Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney

Cobwebs

Who would not praise thee, miracle of Frost?
Some gesture overnight, some breath benign,
And lo! the tree's a fountain all a-shine,
The hedge a throne of unimagined cost;
In wheel and fan along a wall embossed,
The spider's humble handiwork shows fine
With jewels girdling every airy line:
Though the small mason in the cold be lost.

Web after web, a morning snare of bliss
Starring with beauty the whole neighbourhood,
May well beget an envy clean and good.
When man goes too into the earth-abyss,
And God in His altered garden walks, I would
My secret woof might gleam so fair as this.

Astræa

Since I avail no more, O men! with you,
I will go back unto the gods content;
For they recall me, long with earth inblent,
Lest lack of faith divinity undo.
I served you truly while I dreamed you true,
And golden pains with sovereign pleasure spent:
But now, farewell! I take my sad ascent,
With failure over all I nursed and knew.

Are ye unwise, who would not let me love you?
Or must too bold desires be quieted?
Only to ease you, never to reprove you,
I will go back to heaven with heart unfed:
Yet sisterly I turn, I bend above you,
To kiss (ah, with what sorrow!) all my dead.

The Yew-Tree

As I came homeward
At merry Christmas,
By the old Church tower
Through the Churchyard grass,

And saw there circled
With graves all about,
The Yew-tree paternal,
The Yew-tree devout,

Then this hot life-blood
Was hard to endure,
O Death! so I loved thee,
The sole love sure.

For stars slip in heaven,
They wander, they break;
But under the Yew-tree
Not one heartache.

And ours, what failure
Renewed and avowed!
But ah, the long-buried
Is leal, and is proud.

* * * * * *

At eve, o'erlooking
The smooth chilly tide,
With age-hidden meaning
The Yew-tree sighed,

By the square grey tower,
In the short grey grass,
As I came homeward
At merry Christmas.

Ten Colloquies

V. ON TIME’S THRESHOLD

"See: brood: remember: this thy function only;
Neither to have nor do is meet for thee."
"Ah, earth's a palace where I must go lonely!"
"Nay: earth's a dungeon which thou passest, free."

VI. WOOD-PIGEONS

"I cannot soar beside, but must for ever suffer
Blue air athrill with thee to lap against my breast,
And dream it is thy wing."
—"Dear, sighs about thee hover:
Among the dewy leaves my longing is thy guest.
Yet, lone and far apart, shall we no joy discover
To travel the same sky, and by one sea to rest?
Say, mate in all this world?"
—"Ah, mute forbidden lover,
Ah, song I shall not hear!"
—"Ah, sweet unbuilded nest!"

VII. PREDICAMENTS

"If the gods ruin send?"—
"Make that thy bride and friend."

"If the gods cheat?"—"They say
The one true word alway."

"If for some loss I pine?"
"—The past is theirs, yet thine."

"If I sue not?"—"Vain cares!
The morrow's thine, not theirs."

VIII. THE CO-ETERNAL

"Is it thou, silly heart,
Not prone on thy pallet, but grieving apart?"
—"Natal Star, even so."
"I miss thee to-night, while thou smoulderest low."
—"Live in beauty! but I
For bloodshed of spirit, here dwindle and die."

"Are we two not the same,
By law everlasting one mystical flame?
Aloft if I burn,
Every ray of my light be thy stair of return:
Up, up! to our lot
Where warfare and time and the body are not."

IX. STERN APHRODITE

"Iole is coy with me,
Goddess! for a month I suffer
Knowing not how far I be:
Teach me softer arts, or rougher,
Well to sail that sea."

"Fie: how long could Love divine
Venturing, abstain from answer,
Nor look landward for a sign!
Niggard, take of thine entrancer
Shipwreck in the brine."

X. THE JUBILEE

"Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure!
We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure,
All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure."

"Welcome, equal powers benign, quit of ancient madness!
Dance with me beneath the vine, not ungentle Sadness;
Link your little hand in mine soberly, my Gladness."

