Chapter 3

Take back thy song; or let me hear what thou Heardst anciently from me, The woman; now This wassail drift on boughless shores; Once lyre-veined leading thee To singing doors Out of the coiling dark; Teaching thee hark Earth's virgin candours, blossomed wonderings, And sanctities inaudible till strings Of lyric gentleness Wooed Heaven to confess Her world, and I was near, The earliest listener, Who of my bosom then made Arcady, And drew thy forest feet to Castaly.

Take back thy pity. Is it not from man Who made that world his own? As barbican Sends out its darts, and after flings A dole of myrrh where groan Is loudest, sings Thy grace to me, me thus Unbeauteous By thee. Uneased thy covenanted bit From Levite ark till now. Thy judges sit, Gods ruminant, to keep Earth pure for dulcet sleep Of babe and mother. Ay, Drones yet the lulling lie, Whilst I, Disease uncinctured, darkly mate With guard and sentry of thy hierarchate.

Thine ages, are they fair? Shall they yet draw Child-homage from our eyes? The woman awe As her own babe? Far stretch the avid spans Of fame-drunk emperies, And all are man's; But from what tower of praise Does Justice gaze? Art is thy boast? "See how we garland her, The goddess of our hands?" Yea, yea, but where Is Truth, save by whose breath Art is a laurelled death? "Our churches these, and this Our Holy Writ; there wis Our altars high, and sanctuarised sod!" But what, care-taking soul, hast done with God?

The bairning time I knew, the whispering breast, But in thy world no place Was for my nest, Fragrant for perilous brooding pause. Thou went'st thy pace; My gathered straws And grasses cast to dust To make thy lust A wayside couch. Deep from the nation's root, The bower-tree where homes are nesting fruit, Thy blight creeps up unseen On bitten way to the green, Till no hope-banneret Makes Spring in windy fret Of flagellant boughs that whip my fingers bare, Too chill at last to build, to bleed, to care.

Must surge so late with Nature's spawning ruse? Her stintless passioning Lest she should lose The younglet of her dearest pang? To thee, her tenderling, She gave lust-fang To run the jungle's harm; Now strives thee to disarm, And fend Life from that weapon lent thy wear Till thou, forsaking dust, mightst capture her. What need now of the blood Whose wasteful plenitude Swept thee through hostile slime To shores of light and time, Man-minim safe mid frost and poison dews Where naught could live that had not life to lose?

Yet dost thou foster it as thy veined sun; Thy Heaven and Holy Rood Build toppling on Its strifeful hell; root there thy art, Thy dreams of tenderest bud; Gaze on the heart Of its fetidity, This wreck of me, And sing. O God, what death, in eyes so bound, They see Life's beauty in her draining wound! Lay thou the blind thing down With saurian tusk and bone, With dust of sworded maw And peril's fossil claw, Lest sexton Earth even Man inter, nor trover Of after-law untomb for Love her Lover!

Her lover yet uncarnate; of thy race To be; long-dreamed mate Of her embrace; Whose godling fruit, too prized, too dear For bandit breath, shall wait The Garnerer. Not then mute, anguished wives, Dumb in law's gyves, Shall shrink to mother a soul-famined brood,-- Unbudding sentiencies of flowerhood, Shut miracles no wand May touch, that from the hand Of Toil, the reaver, fall To dust, their grudged pall, Leaving imperial web to those who wear That woof of blood and tears as gossamer.

Not then! Where now the wailing way o'erteems, And baffled starvelings bar The way of dreams; Pouring to Want, grey-veined Disease, To Greed, and lurking War,-- Brute goblinries With horde-lip sateless on God-food dust-thrown,-- Lover and Love shall pass, each babe of theirs, Darling of Life, born for the higher wars Where knights of spirit sway, Summoned to holiest fray By heralds never bare To clodded vision. There, Shriven and sure, the sun-dipped lance shall leap Till Dream uncorselet clay and put off sleep.

For me one rift! Through this sepultural blight A breath runs living, new; Unburdening light As when the flame-borne prophet on The Syrian ploughman threw A people's dawn. The world is Heaven worth, The cradle earth Casts orphanhood, a Bethlehem God-swung From crimson grapple with his lyric young. Here triumph I, so low, Knowing that Lust shall go, With whited, anarch train,-- Shall pass, this curbless, vain Usurping deity that would compel The Mary-longing Love to yet mould Jezebel.

