Chapter 2

Spending and spilling your wealth through the grass, Coiner of coins that must rust and pass,-- Knowing the end is--alas, and alas! What may a poet sing?

"Sing of the dust that is blossomy boughs, Dust that is more than your thought allows; Sing you for ever impossible vows Unto the springs to be.

"Dust in the dust is for fire and birth, Beauty and passion and red-lipped mirth, Fashioned of dust for the blossoming earth,-- Even of you and me."

JEWELS

The sea has worn her ships like precious stones, That marked her bosom's tremulous unrest; And for their loss no pendant moon atones That rides eternally upon her breast. For sunk armadas or a little boat She still is wistful as a jewelled queen, Who bears the burning memory at her throat, Of barque and sloop and brilliant brigantine.

The epic chanted to each sounding cave Is all of fleets gone down by lonely shores,-- The shining spars, the sails, the light they gave, Now scattered darkly on her grievous floors;-- And all the sea's long moan is like a sigh For ruined ships remembered where they lie.

CHORUS

Always it was the old songs moved us most, For always there were other voices near, A silver singing threading like a ghost, A thinner music than our ears could hear; So that we sang more softly than we might, As leaving room for some expected tone; Our singing was half listening in the night, For other singing drowned along our own,

And always there was silence at the end, For something that beguiled us with the thought Of presences returning, friend to friend. Seeking again the fellowship they sought, Pleased that we sing old songs they still may know, Who sang with us, or listened, long ago.

SYMBOL

My faith is all a doubtful thing, Wove on a doubtful loom,-- Until there comes, each showery Spring, A cherry-tree in bloom;

And Christ who died upon a tree That death had stricken bare, Comes beautifully back to me, In blossoms, everywhere.

TO AN UNKNOWN ANCESTOR

Among the goodly folk whose name I bear, Men of the plough, the priesthood, and the mill, Whose whispered wisdom follows where I fare, With ghostly promptings that must haunt me still,-- What place was there for you, whose different fame Delighted, once, the Don Juans of the town? The family annals have forgot your name, And time at last has hushed your gay renown.

But often in the chamber of my mind, The righteous rise and leave, their counsels done, And there is counsel of another kind,-- The room turns tavern, and there enters one I pledge as kinsman in a reeling toast, Still unregenerate and delightful ghost.

INTIMATION

Here where the sunlight makes more strangely fair Each shining street, each steeple where it stands, Something like Spring is blowing down the air, Touching the Town with light, transforming hands. Half-shy and hesitant, a Something stays One trembling instant where the sun is sweet,-- A quickening presence on these winter ways, Haunting and swift--and gone on shining feet.

Yet, there was hint of coming daffodils, And slender spears uprising on the lawn, And apple-blossoms on the April hills ... Only the timid prophetess was gone, Leaving a faith as gallant as the grass, How that these things would surely come to pass.

ON A DEAD MOTH

Who knows what trouble trembled in that throat, What sweet distraction for the summer moon, That lured you out, a frail, careering boat, Across the midnight's purple, deep lagoon! Some fire of madness lit that tiny brain, Some soft propulsion clouded through your breast, And lifted you, a white and moving stain Against the dark of that disastrous quest.

The sadness of all brief and lovely things, The fine and futile passions that we bear, Haunt the bright wreck of your too fragile wings, And win a pity for you, ended there,-- Like us, hurled backward to the final shade, From mad adventures for a moon or maid.

MYSTIC

For Something glimpsed upon the topmost hill, For Something glinting down a country lane, Where apple-blossoms shimmer white and spill A ghostly shower close along the rain,-- For Something guessed beyond the hedge or tree, Hinted and hid behind the evening star, I am made captive and am never free Of Something that is neither near nor far.

A waking through the windy shapes of grass, A trembling as of light along a bough,-- These are for footprints and a way to pass, To follow after and to make a vow,-- To seek past glamours that are hourly spent, And find but fainting lights down ways she went.

