Part 2

The Spirit of Earth, with still restoring hands, ’Mid ruin moves, in glimmering chasm gropes, And mosses mantle and the bright flower opes; But Death the Ploughman wanders in all lands, And to the last of Earth his furrow stands. The grave is never hidden; fearful hopes Follow the dead upon the fading slopes, And there wild memories meet upon the sands.

When willows fling their banners to the plain, When rumor of winds and sound of sudden showers Disturb the dream of winter--all in vain The grasses hurry to the graves, the flowers Toss their wild torches on their windy towers; Yet are the bleak graves lonely in the rain.

In the Storm

I huddled close against the mighty cliff. A sense of safety and of brotherhood Broke on the heart: the shelter of a rock Is sweeter than the roofs of all the world.

After Reading Shakspere

Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy hands Or on the edges of the darkness peers, Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears: Imagination (lo! the sky expands) Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,-- Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres, The rush of light before the hurrying years, The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands.

Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie light The dusky vales of Saturn--wood and stream; But who shall follow on the awful sweep Of Neptune through the dim and dreadful deep? Onward he wanders in the unknown night, And we are shadows moving in a dream.

The Hidden Valley

I stray with Ariel and Caliban: I know the hill of windy pines--I know Where the jay’s nest swings in the wild gorge below: Lightly I climb where fallen cedars span Bright rivers--climb to a valley under ban, Where west winds set a thousand bells ablow-- An eerie valley where in the morning glow I hear the music of the pipes of Pan.

Mysterious horns blow by on the still air-- A satyr steps--a wood-god’s dewy notes Come faintly from a vale of tossing oats.-- But ho! what white thing in the canyon crossed? Gods! I shall come on Dian unaware, Look on her fearful beauty and be lost.

The Poets

Some cry of Sappho’s lyre, of Saadi’s flute, Comes back across the waste of mortal things: Men strive and die to reach the Dead Sea fruit-- Only the poets find immortal springs.

Love’s Vigil

Love will outwatch the stars, and light the skies When the last star falls, and the silent dark devours; God’s warrior, he will watch the allotted hours, And conquer with the look of his sad eyes: He shakes the kingdom of darkness with his sighs, His quiet sighs, while all the Infernal Powers Tremble and pale upon their central towers, Lest, haply, his bright universe arise.

All will be well if he have strength to wait, Till his lost Pleiad, white and silver-shod, Regains her place to make the perfect Seven; Then all the worlds will know that Love is Fate-- That somehow he is greater even than Heaven-- That in the Cosmic Council he is God.

Two at a Fireside

I built a chimney for a comrade old, I did the service not for hope or hire-- And then I traveled on in winter’s cold, Yet all the day I glowed before the fire.

The Butterfly

O wingèd brother on the harebell, stay-- Was God’s hand very pitiful, the hand That wrought thy beauty at a dream’s demand?

_Yea, knowing I love so well the flowery way,_ _He did not fling me to the world astray--_ _He did not drop me to the weary sand,_ _But bore me gently to a leafy land:_ _Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day._

Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair! I will go back now to the world of men. Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air, Yet thou hast girded up my heart again; For He that framed the impenetrable plan, And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man.

To William Watson

_After reading “The Purple East.”_

That hour you put the wreath of England by To shake her guilty heart with song sublime, The mighty Muse that watches from the sky Laid on your head the larger wreath of Time.

Keats A-Dying

Often of that Last Hour I lie and think; I see thee, Keats, nearing the Deathway dim-- See Severn in his noiseless hurry, him Who leaned above thee fading on the brink.

* * * * *

What is that wild light through the window chink? Is it the burning feet of cherubim? Or is it the white moon on western rim-- Saint Agnes’ moon beginning now to sink?

How did Death come--with sounds of water-stir? With forms of beauty breaking at the lips? With field pipes and the scent of blowing fir? Or came it hurrying like a last eclipse, Sweeping the world away like gossamer, Blotting the moon, the mountains, and the ships?

Man

Out of the deep and endless universe There came a greater Mystery, a Shape, A Something sad, inscrutable, august-- One to confront the worlds and question them.

The Cricket

The twilight is the morning of his day, While sleep drops seaward from the fading shore, With purpling sail and dip of silver oar, He cheers the shadowed time with roun-delay, Until the dark east softens into gray. Now as the noisy hours are coming--hark! His song dies gently--it is growing dark-- His night, with its one star, is on its way!

Faintly the light breaks o’er the blowing oats-- Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir, We worship Song, and servants are of her-- I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time; Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes, And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme.

In High Sierras

There at a certain hour of the deep night, A gray cliff with a demon face comes up, Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks, and with An anxious look peers at the Zodiac.

