Collected Poems: Volume One

Queen of queens, oh lady mine,
You who say you love me,
Here's a cup of crimson wine
To the stars above me;
Here's a cup of blood and gall
For a soldier's quaffing!
What's the prize to crown it all?
Death? I'll take it laughing!
I ride for the Queen to-night!

Though I find no knightly fee
Waiting on my lealty,
High upon the gallows-tree
Faithful to my fealty,
What had I but love and youth,
Hope and fame in season?
She has proved that more than truth
Glorifies her treason!

Would that other do as much?
Ah, but if in sorrow
Some forgotten look or touch
Pierce her heart to-morrow
She might love me yet, I think;
So her lie befriends me,
Though I know there's darker drink
Down the road she sends me.

Ay, one more great chance is mine
(Can I faint or falter?)
She shall pour my blood like wine,
Make my heart her altar,
Burn it to the dust! For, there,
What if o'er the embers
She should stoop and—I should hear—
"Hush! Thy love remembers!"

One more chance for every word
Whispered to betray me,
While she buckled on my sword
Smiling to allay me;
One more chance; ah, let me not
Mar her perfect pleasure;
Love shall pay me, jot by jot,
Measure for her measure.

Faith shall think I never knew,
I will be so fervent!
Doubt shall dream I dreamed her true
As her war-worn servant!
Whoso flouts her spotless name
(Love, I wear thy token!)
He shall face one sword of flame
Ere the lie be spoken!

All the world's a-foam with may,
(Fragrant as her bosom!)
Could I find a sweeter way
Through the year's young blossom,
Where her warm red mouth on mine
Woke my soul's desire?...
Hey! The cup of crimson wine,
Blood and gall and fire!

Castle Doom or Gates of Death?
(Smile again for pity!)
"Boot and horse," my lady saith,
"Spur against the City,
Bear this message!" God and she
Still forget the guerdon;
Nay, the rope is on the tree!
That shall bear the burden!
I ride for the Queen to-night!

SONG

When that I loved a maiden
My heaven was in her eyes,
And when they bent above me
I knew no deeper skies;
But when her heart forsook me
My spirit broke its bars,
For grief beyond the sunset
And love beyond the stars.

When that I loved a maiden
She seemed the world to me:
Now is my soul the universe,
My dreams the sky and sea:
There is no heaven above me,
No glory binds or bars
My grief beyond the sunset,
My love beyond the stars.

III

When that I loved a maiden
I worshipped where she trod;
But, when she clove my heart, the cleft
Set free the imprisoned god:
Then was I king of all the world,
My soul had burst its bars,
For grief beyond the sunset
And love beyond the stars.

THE HIGHWAYMAN

PART ONE

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gipsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed; Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

III

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

VII

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

VIII

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * *

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

THE HAUNTED PALACE

Come to the haunted palace of my dreams,
My crumbling palace by the eternal sea,
Which, like a childless mother, still must croon
Her ancient sorrows to the cold white moon,
Or, ebbing tremulously,
With one pale arm, where the long foam-fringe gleams,
Will gather her rustling garments, for a space
Of muffled weeping, round her dim white face.

A princess dwelt here once: long, long ago
This tower rose in the sunset like a prayer;
And, through the witchery of that casement, rolled
In one soft cataract of faëry gold
Her wonder-woven hair;
Her face leaned out and took the sacred glow
Of evening, like the star that listened, high
Above the gold clouds of the western sky.

Was there no prince behind her in the gloom,
No crimson shadow of his rich array?
Her face leaned down to me: I saw the tears
Bleed through her eyes with the slow pain of years,
And her mouth yearned to say—
"Friend, is there any message, from the tomb
Where love lies buried?" But she only said—
"Oh, friend, canst thou not save me from my dead?

"Canst thou not minister to a soul in pain?
Or hast thou then no comfortable word?
Is there no faith in thee wherewith to atone
For his unfaith who left me here alone,
Heart-sick with hope deferred;
Oh, since my love will never come again,
Bring'st thou no respite through the desolate years,
Respite from these most unavailing tears?"

Then saw I, and mine own tears made response,
Her woman's heart come breaking through her eyes;
And, as I stood beneath the tower's grey wall,
She let the soft waves of her deep hair fall
Like flowers from Paradise
Over my fevered face: then all at once
Pity was passion; and like a sea of bliss
Those waves rolled o'er me drowning for her kiss.

* * * *

Seven years we dwelt together in that tower,
Seven years in that old palace by the sea,
And sitting at that casement, side by side,
She told me all her pain: how love had died
Now for all else but me;
Yet how she had loved that other: like a flower
Her red lips parted and with low sweet moan
She pressed their tender suffering on mine own.

