starward moving self--the race.

Ay, ye shall come, ye spirits girt with light That falls o'er heaven's hills from dawn to be; Ye warders in the planet house of night, Gliding to unguessed doors with prophet key, And out where dim paths stir with minstrelsy Wordless and strange to man until your clear Doubt-shriven strain interprets to the clay. Oh, might I hear ye as the world shall hear, Nearer, a poet's journey, to the Golden Year!

Dear, honoured bards of centuries dim and sped, Yet glowing ever in your fadeless song, No dust shall heap its silence o'er ye dead, No cadent seas shall drown your chorus strong In more melodious waves. I've lingered long By your brave harps strung for eternity; But now runs my wild heart to meet the throng Who yet shall choir. O wondrous company, If graves may listen then, I then shall listening be!

"AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST"

Of the dumb, bayed god in men, Of the burdened mother eyes, Of the little, lifted hands, Of the passion and the dream Sighing up from trodden lands, Fearless, he is born again; Bold inquisitor of skies, Treading earth unmastered, free, And the way grows wide for him Walking with the day to be.

Dead the grasp of custom then, Silent grows her voice and pen; Part as air the birth-wrong bands, Break as thread the steel-drawn strands, Graves no longer over-awe, Dust is dust and men are men; A living tongue again gives living law.

Trophies ours by gold and gun, Little treasures, houses,--nay, Guerdons of our dearest fight, Now are fuel for his sun, And the dreams that lit the night Burn as candles in the day. Yet we made thee, Man of Right, As our being plead to rise; Of our straining arm thy might; Even as we prayed for sight, Lo, afar thou hadst thy prophet eyes.

Ay, thy gleaming spear is ours; Ours thy fearless, golden bow; And our shining arrows go From thy bright untaken towers. Thou art what we will to be, Sceptre, star, and winged cloud; We are blood and brawn of thee, Glowing up through sod and stone, Burning through thy rended shroud, Moving with thee, chainless, on, Till the world, a quickened whole, Truth-delivered, naked, free, Once again hath found its deathless soul.

MAGDALEN TO HER POET