Winter Boughs

How tender and how slow, in sunset cheer,
Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade!
A broidery of ebon seaweed, laid
Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear.
Frost and sad light and windless atmosphere
Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made
Beauty more sweet than summer's builded shade,
Whose green domes fallen, leave this wonder here.

O ye forgetting and outliving boughs,
With not a plume, gay in the joust before,
Left for the Archer! so, in evening's eye,
So stilled, so lifted, let your lover die,
Set in the upper calm no voices rouse,
Stript, meek, withdrawn, against the heavenly door.

W.H.

A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX

Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;

Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful;
But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer,
Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.

Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit,
Safe also on our earth, begetting ever
Some one love worth the ages and the nations!

Falleth no thing that was to thee eternal.
Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining,
Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches.

The Vigil-at-Arms

Keep holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting
Till morning break, and every bugle play;
Unto the One aware from everlasting
Dear are the winners: thou art more than they.

Forth from this peace on manhood's way thou goest,
Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail;
Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest,
O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail!

A Friend’s Song for Simoisius

The breath of dew and twilight's grace
Be on the lonely battle-place,
And to so young, so kind a face,
The long protecting grasses cling!
(Alas, alas,
That one inexorable thing!)

In rocky hollows cool and deep,
The honey-bees unrifled sleep;
The early moon from Ida steep
Comes to the empty wrestling-ring;

Upon the widowed wind recede
No echoes of the shepherd's reed;
And children without laughter lead
The war-horse to the watering;

With footstep separate and slow
The father and the mother go,
Not now upon an urn they know
To mingle tears for comforting.

Thou stranger Ajax Telamon!
What to the lovely hast thou done,
That nevermore a maid may run
With him across the flowery Spring?

The world to me has nothing dear
Beyond the namesake river here:
Oh, Simois is wild and clear!
And to his brink my heart I bring;

My heart, if only this might be,
Would stay his waters from the sea,
To cover Troy, to cover me,
To haste the hour of perishing.
(Alas, alas,
That one inexorable thing!)

To an Ideal

That I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height:
All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light!
No pleasure born of time for me,
Who in you touch eternity.
If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight.

You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine,
The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine.
More lovely here, to wakened blood,
Sparse leaf and hesitating bud,
Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine.

Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too,
Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue.
Because man's cry, by night and day,
Cried not for God, I broke away.
On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you.

In a Ruin, after a Thunder Storm

Keep of the Norman, old to flood and cloud!
Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look,
That in our common menace I forsook
Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud:
Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud,
Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook
Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook,
No more than they by heaven's assassins cowed.

But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked
With the calm kisses of the light delayed,
Breathe on me better valour: to subject
My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid
Lest ere her fight's full term, the Architect
See downfall of the stronghold that He made.

Beati Mortui

Blessed the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead
Not passed, but perfected:
Who tower up to mystical full bloom
From self, as from a known alchemic tomb;
Who out of wrong
Run forth with laughter and a broken thong;
Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant
Of peace anticipant;
Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now,
Unbound from foot to brow,
Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful
As sun-born colours of a forest pool
Where Autumn sees
The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees.

Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost
As any chantry ghost,
How sight of these, in hermitage or mart,
Makes glad a wistful heart!
For life's apologetics read most true
In spirits risen anew,
Like larks in air
To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair,
And who from yonder parapet
Scorn every mortal fret,
And rain their sweet bewildering staves
Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves.

If thus to have trod and left the wormy way
Makes men so wondrous gay,
So stripped and free and potently alive,
Who would not his infirmity survive,
And bathe in victory, and come to be
As blithe as ye,
Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give;
Turn not away, too fugitive:
But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street,
And sit with us at meat,
And of your courtesy, on us unwise
Fix oft those purer eyes,
Till in ourselves who love them dwell
The same sure light ineffable:
Till they who walk with us in after years
Forgetting time and tears
(As we with you), shall sing all day instead:
"How blessed are the Dead!"

