Part 2

White groups and pink, red, crimson and lemon-yellow, And the yellow-and-red-streaked tulips once loved by a boy; Red and yellow their stiff and varnished petals, And the scent of them stings me still with a youthful joy.

And in the season of perfect and frailest beauty, Pear-blossom broke and the lilacs' waxen cones, And a tranced laburnum trailing its veils of yellow Tenderly drooped over the ivied stones.

The lilacs browned, a breath dried the laburnum, The swollen peonies scattered the earth with blood, And the rhododendrons shed their sumptuous mantles, And the marshalled irises unsceptred stood.

And the borders filled with daisies and pied sweet-williams And busy pansies; and there as we gazed and dreamed, And breathed the swooning smell of the packed carnations, The present was always the crown of all: it seemed

Each month more beautiful sprang from a robe discarded, The year all effortless dropt the best away And struck the heart with loveliness new, more lavish; When the clambering rose had blown and died, by day

The broad-leaved tapering many-shielded hollyhocks Stood like pillars and shone to the August sun, The glimmering cups of waking evening primroses Filled the dusk now the scent of the rose was done.

* * * * *

A wall there was and a door to the rose-garden, And out of that a gate to the orchard led, And there was the last hedge, and the turf sloped upward Till the sky was cut by the hill's line overhead.

And thither at times we climbed, and far below us That world that had made the world remote was seen, Small, a huddle of russet roofs and chimneys, And its guard of elms like bushes against the green:

One spot in the country, little and mild and homely, The nearest house of a wide, populous plain.... But down at evening under the stars and the branches In the whispering garden we lost the world again.

* * * * *

Whispering, faint, the garden under the hillside... Under the stars.... Is it true that we lived there long? Was it certainly so? Did ever we know that dwelling, Breathe that night, and hear in the night that song?

LATE SNOW

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling, Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences, Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air; They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits, Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled, Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding, But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, And lovely the film of falling flakes, so wayward and slack; But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

SONG

You are my sky; beneath your circling kindness My meadows all take in the light and grow; Laugh with the joy you've given, The joy you've given, And open in a thousand buds, and blow.

But when you are sombre, sad, averse, forgetful, Heavily veiled by clouds that brood with rain, Dumbly I lie all shadowed, I lie all shadowed, And dumbly wait for you to shine again.

SONG

The heaven is full of the moon's light, The earth fades below. In this vast empty world of night I only know

Pale-shining trees and moonlit fields, The bird's tune, And my night-flowering heart that yields Her fragrance to the moon.

OLD SONG

My window is darkness, The sighs of the night die in silence; The lamp on my table Burns gravely, the walls are withdrawn; And beneath, in your darkness, You are sleeping and dreaming forgetful, But I think of you smiling, For I'm wakeful and now it is only an hour to the dawn.

When the first throb of light comes I shall rise and go out to the garden, And walk the lawn's verdure Before the wet gossamer goes; And when you come down, sweet, All singing and light in the morning, Delight will break ambush With your garden's most fragrant and softest and reddest red rose.

EPITAPH IN OLD MODE

The leaves fall gently on the grass, And all the willow trees, and poplar trees, and elder trees That bend above her where she sleeps, O all the willow trees, the willow trees Breathe sighs upon her tomb.

O pause and pity, as you pass, She loved so tenderly, so quietly, so hopelessly; And sometimes comes one here and weeps: She loved so tenderly, so tenderly, And never told them whom.

THE MOON

(_To Maurice Baring_)

I waited for a miracle to-night. Dim was the earth beneath a star-swept sky, Her boughs were vague in that phantasmal light, Her current rippled past invisibly. No stir was in the dark and windless meadows, Only the water, whispering in the shadows, That darkened nature lived did still proclaim. An hour I stood in that defeat of sight, Waiting, and then a sudden silver flame Burned in the eastern heaven, and she came.

The Moon, the Summer Moon, surveys the vale: The boughs against the dawning sky grow black, The shades that hid those whispering waters fail, And now there falls a gleaming, lengthening track That lies across the wide and tranquil river, Burnished and flat, not shaken by a quiver. She rises still: the liquid light she spills Makes everywhere quick sparkles, patches pale; And, as she goes, I know her glory fills The air of all our English lakes and hills.

High over all this England will she ride; She silvers all the roofs of folded towns, Her brilliance tips the edge of every tide, Her shadows make soft caverns in the downs; Even now, beyond my tree serenely sailing, She clothes far forests with a gauzy veiling, And even as here, where now I stare and dream, Standing my own transfigured banks beside, On many a quiet wandering English stream There lies the unshifting image of her beam.

