Music.
Music.
Before the dawn is yet the day
I lie and dream so deep,
So drowsy-deep I cannot say
If yet I wake or sleep.
But in my dream a tune there is,
And rings so fresh and sweet
That I would rather die than miss
The utmost end of it.
And yet I know not an it be
Some music in the lane,
Or but a song that rose with me
From sleep, to sink again.
And so, alas, and even so
I waste my life away;
Nor if the tune be real I know,
Or but a dream astray.
A Pastoral of Parnassus.
“Ma io perchè venirvi? O chi’l concede?”
At morning dawn I left my sheep
And sought the mountains all aglow;
The shepherds said, “The way is steep:
Ah, do not go!”
I left my pastures fresh with rain,
My water-courses edged with bloom,
A larger breathing space to gain
And singing room.
Then of a reed I wrought a flute,
And as I went I sang and played.
But though I sang, my heart was mute
And sore afraid,
Because the great hill and the sky
Were full of glooms and glorious
Beyond all light or dark that I
Imagined thus.
My sense grew pure through love and fear;
I saw God burn in every briar.
Then sudden voices, strong and clear,
Flashed up like fire.
And turning where that music rang
I saw aloft, half out of sight,
The watching poets; and they sang
Through day and night.
And very sweet—ah, sweet indeed—
Their voices sounded high and deep.
I blew an echo on my reed
As one asleep.
I heard. My heart grew cold with dread,
For what would happen if they heard?
Would not these nightingales strike dead
Their mocking-bird?
Then from the mountain’s steepest crown,
Where white cliffs pierce the tender grass,
I saw an arm reach slowly down,
Heard some word pass.
“The end is come,” I thought, “and still
I am more happy, come what may,
To die upon Parnassus hill
Than live away.”
Then hands and faces luminous
And holy voices grew one flame—
“Come up, poor singer, and sing with us!”
They sang; I came.
So ended all my wandering;
This is the end and this is sweet,—
All night, all day, to listen and sing
Below their feet.
Going South.
A little grey swallow,
I fled to the vales
Of the nightingales
And the haunts of Apollo.
Behind me lie the sheer white cliffs, the hollow
Green waves that break at home, the northern gales,
The oaks above the homesteads in the vales,
For all my home is far, and cannot follow.
O nightingale voices!
O lemons in flower!
O branches of laurel!
You all are here, but ah not here my choice is:
Fain would I pluck one pink-vein’d bloom of sorrel,
Or watch the wrens build in our hazel bower.
Spring Under Cypresses.
Under the cypresses, here in the stony
Woods of the mountain, the Spring too is sunny:
Rare Spring and early,
Birds singing sparely,
Pale sea-green hellebore smelling of honey.
Desolate, bright, in the blue Lenten weather,
Cones of the cypresses sparkle together,
Shining brightly.
Loosely and lightly,
The winds lift the branches and stir them and feather.
Where the sun pierces, the sharp boulders glitter
Desolate, bright; and the white moths flitter
Pallidly over
The bells that cover
With faint-smelling green all the fragrant brown litter.
Down in the plain the sun ripens for hours—
Look! in the orchards a mist of pale flowers—
Past the rose-hedges
A-bloom to the edges,
A smoke of blue olives, a vision of towers!
Here only hellebore grows, only shade is;
Surely the very Spring here half afraid is:
Out of her bosom
Drops not a blossom,
Mutely she passes through—she and her ladies.
Mutely? Ah, no; for a pause, and thou hearest
One bird who sings alone—one bird, the dearest.
Nay, who shall name it,
Call it or claim it?
Such birds as sing at all sing here their clearest.
Ah, never dream that the brown meadow thrushes,
Finches, or happy larks sing in these hushes.
Only some poet
Of birds, flying to it,
Sings here alone, and is lost to the bushes.
La Belle au Bois Dormant.
Down the enchanted Forest grey,
Hark, a dreamy note is borne!
’Tis the winding of a horn
Far away!
Boughs of oak and boughs of thorn
Stir and sway.