Two Irish Peasant Songs

I. IN LEINSTER

I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while.
Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile;
Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all,
Why from me that's young should the wild tears fall?

The shower-sodden earth, the earth-coloured streams,
They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams,
And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall,
It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall.

The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill,
And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still;
But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call,
The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!

II. IN ULSTER

'Tis the time o' the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch,
The green like a breaker rolls steady up the branch,
And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves
In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves;
And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall,
And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall.

'Tis the time o' the year the marsh is full of sound,
And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground.
The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars,
The daisy takes the middle field and spangles it with stars,
And down the hedgerow to the lane the primroses do crowd,
All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud!

'Tis the time o' the year, in early light and glad,
The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;
The rocks are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise,
Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling's golden eyes,
And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep
Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep.

'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height
To watch from my harrow the dance of going light;
And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale
Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail,
Hey, but there's many a March for me, and many and many a lass!—
I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass.

The Japanese Anemone

All summer the breath of the roses around
Exhales with a delicate passionate sound;
And when from a trellis, in holiday places,
They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces,
A lad in the lane must slacken his paces.

Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower:
But low by the wall is my odourless flower,
So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her,
That poet or bee should delay there and hover;
For she is a silence, and therefore I love her.

And never a mortal by morn or midnight
Is called to her hid little house of delight;
And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden,
Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden,
Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden.

While ardours of roses contend and increase,
Methinks she has found how noble is peace,
Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever,
Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver,
And dead long ago, being lovely for ever.

Orisons

Orange and olive and glossed bay-tree,
And air of the evening out at sea,
And out at sea on the steep warm stone,
A little bare diver poising alone.

Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves,
Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves,
"I am!" he cries to his glorying heart,
And unto he knows not what: "Thou art!"

He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone:
He will climb to the golden ledge anon.
Perfecter rite can none employ,
When the god of the isle is good to a boy.

The Inner Fate: a Chorus

Not weak with eld
The stars beheld
Proud Persia coming to her doom;
Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed,
The long luxurious galleys lost
Their souls at Actium.

Not outer arts
Of hostile hearts
Seduced the arm of France to be
The wreckage of his wars at last,
The orphan of the kingdoms, cast
Upon the mothering sea.

Man evermore doth work his will,
And evermore the gods are still,
Applauding him alone who stands
Too just for Heaven-accusing groans,
But in his house of havoc owns
The doing of his hands:
Transgressor, yet divinely taught
To suffer all, blaspheming naught,
When fair-begun must foul conclude:
Himself progenitor of death
Who breeds, within, the only breath
Can kill beatitude.

The Acknowledgment

Since first I knew it our divine employ
To beat beyond the reach of soiling care,
As at Philippi, well of doom aware,
The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy;
Since first my soul so jealous was of joy,
That any facile linden-bloom in air,
Or fall of water on a wildwood stair,
Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy;
Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled
Long, long, at such august amends up-piled,
Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop
Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup,
On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child,
Immortals! unto You will drink it up.

By the Trundle-bed

Lost love, be never beyond Love's calling!
For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet
As fontal water in Arden falling,
As first-mown hay in the April heat:

To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden,
And bring to bloom in the outer cold,
Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden,
Our son that is like you, and six years old;

And lest his worth be the worth unreal,
To ward him not from the mortal blast,
But suffer your own, through a long ordeal,
Verily like you to be at the last,

And hear men murmur, if so he merit
In your old place with your look to arise:
"The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?—
You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes."

Arboricide

A word of grief to me erewhile:
We have cut the oak down, in our isle.

And I said: "Ye have bereaven
The song-thrush and the bee,
And the fisher-boy at sea
Of his sea-mark in the even;
And gourds of cooling shade, to lie
Within the sickle's sound;
And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye
Of sleep on duty's ground;
And poets of their tent
And quiet tenement.
Ah, impious! who so paid
Such fatherhood, and made
Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade."

For the hewn oak a century fair,
A wound in earth, an ache in air.

