Path Flower, and Other Verses

There's one comes often as the sun
And fills my room with morning; comes with step
Light as a youth's that joy has hurried home.
If he should greet my cheek, so might a wind
Blow roses till they touch, silk leaf to leaf,
And on their beauty leave no deeper dye;
But with that touch an old world is untombed,
Gay, festal-gowned; and two with nuptial eyes
Walk arm-locked there, flinging the curls of Greece
From proud, smooth brows. As trapped between two throbs,
Their laughter dies in silent passion's kiss;
And I from glow of ancient dust look up
To meet the untroubled eyes of my friend's bride,
Her pretty, depthless eyes that smile and smile
Possessingly, not grudging alien me
A footstool place about her sceptred love.
And I, too, from imperial largess, smile.

Another comes more rarely than new moon,
And always with a flower,—one; pours tea
Like an old picture softly made alive,
Sings me a ballad that once teased the ears
Of golden Bess, and reads the book I love.
If he must journey, first he comes to lay
Knight-service on my hand; no passion then
More swift than when a last cool petal falls
To faded summer grass; but as he goes
I see a girl deep in a forest lane,
A narrow lane dark-roofed with locking firs;
And there are purple foxgloves shoulder high,
And round the girl's knees Canterbury bells.
Upon the air is scent of wounded trees,
As though a storm had passed there, and great owls
Ruffle a shade unloved of birds that sing.
But at the green lane's end, far down
A bit of heart-shaped sun tells where the road
Lies wide and open; on the sun the still
Dark shadow of a steed: and by the girl
One who shall ride,—unvisored now, and pale.
"And when I come," he says, to me who know
He'll come that way no more; then hear my door
Closed softly on a sob ten centuries old.

And there is one whom never sun or moon
Brings to my gate; but when amid a throng
That fills some worldly room I see him pass.
The light about me is of regions where
Cold peaks are blue against a colder sky,
And in the dusk-line where begins the Doubt
Men call the Known, we stand in wingless pause,
Unheavened weariness in untaught feet,
And in our hearts sad longing for the fire
Of stars from whence we came. "The earth," he says,
And warms in his my hand amazed to lie
In strange, near comfort,—blossom of first pain.
Then low we dip into the clinging night
That is the Lethe of God-memories;
Stumble and sink in chains of time and sense
Tangle in treacheries of a weed-hung globe,
And tread the dun, dim verges of defeat
Till spirit chafes to vision, and we learn
What morning is, and where the way of love.
In that gold dawn we part, knowing at last
That earth can not divide us. With a smile
He goes, and Fate leads not but runs before
Like an indulgèd child. That smile again
I sometimes see across the world—a room.

TRYST
(AFTER READING FROM SHAKESPEARE)

Night, thou art heavy, with no stars to chain
Thy darkness unto heaven, that thy feet
May dance along these cliffs in gay retreat
Of the pursuing sea; heavy as pain
Where eyes see not the end, or tears that stain
The joy of him who conquers by defeat;
Or this dark sea whose heart doth climb and beat
The stones that make no sign, then falls again.

Cry with the night and wrestle with the wave,
Ye two-edged winds that cut this shore and me;
I warm me still with thinking of a grave
That can not hold the dust's eternal part;
For here across the centuries and the sea,
A dead hand lies like flame upon my heart.

IN THE STUDIO

Bowed in the firelight's softly climbing gleam,
I sit a shadow, in a shadow's place;
While through the great, grey window vaguely stream
Twilight caresses on each pictured face
That one hour gone was cold in art's repose;
Now each still canvas answers tremblingly,
Till eyes unveil and living spirit glows
Where no light was while the rude Day went by.
And rudest Day, that passed so sternly bare,
Cold as the life that walks without desire,
Unbeauteous as duty or despair,
Plucked by a hope that will not set her free,
Turns back, while memory's soft, informing fire
Falls on her face, and Beauty looks at me.

LOVERS' LEAP

In Greece I found the place, though earth
Has many such; and wandering there alone,
One Autumn evening when the moon rose late,
I heard this song, though none was there to sing.
A ghostly rune, yet left the alarmèd dark
Quivering with life, tear-warm and murmuring:

No morrow is if hearts say no;
Life is gone when love doth go.
No tear to weep, no prayer to pray;
Endeth time with lovers' day.