Yet the wood is haunted,
Silent many a year;
Only long-enchanted
Dreamers linger here.
’Tis a Forest thick and dim,
Overgrown and hoar indeed,
Hung with lichen, choked with weed,
To the brim.
Sleeps the knight and sleeps the steed
Under him.
Here the pale princesses
Lying on the green,
Pillow with their tresses
Their enchanted Queen.
Where the barren branches meet
Still they sleep, and none behold
Robes of dim brocaded gold,
Sandalled feet,
Languid arms and lips a-cold
Pale and sweet.
Here the wind is noiseless,
Here the fountain stops,
Hanging blank and voiceless
Her enchanted drops.
Hark, along the unwonted gale
Rings the winding of a horn;
Rings thro’ all a world forlorn
Glad Reveil.
Till the blossom studs the thorn,
Thick as hail.
Hark the awaken’d thrushes!
Lo! the deer awake,
Leaping from the rushes,
Through the windy brake.
Till beneath the flowering tree,
Novel music in her ears,
Lo, asleep a thousand years,
It is She!
Blow thy clarion, Spring; she hears!
She is free!
Break, O bower above her,
Briar and thorn divide.
Hark, the Eternal Lover
Calls the Enchanted Bride!
Dawn-Angels.
All night I watched awake for morning,
At last the East grew all a-flame,
The birds for welcome sang, or warning,
And with their singing morning came.
Along the gold-green heavens drifted
Pale wandering souls that shun the light,
Whose cloudy pinions torn and rifted,
Had beat the bars of Heaven all night.
These clustered round the moon, but higher
A troop of shining spirits went,
Who were not made of wind or fire,
But some divine dream-element.
Some held the Light, while those remaining
Shook out their harvest-coloured wings
A faint unusual music raining
(Whose sound was Light) on earthly things.
They sang, and as a mighty river
Their voices washed the night away,
From East to West ran one white shiver,
And waxen strong their song was Day.
A Pastoral.
It was Whit Sunday yesterday,
The neighbours met at church to pray;
But I remembered it was May
And went a-wandering far away.
I rested on a shady lawn,
Behind I heard green branches torn,
And through the gap there looked a Faun,
Green ivy hung from either horn.
We built ourselves a flowery house
With roof and walls of tangled boughs,
But while we sat and made carouse
The church bells drowned our songs and vows.
The light died out and left the sky,
We sighed and rose and said good-bye.
We had forgotten—He and I,
That he was dead, that I must die.
Paradise Fancies.
I.
Through Paradise garden
A minstrel strays,
An old golden viol
For ever he plays.
Birds fly to his head,
Beasts lie at his feet,
For none of God’s angels
Make music so sweet.
And here, far from Zion
And lonely and mute,
I listen and long
For my heart is the lute.
%center%II.
On the topmost branch of the Tree of Life
There hung a ripe red apple,
The angels singing underneath
All praised its crimson dapple.
They plucked it once to play at ball,
But ’mid the shouts and laughter
The apple fell o’er Heaven’s edge,
Sad angels looking after.
E’en while at ease to see it rest
Beside a peaceful chapel,
An old priest flung it farther still,
“Bah, what a battered apple!”
To a Dragon Fly.
You hail from Dream-land, Dragon-fly?
A stranger hither? so am I,
And (sooth to say) I wonder why
We either of us came!
Are you (that shine so bright i’ the air)
King Oberon’s state-messenger?
Come tell me how my old friends fare,
Is Dream-land still the same?
Who won the latest tourney fight,
King Arthur, or the Red-Cross Knight,
Or he who bore away the bright
Renown’d Mambrino’s Casque?
Is Caliban King’s councillor yet?
Cross Mentor jester still and pet?
Is Suckling out of love and debt?
Has Spenser done his task?
Say, have they settled over there,
Which is the loveliest Guinevere,
Or Gloriana or the fair
Young Queen of Oberon’s Court?
And does Titania torment still
Mike Drayton and sweet-throated Will?
In sooth of her amours ’twas ill
To make such merry sport.
Ah, I have been too long away!