And I said: "No pillared height
With a summer daïs over,
Where a dryad fled her lover
Through the long arcade of light;
Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more,
Since the loud leaves are gone,
Between the shorn cliff and the shore,
Pan's organ antiphon.
Some nameless envy fed
This blow at grandeur's head:
Some breathed reproach, o'erdue,
Degenerate men, ye drew!
Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew."

The Cherry Bough

In a new poet's and a new friend's honour,
Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting,
Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome
Here in my garden,

Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses,
And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting,
One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries.
Oh, naught is absent,

Oh, naught but you, kind head that far in prison
Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god's pity
Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels
Were once so plenty;

Nor dreams, from revel and strange faces turning,
How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you
I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden
With your rich verses!

Since, long ago, in other gentler weather,
Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it
(Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother
Glad with your gladness),

What has befallen in the world of wonder,
That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour,
And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty,
Are sapped and rotten?

Alas! When my young guests have done with singing,
I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory,
And hold it high among them, and say after:
"O my poor Ovid,

"Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember
For the clear time when we were boys together,
These tears at home are shed; and with you also
Your bough is dying."

The Wild Ride

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle
Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:
What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam:
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty:
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

(I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.)

We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind;
We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.

Bedesfolk

Who is good enough to be
Near the never-stainèd sea?
Ah, not I,
Who thereby
Only sigh:
Pray for me.

Standing underneath some free
Innocent magnanimous tree,
To be true,
There anew
Must I sue:
Pray for me.

Ere I pass on hilly lea
Fellow-lives of glad degree,
Without shame,
Name by name
These I claim:
Pray for me.

Fail not, then, thou kingly sea!
Aid the needy, sister tree!
March herds,
Ye have words!
April birds,
Pray for me!

In a City Street

Though sea and mount have beauty and this but what it can,
Thrice fairer than their life the life here battling in the van,
The tragic gleam, the mist and grime,
The dread endearing stain of time,
The sullied heart of man.

Mine is the clotted sunshine, a bubble in the sky,
That where it dare not enter steals in shrouded passion by;
And mine the saffron river-sails,
And every plane-tree that avails
To rest an urban eye;

The bells, the dripping gable, the tavern's corner glare;
The cab in firefly darting; the barrel-organ air,
While one by one, or two by two
The hatless babes are waltzing through
The gutters of the Square.

Not on Thessalian headlands of song and old desire
My spirit chose her pleasure-house, but in the London mire:
Long, long alone she loves to pace,
And find a music in this place
As in a minster choir.

O names of awe and rapture! O deeds of legendry!
Still is it most of joy within your altered pale to be,
Whose very ills I fain would slake
Mine angels are, and help to make
In Hell a Heaven for me.

Florentin

A.D. MDCCCXC

Heart all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright
On wild little waters floating half of an April night,
Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light,

Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be
Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea:
Whither, through troubled valleys, we also follow thee.

A Song of the Lilac

Above the wall that's broken,
And from the coppice thinned,
So sacred and so sweet
The lilac in the wind!
For when by night the May wind blows
The lilac-blooms apart,
The memory of his first love
Is shaken on his heart.

In tears it long was buried,
And trances wrapt it round;
Oh, how they wake it now,
The fragrance and the sound!
For when by night the May wind blows
The lilac-blooms apart,
The memory of his first love
Is shaken on his heart.

Monochrome

Shut fast again in Beauty's sheath
Where ancient forms renew,
The round world seems above, beneath,
One wash of faintest blue,

And air and tide so stilly sweet
In nameless union lie,
The little far-off fishing fleet
Goes drifting up the sky.

Secure of neither misted coast
Nor ocean undefined,
Our flagging sail is like the ghost
Of one that served mankind,

Who in the void, as we upon
This melancholy sea,
Finds labour and allegiance done,
And Self begin to be.

Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon

"And now, my clerks who go in fur or feather
Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true
To your true Lover and Avenger, whether
By land or sea ye die the death undue.
Then proffer man your pardon; and together
Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new.