LEVIATHANS

You who have seen the foam upon bright wrecks Of stately ships that never come to port, Where sea-things crawl upon those sunken decks, And fishes through those cabins take their sport,---- There where at last the gilded, gay saloon Turns watery cavern for the spawn of seas, And spars, once splendid, rot beneath the moon That once was glad to sail with such as these,--

Let never word of pity pass your lips: For these were proud in ways you cannot know, And pride is slow to die in ruined ships Who can but dream that some day they will go, Their wounds all healed, their clean strength whole again, Monarch of seas, marvel of moons and men.

INVIOLATE

I would be dumb before the evening star, And no light word should stir upon my lips For autumn dusks where dying embers are, For evening seas and slow, returning ships. I would be hushed before the face I love, Rising in star-like quiet close to mine, Lest all the beauty thought is dreaming of Be rudely shaken and be spilled like wine.

For present loveliness there is no speech, A word may wrong a flower or a face, And stars that swim beyond our stuttering reach Are safer in some golden, silent place.... Only when these are broken, or pass by, Wonder and worship speak ... or sing ... or cry.

MANUSCRIPTS

As some monastic scrivener in his cell, Sensing a chill along the stony crypt, Might labour yet more gorgeously to spell The final, splendid entries of his script,-- So with bright rubrics has the Autumn writ A coloured chronicle of things that pass, Thumbing a yellow parchment that is lit With brief, illumined letters through the grass.

With what a prodigality of stains, Is fashioned this last entry and design, By one aware of cold, approaching rains,-- Who senses, through each iridescent line, A presence at the shoulder--chills and blights, Winds that will snuff his letters out like lights.

IN AN OLD BURIAL GROUND

I have imagined ... but I have not known What swift, recaptured seasons, lost of late, What long-regretted Aprils yet may wait For each of these beyond his crypted stone. Some Springtime that was all too quickly blown, Some Summer that was roses in his heart, May wake again in every sweetest part, And show themselves familiarly his own.

It well may be there are eternal days For every frailest thing, beyond this door, Where roses are not ruined any more, And April with her jonquils stays and stays, Outlingering walls of granite where they blow ... I have imagined ... but I do not know.

ENCORE

This old slow music will have never done With dancers who were graceful long ago; A sigh returns them, one by ghostly one, To tunes and measures that they knew--and know. These lifted faces, floating on a stream, Are one with other faces that were fair,-- That once were light, and summertime and dream, And drifted laughter over hall and stair.

The viols end, and two by two they pass Out of this blaze into the leafy dark, Too ghostly and too dim across the grass, Too soon obscured and blotted, all,--till Hark! This old, slow music that is like a sigh For silver feet gone, ah, how lightly by.

REDEMPTION

The old gods wait where secret beauty stirs, By green, untempled altars of the Spring, If haply, still, there be some worshippers Whose hearts are moved with long remembering. The cloven feet of Pan are on the hill, His reedy musics sadder than all rains, Since none will seek--pipe ever as he will-- Those unanointed and neglected fanes.

Beauty and joy--the bread and wine and all-- We have foresworn; our noisy hearts forget; We stray and on strange altars cry and call ... Ah, patient gods, be patient with us yet, And Pan, pipe on, pipe on, till we shall rise, And follow, and be happy, and be wise.

THE HUNTED

There is no rest for them, even in Death: As life had harried them from lair to lair, Still with unquiet eyes and furtive breath, They haunt the secret by-ways of the air. They know Earth's outer regions like a street, And on pale ships that make no port of call, They pass in silence when they chance to meet, Saying no names, telling no tales at all.

Yet, on November nights of wind and storm, Shivered and driven from their ghostly shores, They peer in lighted windows glowing warm, And thrill again at dear, remembered doors-- But they are wary listeners in the night: Speak but a name, and they are off in flight.

THE SCHOOL BOY READS HIS ILIAD

The sounding battles leave him nodding still: The din of javelins at the distant wall Is far too faint to wake that weary will That all but sleeps for cities where they fall. He cares not if this Helen's face were fair, Nor if the thousand ships shall go or stay; In vain the rumbling chariots throng the air With sounds the centuries shall not hush away.