No doubt I shall return some day,
But now I’m lost in love and may
Not leave my Lady’s sight.
Mine is (of course) the happier lot,
Yet—tell them I forget them not,
My pretty gay compatriot,
When you go home to-night.
Celia’s Home-Coming.
Maidens, kilt your skirts and go
Down the stormy garden-ways,
Pluck the last sweet pinks that blow,
Gather roses, gather bays,
Since our Celia comes to-day
That has been too long away.
Crowd her chamber with your sweets—
Not a flower but grows for her!
Make her bed with linen sheets
That have lain in lavender;
Light a fire before she come
Lest she find us chill at home.
Ah, what joy when Celia stands
By the leaping blaze at last,
Stooping down to warm her hands
All benumbèd with the blast,
While we hide her cloak away
To assure us she shall stay.
Cyder bring and cowslip wine,
Fruits and flavours from the East,
Pears and pippins too, and fine
Saffron loaves to make a feast:
China dishes, silver cups,
For the board where Celia sups!
Then, when all the feasting’s done,
She shall draw us round the blaze,
Laugh, and tell us every one
Of her far triumphant days—
Celia, out of doors a star,
By the hearth a holier Lar!
Posies.
TO F. M. R.
I.
I made a posy for my Love
As fair as she is soft and fine:
The lilac thrift I made it of,
And lemon-yellow columbine.
But woe is me for my despair,
For my pale flowers, woe is me
A bolder man has given her
A branch of crimson peony!
%center%II.
Come let us a posy make
Sweet with lasting flowers to-day!
Gather roses, dear, and break
Pinks in bud and sprigs of bay,
Myrtle, violets, woodruff, rue,
Lavender and featherfew.
Trim it round with southern-wood,
Grey and sweet as honest age;
Ladies’ bedstraw fresh and good;
Lilac thyme and silvery sage.
Kiss it last, and let it lie
With my letters—till it die!
Thanksgiving for Flowers.
You bring me flowers—behold my shaded room
Is grown all glorious and alive with Light.
Moonshine of pallid primroses, and bright
Daffodil-suns that light the way o’ the tomb.
You bring me dreams—through sleep’s close-lidded gloom,
Sad violets mourn for Sappho all the night,
Where purple saffrons make antique delight
Mid crown’d memorials of Narcissus’ doom.
A scent of herbs now sets me musing on
Men dead i’ the fennel-beds on Marathon:
My flowers, my dreams and I shall lie as dead!
Flowers fade, dreams wake, men die; but never dies
The soul whereby these things were perfected,—
This leaves the world on flower with memories.
Poplar Leaves.
The wind blows down the dusty street;
And through my soul that grieves—
It brings a sudden odour sweet:
A smell of poplar leaves.
O leaves that herald in the spring,
O freshness young and pure,
Into my weary soul you bring
The vigour to endure.
The wood is near, but out of sight,
Where all the poplars grow;
Straight up and tall and silver white,
They quiver in a row.
My love is out of sight, but near;
And through my soul that grieves
A sudden memory wafts her here
As fresh as poplar leaves.
A Rifiorita.
Flowers in the wall!
How could he leave the house where he was born?
(We children played together
In warm or wintry weather)
How could he leave the house where he was born?
I count the stones for him and love them all.
(We children played together
In warm or wintry weather).
Flowers on the stone!
The Siren loves the sea, but I the Past!
(We children played together
In warm or wintry weather)
The Siren loves the sea, but I the Past!
Upon my rock I sing alone, alone,—
(We children played together
In warm or wintry weather).
Le Roi Est Mort.
And shall I weep that Love’s no more,
And magnify his reign?
Sure never mortal man before,
Would have his grief again.
Farewell the long-continued ache,
The days a-dream, the nights awake,
I will rejoice and merry make,
And never more complain.
King Love is dead and gone for aye,
Who ruled with might and main,
For with a bitter word one day,
I found my tyrant slain,
And he in Heathenesse was bred,
Nor ever was baptized, ’tis said,
Nor is of any creed, and dead
Can never rise again.
Lethe.
