Chapter 2

Seem all my thoughts and prayers When He but speaks Thy Law; Out of my heart the tares Are torn by awe!

I cannot look upon Him, So strangely burn His eyes-- Hath not some grieving drawn Him From Paradise?

For Thee, for Thee I'd live, Lord! Yet oft I almost fall Before Him--Oh, forgive, Lord, My sinful thrall!

But e'en when He was nursing, A baby at my breast, It seemed He was dispersing The world's unrest.

Thou bad'st me call Him "Jesus," And from our heavy sin I know He shall release us, From Sheol win.

But, Lord, forgive! the yearning That He may sometimes be Like other children, learning Beside my knee,

Or playing, prattling, seeking For help--comes to my heart.... Ah sinful, Lord, I'm speaking-- How good Thou art!

ADELIL

Proud Adelil! Proud Adelil! Why does she lie so cold? (I made her shrink, I made her reel, I made her white lids fold.)

We sat at banquet, many maids, She like a Valkyr free. (I hated the glitter of her braids, I hated her blue eye's glee!)

In emerald cups was poured the mead; Icily blew the night. (But tears unshed and woes that bleed Brew bitterness and spite.)

"A goblet to my love!" she cried, "Prince where the sea-winds fly!" (Her love!--it was for that he died, And for it she should die.)

She lifted the cup and drank--she saw A heart within its lees. (I laughed like the dead who feel the thaw Of summer in the breeze.)

They looked upon her stricken still, And sudden they grew appalled. ("It is thy lover's heart!" I shrill As the sea-crow to her called.)

Palely she took it--did it give Ease there against her breast? (Dead--dead she swooned, but I cannot live, And dead I shall not rest.)

INTIMATION

All night I smiled as I slept, For I heard the March-wind feel Blindly about in the trees without For buds to heal.

All night in dreams, for I smelt, In the rain-wet woods and fields, The coming flowers and the glad green hours That summer yields.

All night--and when at dawn I woke with the blue-bird's cheep, Winter with all its chill and pall Seemed but a sleep.

IN JULY

This path will tell me where dark daisies dance To the white sycamores that dell them in; Where crow and flicker cry melodious din, And blackberries in ebon ripeness glance Luscious enticings under briery green. It will slip under coppice limbs that lean Brushingly as the slow-belled heifer pants Toward weedy water-plants That shade the pool-sunk creek's reluctant trance.

I shall find bell-flower spires beside the gap And lady phlox within the hollow's cool; Cedar with sudden memories of Yule Above the tangle tipped with blue skullcap. The high hot mullein fond of the full sun Will watch and tell the low mint when I've won The hither wheat where idle breezes nap, And fluffy quails entrap Me from their brood that crouch to escape mishap.

Then I shall reach the mossy water-way That gullies the dense hill up to its peak, There dally listening to the eerie eke Of drops into cool chalices of clay. Then on, for elders odorously will steal My senses till I climb up where they heal The livid heat of its malingering ray, And wooingly betray To memory many a long-forgotten day.

There I shall rest within the woody peace Of afternoon. The bending azure frothed With silveryness, the sunny pastures swathed, Fragrant with morn-mown clover and seed-fleece; The hills where hung mists muse, and Silence calls To Solitude thro' aged forest halls, Will waft into me their mysterious ease, And in the wind's soft cease I shall hear hintings of eternities.

FROM ABOVE

What do I care if the trees are bare And the hills are dark And the skies are gray.

What do I care for chill in the air For crows that cark At the rough wind's way.

What do I care for the dead leaves there-- Or the sullen road By the sullen wood.

There's heart in my heart To bear my load! So enough, the day is good!

BY THE INDUS

Thou art late, O Moon, Late, I have waited thee long. The nightingale's flown to her nest, Sated with song. The champak hath no odour more To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er-- But my heart it will not rest.

Thou art late, O Love, Late, For the moon is a-wane. The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs, Burns with my pain. The lotus leans her head on the stream-- Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream, Dream ere the night-cool dies?

Thou art late, O Death, Late, For he did not come! A pariah is my heart, Cast from him--dumb! I cannot cry in the jungle's deep-- Is it not time for the Tomb--and Sleep? O Death, strike with thy dart!

EVOCATION

(NIKKO, JAPAN, 1905)

Dim thro' the mist and cryptomeria Booms the temple bell, Down from the tomb of Iêyasü Yearning, as a knell.

Down from the tomb where many an æon Silently has knelt; Many a pilgrimage of millions-- Still about it felt.

Still, for I see them gather ghostly Now, as the numb sound Floats, an unearthly necromancy, From the past's dead ground.

See the invisible vast millions, Hear their soundless feet Climbing the shrine-ways to the gilded Carven temple's seat.