This trailing night will pale and flee,
And dawn again creep o'er the sea;
Light's tender hands will earth attire,
Aloft will swim the golden fire,
And every bird begin his lay,
But I shall know there is no day.

And Spring shall come. With teary cheek,
But heart of Bacchus, she will seek
With healing eyes each winter wound,
Till little minstrels of the ground,
The choral buds, in wonder wake
To croon the dewy songs they take
From brooks that haunt the woodman's glade
And lose a dream in every shade.
And ere the Spring has vanished,
Summer will make her rosy bed
And new loves take with every wind
Till earth be laden with her kind
And foster-bosomed Autumn come
To nurse the darlings of her womb.

But naught of season, change, or sun,
Recks the heart whose love is done.
Oh, ne'er again will beauty wear
For my sad eyes a robe more fair,
And ne'er again will music make
A sweeter song for my poor sake.
No tear to weep, no prayer to pray!
Endeth time with lover's day.

No morrow is if hearts say no;
Life is gone when love doth go.
Death, O Death, why dost thou flee
From one whose wish is but for thee?
Here is thy pillow, on my breast.
No dove but would its spicèd nest
Forego to couch in this sweet bed
That here I open for thy head.
Thou wilt not hear? Thou wilt not come?
Then must I seek thee in thy home.
Once more lift up this stone-dead heart,
And leap to find thee where thou art!

HAVENED

Come, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose
Upon the breast that storm and thee divide;
And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows,
Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride
To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in;
And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then
Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide.

Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes
That showed me in a gracious court of trees
Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise,
And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze
That traced the ground and to a river grew,
Casting its tender spray in tinted dew
As curved its silver way with laughing ease.

I followed, forest deep, this wooing guide
Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'ergrown,
Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside,
Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown,—
High murmurings among the cloudy leaves,
As when some dull and dreamy throng receives
Strange lyric stir from power not its own.

And more and more the murmurs grew like song,
Save that no song could drop such honey-rain;
The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong,
Were he that golden sound to breathe again;
And as my guide into a cave did pass,
That closèd seemed, and yet unclosèd was,
That airy cadence stooped and bore me in.

Then wandered life from out my memory,
Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go;
Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be,
From those dark lures that make our worldly woe.
O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue
Should dim the glories that I moved among
With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know.

The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth,
It might have been, but that there shone,
The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth
That might no rival of its radiance own.
Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be,
And the bright dome but its gold boundary;
Yet gleamèd here no crown or mounted throne.

The music budded till it dropped soft showers;
All things to other changed, though here no mage;
Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers,
And chance and change to all was privilege;
The air was full of phantom-stirring things,
And I not breathed but that I touched new wings,
And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage.

Ere my delight had held me pausing long
Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool,
A stir awoke amid a ferny throng
That leaned their trembling grace above a pool,
And following the flutter of a song
To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young
Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule,

Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount,
That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay;
A sighing mist that partly filled the fount,
And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray,
For her fair body pillowed soft the ground,
Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round
And of each grace take new and sweet account.

In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran,
Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell;
Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can
Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell;
Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please
They might have hermits made forget their knees
And kings find out they had them, such their spell.

Above her forehead hovered close a star,
Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray
Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are
Love's life,—the offerings earth lovers lay
Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow
She smiles or droops as this true star doth show,—
Or dim or bright as serve we or betray.

Beside her was an instrument of tune,
Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud,
And as I looked she woke it to strange rune,
As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud,—
For all Love's thoughts are music,—but to make
That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake,
And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud?

Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise
Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame;
He bore the ages in his listening eyes,
And prophecy there waited for a name;
Joy loved him best, and gave eternity,
And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say
"I am the aspiration of all dream."

Upward he gazed as though he would read o'er
The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns,
And lists—ah, might it be earth's shore
Freed of her epic hates and tunèd groans!
War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past,
And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last,
Pouring the music of her happy moons!

Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he
Who may with their resound make sweet his own;
He who shall come as morning walks the sea,
Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one;
So much we know by frail yet quenchless light
That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night,—
The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn.

Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways
On silent wing or spirit wave of air,
Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze,
Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there;
But as each passed before his lifted face,
They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace
My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar.

Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart
And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise
Took all my being with such tremorous start
I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes.
I could not tell what the bright wonder was
Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause
Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies.

There shone the star that lit man's first desire,
And there his hope that latest fluttered bare;
One look translating made me as a lyre
Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share,—
Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing,—
But ere I breathèd had for wondering,
A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair.

Youth was the angel of that countenance,
Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng;
Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance,
If word of earthly time, or old or young,
Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept
The silences when Uncreation slept
And gave the dream that woke the suns in song.

Each age that left a glory left it writ
Upon her brow, as with a pen of light
Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit
The story there, the court grew softlier bright;
Each dullsome thing—Oh, no thing there was dull!
Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful,
As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight.

Then all the wonder that made vague her form,
Oped on a figure splendent so to view;
Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm
Of warring rainbows it endearèd grew
To shape of her who 'gan descending slow,
Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low:
'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two.

Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three;
And as a sighing shore no more may hold
The mermaid wave that would go out to sea,
So slipped the vision from my fancy bold.
O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this,
To dream awhile, and then awake to press
Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold!

MID-MAY

Hand clamped to desk,
And eyes on task undone,
I see a meadow pool,
With shaken willows silvering.
O, gods that trouble me,
Wherefore, wherefore?—
Pan is at the door.

An arabesque
Of sifted sun
And forest star-grass, cool
With shadows tunnelling:
Witch-work that tauntingly
Webs my bare floor:
Ah, Pan is at the door.

I'm civilized,
And in my veins
The mountain brook is still
As water in a jar;
But oh, the heart hill-born,
It paineth sore,
For Pan is at the door.

Ye sacrificed
Of earth, what rains
Have wept their will
And drowned your rebel star,
That ye should sit forlorn,
Telling Greed's score,
When Pan is at the door?

THE LOSS

When thou shalt search thy glass nor find the flower
That there so long smiled gay, unwithering,
And from sad vantage of a forlorn hour
That fore nor aft unmasks one hint of Spring,
Thou mourn'st the barrenness of beauty spent
With no reservèd treasure for the day
When all that youth and sunny fortune lent
No more should light adoring eyes to thee,
And fear'st thyself a-cold, by the last storm
Beat to thine inn, a still, uncarping guest,
Thy once bright eye a pilot to the worm
Making his dungeon way to his new feast,
Drop not a tear then for thy beauty fled,
But for the wounds it healed not bow thy head.

CALLED

I rise, I pass;
The feast is on, bright is the board,
Undrained the comrade glass;
Love's sheltering eyes are deep and nigh;
Fame waits with shining word;
But sweeter, goldening the sphere,
A voice falls from another sky;
The wasting world I do not hear,
And no god laughs as I pass by,
A wanderer.

Unpausing lowers
The gleam of her from other airs,
And Being's guarded doors
Are open wide for journey free
Where wait my chosen stars;
And o'er me, O what lustres break
Of that desire, Reality,
That burns a thousand suns to make
One nightingale to sing for me,
A soul awake!

Far, far I sped
Down moonless lanes from doubt to doubt;
With hasting, hungry tread
Up slopes of frost unpitying
Where the last star went out;
There fell I in unlifting dark,
And lying while an æon's wing
Dragged o'er me bare, wind-stript and stark,
As leafless planets dream of Spring,
Dreamed she would hark.

Then by me bound,
Came one who wore my lost career
With star on star pinned round,
And stood him by my bones to stare.
With pity's ancient sneer
He mocked my bleachen nudity;
Then did she turn, then did she care,
And pausing where I might not see
She let the winds blow back her hair
And cover me.

SONG OF TO-MORROW

Sound, O Harp of Being, set
Deathless in the winds of time!
All thine ancient part forget,
Wailing lust, and strife, and crime!
Clouds of hate are now sweet rain:
Thou shall never moan again.

Harp of Being, O forget
Hesper dead that played on thee,
All her golden fingers wet
With the blood of misery!
Morning sweeps along thy strings;
Thou art done with yester things.