Drag me with life that keeps Death shadow-near Till I, unfrighted, wake His charnel fear In every face that wariful Meets mine; this bud-mouth make Unkissable With kisses; and up-lap My soul's youth sap Till 't withers to a clutch about the gold You think pays all; yet from this reedy mould, This swamped, unfructant sedge, Gentility's marsh edge, I, on free wing, shall take My swan-course o'er the brake, Leaving the chanson of thy sin to thee Who hast not seen, not touched the unstainable me.

Yet art thou dear, O singer! When we rest Past all Life's hostel doors, On her home crest; And 'neath our feet the dark vat night From pain's crushed star-grapes pours The climbing light; There thou, beside me then, With moteless ken, Remembering these, thy pity and thy song, Dropped at the cross where thou didst nail me long, Shalt sereless 'scape the aim Of hot, lance-darting shame, For over thee shall fall The dawn-tressed coronal Of Love I then shall be, wrapping thee in The pity at whose touch dies every sin.

FRIENDS

There's one comes often as the sun And fills my room with morning; comes with step Light as a youth's that joy has hurried home. If he should greet my cheek, so might a wind Blow roses till they touch, silk leaf to leaf, And on their beauty leave no deeper dye; But with that touch an old world is untombed, Gay, festal-gowned; and two with nuptial eyes Walk arm-locked there, flinging the curls of Greece From proud, smooth brows. As trapped between two throbs, Their laughter dies in silent passion's kiss; And I from glow of ancient dust look up To meet the untroubled eyes of my friend's bride, Her pretty, depthless eyes that smile and smile Possessingly, not grudging alien me A footstool place about her sceptred love. And I, too, from imperial largess, smile.

Another comes more rarely than new moon, And always with a flower,--one; pours tea Like an old picture softly made alive, Sings me a ballad that once teased the ears Of golden Bess, and reads the book I love. If he must journey, first he comes to lay Knight-service on my hand; no passion then More swift than when a last cool petal falls To faded summer grass; but as he goes I see a girl deep in a forest lane, A narrow lane dark-roofed with locking firs; And there are purple foxgloves shoulder high, And round the girl's knees Canterbury bells. Upon the air is scent of wounded trees, As though a storm had passed there, and great owls Ruffle a shade unloved of birds that sing. But at the green lane's end, far down A bit of heart-shaped sun tells where the road Lies wide and open; on the sun the still Dark shadow of a steed: and by the girl One who shall ride,--unvisored now, and pale. "And when I come," he says, to me who know He'll come that way no more; then hear my door Closed softly on a sob ten centuries old.

And there is one whom never sun or moon Brings to my gate; but when amid a throng That fills some worldly room I see him pass. The light about me is of regions where Cold peaks are blue against a colder sky, And in the dusk-line where begins the Doubt Men call the Known, we stand in wingless pause, Unheavened weariness in untaught feet, And in our hearts sad longing for the fire Of stars from whence we came. "The earth," he says, And warms in his my hand amazed to lie In strange, near comfort,--blossom of first pain. Then low we dip into the clinging night That is the Lethe of God-memories; Stumble and sink in chains of time and sense Tangle in treacheries of a weed-hung globe, And tread the dun, dim verges of defeat Till spirit chafes to vision, and we learn What morning is, and where the way of love. In that gold dawn we part, knowing at last That earth can not divide us. With a smile He goes, and Fate leads not but runs before Like an indulged child. That smile again I sometimes see across the world--a room.

TRYST

(AFTER READING FROM SHAKESPEARE)

Night, thou art heavy, with no stars to chain Thy darkness unto heaven, that thy feet May dance along these cliffs in gay retreat Of the pursuing sea; heavy as pain Where eyes see not the end, or tears that stain The joy of him who conquers by defeat; Or this dark sea whose heart doth climb and beat The stones that make no sign, then falls again.

Cry with the night and wrestle with the wave, Ye two-edged winds that cut this shore and me; I warm me still with thinking of a grave That can not hold the dust's eternal part; For here across the centuries and the sea, A dead hand lies like flame upon my heart.