"From long ago one hope hath in me thriven,
Your hope, mysterious as the scented May:
Not to Himself your titles God hath given
In vain, nor only for our mortal day.
O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven?
O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play."

An Estray

Well we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream:
Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream,

For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave,
For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave.

While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering,
And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing,

Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast
Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest,

As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay,
Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day?

Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain
Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again,

As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light,
How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight!

Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so
From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago.

Friendship Broken

I

We chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend,
Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak,
Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke
Strange things and deep as any poet penned,
Such truth as never truth again can mend,
Whatever art we use, what gods invoke;
It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke:
Be what it may, it had a solemn end.

Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne
Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers,
Each a wise skeptic of the other's star.
Silently, as we went our ways alone,
The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters,
Drew high between us his majestic bar.

II

Mine was the mood that shows the dearest face
Through a long avenue, and voices kind
Idle, and indeterminate, and blind
As rumours from a very distant place;
Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase
Of the first swallows where the lane's inclined,
An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind
For round Spring's vision. Ah, some equal grace
(The calm sense of seen beauty without sight)
Befell thee, honourable heart! no less
In patient stupor walking from the dawn;
Albeit thou too wert loser of life's light,
Like fallen Adam in the wilderness,
Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn.

A Talisman

Take Temperance to thy breast,
While yet is the hour of choosing,
As arbitress exquisite
Of all that shall thee betide;
For better than fortune's best
Is mastery in the using,
And sweeter than any thing sweet
The art to lay it aside!

Heathenesse

No round boy-satyr, racing from the mere,
Shakes on the mountain lawn his dripping head
This many a May, your sister being dead,
Ye Christian folk! your sister great and dear.
To breathe her name, to think how sad-sincere
Was all her searching, straying, dreaming, dread,
How of her natural night was Plato bred
(A star to keep the ways of honour clear),

Who will not sigh for her? who can forget
Not only unto campèd Israel,
Nor martyr-maids that as a bridegroom met
The Roman lion's roar, salvation fell?
To Him be most of praise that He is yet
Your God through gods not inaccessible.

For Izaak Walton

Can trout allure the rod of yore
In Itchen stream to dip?
Or lover of her banks restore
That sweet Socratic lip?
Old fishing and wishing
Are over many a year.
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

Again the foamy shallows fill,
The quiet clouds amass,
And soft as bees by Catherine Hill
At dawn the anglers pass,
And follow the hollow,
In boughs to disappear.
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

Nay, rise not now, nor with them take
One amber-freckled fool!
Thy sons to-day bring each an ache
For ancient arts to cool.
But, father, lie rather
Unhurt and idle near;
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

While thought of thee to men is yet
A sylvan playfellow,
Ne'er by thy marble they forget
In pious cheer to go.
As air falls, the prayer falls
O'er kingly Winchester:
Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear.

Fifteen Epitaphs

I

I laid the strewings, darling, on thine urn;
I lowered the torch, I poured the cup to Dis.
Now hushaby, my little child, and learn
Long sleep how good it is.

In vain thy mother prays, wayfaring hence,
Peace to her heart, where only heartaches dwell;
But thou more blest, O mild intelligence!
Forget her, and Farewell.

II

Gentle Grecian passing by,
Father of thy peace am I:
Wouldst thou now, in memory,
Give a soldier's flower to me,
Choose the standard named of yore
Beautiful Worth-dying-for,
That shall wither not, but wave
All the year above my grave.

III

Light thou hast of the moon,
Shade of the dammar-pine,
Here on thy hillside bed;
Fair befall thee, O fair
Lily of womanhood,
Patient long, and at last
Here on thy hillside bed,
Happier: ah, Blæsilla!

IV

Me, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping,
Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping,
Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping!

V

Upon thy level tomb, till windy winter morn,
The fallen leaves delay;
But plain and pure their trace is, when themselves are torn
From delicate frost away.

As here to transient frost the absent leaf is, such
Thou wert and art to me:
So on my passing life is thy long-passèd touch,
O dear Alcithoë!