Come with me to Lethe-lake,
Come, since Love is o’er,
He whose thirst those waters slake,
Thirsteth nevermore.
There the sleepy hemlock grows
In the night-shade ranks,
Crimson poppies rows on rows
Flush its quiet banks.
Drink with me of Lethe-lake
Deep and deeper yet,
Drink with me for dead Love’s sake
Drink till we forget.
Since our roses are all dead,
Lost our laurel-boughs,
Let these poppies hang instead
Round our aching brows.
Sonnet.
God sent a poet to reform His earth.
But when he came and found it cold and poor,
Harsh and unlovely, where each prosperous boor
Held poets light for all their heavenly birth,
He thought—Myself can make one better worth
The living in than this—full of old lore,
Music and light and love, where Saints adore
And Angels, all within mine own soul’s girth.
But when at last he came to die, his soul
Saw earth (flying past to Heaven) with new love,
And all the unused passion in him cried:
O God, your Heaven I know and weary of.
Give me this world to work in and make whole,
God spoke: Therein, fool, thou hast lived and died!
Two Lovers.
I.
I love my lover; on the heights above me
He mocks my poor attainment with a frown.
I, looking up as he is looking down,
By his displeasure guess he still doth love me;
For his ambitious love would ever prove me
More excellent than I as yet am shown:
So, straining for some good ungrasped, unknown,
I vainly would become his image of me.
And, reaching through the dreadful gulfs that sever
Our souls, I strive with darkness nights and days,
Till my perfected work towards him I raise,
Who laughs thereat, and scorns me more than ever;
Yet his upbraiding is beyond all praise.
This lover that I love I call: Endeavour.
%center%II.
I have another lover loving me,
Himself beloved of all men, fair and true.
He would not have me change although I grew
Perfect as Light, because more tenderly
He loves myself than loves what I might be.
Low at my feet he sings the winter through,
And, never won, I love to hear him woo.
For in my heaven both sun and moon is he,
To my bare life a fruitful-flooding Nile,
His voice like April airs that in our isle
Wake sap in trees that slept since autumn went.
His words are all caresses, and his smile
The relic of some Eden ravishment;
And he that loves me so I call: Content.
Treasure Song.
The miser loves to count his store
Of barren ducats o’er and o’er:
Above all pomp or pleasure
He loves his golden treasure.
And I do love to count alone
A useless treasure of mine own
Heigho! Delights of dreaming,
So dear, and only seeming!
Love, Death, and Art.
Lord, give me Love! give me the silent bliss
Of meeting souls, of answering eyes and hands;
The comfort of one heart that understands;
The thrill and rapture of Love’s sealing kiss.
Or grant me—lest I weary of all this—
The quiet of Death’s unimagined lands,
Wherein the longed-for Tree of Knowledge stands,
Where Thou art, Lord—and the great mysteries.
Nay let me sing, my God, and I’ll forego,
Love’s smiling mouth, Death’s sweetlier smiling eyes.
Better my life long mourn in glorious woe,
Than love unheard in a mute Paradise—
For no grief, no despair, can quail me long,
While I can make these sweet to me in song.
Friendship.
For your sovereign sake, my friend,
All my lovers are estranged,
Shadow lovers without end;
But last night they were avenged.
On the middle of the night
One by one I saw them rise,
Passing in the ghostly light,
Silent, with averted eyes.
First, my master from the South
With the laurels round his brow,
And the bitter-smiling mouth,
Left me—without smiling now.
Then came one long used to rule
All I was, or did, or had—
Plato, that I read at school
Till my playmates called me mad.
Maiden saints as pure as pearls,
Beautiful, divine, austere;
Sweeter-voiced Æolian girls,
Left their friend of many a year.
But my earliest friend and best,
My Beethoven, this was hard,
You should leave me with the rest,
Pass without one last regard.
For all went and left me there,
Sighing as they passed me by;
Ah, how sad their voices were!
I shall hear them when I die.
“Fare thee well,” they said; “we go
Scorned as shades and dreams. Adieu!
Love thine earthly friend, but know
Shadows still thou dost pursue.”