And always with vague eyes she gazed afar,
Out through the casement o'er the changing tide;
And slowly was my heart's hope brought to nought
That some day I should win each wandering thought
And make her my soul's bride:
Still, still she gazed across the cold sea-bar;
Ay; with her hand in mine, still, still and pale,
Waited and watched for the unreturning sail.

And I, too, watched and waited as the years
Rolled on; and slowly was I brought to feel
How on my lips she met her lover's kiss,
How my heart's pulse begat an alien bliss;
And cold and hard as steel
For me those eyes were, though their tender tears
Were salt upon my cheek; and then one night
I saw a sail come through the pale moonlight.

And like an alien ghost I stole away,
And like a breathing lover he returned;
And in the woods I dwelt, or sometimes crept
Out in the grey dawn while the lovers slept
And the great sea-tides yearned
Against the iron shores; and faint and grey
The tower and the shut casement rose above:
And on the earth I sobbed out all my love.

At last, one royal rose-hung night in June,
When the warm air like purple Hippocrene
Brimmed the dim valley and sparkled into stars,
I saw them cross the foam-lit sandy bars
And dark pools, glimmering green,
To bathe beneath the honey-coloured moon:
I saw them swim out from that summer shore,
Kissed by the sea, but they returned no more.

* * * *

And into the dark palace, like a dream
Remembered after long oblivious years,
Through the strange open doors I crept and saw
As some poor pagan might, with reverent awe,
And deep adoring tears,
The moonlight through that painted window stream
Over the soft wave of their vacant bed;
There sank I on my knees and bowed my head,

For as a father by a cradle bows,
Remembering two dead children of his own,
I knelt; and by the cry of the great deep
Their love seemed like a murmuring in their sleep,
A little fevered moan,
A little tossing of childish arms that shows
How dreams go by! "If I were God," I wept,
"I would have pity on children while they slept."

* * * *

The days, the months, the years drift over me;
This is my habitation till I die:
Nothing is changed; they left that open book
Beside the window. Did he sit and look
Up at her face as I
Looked while she read it, and the enchanted sea
With rich eternities of love unknown
Fulfilled the low sweet music of her tone?

So did he listen, looking in her face?
And did she ever pause, remembering so
The heart that bore the whole weight of her pain
Until her own heart's love returned again?
In the still evening glow
I sit and listen in this quiet place,
And only hear—like notes of phantom birds—
Their perished kisses and little broken words.

Come to the haunted palace of my dreams,
My crumbling palace by the eternal sea,
Which, like a childless mother, still must croon
Her ancient sorrows to the cold white moon,
Or, ebbing tremulously,
With one pale arm, where the long foam-fringe gleams,
Will gather her rustling garments, for a space
Of muffled weeping, round her dim white face.

THE SCULPTOR

This is my statue: cold and white
It stands and takes the morning light!
The world may flout my hopes and fears,
Yet was my life's work washed with tears
Of blood when this poor hand last night
Finished the pain of years.

Speak for me, patient lips of stone,
Blind eyes my lips have rested on
So often when the o'er-weary brain
Would grope to human love again,
And found this grave cold mask alone
And the tears fell like rain.

Ay; is this all? Is this the brow
I fondled, never wondering how
It lived—the face of pain and bliss
That through the marble met my kiss?
Oh, though the whole world praise it now,
Let no man dream it is!

They blame; they cannot blame aright
Who never knew what infinite
Deep loss must shame me most of all!
They praise; like earth their praises fall
Into a tomb. The hour of light
Is flown beyond recall.

Yet have I seen, yet have I known,
And oh, not tombed in cold white stone
The dream I lose on earth below;
And I shall come with face aglow
And find and claim it for my own
Before God's throne, I know.

SUMMER

(AN ODE)

Now like a pageant of the Golden Year
In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,
With rose-embroidered flags unfurled
And tasselled bugles calling through the world
Wake, for your hope draws near!
Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,
Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate
Of Eden swings apart for Summer's royal state.

Ah, when the Spirit of the moving scene
Has entered in, the splendour will be spent!
The flutes will cease, the gates will close;
Only the scattered crimson of the rose,
The wild wood's hapless queen,
Dis-kingdomed, will declare the way he went;
And, in a little while, her court will go,
Pass like a cloud and leave no trace on earth below.

Tell us no more of Autumn, the slow gold
Of fruitage ripening in a world's decay,
The falling leaves, the moist rich breath
Of woods that swoon and crumble into death
Over the gorgeous mould:
Give us the flash and scent of keen-edged May
Where wastes that bear no harvest yield their bloom,
Rude crofts of flowering nettle, bents of yellow broom.