VI

Hail, and be of comfort, thou pious Xeno,
Late the urn of many a kinsman wreathing;
On thine own shall even the stranger offer
Plentiful myrtle.

VII

Here lies one in the earth who scarce of the earth was moulded,
Wise Æthalides' son, himself no lover of study,
Cnopus, asleep, indoors: the young invincible runner.
They from the cliff footpath that see on the grave we made him,
Tameless, slant in the wind, the bare and beautiful iris,
Stop short, full of delight, and cry out: "See, it is Cnopus
Runs, with white throat forward, over the sands to Chalcis!"

VIII

Ere the Ferryman from the coast of spirits
Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither,
Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it
For thy desolate father, for thy sister,
Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter.

IX

Jaffa ended, Cos begun
Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one
Fit to trample out the sun:
Who shall think thine ardours are
But a cinder in a jar?

X

Two white heads the grasses cover:
Dorcas, and her lifelong lover.
While they graced their country closes
Simply as the brooks and roses,
Where was lot so poor, so trodden,
But they cheered it of a sudden?
Fifty years at home together,
Hand in hand, they went elsewhither,
Then first leaving hearts behind
Comfortless. Be thou as kind.

XI

As wind that wasteth the unmarried rose,
And mars the golden breakers in the bay,
Hurtful and sweet from heaven for ever blows
Sad thought that roughens all our quiet day;

And elder poets envy, while they weep,
Ion, whom first the gods to covert brought,
Here under inland olives laid asleep,
Most wise, most happy, having done with thought.

XII

Cows in the narrowing August marshes,
Cows in a stretch of water
Motionless,
Neck on neck overlapped and drooping;

These in their troubled and dumb communion,
Thou on the steep bank yonder,
Pastora!
No more ever to lead and love them,

No more ever. Thine innocent mourners
Pass thy tree in the evening
Heavily,
Hearing another herd-girl calling.

XIII

Go you by with gentle tread.
This was Paula, who is dead:
Dear grey eyes that had a look
Like some rock-o'ershadowed brook,
Voice upon the ear to cling
Sweeter than the cithern string.
With that spirit shy and fair
Quietly and unaware
Climbing past the starry van
Went, for triple talisman,
They to whom the heavens must ope:
Candour, Chastity, and Hope.

XIV

Take from an urn my vow and salutation
Unto the land I never now shall see:
Laid here exiled, my heart in desolation
Frets like a child against her breast to be.

Far from the sky, a rose that opes at even
(One liquid star for dewdrop on the rose),
Far from the shower that nesting low in heaven
Thrice in an hour light-wingèd comes and goes,

Far from my lost and blessèd and belovèd
Nightfall of June beside the Rhodian wave,
Mine is the pain another isle to covet,
Though all in vain, for gardener of my grave.

XV

Praise thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me,
A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee.

Deo Optimo Maximo

All else for use, One only for desire;
Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee:
Up from the best, whereof no man need tire,
Impel Thou me.

Delight is menace if Thou brood not by,
Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer.
Oft as the morn (though none of earth deny
These three are dear),

Wash me of them, that I may be renewed,
And wander free amid my freeborn joys:
Oh, close my hand upon Beatitude!
Not on her toys.

Charista Musing

Moveless, on the marge of a sunny cornfield,
Rapt in sudden revery while thou standest,
Like the sheaves, in beautiful Doric yellow
Clad to the ankle,

Oft to thee with delicate hasty footstep
So I steal, and suffer because I find thee
Inly flown, and only a fallen feather
Left of my darling.

Give me back thy wakening breath, thy ringlets
Fragrant as the vine of the bean in blossom,
And those eyes of violet dusk and daylight
Under sea-water,

Eyes too far away, and too full of longing!
Yes: and go not heavenward where I lose thee,
Go not, go not whither I cannot follow,
Being but earthly.

Willing swallow poisèd upon my finger,
Little wild-wing ever from me escaping,
For the care thou art to me, I thy lover
Love thee, and fear thee.