Bright thou art with drops that fell
Watering earth's long-buried Spring;
Thou hast quivered safe through Hell
Where Love found immortal wing;
Sound, while Life unfrenzied calls
Joy to hallowed Bacchanals!

Harp of Dawn, forget, forget!
Sound thee of the hours now come
When the vine and violet
Bind to earth the fallen drum.
Palsied as a dying star
Fails the shaken torch of war!

From each pennoned pinnacle
Of the cities of the free,
Clasped in time invisible,
Flows the wonder flown to thee;
Thou so swift to throb and start
With the singing earth's new heart!

By the light that sets mind free,
By the night that once it wore,
By the soul man is to be,
By the beast he is no more;
By thy past, unmeasured pain,
Thou shalt never moan again.

LITTLE DAUGHTERS

I

What is sweeter, sweet, than you?
Not the fairy dew
Of these bee-sipped pastures where
Time, unsandalled, unaware,
Rests him ere he tire.

Shall I his forgotten hour
Strike for thee?
Fatefully,
Lift the wand that wakes
Woman in the flower?
Then o'er dream's horizon breaks
Rose of other fire;
From a world more sweet
Rival rise the fragrant floods;
Breath that makes
Thy morning meadows dun,
Mutes their dew-bells, misty hoods
Every leaf that shone;
Sets thy daisy-fondled feet
Twinkling to be gone;
Down the ways and up the ways,
Hope-fleet, trampling care
As curling buds,
Iris goal joy-near;
Then a-creep on praying knees,
Frail shoulders bent to bear
Heaven's falling sphere.

Ah, not yet, heart's wonder!
A little hour we'll stay,
And thou wilt give me grace of dawn
For travelled, dusk array.
This gown of mottled years,
By noon and gnome-light spun,
Enchant me to surrender
To Ariel ministers;
Here poised with thee before
Thy summer world's wide door,
And glory that is hers;
This soft, unclamorous sky
That makes a lotus ship of every eye
Upventuring; song's sail that pilotless
Drifts down, a wing's caress
On billowed field and climbing shore
Whose veiny tidelets beat and cling,
Bloom-labouring,
Invincibly sweet and far,
Up looming cone and scaur,
And clambering spill
To lap of ledge and aproned hill
The heaped and whispering greenery
Of beauty's burden that unburdens me!

And thou, the fairest thing
In this fair shaman-ring,
Shall my sore magic loose thee wandering?
Has Life such faltering need,
Mid outlands where she runs,
She cannot reach the suns
Save thou dost bleed?
Shall she go fleet,
With heart of stouter cheer,
Because thou givest her
Thy little, bruisèd feet?

Thou'dst earn thy Heaven? Dear, I know
Heaven must not ban thee shining so!
Why shouldst thou laden bow,
And climb, and slip, and toil,
And blanch thy cheek to keep thy soul as white,
Inviolate as now?
O, we have dreams we shall not put away
Till earth be fair as they;
When all this work-night coil
Shall be unwound by wizard fingers bright
That send our own to play;
And wisdom, wiser than we know, shall find
The birth trail to the mind;
Nor spirit waver, panting here and yon
Seeking sun-vantage, for all heights are won.
Shall not we then be as the flowers,
Drinking dew dowers
As now thou dost?
Glad petals that unclose
About Life's heart,—at last the perfect Rose?
Sweet, I will trust
Love and the morn;
Fold here the wakeful wand,
Leave thee in dewy bond
Of blossomy sleep.
Who knows but thou hast won the steep
By silent, angel way,
Hidden and heavenly,
That leaves no trace of thorn?
Star-flower, keep thy sky;
If man must climb, let him go up to thee;
A daisy may be nearer God than he—
Than I.