IN THE STUDIO

Bowed in the firelight's softly climbing gleam, I sit a shadow, in a shadow's place; While through the great, grey window vaguely stream Twilight caresses on each pictured face That one hour gone was cold in art's repose; Now each still canvas answers tremblingly, Till eyes unveil and living spirit glows Where no light was while the rude Day went by. And rudest Day, that passed so sternly bare, Cold as the life that walks without desire, Unbeauteous as duty or despair, Plucked by a hope that will not set her free, Turns back, while memory's soft, informing fire Falls on her face, and Beauty looks at me.

LOVERS' LEAP

In Greece I found the place, though earth Has many such; and wandering there alone, One Autumn evening when the moon rose late, I heard this song, though none was there to sing. A ghostly rune, yet left the alarmed dark Quivering with life, tear-warm and murmuring:

No morrow is if hearts say no; Life is gone when love doth go. No tear to weep, no prayer to pray; Endeth time with lovers' day.

This trailing night will pale and flee, And dawn again creep o'er the sea; Light's tender hands will earth attire, Aloft will swim the golden fire, And every bird begin his lay, But I shall know there is no day.

And Spring shall come. With teary cheek, But heart of Bacchus, she will seek With healing eyes each winter wound, Till little minstrels of the ground, The choral buds, in wonder wake To croon the dewy songs they take From brooks that haunt the woodman's glade And lose a dream in every shade. And ere the Spring has vanished, Summer will make her rosy bed And new loves take with every wind Till earth be laden with her kind And foster-bosomed Autumn come To nurse the darlings of her womb.

But naught of season, change, or sun, Recks the heart whose love is done. Oh, ne'er again will beauty wear For my sad eyes a robe more fair, And ne'er again will music make A sweeter song for my poor sake. No tear to weep, no prayer to pray! Endeth time with lover's day.

No morrow is if hearts say no; Life is gone when love doth go. Death, O Death, why dost thou flee From one whose wish is but for thee? Here is thy pillow, on my breast. No dove but would its spiced nest Forego to couch in this sweet bed That here I open for thy head. Thou wilt not hear? Thou wilt not come? Then must I seek thee in thy home. Once more lift up this stone-dead heart, And leap to find thee where thou art!

HAVENED

Come, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose Upon the breast that storm and thee divide; And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows, Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in; And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide.

Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes That showed me in a gracious court of trees Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise, And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze That traced the ground and to a river grew, Casting its tender spray in tinted dew As curved its silver way with laughing ease.

I followed, forest deep, this wooing guide Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'ergrown, Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside, Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown,-- High murmurings among the cloudy leaves, As when some dull and dreamy throng receives Strange lyric stir from power not its own.

And more and more the murmurs grew like song, Save that no song could drop such honey-rain; The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong, Were he that golden sound to breathe again; And as my guide into a cave did pass, That closed seemed, and yet unclosed was, That airy cadence stooped and bore me in.

Then wandered life from out my memory, Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go; Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be, From those dark lures that make our worldly woe. O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue Should dim the glories that I moved among With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know.

The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth, It might have been, but that there shone, The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth That might no rival of its radiance own. Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be, And the bright dome but its gold boundary; Yet gleamed here no crown or mounted throne.

The music budded till it dropped soft showers; All things to other changed, though here no mage; Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers, And chance and change to all was privilege; The air was full of phantom-stirring things, And I not breathed but that I touched new wings, And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage.

Ere my delight had held me pausing long Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool, A stir awoke amid a ferny throng That leaned their trembling grace above a pool, And following the flutter of a song To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule,

Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount, That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay; A sighing mist that partly filled the fount, And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray, For her fair body pillowed soft the ground, Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round And of each grace take new and sweet account.

In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran, Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell; Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell; Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please They might have hermits made forget their knees And kings find out they had them, such their spell.

Above her forehead hovered close a star, Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are Love's life,--the offerings earth lovers lay Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow She smiles or droops as this true star doth show,-- Or dim or bright as serve we or betray.

Beside her was an instrument of tune, Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud, And as I looked she woke it to strange rune, As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud,-- For all Love's thoughts are music,--but to make That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake, And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud?

Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame; He bore the ages in his listening eyes, And prophecy there waited for a name; Joy loved him best, and gave eternity, And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say "I am the aspiration of all dream."

Upward he gazed as though he would read o'er The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns, And lists--ah, might it be earth's shore Freed of her epic hates and tuned groans! War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past, And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last, Pouring the music of her happy moons!

Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he Who may with their resound make sweet his own; He who shall come as morning walks the sea, Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one; So much we know by frail yet quenchless light That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night,-- The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn.

Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways On silent wing or spirit wave of air, Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze, Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there; But as each passed before his lifted face, They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar.

Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise Took all my being with such tremorous start I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes. I could not tell what the bright wonder was Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies.

There shone the star that lit man's first desire, And there his hope that latest fluttered bare; One look translating made me as a lyre Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share,-- Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing,-- But ere I breathed had for wondering, A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair.

Youth was the angel of that countenance, Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng; Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance, If word of earthly time, or old or young, Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept The silences when Uncreation slept And gave the dream that woke the suns in song.

Each age that left a glory left it writ Upon her brow, as with a pen of light Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit The story there, the court grew softlier bright; Each dullsome thing--Oh, no thing there was dull! Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful, As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight.

Then all the wonder that made vague her form, Oped on a figure splendent so to view; Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm Of warring rainbows it endeared grew To shape of her who 'gan descending slow, Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low: 'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two.

Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three; And as a sighing shore no more may hold The mermaid wave that would go out to sea, So slipped the vision from my fancy bold. O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this, To dream awhile, and then awake to press Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold!

MID-MAY

Hand clamped to desk, And eyes on task undone, I see a meadow pool, With shaken willows silvering. O, gods that trouble me, Wherefore, wherefore?-- Pan is at the door.

An arabesque Of sifted sun And forest star-grass, cool With shadows tunnelling: Witch-work that tauntingly Webs my bare floor: Ah, Pan is at the door.

I'm civilized, And in my veins The mountain brook is still As water in a jar; But oh, the heart hill-born, It paineth sore, For Pan is at the door.

Ye sacrificed Of earth, what rains Have wept their will And drowned your rebel star, That ye should sit forlorn, Telling Greed's score, When Pan is at the door?

THE LOSS

When thou shalt search thy glass nor find the flower That there so long smiled gay, unwithering, And from sad vantage of a forlorn hour That fore nor aft unmasks one hint of Spring, Thou mourn'st the barrenness of beauty spent With no reserved treasure for the day When all that youth and sunny fortune lent No more should light adoring eyes to thee, And fear'st thyself a-cold, by the last storm Beat to thine inn, a still, uncarping guest, Thy once bright eye a pilot to the worm Making his dungeon way to his new feast, Drop not a tear then for thy beauty fled, But for the wounds it healed not bow thy head.

CALLED

I rise, I pass; The feast is on, bright is the board, Undrained the comrade glass; Love's sheltering eyes are deep and nigh; Fame waits with shining word; But sweeter, goldening the sphere, A voice falls from another sky; The wasting world I do not hear, And no god laughs as I pass by, A wanderer.

Unpausing lowers The gleam of her from other airs, And Being's guarded doors Are open wide for journey free Where wait my chosen stars; And o'er me, O what lustres break Of that desire, Reality, That burns a thousand suns to make One nightingale to sing for me, A soul awake!

Far, far I sped Down moonless lanes from doubt to doubt; With hasting, hungry tread Up slopes of frost unpitying Where the last star went out; There fell I in unlifting dark, And lying while an aeon's wing Dragged o'er me bare, wind-stript and stark, As leafless planets dream of Spring, Dreamed she would hark.

Then by me bound, Came one who wore my lost career With star on star pinned round, And stood him by my bones to stare. With pity's ancient sneer He mocked my bleachen nudity; Then did she turn, then did she care, And pausing where I might not see She let the winds blow back her hair And cover me.

SONG OF TO-MORROW

Sound, O Harp of Being, set Deathless in the winds of time! All thine ancient part forget, Wailing lust, and strife, and crime! Clouds of hate are now sweet rain: Thou shall never moan again.