And, one among them--pale among them-- Passes waning by. What is it tells me mystically That strange one was I?...

Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria Dies the bell--'tis dumb. After how many lives returning Shall I hither come?

Hither again! and climb the votive Ever mossy ways? Who shall the gods be then, the millions Meek, entreat or praise?

THE CHILD GOD GAVE

"Give me a little child To draw this dreary want out of my breast," I cried to God. "Give, for my days beat wild With loneliness that will not rest But under the still sod!"

It came--with groping lips And little fingers stealing aimlessly About my heart. I was like one who slips A-sudden into Ecstasy And thinks ne'er to depart.

"Soon he will smile," I said, "And babble baby love into my ears-- How it will thrill!" I waited--Oh, the dread, The clutching agony, the fears!-- He was so strange and still.

Did I curse God and rave When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas A witless child? No ... I ... I only gave One cry ... just one ... I think ... because ... You know ... he never smiled.

THE WINDS

The East Wind is a Bedouin, And Nimbus is his steed; Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin Blue scimitar he flies afar, Whither his rovings lead. The Dead Sea waves And Egypt caves Of mummied silence laugh When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench And to wrench From his clutch the tyrant's staff.

The West Wind is an Indian brave Who scours the Autumn's crest. Dashing the forest down as a slave, He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves A maelstrom for his breast. Out of the night Crying to fright The earth he swoops to spoil-- There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath, In his path There is misery and moil.

The North Wind is a Viking--cold And cruel, armed with death! Born in the doomful deep of the old Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose From Niflheim's ebon breath. And with him sail Snow, Frost, and Hail, Thanes mighty as their lord, To plunder the shores of Summer's stores-- And his roar's Like the sound of Chaos' horde.

The South Wind is a Troubadour; The Spring 's his serenade. Over the mountain, over the moor, He blows to bloom from the winter's tomb Blossom and leaf and blade. He ripples the throat Of the lark with a note Of lilting love and bliss, And the sun and the moon, the night and the noon, Are a-swoon-- When he woos them with his kiss.

TRANSCENDED

I who was learnèd in death's lore Oft held her to my heart And spoke of days when we should love no more-- In the long dust, apart.

"Immortal?" No--it could not be, Spirit with flesh must die. Tho' heart should pray and hope make endless plea, Reason would still outcry.

She died. They wrapped her in the dust-- I heard the dull clod's dole, And then I knew she lived--that death's dark lust Could never touch her soul!

LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD

We are not lovers, you and I, Upon this sunny lane, But children who have never known Love's joy or pain.

The trees we pass, the summer brook, The bird that o'er us darts-- We do not know 'tis they that thrill Our childish hearts.

The earth-things have no name for us, The ploughing means no more Than that they like to walk the fields Who plough them o'er.

The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills Are not a World to-day-- But just a place God's made for us In which to play.

AUTUMN

I know her not by fallen leaves Or resting heaps of hay; Or by the sheathing mists of mauve That soothe the fiery day.

I know her not by plumping nuts, By redded hips and haws, Or by the silence hanging sad Under the wind's sere pause.

But by her sighs I know her well-- They are like Sorrow's breath; And by this longing, strangely still, For something after death.

SHINTO

(MIYAJIMA, JAPAN, 1905)

Lowly temple and torii, Shrine where the spirits of wind and wave Find the worship and glory we Give to the one God great and grave--

Lowly temple and torii, Shrine of the dead, I hang my prayer Here on your gates--the story see And answer out of the earth and air.

For I am Nature's child, and you Were by the children of Nature built. Ages have on you smiled--and dew On you for ages has been spilt--

Till you are beautiful as Time Mossy and mellowing ever makes: Wrapped as you are in lull--or rhyme Of sounding drum that sudden breaks.

This is my prayer then, this: that I Too may reverence all of life, Lose no power and miss no high Awe, of a world with wonder rife!

That I may build in spirit fair Temples and torii on each place That I have loved--Oh, hear it, Air, Ocean and Earth, and grant your grace!

MAYA

(HIROSHIMA, JAPAN, 1905)

Pale sampans up the river glide, With set sails vanishing and slow; In the blue west the mountains hide, As visions that too soon will go.

Across the rice-lands, flooded deep, The peasant peacefully wades on-- As, in unfurrowed vales of sleep, A phantom out of voidness drawn.

Over the temple cawing flies The crow with carrion in his beak. Buddha within lifts not his eyes In pity or reproval meek;

Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow A respite from the blinding sun, The old priest--dreaming painless how Nirvana's calm will come when won.

"All is illusion, _Maya_, all The world of will," the spent East seems Whispering in me; "and the call Of Life is but a call of dreams."