The very reeds and sedges of the fen
Open their hearts and blossom to the sky;
The wild thyme on the mountain's knees
Unrolls its purple market to the bees;
Unharvested of men
The Traveller's Joy can only smile and die.
Joy, joy alone the throbbing whitethroats bring,
Joy to themselves and heaven! They were but born to sing!

And see, between the northern-scented pines,
The whole sweet summer sharpens to a glow!
See, as the well-spring plashes cool
Over a shadowy green fern-fretted pool
The mystic sunbeam shines
For one mad moment on a breast of snow
A warm white shoulder and a glowing arm
Up-flung, where some swift Undine sinks in shy alarm.

And if she were not all a dream, and lent
Life for a little to your own desire,
Oh, lover in the hawthorn lane,
Dream not you hold her, or you dream in vain!
The violet, spray-besprent
When from that plunge the rainbows flashed like fire,
Will scarce more swiftly lose its happy dew
Than eyes which Undine haunts will cease to shine on you.

What though the throstle pour his heart away,
A happy spendthrift of uncounted gold,
Swinging upon a blossomed briar
With soft throat lifted in a wild desire
To make the world his may.
Ever the pageant through the gates is rolled
Further away; in vain the rich notes throng
Flooding the mellow noon with wave on wave of song.

The feathery meadows like a lilac sea,
Knee-deep, with honeyed clover, red and white,
Roll billowing: the crisp clouds pass
Trailing their soft blue shadows o'er the grass;
The skylark, mad with glee, Quivers, up, up, to lose himself in light;
And, through the forest, like a fairy dream
Through some dark mind, the ferns in branching beauty stream.

Enough of joy! A little respite lend,
Summer, fair god that hast so little heed
Of these that serve thee but to die,
Mere trappings of thy tragic pageantry!
Show us the end, the end!
We too, with human hearts that break and bleed,
March to the night that rounds their fleeting hour,
And feel we, too, perchance but serve some loftier Power.

O that our hearts might pass away with thee,
Burning and pierced and full of thy sweet pain,
Burst through the gates with thy swift soul,
Hunt thy most white perfection to the goal,
Nor wait, once more to see
Thy chaliced lilies rotting in the rain,
Thy ragged yellowing banners idly hung
In woods that have forgotten all the songs we sung!

Peace! Like a pageant of the Golden Year
In rich memorial pomp the hours go by,
With rose-embroidered flags unfurled
And tasselled bugles calling through the world
Wake, for your hope draws near!
Wake, for in each soft porch of azure sky,
Seen through each arch of pale green leaves, the Gate
Of Eden swings apart for Summer's royal state.

Not wait! Forgive, forgive that feeble cry
Of blinded passion all unworthy thee!
For here the spirit of man may claim
A loftier vision and a nobler aim
Than e'er was born to die:
Man only, of earth, throned on Eternity,
From his own sure abiding-place can mark
How earth's great golden dreams go past into the dark.

AT DAWN

O Hesper-Phosphor, far away
Shining, the first, the last white star,
Hear'st thou the strange, the ghostly cry,
That moan of an ancient agony
From purple forest to golden sky
Shivering over the breathless bay?
It is not the wind that wakes with the day;
For see, the gulls that wheel and call,
Beyond the tumbling white-topped bar,
Catching the sun-dawn on their wings,
Like snow-flakes or like rose-leaves fall,
Flutter and fall in airy rings;
And drift, like lilies ruffling into blossom
Upon some golden lake's unwrinkled bosom.

Are not the forest's deep-lashed fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth's heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and we—
We that remember our lost Aready,
Have we not known, we too,
The primal greenwood's arch of blue,
The radiant clouds at sun-rise curled
Around the brows of the golden world;
The marble temples, washed with dew,
To which with rosy limbs aflame
The violet-eyed Thalassian came,
Came, pitiless, only to display
How soon the youthful splendour dies away;
Came, only to depart
Laughing across the grey-grown bitter sea;
For each man's life is earth's epitome,
And though the years bring more than aught they take,
Yet might his heart and hers well break
Remembering how one prayer must still be vain.
How one fair hope is dead,
One passion quenched, one glory fled
With those first loves that never come again.

How many years, how many generations,
Have heard that sigh in the dawn,
When the dark earth yearns to the unforgotten nations
And the old loves withdrawn,
Old loves, old lovers, wonderful and unnumbered
As waves on the wine-dark sea,
'Neath the tall white towers of Troy and the temples that slumbered
In Thessaly?

From the beautiful palaces, from the miraculous portals,
The swift white feet are flown!
They were taintless of dust, the proud, the peerless Immortals
As they sped to their loftier throne!
Perchance they are there, earth dreams, on the shores of Hesper,
Her rosy-bosomed Hours,
Listening the wild fresh forest's enchanted whisper,
Crowned with its new strange flowers;
Listening the great new ocean's triumphant thunder
On the stainless unknown shore,
While that perilous queen of the world's delight and wonder
Comes white from the foam once more.

