Part 3

'Nay, I am bound. And your cry faints out in my mind. Peace not on earth have I found, Yet to earth am resigned. Cease thy shrill mockery, Voice, Nor answer again.' 'O Master, thick cloud shuts thee out And cold tempests of rain.'

MAERCHEN

SOUNDLESS the moth-flit, crisp the death-watch tick; Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did sing; Slow wreathed the grease adown from soot-clogged wick: The Cat looked long and softly at the King.

Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked; Small at the window looped cowled bat a-wing; The dim-lit rafters with the night-mist reeked: The Cat looked long and softly at the King.

O wondrous robe enstarred, in night dyed deep: O air scarce-stirred with the Court's far junketing: O stagnant Royalty—A-swoon? Asleep? The Cat looked long and softly at the King.

GOLD

SIGHED the wind to the wheat:— 'The Queen who is slumbering there, Once bewildered the rose; Scorned, "Thou un-fair!" Once, from that bird-whirring court, Ascended the ruinous stair. Aloft, on that weed-hung turret, suns Smote on her hair— Of a gold by Archiac sought, Of a gold sea-hid, Of a gold that from core of quartz No flame shall bid Pour into light of the air For God's Jews to see.'

Mocked the wheat to the wind— 'Kiss me! Kiss me!'

MIRAGE

... And burned the topless towers of Ilium

STRANGE fabled face! From sterile shore to shore O'er plunging seas, thick-sprent with glistening brine, The voyagers of the World with sail and heavy oar Have sought thy shrine. Beauty inexorable hath lured them on: Remote unnamèd stars enclustering gleam— Burn in thy flowered locks, though creeping daybreak wan Prove thee but dream.

Noonday to night the enigma of thine eyes Frets with desire their travel-wearied brain, Till in the vast of dark the ice-cold moon arise And pour them peace again; And with malign mirage uprears an isle Of fountain and palm, and courts of jasmine and rose, Whence far decoy of siren throats their souls beguile, And maddening fragrance flows.

Lo, in the milken light, in tissue of gold Thine apparition gathers in the air— Nay, but the seas are deep, and the round world old, And thou art named, Despair.

FLOTSAM

SCREAMED the far sea-mew. On the mirroring sands Bell-shrill the oyster-catchers. Burned the sky. Couching my cheeks upon my sun-scorched hands, Down from bare rock I gazed. The sea swung by.

Dazzling dark blue and verdurous, quiet with snow, Empty with loveliness, with music a-roar, Her billowing summits heaving noon-aglow— Crashed the Atlantic on the cliff-ringed shore,

Drowsed by the tumult of that moving deep, Sense into outer silence fainted, fled; And rising softly, from the fields of sleep, Stole to my eyes a lover from the dead;

Crying an incantation—learned, Where? When?... White swirled the foam, a fount, a blinding gleam Of ice-cold breast, cruel eyes, wild mouth—and then A still dirge echoing on from dream to dream.

MOURN'ST THOU NOW?

LONG ago from radiant palace, Dream-bemused, in flood of moon, Stole the princess Seraphita Into forest gloom.

Wail of hemlock; cold the dewdrops; Danced the Dryads in the chace; Heavy hung ambrosial fragrance; Moonbeams blanched her ravished face.

Frail and clear the notes delusive; Mocking phantoms in a rout Thridded the night-cloistered thickets, Wove their sorceries in and out....

Mourn'st thou now? Or do thine eyelids Frame a vision dark, divine, O'er this imp of star and wild-flower— Of a god once thine?

THE GALLIASS

'TELL me, tell me, Unknown stranger, When shall I sight me That tall ship On whose flower-wreathed counter is gilded, _Sleep_?'

'Landsman, landsman, Lynx nor kestrel Ne'er shall descry from Ocean steep That midnight-stealing, high-pooped galliass, _Sleep_.'

'Promise me, Stranger, Though I mark not When cold night-tide's Shadows creep, Thou wilt keep unwavering watch for _Sleep_.'