Yes, calm she mounts, and watching her, I know By many a river other eyes than mine Turn up to her; and, as of old, they show Their inward hearts all naked to her shine: Maids, solitaries, sick and happy lovers, To whom her dear returning orb discovers For each the gift he waits for: soft release, The unsealing of imagination's flow, Her own sweet pain, or other pain's surcease, The friendly benediction of her peace.

I too am held: as kind she is, as fair, As when long since a younger heart drank deep From that sweet solace, while, through summer air, Her lucid fingers hushed the world to sleep. O as I stand this latest moon beholding, Her forms unresting memory is moulding; Beneath my enchanted eyelids there arise Visions again of many moons that were, Fair, fleeting moons gathered from faded skies, Greeted and lost by these corporeal eyes.

Unnumbered are those moons of memory Stored in the backward chambers of my brain: The moons that make bright pathways on the sea, The golden harvest moon above the grain; The moon that all a sleeping village blanches, The woodland moon that roves beyond the branches, Filtering through the meshes of the green To breast of bird and mossy trunk of tree; Moons dimly guessed-at through a cloudy screen, The bronze diffusion shed by moons unseen;

Moons that a thin prismatic halo rings, Looking a hurrying fleecy heaven through; The fairy moons of luminous evenings, Phantoms of palest pink in palest blue; Large orange moons on earth's grey verge suspended, When trees still slumber from the heat that's ended, Erect and heavy, and all waters lie Oily, and there is not a bird that sings. All these I know, I have seen them born and die, And many another moon in many a sky.

There was a moon that shone above the ground Where on a grassy forest height I stood; Bright was that open place, and all around The dense discovered tree-tops of the wood, Line after line, in misty radiance glistened, Failing away. I watched the scene and listened; Then, awed and hushed, I turned and saw alone, Protruding from the middle of the mound, Fringed with close grass, a moonlit mottled stone, Rough-carven, of antiquity unknown.

A night there was, a crowd, a narrow street, Torches that reddened faces drunk with dreams, An orator exultant in defeat, Banners, fierce songs, rough cheering, women's screams; My heart was one with those rebellious people, Until along a chapel's pointing steeple My eyes unwitting wandered to a thin Crescent, and clouds a swift and ragged sheet; And in my spirit's life all human din Died, and eternal Silence stood within.

And once, on a far evening, warm and still, I leant upon a cool stone parapet. The quays and houses underneath the hill Twinkled with lights; I heard the sea's faint fret; And then above the eastern cape's long billow Silent there welled a trembling line of yellow, A shred that quickened, then a half that grew To a full moon, that moved with even will. The night was long before her, well she knew, And, as she slowly rose into the blue,

She slowly paled, and, glittering far away, Flung on the silken waters like a spear, Her crispèd silver shaft of moonlight lay. The lighthouse lamp upon the little pier Burned wanly by that radiance clear and certain. Waiting I knew not what uplifted curtain, I watched the unmoving world beneath my feet Till, without warning, miles across the bay, Into that silver out of shadows beat, Dead black, the whole mysterious fishing-fleet.

These moons I have seen, but these and every one Came each so new it seemed to be the first, New as the buds that open to the sun, New as the songs that to the morning burst. The roses die, each day fresh flowers are springing, Last year it was another blackbird singing, Thou only, marvellous blossom, whose pale flower Beyond mankind's conjecture hath begun, Retain'st for ever an unwithering power That stales the loveliest stranger of an hour.

But O, had all my infant nights been dark, Or almost dark, lit by the stars alone, Had never a teller of stories bid me hark The promised splendours of that moon unknown: How perfect then had been the revelation When first her gradual gold illumination Broke on a night upon the conscious child: My heart had stopped with beauty, seeing her arc Climbing the heavens, so far and undefiled, So large with light, so even and so mild.

Most wondrous Light, who bring'st this lovelier earth, This world of shadows cool with silver fires, Drawing us higher than our human birth: To whom our strange twin-natured kind suspires Its saddest thoughts, and tenderest and most fragrant Tears, and desires unnameable and vagrant: Watcher, who leanest quietly from above, Saying all mortal wars are nothing worth: Friend of the sorrowful, tranquil as the dove, Muse of all poets, lamp of all who love.

Alone and sad, alone and kind and sweet, But always peaceful and removed and proud, Whether with loveliness revealed complete, Or veiling from our vision in a cloud: Our souls' eternal listener, could we wonder That men who made of sun and storm and thunder The awful forms of strong divinity, Heard in each storm the noise of travelling feet, Should, gazing at thy face with hearts made free, Have felt a pure, immortal Power in thee?

Selene, Cynthia, and Artemis, The swift proud goddess with the silver bow, Diana, she whose downward-bending kiss One only knew, though all men yearned to know; The shepherd on a hill his flock was keeping, The night's pale huntress came and found him sleeping: She stooped: he woke, and saw her hair that shone, And lay, drawn up to cool and timeless bliss Lapt in her radiant arms, Endymion, All the still night, until the night was gone.