When the mists divide with the dawn o'er those glittering waters,
Do they gaze over unoared seas—
Naiad and nymph and the woodland's rose-crowned daughters
And the Oceanides?
Do they sing together, perchance, in that diamond splendour,
That world of dawn and dew,
With eyelids twitching to tears and with eyes grown tender
The sweet old songs they knew,
The songs of Greece? Ah, with harp-strings mute do they falter
As the earth like a small star pales?
When the heroes launch their ship by the smoking altar
Does a memory lure their sails? Far, far away, do their hearts resume the story
That never on earth was told,
When all those urgent oars on the waste of glory
Cast up its gold?

Are not the forest fringes wet
With tears? Is not the voice of all regret
Breaking out of the dark earth's heart?
She too, she too, has loved and lost; and though
She turned last night in disdain
Away from the sunset-embers,
From her soul she can never depart;
She can never depart from her pain.
Vainly she strives to forget;
Beautiful in her woe,
She awakes in the dawn and remembers.

THE SWIMMER'S RACE

Between the clover and the trembling sea
They stand upon the golden-shadowed shore
In naked boyish beauty, a strenuous three,
Hearing the breakers' deep Olympic roar;
Three young athletes poised on a forward limb,
Mirrored like marble in the smooth wet sand,
Three statues moulded by Praxiteles:
The blue horizon rim
Recedes, recedes upon a lovelier land,
And England melts into the skies of Greece.

The dome of heaven is like one drop of dew,
Quivering and clear and cloudless but for one
Crisp bouldered Alpine range that blinds the blue
With snowy gorges glittering to the sun:
Forward the runners lean, with outstretched hand
Waiting the word—ah, how the light relieves
The silken rippling muscles as they start
Spurning the yellow sand,
Then skimming lightlier till the goal receives
The winner, head thrown back and lips apart.

III

Now at the sea-marge on the sand they lie
At rest for a moment, panting as they breathe,
And gazing upward at the unbounded sky
While the sand nestles round them from beneath;
And in their hands they gather up the gold
And through their fingers let it lazily stream
Over them, dusking all their limbs' fair white,
Blotting their shape and mould,
Till, mixed into the distant gazer's dream
Of earth and heaven, they seem to sink from sight.

But one, in seeming petulance, oppressed
With heat has cast his brown young body free:
With arms behind his head and heaving breast
He lies and gazes at the cool bright sea;
So young Leander might when in the noon
He panted for the starry eyes of eve
And whispered o'er the waste of wandering waves,
"Hero, bid night come soon!"
Nor knew the nymphs were waiting to receive
And kiss his pale limbs in their cold sea-caves.

Now to their feet they leap and, with a shout,
Plunge through the glittering breakers without fear,
Breast the green-arching billows, and still out,
As if each dreamed the arms of Hero near;
Now like three sunbeams on an emerald crest,
Now like three foam-flakes melting out of sight,
They are blent with all the glory of all the sea;
One with the golden West;
Merged in a myriad waves of mystic light
As life is lost in immortality.

THE VENUS OF MILO

Backward she leans, as when the rose unblown
Slides white from its warm sheath some morn in May!
Under the sloping waist, aslant, her zone
Clings as it slips in tender disarray;
One knee, out-thrust a little, keeps it so
Lingering ere it fall; her lovely face
Gazes as o'er her own Eternity!
Those armless radiant shoulders, long ago
Perchance held arms out wide with yearning grace
For Adon by the blue Sicilian sea.

No; thou eternal fount of these poor gleams,
Bright axle-star of the wheeling temporal skies,
Daughter of blood and foam and deathless dreams,
Mother of flying Love that never dies,
To thee, the topmost and consummate flower,
The last harmonic height, our dull desires
And our tired souls in dreary discord climb;
The flesh forgets its pale and wandering fires;
We gaze through heaven as from an ivory tower
Shining upon the last dark shores of Time.

III

White culmination of the dreams of earth,
Thy splendour beacons to a loftier goal,
Where, slipping earthward from the great new birth,
The shadowy senses leave the essential soul!
Oh, naked loveliness, not yet revealed,
A moment hence that falling robe will show
No prophecy like this, this great new dawn,
The bare bright breasts, each like a soft white shield,
And the firm body like a slope of snow
Out of the slipping dream-stuff half withdrawn.

Collected Poems: Volume One

About This Book

SONG

THE HIGHWAYMAN

PART ONE

PART TWO

THE HAUNTED PALACE

THE SCULPTOR

SUMMER

(AN ODE)

AT DAWN

THE SWIMMER'S RACE

THE VENUS OF MILO

THE NET OF VULCAN