'Myriad the lights are, Wayworn landsman, Rocking the dark through On the deep: She alone burns none to prove her _Sleep_.'

THE DECOY

'TELL us, O pilgrim, what strange She Lures and decoys your wanderings on? Cheek, eye, brow, lip, you scan each face, Smile, ponder—and are gone.

'Are we not flesh and blood? Mark well, We touch you with our hands. We speak A tongue that may earth's secrets tell: Why further will you seek?'

'Far have I come, and far must fare. Noon and night and morning-prime, I search the long road, bleak and bare, That fades away in Time.

'On the world's brink its wild weeds shake, And there my own dust, dark with dew, Burns with a rose that, sleep or wake, Beacons me—"Follow true!"'

'Her name, crazed soul? And her degree? What peace, prize, profit in her breast?' 'A thousand cheating names hath she; And none fore-tokens rest.'

SUNK LYONESSE

IN sea-cold Lyonesse, When the Sabbath eve shafts down On the roofs, walls, belfries Of the foundered town, The Nereids pluck their lyres Where the green translucency beats, And with motionless eyes at gaze Make minstrelsy in the streets.

And the ocean water stirs In salt-worn casemate and porch. Plies the blunt-snouted fish With fire in his skull for torch. And the ringing wires resound; And the unearthly lovely weep, In lament of the music they make In the sullen courts of sleep:

Whose marble flowers bloom for aye: And—lapped by the moon-guiled tide— Mock their carver with heart of stone, Caged in his stone-ribbed side.

THE CATECHISM

'HAST thou then nought wiser to bring Than worn-out songs of moon and rose?' 'Cracked my voice and broken my wing, God knows.'

'Tell'st thou no truth of the life that _is_; Seek'st thou from heaven no pitying sign?' 'Ask thine own heart these mysteries, Not mine.'

'Where then the faith thou hast brought to seed? Where the sure hope thy soul would feign?' 'Never ebbed sweetness—even out of a weed— In vain.'

'Fool. The night comes.... 'Tis late. Arise: Cold lap the waters of Jordan stream.' 'Deep be their flood and tranquil thine eyes With a dream.'

FUTILITY

SINK, thou strange heart, unto thy rest. Pine now no more, to pine in vain. Doth not the moon on heaven's breast Call the floods home again?

Doth not the summer faint at last? Do not her restless rivers flow When that her transient day is past To hide them in ice and snow?

All this—thy world—an end shall make; Planet to sun return again; The universe, to sleep from wake, In a last peace remain.

Alas, the futility of care That, spinning thought to thought, doth weave An idle argument on the air We love not, nor believe.

BITTER WATERS

IN a dense wood, a drear wood, Dark water is flowing; Deep, deep, beyond sounding, A flood ever flowing.

There harbours no wild bird, No wanderer strays there; Wreathed in mist, sheds pale Ishtar Her sorrowful rays there.

Take thy net; cast thy line; Manna sweet be thy baiting; Time's desolate ages Shall still find thee waiting

For quick fish to rise there, Or butterfly wooing, Or flower's honeyed beauty, Or wood-pigeon cooing.

Inland wellsprings are sweet; But to lips, parched and dry, Salt, salt is the savour Of these; faint their sigh.

Bitter Babylon's waters. Zion, distant and fair. We hanged up our harps On the trees that are there.

WHO?

1ST STRANGER. WHO walks with us on the hills?

2ND STRANGER. I cannot see for the mist.

3RD STRANGER. Running water I hear, Keeping lugubrious tryst With its cresses and grasses and weeds, In the white obscure light from the sky.

2ND STRANGER. _Who walks with us on the hills?_

WILD BIRD. Ay!... Aye!... _Ay!..._

A RIDDLE

THE mild noon air of Spring again Lapped shimmering in that sea-lulled lane. Hazel was budding; wan as snow The leafless blackthorn was a-blow.