The Wharf of Dreams

Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep: Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light Flashes a signal fire across the night; Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep Their way without a star upon the deep; And from lost ships, homing with ghostly crews, Come cries of incommunicable news, While cargoes pile the piers, a moon-white heap--

Budgets of dream-dust, merchandise of song, Wreckage of hope and packs of ancient wrong, Nepenthes gathered from a secret strand, Fardels of heartache, burdens of old sins, Luggage sent down from dim ancestral inns, And bales of fantasy from No-Man’s Land.

To Louise Michel

I cannot take your road, Louise Michel, Priestess of Pity and of Vengeance--no: Down that amorphous gulf I cannot go-- That gulf of Anarchy whose pit is Hell. Yet, sister, though my first word is farewell, Remember that I know your hidden woe; Have felt the grief that rends you blow on blow; Have knelt beside you in the murky cell.

You never followed hate (let this atone) Nor knew the wrongs of others from your own: Wild was the road, but Love has always led, So I am silent where I cannot praise; And here now at the parting of the ways, I lay a still hand lightly on your head.

Shepherd Boy and Nereid

Ah, once of old in some forgotten tongue, Forgotten land, I was a shepherd boy, And you a Nereid, a wingèd joy: On through the dawn-bright peaks our bodies swung And flower-soft lyrics by immortals sung Fell from their unseen pinnacles in air: God looked from Heaven that hour, for you were fair, And I a poet, and the star was young.

You’d heard my woodland pipe and left the sea-- Your hair blown gold and all your body white-- Had left the ocean-girls to follow me. We joined the hill-nymphs in their joyous flight, And you laughed lightly to the sea, and sent Quick glances flashing through me as I went.

A Song at the Start

Oh, down the quick river our galley is going, With a sound in the cordage, a beam on the sail: The wind of the canyon our loose hair is blowing, And the clouds of the morning are glad of the gale.

Around the swift prow little billows are breaking, And flinging their foam in a glory of light; Now the shade of a rock on the river is shaking, And a wave leaps high up growing suddenly white.

The weight of the whole world is light as a feather, And the peaks rise in silence and westerly flee: Oh, the world and the poet are singing together, And from the far cliff comes a sound of the sea.

My Comrade

I never build a song by night or day, Of breaking ocean or of blowing whin, But in some wondrous unexpected way, Like light upon a road, my Love comes in.

And when I go at night upon the hill, My heart is lifted on mysterious wings: My Love is there to strengthen and to still, For she can take away the dread of things.

A Lyric of the Dawn

Alone I list In the leafy tryst; Silent the woodlands in their starry sleep-- Silent the phantom wood in waters deep: No footfall of a wind along the pass Startles a harebell--stirs a blade of grass. Yonder the wandering weeds, Enchanted in the light, Stand in the gusty hollows, still and white; Yonder are plumy reeds, Dusking the border of the clear lagoon; Far off the silver clifts Hang in ethereal light below the moon; Far off the ocean lifts, Tossing its billows in the misty beam, And shore-lines whiten, silent as a dream: I hark for the bird, and all the hushed hills harken: This is the valley: here the branches darken The silver-lighted stream.

Hark-- That rapture in the leafy dark! Who is it shouts upon the bough aswing, Waking the upland and the valley under? What carols, like the blazon of a king, Fill all the dawn with wonder? Oh, hush, It is the thrush, In the deep and woody glen! Ah, thus the gladness of the gods was sung, When the old Earth was young; That rapture rang, When the first morning on the mountains sprang: And now he shouts, and the world is young again!

Carol, my king, On your bough aswing Thou art not of these evil days-- Thou art a voice of the world’s lost youth: Oh, tell me what is duty--what is truth-- How to find God upon these hungry ways; Tell of the golden prime, When men beheld swift deities descend, Before the race was left alone with Time, Homesick on Earth, and homeless to the end, When bird and beast could make a man their friend; Before great Pan was dead, Before the naiads fled; When maidens white with dark eyes shy and bold, With peals of laughter on the peaks of gold, Startled the still dawn-- Shone in upon the mountains and were gone, Their voices fading silverly in depths of forests old.

Sing of the wonders of their woodland ways, Before the weird earth-hunger of these days, When there was rippling mirth, When justice was on Earth, And light and grandeur of the Golden Age; When never a heart was sad, When all from king to herdsman had A penny for a wage. Ah, that old time has faded to a dream-- The moon’s fair face is broken in the stream; Yet shout and carol on, O bird, and let The exiled race not utterly forget; Publish thy revelation on the lawns-- Sing ever in the dark ethereal dawns; Sometime, in some sweet year, These stormy souls, these men of Earth may hear.