II

What crime was hers, that she lies hushed,
Dead with the price, while you and I,
With lifted head, walk sinless by?
Pause then,—but spare
That easy tear; the tale I'll bare.
Mid stones that pushed
Her eager life back, grudged her room
For root without one bloom,
There strangely blushed
Some little dreams,—not gloriously fine
As yours and mine,
But vague, and veiled, and few;
She hardly knew their names, but felt the stir
That filled her heart with whispers as they grew,
And knew that life lay in them, life for her.
When Hunger came she turned her breast
And let him feed. Cold followed, gripped
Her veins and sipped
The thin blood thinner; both she pressed
As close as lovers, lest
A darker fiend might creep within
Her empty arms; lest she might buy,
With one swift hour of sin,
A poisoned ease from tooth of need,—
A little food, a little fire, and die;
And she had dreams to shelter, little dreams to feed.
Oh, unresisting dumb!
In wide earth's harvest-gold
She asked no share,
If in the dust a crumb
Might be for her;
If she might round her aching body fold
One hour's undriven sleep,—
But one hour more,
Safe from the Want that pried
Her thin and shaken door,—
That hour the shivering dawn denied
With scream that cut life through,
And made her wretched pillow seem a rose
Her clinging cheek would keep
In soft, ungoaded death! And ah, suppose
A few more pence the day
Were richly hers, to make youth gay
With ribbon or a flower ere it flew!
(So soon toil's wrinkles come!)
Then would she make her dreams a fairer home;
Then would her heart be stronger where they grew;
Then would she walk more bravely knowing them;
Then would her eyes be brighter showing them.
Yet did they whisper, yet they stirred
Uptremblingly, till half their breath
Was music, half was song;
Told of free hours and a wild heath
Where wind and sun ran dappling; of a bird
Bough-throned, whose trill
Turned all the forest leaves to wings,—
His singing young;
Of a moon-goldened hill
Where blossoms danced; of sweeter, holier things;
A sea-beach grey,
Where waves were drownèd twilight, and the day
Hung in a pause that softly, suddenwise,
Became a soul. She too would have a soul,
And hours with God and friends; no more give all,
Now there were dreams, to the machine.
Then rose with young, star-driven eyes
To face the lords of gain,
And here she lies.

Lift up the cotton, thinned with wear,
That hides the poor, starved shoulder; bare
The bruise shows, like a printed paw.
Haste, draw the dumb, frayed sheet again,
And think you cover so the stain
Upon our hearts; for—have the truth!—
'Twas we who put the club of law
Into bought hands to strike her battling youth.
She kept her virtue's gold,
Fought hunger, fiend, and cold
Unvanquished; when the might of Hell
Rose in law's name and ours, she broken fell.
O friend, when next you smooth the golden head
Like nestled morning 'gainst your knee,
Look farther,—see
Fair girlhood dead.
These lips, unvisited by love, were sweet
As are thy fondling's; this want-hollowed cheek
A little ease had made
Playground of dimples, joy's rose-seat;
And could these eyes ope they would speak
Of one who bought her dreams of Death and paid.
If blind thou shrinkest yet
To meet Truth bare,
Then as thou'st dealt with this pale maid
Life shall thine own besiege.
Injustice holds
No sanctuary folds;
To fence out care
We must the planet hedge;
Justice is God, and waits
Behind our blood-built tower-gates;
And as indifference
Was once our soul's pretence,
Who then shall heed us, who shall understand,
When our crushed hearts lie in the vengeant hand?
But is she dead? Faint on my ears
A far-off singing falls,
Sweet from time's sleep
Amid the stainless years
Yet unawake to men.
Nearer it calls,
Like music through a rain,
And o'er the distant ridges sweep
Soft garments and young feet. O maidens, ye
Are like a cloud in beauty,—nay, more swift!
If that the milky stream of stars could lift
Its clustered glory, hasten free,
And while we marvelled pass from east to west,
Then ye would mirrored be!

The hills seem lit with brides,
And she whose death-cold breast
Was shrouded here, is't she who guides
This fearless company
Sure of earth's welcome as a maiden Spring?
And in their eyes the dreams she fought for,
In their hands the flowers she sought for,
On their lips the songs that here she did not sing!

Not dead! While Destiny hath need
Of living dream and deed,
Ay, she shall deathless be!
While aught availeth, and God is,
For in her hope lay His!
O, ye who mar Love's face
Ere Love be born, leave not this place,
Pass not this white form by,
Till from assaulted skies ye hear the cry,
"She is not dead till ye have murdered Me!"

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
at Paul's Work, Edinburgh

Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Original spellings have been retained.