A chaffinch clankt, a robin woke An eerie stave in the leafless oak. Green mocked at green; lichen and moss The rain-worn slate did softly emboss.

From out her winter lair, at sigh Of the warm South wind, a butterfly Stepped, quaffed her honey; on painted fan Her labyrinthine flight began.

Wondrously solemn, golden and fair, The high sun's rays beat everywhere; Yea, touched my cheek and mouth, as if, Equal with stone, to me 'twould give Its light and life.

O restless thought Contented not. With 'Why' distraught. Whom asked you then your riddle small?— 'If hither came no man at all

'Through this grey-green, sea-haunted lane, Would it mere blackened nought remain? Strives it this beauty and life to express Only in human consciousness?'

Oh, rather, idly breaks he in To an Eden innocent of sin; And, prouder than to be afraid, Forgets his Maker in the made.

THE OWL

WHAT if to edge of dream, When the spirit is come, Shriek the hunting owl, And summon it home— To the fear-stirred heart And the ancient dread Of man, when cold root or stone Pillowed roofless head?

Clangs not at last the hour When roof shelters not; And the ears are deaf, And all fears forgot: Since the spirit too far has fared For summoning scream Of any strange fowl on earth To shatter its dream?

THE LAST COACHLOAD

(To Colin)

CRASHED through the woods that lumbering Coach. The dust Of flinted roads bepowdering felloe and hood. Its gay paint cracked, its axles red with rust, It lunged, lurched, toppled through a solitude

Of whispering boughs, and feathery, nid-nod grass. Plodded the fetlocked horses. Glum and mum, Its ancient Coachman recked not where he was, Nor into what strange haunt his wheels were come.

Crumbling the leather of his dangling reins; Worn to a cow's tuft his stumped, idle whip; Sharp eyes of beast and bird in the trees' green lanes Gleamed out like stars above a derelict ship.

'Old Father Time—Time—Time!' jeered twittering throat. A squirrel capered on the leader's rump, Slithered a weasel, peered a thieflike stoat, In sandy warren beat on the coney's thump.

Mute as a mammet in his saddle sate The hunched Postilion, clad in magpie trim; Buzzed the bright flies around his hairless pate; Yaffle and jay squawked mockery at him.

Yet marvellous peace and amity breathed there. Tranquil the labyrinths of this sundown wood. Musking its chaces, bloomed the brier-rose fair; Spellbound as if in trance the pine-trees stood.

Through moss, and pebbled rut, the wheels rasped on; That Ancient drowsing on his box. And still The bracken track with glazing sunbeams shone; Laboured the horses, straining at the hill....

But now—a verdurous height with eve-shade sweet; Far, far to West the Delectable Mountains glowed. Above, Night's canopy; at the horses' feet A sea-like honied waste of flowers flowed.

There fell a pause of utter quiet. And— Out from one murky window glanced an eye, Stole from the other a lean, groping hand, The padded door swung open with a sigh.

And—_Exeunt Omnes!_ None to ask the fare— A myriad human Odds in a last release Leap out incontinent, snuff the incensed air; A myriad parched-up voices whisper, 'Peace.'

On, on, and on—a stream, a flood, they flow. O wondrous vale of jocund buds and bells! Like vanishing smoke the rainbow legions glow, Yet still the enravished concourse sweeps and swells.

All journeying done. Rest now from lash and spur— Laughing and weeping, shoulder and elbow—'twould seem That Coach capacious all Infinity were, And these the fabulous figments of a dream.

Mad for escape; frenzied each breathless mote, Lest rouse the Old Enemy from his death-still swoon, Lest crack that whip again—they fly, they float, Scamper, breathe—'Paradise!' abscond, are gone....

AN EPITAPH

LAST, Stone, a little yet; And then this dust forget. But thou, fair Rose, bloom on. For she who is gone Was lovely too; nor would she grieve to be Sharing in solitude her dreams with thee.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.