Beyond the window where the Spring is new, Are marbles in a square, and tops again, And floating voices tell him what they do, Luring his thought from these long-warring men,---- And though the camp be visited with gods, He dreams of marbles and of tops, and nods.

MOMENTS

Earth has been splendid in her changing moods, Whose scattered glories mark the moment spent; Reliques of mirth or thoughtful solitudes Betoken what a Christ or Dante meant. What smiling dream, what happy, happy hour Yielded an Athens for the bride of Time! What darker reverie wrought the Roman flower Whose crimson petals stained the grass with crime!

Mood after mood, its subtle secret hid, Plies in the earth and has its moody way, Patient or swift--to build a pyramid, Or strike a Phidias from the quickened clay ... A reverie, that is cities on a hill, Or laughter trembling in a daffodil.

CLEAR MORNING

The air is full of thin and blowing bells Whose delicate, faint music breaks and swells

For every lightest wind, and dies unheard,-- Unless it be by some leaf-hidden bird,

Or some shy faun who listens in the reeds, If haply there be tunes to suit his needs.

RENAISSANCE

This glittering sense of bright and bladed grass, Of hedges topped with blossom, white like foam, And moons that know a purple way to pass,-- This beauty that the mind has taken home-- Goes never wholly from us at the last, But stays beyond each summer's slow decay, Storing our thought with summers that are past: Hedges and moons, white in their ancient way.

So, in some subtle instant, for their sake, The winter world turns summer earth and sky: Blossom and bird and musics in their wake ... And one bright moment, ere it hurries by, Throngs all the mind with colour, light and mirth, Like summertimes returning through the earth.

AN OLD LOVER

Whenever he would talk to us of ships, Old schooners lost, or tall ships under weigh, The god of speech was neighbour to his lips, A lover's grace on words he loved to say. He called them by their names, and you could see Spars in the sun, keels, and their curling foam; And all his mind was like a morning quay Of ships gone out, and ships come gladly home.

He filled the bay with sails we had not seen: The _Marguerita L._, "a maid for shape," The slender _Kay_, the worthy _Island Queen_,-- That was his own, he lost her off the Cape, "She was a ship"--and then he looked away, And talked to us no more of ships that day.

ONE DAY IN SUMMER

This singing Summertime has never done With afternoons all gold and dust and fire, And windy trees blown silver in the sun, The lights of earth, her musics and desire;-- But day by day, and hour by lighted hour, Something beyond the summer earth and sky, Burns through this passion of a world in flower,-- Some ghostly sense of lovers thronging by.

And I have thought, upon this windy hill, Where bends and sways the long, dream-troubled grass, That I may know the heart-beats, tender still, Of gone, forgotten lovers where they pass,-- Their love, too long for one brief life to hold, Beating and burning through this dust and gold.

VINES

No hint was told to these untutored seed: Along the mould wherein their roots are curled, No whisper runs of station, caste or creed, To guide their tendrils through a jealous world. From palace wall or cottage door, these blooms, In careless disarray of white and red, Will peer through open windows into rooms Where princes sit, or women kneading bread.

Along these tender twilights where they lean, They send no whispered gossip down at all, Of cradle songs, or counsels of a queen, To roots indifferent if that upper wall Be loud with battles and the clash of Kings, Or quiet, where a mother sits and sings.

AUDIENCE

I am aware of crowds behind the night, Of eager faces just beyond our eyes, Immured in silences and lost to light, Piteous and pleading with a hurt surprise That we who live will never turn a head To speak them any answer, or to hark The pregnant whispered wisdom of the Dead, The futile finger pointed in the Dark.

THE DANCE

When we had gone from out the blazing room, Into the cool and leafy dark, at last, And found a sweetness in the summer gloom, A holy quiet on the ways we passed,-- We turned, with only half-regretful glance At silhouettes beyond that square of light,-- Content to leave the laughter and the dance, For green, cool chambers of the summer night.