By many names they knew thee, but thy shape Was woman's always, transient and white: A flashing huntress leaving hinds agape, A sweet descent of beauty in the night: Yet some, more fierce and more distraught their dreaming, Brooded, until they fashioned from thy seeming, A lithe and luring queen with fatal breath, A witch the man who saw might not escape, A snare that gleamed in shadowy groves of death, The tall tiaraed Syrian Ashtoreth.

And even to-night in African forests some There are, possessed by such a blasphemy; Through branching beams thy fevered votaries come To appease their brains' distorted mask of thee. There in the glades the drums pulsate and languish, Men leap and wail to dim the victim's anguish In the sad frenzy of the sacrifice. They are slaves to thee, made mad because thou art dumb, And dumb thou lookest on them from the skies, Above their fires and dances, blood and cries.

So these; but otherwhere, at such an hour, In all the continents, by all the seas, Men, naming not the goddess, feel thy power, Adoring her with gentler rites than these: The thoughts of myriad hearts to thee uplifted Rise like a smoke above thine altars drifted, Perpetual incense poured before thy throne By those whom thou hast given thy secret dower, Those in whose kindred eyes thy light is known, Whom thou hast signed and sealed for thine own.

For thee they watch by Asian peaks remote, Where thy snows gleam above the pointing pines; Entranced on templed lakes is many a boat For thee, where clear thy dropt reflection shines; On the great seas where nothing else is tender, Rising and setting, unto thee surrender All lonely hearts in lonely wandering ships; And, where their warm far-scattered islands float, Through forests many a flower-crowned maiden slips To gaze on thee, with parted burning lips.

O thus they do, and thus they did of old; Our hearts were never secret in thy sight; Ere our first records were thy shrine was cold That speechless eyes went seeking in the night; Beyond the compass of our dim traditions Thou knewest of men the pitiful ambitions, Their loves and their despair; within thy ken All our poor history has been unrolled; Thou hast seen all races born and die again, The climbing and the crumbling towers of men.

Black were the hollows of that Emperor's eyes Who paced with backward arms beyond his tents, Lone in the night, and felt above him rise The ancient conqueror's sloping, smooth, immense, Moon-pointing Pyramid's enduring courses, Heard not his sentries, nor his stamping horses, But thought of Egypt dead upon that air, Fighting with his moon-coloured memories Of vanished kings who builded, and the bare Sands in the moon before those builders were.

Restless, he knew that moon who watched him muse, Had seen a restless Cæsar brood on fame Amid the Pharaohs' broken avenues. And, circling round that fixed monition, came Woven by moonlight, random, transitory, Fragments of all the dim receding story: The moonlit water dripping from the oars Of triremes in the bay of Syracuse; The opposing bivouacs upon the shores, That knew dead Hector's and Achilles' wars.

He saw fall'n Carthage, Alexander's grave, The tomb of Moses in the wilderness, The moonlight on the Atlantean wave That covered all a multitude's distress: Cities and hosts and emperors departed Under the steady moon. And sullen-hearted He turned away, and, in a little, died, Even as he who hunted from his cave And struck his foe, and stripped the shaggy hide Under the moon, and was not satisfied.

For in the prime, thy influence was felt; When eyes first saw, thy beauty was as this; Thy quiet look bade hope, fear, passion melt Before men dreamed of empire. The abyss Of thought yawned through their jungle then, as ever Dark past, dark future, menaced their endeavour: Yet, on thy nights, stood some by hill and sea Naked; and blind impulsive spirits knelt, Not questioning why they knelt, feeling in thee Thought's strangest, sweetest, saddest mystery.

Still Moon, bright Moon, compassionate Moon above, Thou shinedst there ere any life began, When of his pain or of his powerless love Thou heardest not from heart of any man; Though long the earth had shaken off the vapour Left by the vanished gleams of fire, the shaper, Old, old, her stony wrinkled face did grow Whilst only her blind elements did move; Dumb, bare, and prayerless thou saw'st her go, And afterwards again shalt see her so.

A time there was when Life had never been, A time will be, it will have passed away; Still wilt thou shine, still tender and serene, When Life which in thy sister's yesterday Had never flowered, will have drooped and faded; Passed with the clouds that once her bosom shaded. She will be barren then as not before, Bared of her snows and all her garments green; No darkling sea by any earthly shore Will take thy rays: thy kin will be no more.

Pale satellite, old mistress of our fires, Who hast seen so much and been so much to men, Symbol and goal of all our wild desires, Not any voice will cry upon thee then; Dreamer and dream, they will have all gone over, The sick of heart, the singer and the lover, An end there will have been to all their lust, Their sorrow, and the sighing of their lyres; O all this Life that stained Earth's patient crust, Time's dying breath will have blown away like dust.