A JAPANESE MOTHER

(IN TIME OF WAR)

The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops, Down on the brink of the river. My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse-- The bamboo copse where the rice field stops: The bamboos sigh and shiver.

The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill; I must pray to Inari. I hear her calling me low and chill-- Low and chill when the wind is still At night and the skies hang starry.

And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead! Your lord who went to battle. How shall your baby now be fed, Ukibo fed, with rice and bread-- What if I hush his prattle?"

The red moon rises as I slip back, And the bamboo stems are swaying. Inari was deaf--and yet the lack, The fear and lack, are gone, and the rack, I know not why--with praying.

For though Inari cared not at all, Some other god was kinder. I wonder why he has heard my call, My giftless call--and what shall befall?... Hope has but left me blinder!

THE DEAD GODS

I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss Which is Oblivion, the house of Death. I thought there blew upon my soul the breath Of time that was but never more can be.

Ten thousand years within its void I thought I lay, blind, deaf, and motionless, until-- Though with no eye nor ear--I felt the thrill Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh.

First one beside me spoke, in tones that told He once had been a god--"Persephone, Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we Are king and queen of Tartarus no more; And that wan, shrivelled sceptre in thy hand, Why dost thou clasp it still? Cast it away, For now it hath no virtue that can sway Dull shades or drive the Furies to their spoil.

"Cast it away, and give thy palm to mine: Perchance some unobliterated spark Of memory shall warm this dismal Dark. Perchance--Vain! vain! love could not light such gloom."

He sank.... Then in great ruin by him moved Another as in travail of some thought Near unto birth; and soon from lips distraught By aged silence, fell, with hollow woe:

"Ah, Pluto, dost thou, one time lord of Styx And Acheron make moan of night and cold? Were we upon Olympus as of old Laughter of thee would rock its festal height.

"But think, think thee of me, to whom or gloom Or cold were more unknown than impotence! See the unhurlèd thunderbolt brought hence To mock me when I dream I still am Jove!"

Too much it was: I withered in the breath; And lay again ten thousand lifeless years; And then my soul shook, woke--and saw three biers Chiselled of solid night majestically.

The forms outlaid upon them were enwound As with the silence of eternity. Numbing repose dwelt o'er them like a sea, That long hath lost tide, wave and roar, in death.

"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris are their names," A spirit hieroglyphed unto my soul. "Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris--they who stole The heart of Egypt from the God of gods:

"Aye, they! and these!" pointing to many wraiths That stood around--Baal, Ormuzd, Indra, all Whom frightened ignorance and sin's appall Had given birth, close-huddled in despair.

Their eyes were fixed upon a cloven slope Down whose descent still other forms a-fresh From earth were drawn, by the unceasing mesh Of Time to their irrevocable end.

"They are the gods," one said--"the gods whom men Still taunt with wails for help."--Then a deep light Upbore me from the Gulf, and thro' its might I heard the worlds cry, "God alone is God!"

CALL TO YOUR MATE, BOB-WHITE

O call to your mate, bob-white, bob-white, And I will call to mine. Call to her by the meadow-gate, And I will call by the pine.

Tell her the sun is hid, bob-white, The windy wheat sways west. Whistle again, call clear and run To lure her out of her nest.

For when to the copse she comes, shy bird, With Mary down the lane I'll walk, in the dusk of the locust tops, And be her lover again.

Ay, we will forget our hearts are old, And that our hair is gray. We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset That summer's halcyon day.

That day, can it fade?... ah, bob, bob-white, Still calling--calling still? We're coming--a-coming, bent and weighed, But glad with the old love's thrill!

THE DYING POET

Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun, Drawing my heart with thee over the west! Done is its day as thy day is done, Fallen its quest!

Swoon into purple and rose, then die: Tho' to arise again out of the dawn: Die as I praise thee, ere thro' the Dark Lie Of death I am drawn!

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life! I like a child could cry for it again-- Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife, Its women, its men!

For, how I drained it with love and delight! Opened its heart with the magic of grief! Reaped every season--its day and its night! Loved every sheaf!

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod, Never a flower swung sweet to my face, Never a heart that was touched of God, But taught me its grace.

Off from my lids then a moment yet, Fingering Death, for again I must see Lifted by memory all that I met Under Time's lee.

There!... I'm a child again--fair, so fair! Under the eyes does a marvel not burn? Speak they not vision--and frenzy to dare, That still in me yearn?...

Youth! my wild youth!--O, blood of my heart, Still you can answer with swirling the thought! Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart, Joyous, distraught!...

Love, and her face again! there by the wood!-- Come, thou invisible Dark with thy mask! Shall I not learn if she lives? and could I more of thee ask?...