The Still of the Year

Up from the willow-root
Subduing agonies leap;
The field-mouse and the purple moth
Turn over amid their sleep;
The icicled rocks aloft
Burn amber and blue alway,
And trickling and tinkling
The snows of the drift decay.
Oh, mine is the head must hang
And share the immortal pang!
Winter or spring is fair;
Thaw's hard to bear.
Heigho! my heart's sick.

Sweet is cherry-time, sweet
A shower, a bobolink,
And trillium, fain far under
Her cloistering leaf to shrink;
But here in the vast, unborn,
Is the bitterest place to be,
Till striving and longing
Shall quicken the earth and me.
What change inscrutable
Is nigh us, we know not well;
Gone is the strength to sigh
Either to live or die.
Heigho! my heart's sick.

A Footnote to a Famous Lyric

True love's own talisman, which here
Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach,
A steel-and-velvet Cavalier
Gave to our Saxon speech:

Chief miracle of theme and touch
That all must envy and adore:
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

No critic born since Charles was King
But sighed in smiling, as he read:
"Here's theft supreme of everything
A poet might have said!"

Young knight and wit and beau, who won
Mid war's upheaval, ladies' praise,
Was't well of you, ere you had done,
To blight our modern bays?

Oh, yet to you, whose random hand
Struck from the dark whole gems like these
(Archaic beauty, never planned
Nor reared by wan degrees,

Which leaves an artist poor, and Art
An earldom richer all her years);
To you, dead on your shield apart,
Be "Ave!" passed in tears.

'Twas virtue's breath inflamed your lyre:
Heroic from the heart it ran;
Nor for the shedding of such fire
Lived, since, a manlier man.

And till your strophe sweet and bold
So lovely aye, so lonely long,
Love's self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold
The parapets of Song.

T.W.P.

A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII

Friend who hast gone, and dost enrich to-day
New England brightly building far away,
And crown her liberal walk
With company more choice, and sweeter talk,

Look not on Fame, but Peace; and in a bower
Receive at last her fulness and her power:
Nor wholly, pure of heart!
Forget thy few, who would be where thou art.

Summum Bonum

Waiting on Him who knows us and our need,
Most need have we to dare not, nor desire,
But as He giveth, softly to suspire
Against His gift with no inglorious greed,
For this is joy, though still our joys recede;
And, as in octaves of a noble lyre,
To move our minds with His, and clearer, higher,
Sound forth our fate: for this is strength indeed.

Thanks to His love let earth and man dispense
In smoke of worship when the heart is stillest,
A praying more than prayer: "Great good have I,
Till it be greater good to lay it by;
Nor can I lose peace, power, permanence,
For these smile on me from the thing Thou willest!"

When on the Marge of Evening

When on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken,
And winds of dreamy odour are loosened from afar,
Or when my lattice opens, before the lark hath spoken,
On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning's dying star,

I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!),
Whose greater noonday splendours the many share and see,
While sacred and for ever, some perfect law is keeping
The late, the early twilight, alone and sweet for me.

Hylas

(There's a thrush on the under bough
Fluting evermore and now:
"Keep—young!" but who knows how?)

Jar in arm, they bade him rove
Through the alder's long alcove,
Where the hid spring musically
Gushes to the ample valley.

Down the woodland corridor,
Odours deepened more and more;
Blossomed dogwood in the briars
Struck her faint delicious fires;
Miles of April passed between
Crevices of closing green,
And the moth, the violet-lover,
By the wellside saw him hover.

Ah, the slippery sylvan dark!
Never after shall he mark
(On his drownèd cheek down-sinking),
Noisy ploughman drinking, drinking.

Quit of serving is that wild
Absent and bewitchèd child,
Unto action, age, and danger
Thrice a thousand years a stranger.

Fathoms low, the naiads sing,
In a birthday welcoming;
Water-white their breasts, and o'er him,
Water-grey, their eyes adore him.

(There's a thrush on the under bough
Fluting evermore and now:
"Keep—young!" but who knows how?)

Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney

About This Book

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