But hark again, From the secret glen, That voice of rapture and ethereal youth Now laden with despair. Forbear, O bird, forbear: Is life not terrible enough forsooth? Cease, cease the mystic song-- No more, no more, the passion and the pain: It wakes my life to fret against the chain; It makes me think of all the agèd wrong-- Of joy and the end of joy and the end of all-- Of souls on Earth, and souls beyond recall. Ah, ah, that voice again! It makes me think of all these restless men, Called into time--their progress and their goal; And now, oh now, it sends into my soul Dreams of a love that might have been for me-- That might have been--and now can never be.

Tell me no more of these-- Tell me of trancèd trees; (The ghosts, the memories, in pity spare) Show me the leafy home of the wild bees; Show me the snowy summits dim in air; Tell me of things afar In valleys silent under moon and star: Dim hollows hushed with night, The lofty cedars misty in the light, Wild clusters of the vine, Wild odors of the pine, The eagle’s eyrie lifted to the moon-- High places where on quiet afternoon A shadow swiftens by, a thrilling scream Startles the cliff, and dies across the woodland to a dream.

Ha, now He springs from the bough, It flickers--he is lost! Out of the copse he sprang; This is the floating briar where he tossed: The leaves are yet atremble where he sang. Here a long vista opens--look! This is the way he took, Through the pale poplars by the pond: Hark! he is shouting in the field beyond. Ho, there he goes Through the alder close! He leaves me here behind him in his flight, And yet my heart goes with him out of sight! What whispered spell Of Faëry calls me on from dell to dell? I hear the voice--it wanders in a dream-- Now in the grove, now on the hill, now on the fading stream.

Lead on--you know the way-- Lead on to Arcady, O’er fields asleep; by river bank abrim; Down leafy ways, dewy and cool and dim; By dripping rocks, dark dwellings of the gnome, Where hurrying waters dash their crests to foam. I follow where you lead, Down winding paths, across the flowery mead, Down silent hollows where the woodbine blows, Up water-courses scented by the rose. I follow the wandering voice-- I follow, I rejoice, I fade away into the Age of Gold-- We two together lost in forest old.-- O ferny and thymy paths, O fields of Aidenn, Canyons and cliffs by mortal feet untrod! O souls that weary and are heavy laden, Here is the peace of God!

Lo! now the clamoring hours are on the way: Faintly the pine tops redden in the ray; From vale to vale fleet-footed rumors run, With sudden apprehension of the sun; A light wind stirs The filmy tops of delicate dim firs, And on the river border blows, Breaking the shy bud softly to a rose. Sing out, O throstle, sing: I follow on, my king: Lead me forever through the crimson dawn-- Till the world ends, lead me on! Ho there! he shouts again--he sways--and now, Upspringing from the bough, Flashing a glint of dew upon the ground, Without a sound He drops into a valley and is gone!

Joy of the Morning

I hear you, little bird, Shouting aswing above the broken wall. Shout louder yet: no song can tell it all. Sing to my soul in the deep still wood: ’Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word: I’d tell it, too, if I could.

Oft when the white, still dawn Lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I’ve felt it like a glory in my heart-- (The world’s mysterious stir) But had no throat like yours, my bird, Nor such a listener.

Youth and Time

Once, I remember, the world was young; The rills rejoiced with a silver tongue; The field-lark sat in the wheat and sang; The thrush’s shout in the woodland rang; The cliffs and the perilous sands afar Were softened to mist by the morning star; For Youth was with me (I know it now!), And a light shone out from his wreathèd brow. He turned the fields to enchanted ground, He touched the rains with a dreamy sound.

But alas, he vanished, and Time appeared, The Spirit of Ages, old and weird. He crushed and scattered my beamy wings; He dragged me forth from the court of kings; He gave me doubt and a bloom of beard, This Spirit of Ages, old and weird. The wonder went from the field of corn, The glory died on the craggy horn; And suddenly all was strange and gray, And the rocks came out on the trodden way.

I hear no more the wild thrush sing: He is silent now on the peach aswing. Something is gone from the house of mirth-- Something is gone from the hills of Earth. Time hurries me on with a wizard hand; He turns the Earth to a homeless land; He stays my life with a stingy breath, And darkens its depths with foreknowledge of death; Calls memories back on their path apace; Sends desperate thoughts to the soul’s dim place.

Time murders our youth with his sorrow and sin, And pushes us on to the windowless inn.

A Satyr Song

I know by the stir of the branches The way she went; And at times I can see where a stem Of the grass is bent. She’s the secret and light of my life, She allures to elude; But I follow the spell of her beauty Whatever the mood.

I have followed all night in the hills, And my breath is deep, But she flies on before like a voice In the vale of sleep. I follow the print of her feet In the wild river bed, And lo, she calls gleefully down From a cliff overhead.

A Cry in the Night

Wail, wail, wail, For the fleering world goes down: Into the song of the poet pale Mixes the laugh of the clown.