Turn me away from the ashen west, Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk. Something is stealing like light from my breast-- Soul from its husk ...

Soft!... Where the dead feel the buried dead, Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls, Bury me, near to the haunting tread Of life that o'errolls.

THE OUTCAST

I did not fear, But crept close up to Christ and said, "Is he not here?"

They drew me back-- The seraphs who had never bled Of weary lack--

But still I cried, With torn robe, clutching at His feet, "Dear Christ! He died

"So long ago! Is he not here? Three days, unfleet As mortal flow

"Of time I've sought-- Till Heaven's amaranthine ways Seem as sere nought!"

A grieving stole Up from His heart and waned the gaze Of His clear soul

Into my eyes. "He is not here," troubled He sighed. "For none who dies

"Beliefless may Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide, And live alway."

Then darkness rose Within me, and drear bitterness. Out of its throes

I moaned, at last, "Let me go hence! Take off the dress, The charms Thou hast

"Around me strown! Beliefless too am I without His love--and lone!"

Unto the Gate They led me, tho' with pitying doubt. I did not wait

But stepped across Its portal, turned not once to heed Or know my loss.

Then my dream broke, And with it every loveless creed-- Beneath love's stroke.

APRIL

A laughter of wind and a leaping of cloud, And April, oh, out under the blue! The brook is awake and the blackbird loud In the dew!

But how does the robin high in the beech, Beside the wood with its shake and toss, Know it--the frenzy of bluets to reach Thro' the moss!

And where did the lark ever learn his speech? Up, wildly sweet, he's over the mead! Is more than the rapture of earth can teach In its creed?

I never shall know--I never shall care! 'Tis, oh, enough to live and to love! To laugh and warble and dream and dare Are to prove!

AUGUST GUESTS

The wind slipt over the hill And down the valley. He dimpled the cheek of the rill With a cooling kiss. Then hid on the bank a-glee And began to rally The rushes--Oh, I love the wind for this!

A cloud blew out of the west And spilt his shower Upon the lily-bud crest And the clematis. Then over the virgin corn Besprinkled a dower Of dew-gems--And, I love the cloud for this!

TO A DOVE

1

Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves, That tremble dimly in the summer dusk, Falls sad along the oatland's sallow sheaves And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk With plashy willow and bold-wading reed. The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not, But softer mourns unto me from the mead Than airs that in the wood intoning start, Or breath of silences in dells begot To soothe some grief-wan soul with sin a-smart.

2

A votaress art thou of Simplicity, Who hath one fane--the heaven above thy nest; One incense--love; one stealing litany Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest. Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze, Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils, Faith of the darkening distance, charities Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils That would earth of its heavenliness rob.

3

But few, how few her worshippers! For we Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free, To sacrificing a vain sacrifice! Let thy lone innocence then quickly null Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire-- Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull Of feverous mystery the days we drain! Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre To lead us to life's Arcady again!

AT TINTERN ABBEY

(June, 1903)

O Tintern, Tintern! evermore my dreams Troubled by thy grave beauty shall be born; Thy crumbling loveliness and ivy streams Shall speak to me for ever, from this morn; The wind-wild daws about thy arches drifting, Clouds sweeping o'er thy ruin to the sea, Gray Tintern, all the hills about thee, lifting Their misty waving woodland verdancy!

The centuries that draw thee to the earth In envy of thy desolated charm, The summers and the winters, the sky's girth Of sunny blue or bleakness, seek thy harm. But would that I were Time, then only tender Touch upon thee should fall as on I sped; Of every pillar would I be defender, Of every mossy window--of thy dead!

Thy dead beneath obliterated stones Upon the sod that is at last thy floor, Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er. O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never Are wanting mysteries that move the breast, I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever-- Till sinks within me the last voice to rest!

OH, GO NOT OUT

Oh, go not out upon the storm, Go not, my sweet, to Swalchie pool! A witch tho' she be dead may charm Thee and befool.

A wild night 'tis! her lover's moan, Down under ooze and salty weed, She'll make thee hear--and then her own! Till thou shalt heed.

And it will suck upon thy heart-- The sorcery within her cry-- Till madness out of thee upstart, And rage to die.

For him she loved, she laughed to death! And as afloat his chill hand lay, "Ha, ha! to hell I sent his wraith!" Did she not say?

And from his finger strive to draw The ring that bound him to her spell? Till on her closed his hand whose awe No curse could quell?

Oh, yea! and tho' she struggled pale, Did it not hold her cold and fast, Till crawled the tide o'er rock and swale, To her at last?

Down in the pool where she was swept He holds her--Oh, go not a-near! For none has heard her cry but wept And died that year.

HUMAN LOVE