The Mushrooms of the Mine.
Deep in the mines of the North, in the centre of desolate Sweden,
More than a mile underground, winter has never an end—
Lo, not a rift in the granite mass of the mountain where ever
Ray or dew of the morn, dream of the moon, may descend.
Up in the hills overhead the spring and the summer are mingled;
Lilacs heavy with blossom o’ershadow the ripening corn.
How should the hollow heart of the mountain thrill with the shiver
Rippling swift in the leaves when the first of the roses is born?
Six months long, overhead, the bright white sun of the Vikings
Glitters clear and immense, seven-rayed as a star.
Cold and clear as a star of steel—see, it pierces the midnight;
Crystal, undazzling, eterne.... Ay, but the mine is too far!
Yet in the depth of the mine where the day and the night never enter,
Lo! in the mine there is light, and lo! there are flowers in the mine!
Woven of dew and of moonlight, blooming in pale phosphorescence,
Moon-blue, rose as the levin, green as the marish-shine.
Hanging aloft from the roof of the wonderful flower-lighted caverns,
Shedding hither and thither their flakes of the milkiest flame.
Light that is not of the earth and not of the heavens exhaling:
These are the stars of the miners; out of the darkness they came.
Mushrooms of the mine—no more—that the sun never visits,
Born of the ooze and the damp, bred in the slime and the cold,
Scentless and petalless blossoms, made without pleasure and hidden:
See, how they shed in the darkness the light they shall never behold!
1890.
An Orchard at Avignon.
The hills are white, but not with snow:
They are as pale in summer time,
For herb or grass may never grow
Upon their slopes of lime.
Within the circle of the hills
A ring, all flowering in a round,
An orchard-ring of almond fills
The plot of stony ground.
More fair than happier trees, I think,
Grown in well-watered pasture land,
These parched and stunted branches, pink
Above the stones and sand.
O white, austere, ideal place,
Where very few will care to come,
Where spring hath lost the waving grace
She wears for us at home!
Fain would I sit and watch for hours
The holy whiteness of thy hills,
Their wreath of pale auroral flowers,
Their peace the silence fills.
A place of secret peace thou art,
Such peace as in an hour of pain
One moment fills the amazed heart,
And never comes again.
Twilight.
When I was young the twilight seemed too long.
How often on the western window seat
I leaned my book against the misty pane
And spelled the last enchanting lines again,
The while my mother hummed an ancient song,
Or sighed a little and said: “The hour is sweet!”
When I, rebellious, clamoured for the light.
But now I love the soft approach of night,
And now with folded hands I sit and dream
While all too fleet the hours of twilight seem;
And thus I know that I am growing old.
O granaries of Age! O manifold
And royal harvest of the common years!
There are in all thy treasure-house no ways
But lead by soft descent and gradual slope
To memories more exquisite than Hope.
Thine is the Iris born of olden tears,
And thrice more happy are the happy days
That live divinely in thy lingering rays.
So autumn roses bear a lovelier flower;
So in the emerald after-sunset hour
The orchard wall and trembling aspen trees
Appear an infinite Hesperides.
Ay, as at dusk we sit with folded hands,
Who knows, who cares in what enchanted lands
We wander while the undying memories throng?
When I was young the twilight seemed too long.
1889.
Darwinism.
When first the unflowering Fern forest
Shadowed the dim lagoons of old,
A vague, unconscious, long unrest
Swayed the great fronds of green and gold.
Until the flexible stem grew rude,
The fronds began to branch and bower,
And lo! upon the unblossoming wood
There breaks a dawn of apple-flower.
Then on the fruitful forest-boughs
For ages long the unquiet ape
Swung happy in his airy house
And plucked the apple, and sucked the grape.
Until at length in him there stirred
The old, unchanged, remote distress,
That pierced his world of wind and bird
With some divine unhappiness.
Not love, nor the wild fruits he sought,
Nor the fierce battles of his clan
Could still the unborn and aching thought
Until the brute became the man.
Long since.... And now the same unrest
Goads to the same invisible goal,
Till some new gift, undreamed, unguessed
End the new travail of the soul.
Antiphon to the Holy Spirit.
Men and Women sing.
Men.
O Thou that movest all, O Power
That bringest life where’er Thou art,
O Breath of God in star and flower,
Mysterious aim of soul and heart;
Within the thought that cannot grasp Thee
In its unfathomable hold,
We worship Thee who may not clasp Thee,
O God, unreckoned and untold!
%center%Women.
O Source and Sea of Love, O Spirit
That makest every soul akin,
O Comforter whom we inherit,
We turn and worship Thee within!
To give beyond all dreams of giving,
To lose ourselves as Thou in us,
We long; for Thou, O Fount of living,
Art lost in Thy creation thus!
%center%Men.
The mass of unborn matter knew Thee,
And lo! the splendid, silent sun
Sprang out to be a witness to Thee
Who art the All, who art the One;
The airy plants unseen that flourish
Their floating strands of filmy rose,
Too small for sight, are Thine to nourish;
For Thou art all that breathes and grows.
%center%Women.
Thou art the ripening of the fallows,
The swelling of the buds in rain;
Thou art the joy of birth that hallows
The rending of the flesh in twain;
O Life, O Love, how undivided
Thou broodest o’er this world of Thine,
Obscure and strange, yet surely guided
To reach a distant end divine!
%center%Men.
We know Thee in the doubt and terror
That reels before the world we see;
We knew Thee in the faiths of error;
We know Thee most who most are free.
This phantom of the world around Thee
Is vast, divine, but not the whole:
We worship Thee, and we have found Thee
In all that satisfies the soul!
%center%Men and Women.
How shall we serve, how shall we own Thee,
O breath of Love and Life and Thought?
How shall we praise, who are not shown Thee?
How shall we serve, who are as nought?
Ah, though Thy worlds maintain unbroken
The silence of their awful round,
A voice within our souls hath spoken,
And we who seek have more than found.
Epilogue.
In the cup of life, ’tis true,
Dwells a draught of bitter dew—
Disenchantment, sorrow, pain,
Hunger that no bread can still,
Dreary dawns that dawn in vain,
Hopes that torture, joys that kill.
Yet no other cup I know
Where such radiant waters glow:
It contains the song of birds,
And the shining of the sun;
And the sweet unspoken words
We have dreamed of, every one;
Love of women, minds of men.—
—Take the cup, nor break it, then.
The Gresham Press,
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHILWORTH AND LONDON.