Gone from thine eye that brief confusèd stir, The rumours and the marching and the strife; Earth will be still, and all the face of her Swept of the last remains of moving life; The last of all men's monuments that defied them, Like those his valiant gestures that denied them, Into the waiting elements will fade, And thou wilt see thy fellow traveller, A forlorn round of rocky contours made, A glimmering disk of empty light and shade,

Ah, depth too deep for thought therein to cast; The old, the cold companions, you will go, Obeying still some long-forgotten past, And all our pitiful history none will know; Still shining, Moon, still peaceful, wilt thou wander, But on that greater ball no heart will ponder The thought that rose and nightingale are gone, And all sweet things but thou; and only vast Ridges of rock remain, and stars and sun; O Moon, thou wilt be lovely alone for none.

And so, pale wanderer, so thou leavest me, Passing beyond imagination's range, Away into the void where waits for thee Thy inconceivable destiny of change; And after all the memories I have striven To paint, this picture that thyself hast given Lives, and I watch, to all those others blind, Thy form, gliding into eternity, Fading, an unconjectured fate to find, The last, most wonderful image of the mind.

THE HAPPY NIGHT

I have loved to-night; from love's last bordering steep I have fallen at last with joy and forgotten the shore; I have known my love to-night as never before, I have flung myself in the deep, and drawn from the deep, And kissed her lightly, and left my beloved to sleep. And now I sit in the night and my heart is still: Strong and secure; there is nothing that's left to will, There is nothing to win but only a thing to keep.

And I look to-night, completed and not afraid, Into the windy dark where shines no light; And care not at all though the darkness never should fade, Nor fear that death should suddenly come to-night. Knowing my last would be surely my bravest breath, I am happy to-night: I have laughed to-night at death.

CONSTANTINOPLE

"_I suddenly realise that the ambition of my life has been--since I was two--to go on a military expedition against Constantinople."--Letter from Rupert Brooke. (Died at Scyros, April_ 23_rd,_ 1915.)

JUSTINIAN.

Does the church stand I raised Against the unchristened East? Still do my ancient altars bear The sacrificial feast?

My jewels are they bright, My marbles and my paint, Wherewith I glorified the Lord And many a martyred Saint?

And does my dome still float Above the Golden Horn? And do my priests on Christmas Day Still sing that Christ was born?

EUROPE.

Though dust your house, Justinian, Still stands your lordliest shrine, But the dark men who walk therein, Know not of bread nor wine.

They fell long since upon your stones, And made your colours dim, Their priests who pray on Christmas Day They sing no Christmas hymn.

But a voice at evening goes From every climbing tower, Crying a word you never heard, A name of desert power.

CONSTANTINE PALAEOLOGUS.

For seven hundred years We gripped a weakening blade, Keeping the gateway of the West With none to give us aid.

Till at the last they broke What Constantine had built, And by the shattered wall the blood Of Constantine was spilt.

Do men remember still The manner of my death, How after all those failing years I at the last kept faith?

EUROPE.

They know it for a bygone thing True but indifferent, For many a fight has come to pass Since to the wall you went.

Westward and northward, Emperor, Poured on that bloody brood, Till those must turn to save themselves Who had known not gratitude.

One fought them on the Middle Sea, One at Vienna's gate, And then the kings of Christendom Watched the red tide abate.

Till in the end Byzantium Heard a returning war; But still a Mehmet holds your tomb... Keep silence ... ask no more.

ELEGY

I vaguely wondered what you were about, But never wrote when you had gone away; Assumed you better, quenched the uneasy doubt You might need faces, or have things to say. Did I think of you last evening? Dead you lay. O bitter words of conscience I hold the simple message, And fierce with grief the awakened heart cries out: "It shall not be to-day;

It is still yesterday; there is time yet!" Sorrow would strive backward to wrench the sun, But the sun moves. Our onward course is set, The wake streams out, the engine pulses run Droning, a lonelier voyage is begun. It is all too late for turning, You are past all mortal signal, There will be time for nothing but regret And the memory of things done!

The quiet voice that always counselled best, The mind that so ironically played Yet for mere gentleness forbore the jest. The proud and tender heart that sat in shade Nor once solicited another's aid, Yet was so grateful always For trifles lightly given, The silences, the melancholy guessed Sometimes, when your eyes strayed.

But always when you turned, you talked the more. Through all our literature your way you took With modest ease; yet would you soonest pore, Smiling, with most affection in your look, On the ripe ancient and the curious nook. Sage travellers, learned printers, Divines and buried poets, You knew them all, but never half your lore Was drawn from any book.