Grim, grim, grim, Is the road we go to the dead; Yet we must on, for a Something dim Pushes the soul ahead.

Where, where, where, Through the dust and shadow of things Will the fleeing Fates with their wild manes bear These tribes of slaves and kings?

Fays

One secret night, I stood where ocean pours Eternal waters on the yellow shores, And saw the drift of fays that Prosper saw: (Their feet had no more sound than blowing straw.) And little hands held light in little hands They chased a fleeing billow down the sands, But turned in the nick o’ time, and mad with glee Raced back again before the swelling sea.

In Death Valley

There came gray stretches of volcanic plains, Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill, Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw. Around were heaps of ruins piled between The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care; And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls One pillar rose up dark against the moon. There was a nameless Presence everywhere; In the gray soil there was a purple stain, And the gray reticent rocks were dyed with blood-- Blood of a vast unknown Calamity. It was the mark of some ancestral grief-- Grief that began before the ancient Flood.

At Dawn

Just then the branches lightly stirred.... See, out o’ the apple boughs a bird Bursts music-mad into the blue abyss: Rothschild would give his gold for this-- The wealth of nations, if he knew: (And find a profit in the business, too.)

“Follow Me”

O friend, we never choose the better part, Until we set the Cross up in the heart. I know I can not live until I die-- Till I am nailed upon it wild and high, And sleep in the tomb for a full three days dead, With angels at the feet and at the head. But then in a great brightness I shall rise To walk with stiller feet below the skies.

In Poppy Fields

Here the poppy hosts assemble: How they startle, how they tremble! All their royal hoods unpinned Blow out lightly in the wind. Here is gold to labor for; Here is pillage worth a war.

Men that in the cities grind, Come! before the heart is blind.

The Joy of the Hills

I ride on the mountain tops, I ride; I have found my life and am satisfied. Onward I ride in the blowing oats, Checking the field-lark’s rippling notes-- Lightly I sweep From steep to steep: Over my head through the branches high Come glimpses of a rushing sky; The tall oats brush my horse’s flanks; Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks; A bee booms out of the scented grass; A jay laughs with me as I pass.

I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget Life’s hoard of regret-- All the terror and pain Of the chafing chain.

Grind on, O cities, grind: I leave you a blur behind. I am lifted elate--the skies expand: Here the world’s heaped gold is a pile of sand. Let them weary and work in their narrow walls: I ride with the voices of waterfalls!

I swing on as one in a dream--I swing Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing! The world is gone like an empty word: My body’s a bough in the wind, my heart a bird!

The Invisible Bride

The low-voiced girls that go In gardens of the Lord, Like flowers of the field they grow In sisterly accord.

Their whispering feet are white Along the leafy ways; They go in whirls of light Too beautiful for praise.

And in their band forsooth Is one to set me free-- The one that touched my youth-- The one God gave to me.

She kindles the desire Whereby the gods survive-- The white ideal fire That keeps my soul alive.

Now at the wondrous hour, She leaves her star supreme, And comes in the night’s still power, To touch me with a dream.

Sibyl of mystery On roads beyond our ken, Softly she comes to me, And goes to God again.

The Valley

I know a valley in the summer hills, Haunted by little winds and daffodils; Faint footfalls and soft shadows pass at noon; Noiseless, at night, the clouds assemble there; And ghostly summits hang below the moon-- Dim visions lightly swung in silent air.

The Climb of Life

There’s a feel of all things flowing, And no power of Earth can bind them; There’s a sense of all things growing, And through all their forms a-glowing Of the shaping souls behind them.

And the break of beauty heightens With the swiftening of the motion, And the soul behind it lightens, As a gleam of splendor whitens From a running wave of ocean.

See the still hand of the Shaper, Moving in the dusk of being: Burns at first a misty taper, Like the moon in veil of vapor, When the rack of night is fleeing.

In the stone a dream is sleeping, Just a tinge of life, a tremor; In the tree a soul is creeping-- Last, a rush of angels sweeping With the skies beyond the dreamer.

So the Lord of Life is flinging Out a splendor that conceals Him: And the God is softly singing And on secret ways is winging, Till the rush of song reveals Him.

The Tragedy

Oh, the fret of the brain, And the wounds and the worry; Oh, the thought of love and the thought of death-- And the soul in its silent hurry.

But the stars break above, And the fields flower under; And the tragical life of man goes on, Surrounded by beauty and wonder.

Divine Vision

Can it be the Master knows How the Cosmic Blossom blows?

Yes, at times the Lord of Light Breaks forth wonderful and white, And He strikes a corded lyre In a rush of whirlwind fire; And He sees before Him pass Souls and planets in a glass; And within the music hears All the motions of all spheres, All the whispers of all feet, Cries of triumph and retreat, Songs of systems and of souls, Circling to their mighty goals.