I think that we shall not be otherwise, When we have quit all rooms where once we went,-- But gazing back with grave, untroubled eyes, Shall find ourselves so quietly content, We shall not wish to alter that estate, Nor seek again the dance we left of late.

ON HEARING A BIRD SING AT NIGHT

Out of what ancient summer of soft airs Was spun this song that stills each listening leaf-- This silver, moon-bright minstreling that fares Through all old time, still laden with a grief? Some hidden bird, by turrets and black bars, Where one had languished for her face was fair, Heard thus some troubadour beneath the stars, And learned this song of vanished hands and hair.

Who knows what golden story first gave birth To this old music that is heavy-sweet With gardens long forgotten of the earth, With passion that was silver wings and feet, To cross the silent centuries and be heard, Calling again in this dream-troubled bird!

DAWN

The thousand muffled noises of the dawn: The drowsy stir of birds, surprised from sleep, The faint applause of leaves above the lawn, The bleat, far off, of closely-cabined sheep,-- Are like dim perfumes blowing down the stairs, All sweetly prescient of the coming day,-- And less like sounds, than little tender airs Gone softly shod and happily astray.

The later sleepers, where the garden lies, Such heavy-lidded ladies as the rose, Hear the soft tumult with a dim surprise, There, where an early wind as roundsman goes, To rouse each languid, over-sleepy head, And shame them that they lie so long abed.

DAFFODILS OVER NIGHT

(_A Short Tale for Children_)

I think the ghost of Leerie Came by with ghostly tread, And little lighted tapers, When we had gone to bed,-- Past gravel-walk and garden, As he was wont to go, And lit these yellow lanterns, Burning where thy blow.

VALUES

It moves my heart but little to suppose That planted men, like planted seed, shall rise, That faulty dust re-blossoms as the rose, In new perfections for more perfect skies; Nor should I greatly care if one who knew Should tell that out beyond the Grievous Gate, The sleepy country that we travel to, Has never any waking, soon or late.

But what if I should hear a prophet say: Next year will bring no robins round the door, And April will not have her ancient way, The hedge will bear no blossoms any more, The earth will not be green for living men,-- For Spring will not pass by this way again!...

A GHOST OUT OF STRATFORD

For all the crowd that packed the house to-night, Marked you the vacant seat none came to claim,... The fourth row from the front, and to the right?... Vacant, I call it now.... But I could name A thing that happened when the lights were off, Of one who walked in buckles down the aisle, Wearing a great hat that he scorned to doff, And richly kerchiefed, wrist and neck in style.

Once in the play--I swear it--once I heard, Along the tumult of our loud applause, A sly and ghostly chuckle at a word That Falstaff mouthed with those outrageous jaws ... I think he liked the play ... and stayed, no doubt, Long after us, and lingered going out.

WHO WALKS WITH BEAUTY

Who walks with Beauty has no need of fear: The sun and moon and stars keep pace with him; Invisible hands restore the ruined year, And time itself grows beautifully dim. One hill will keep the footprints of the moon That came and went a hushed and secret hour; One star at dusk will yield the lasting boon: Remembered beauty's white, immortal flower.

Who takes of Beauty wine and daily bread, Will know no lack when bitter years are lean; The brimming cup is by, the feast is spread; The sun and moon and stars his eyes have seen, Are for his hunger and the thirst he slakes: The wine of Beauty and the bread he breaks.

RACONTEUR

The Earth remembers many, many things, Kept of her pride, a rich and ancient lore,-- The fading footprints of her transient Springs, Her nameless cities, and the stones they wore. Anointed shrines that men had perished for, And women who were music for their times, These, and the world's long iliads of war, Will haunt her heart like dear, remembered rhymes.

I have imagined how it might be so, When Earth takes home this wandering dust again, There may be stories I shall come to know, Of tragic queens and towns and valiant men,-- Old honoured tales that Earth may tell to me, As mothers do, for children at the knee.