Wild Cherry Branches.
I.
Lithe sprays of freshness and faint perfume,
You are strange in a London room;
Sweet foreigners come to the dull, close city,
Your flowers are memories, clear in the gloom,
That sigh with regret and are fragrant with pity.
%center%II.
Flowers, a week since your long, sweet branches
Swayed, hardly seen, in the dusk overhead;
(We live, but the bloom on our living is dead).
Ah! look, where the white moon launches
Her skiff in the skies where the roof-tops spread.
%center%III.
Like rocks on her course. But she rose not so
Through your wavering sprays when the April weather
Smelt only of flowers a week ago—
On your stems, in my heart, did such blossoms blow!
Let us sigh all together.
%center%IV.
Your sigh is, perchance, for the neighbouring bushes,
With soft, yellow palms, or the song of the thrushes;
But mine for none of the birds that sing,
No flower of the spring,
But for two distant eyes and a voice that hushes.
%center%V.
Such light and music, O blossom,
Was ours when I plucked you one moonrise, and you
Remember in fragrance her smile that you knew,
As you lived in her hand, as you lay on her bosom
Once, for a moment, and blossomed anew.
%center%VI.
As I took you I looked, half in awe, where my friend
Crowned with completeness
All heaven’s peace and the whole earth’s sweetness;
So does her soul all souls transcend,
So, in my love for her, all loves blend.
%center%VII.
For more than the vast everlasting heaven
Declares in its infinite mute appeal
To hearts that feel,
More than the secret and peace of dim even
Knows of God, may a love reveal.
%center%VIII.
For then indeed it was clear to my soul
That in loving the one I loved the whole,
Fulfilled all aims, attained every goal,
And God was with me, eternity round me,
Though Life still bound me.
%center%IX.
Past is that hour, but the heart’s trouble lessens
Because it has been.
When I die, when free of its selfish screen
The god in me soars to the Godhead, the Presence
May seem to it first as the love once seen.
%center%X.
We, flowers, have lived to our blossoming hour,
And not in vain did we rise from the root,
Whether we perish or ripen to power;
We know what sweetness it is to flower,
Let life or death be the fruit.
The Springs of Fontana.
The springs of Fontana well high on the mountain,
Out of the rock of the granite they pour
Twenty or more;
Ripple and runnel and freshet and fountain
Well, happy tears, from the heart of the mountain
Up at Fontana.
See, not a step can we take but a spring
Breaks from the roots of the blond-flower’d chestnuts—
(Look, in the water their long golden breast-knots
Flung in caress!)—from a tuft of the ling,
From a stone, anything,
Up at Fontana.
Twenty or more, and no one of the twenty
Gushes the same; here the waters abundant
Babble redundant,
Filling the vale with the bruit of their plenty;
Here a mere ripple, a trickle, a scanty
Dew on Fontana.
Surely one noonday the Prophet in heaven
Slept, and the wand of the desert fell—
Fell to the rock, and the rock was riven.
Lo, all around it eternally well
(A miracle!)
The springs of Fontana.
Waters of boon!
Deluge or drought cannot alter your current,
Swift in December and icy in June,
Full when the icicle hangs on the torrent,
Full when the river is dry and the noon
Parches Fontana.
Over the rocks!
Over the tree-root that tangles and blocks—
Robbing from all that resists you a sunny
Scent of the cistus and rock-hidden honey,
Yarrow, campanula, thyme, agrimony—
Flow from Fontana!
Flow, happy waters, and gather and rally,
Rush to the plain.
Flow to the heavenly fields of Limain,
Blue as a dream in the folds of the valley;
Feed them and fatten with blossom and grain,
Springs of Fontana!
River of springs,
Born many times in renewal unending,
Bright, irresistible, purest of things,
Blessing the rocks that oppose you, befriending
Pastures and cattle and men in your wending
Forth from Fontana.
Born (who knows how?) a mysterious fountain
Out of the stone and the dust of the mountain,
Bound to a country we know little of,
How shall I bless ye and praise ye enough,
Image of Love,
Springs of Fontana!
July, 1889.