AFFINITIES

Young girls love a slender birch, Tall and blowing in the wind, Silvered in the sun and rain, And beautifully thinned.

Old men love an apple-tree Twisted and gnarled as they; But when new blossoms line the bough, The old men look away.

TRANSFIGURATION

What old historic dust gives back the rose! What crumbled empires yield the creeping vine! And purple grapes have sucked a pleasant wine From ramparts that had bowed to sudden blows. Where now the unregarded river flows, Old dissolute cities, their debauches done, Lift up a slender blossom to the sun, Steeped in the thoughtful silence where it grows.

Where Splendour was, no Splendour is today: Ruin has wrought upon the crowns of kings, Their throne-rooms all are green and tender things ... And wonder dies,--save in the patient way Of these slow transmutations in the dust: Beauty from power, lilies out of lust.

ONE WAY OF SPRING

The Spring came to this street with spinning tops, And marbles rolling where the yards were bare, With parti-coloured bonnets in the shops, And young girls' laughter on the sterile air. Through open windows and from stair to stair, Went women's voices, calling each to each, And in the cramped and crowded little square, The ancient hush of soft and tender speech.

For all the lack of green things coming in, That magic that was marbles in the street, That swept the stairs, and moved the tops to spin, Was wine and music, potent still and sweet, As when it swayed those graceful girls of Troy, And set to dreaming many a Trojan boy.

FOR A SEQUESTERED LADY

Roses, roses at her door, Roses bringing something more Than one Summer to her door,-- Beauty, beauty evermore.

Roses that were Guinivere In a far-off golden year, Hair that blinded like the sun, Hands that never would have done With the white spells that they wrought, Till a city came to naught,-- Hands and hair and hearts, at last, Dust! Till now, their slumbers past, Roses bloom about her door, Beauty, beauty evermore.... Trojan maidens who had been Still, white faces through the din Of those chariots gone by, Stars above a troubled sky-- Beauty passing to re-pass, Pearl-white feet across the grass, Crowns of beauty that they wore Given to the dust for more Roses, roses at her door.... All old tales of beauty dead, Hands and hair and lifted head, Gone from cities long forgot: Rimini and Camelot, Lovers who had been like light, Summertime and dream ... and Night ... Now, their night of sleeping gone, Roses rise above the lawn.

Roses, roses at her door, Roses bringing something more Than one Summer to her door ... Beauty, beauty evermore.

HERITAGE

All purged, at last, are glories in the dust,-- Those temples that were worship for a day. The gallant banners of a people's trust, And hands and lips--and Aprils brief as they. Beyond their lighted moment in the sun, They bore away their splendours and their stains; Now they are dust, the cleansing ritual done, And only their dim holiness remains.

Since I am somehow fashioned out of these, The quickened dust of city, saint and grass, Of holy altars and old mysteries,-- Let me be mindful of them where I pass, Dishonouring not this garment among men, Lest I be shamed when I am dust again.

"SHIPPING NEWS"

(_A Maritime Paper_)

Here is the record of their splendid days: The curving prow, the tall and stately mast, And all the width and wonder of their ways, Reduced to little printed words, at last; The _Helen Dover_ docks, the _Mary Ann_ Departs for Ceylon and the Eastern trade; Arrived: _The Queen_, with cargoes from Japan, And _Richard Kidd_, a tramp, and _Silver Maid_.

The narrow print is wide enough for these: But here: "Reported missing" ... the type fails, The column breaks for white and angry seas, The jagged spars thrust through, and flapping sails Flagging farewells to wind and sky and shore, Arrive at silent ports, and leave no more.

ARTICULATION

With what bright symbols have we learned, at last, To write the epic of the tender Springs!-- We, who were dumb so many centuries past, Who found no word for frail and lovely things. In tongue-tied wonder at the blossoming earth, We watched the trailing seasons loiter by, Too inarticulate of their transient worth, Beyond the saddened utterance of a sigh.