Poems

1872–1889

Gil Blas AU LECTEUR.

Chiming a dream by the way
   With ocean’s rapture and roar,
I met a maiden to-day
   Walking alone on the shore:
Walking in maiden wise,
   Modest and kind and fair,
The freshness of spring in her eyes
   And the fulness of spring in her hair.

Cloud-shadow and scudding sun-burst
   Were swift on the floor of the sea,
And a mad wind was romping its worst,
   But what was their magic to me?
Or the charm of the midsummer skies?
   I only saw she was there,
A dream of the sea in her eyes
   And the kiss of the sea in her hair.

1872

Life is bitter.  All the faces of the years,
Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears.
   Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep?
In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers,
Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . .
            Let me sleep.

Riches won but mock the old, unable years;
Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears;
   Love must wither, or must live alone and weep.
In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers,
While we slumber, death approaches though the hours! . . .
            Let me sleep.

1872

O, gather me the rose, the rose,
   While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
   And winter waits behind it!

For with the dream foregone, foregone,
   The deed forborne for ever,
The worm, regret, will canker on,
   And Time will turn him never.

So well it were to love, my love,
   And cheat of any laughter
The fate beneath us and above,
   The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
   The sunshine and the swallow,
The dream that comes, the wish that goes,
   The memories that follow!

1874

Out of the night that covers me,
   Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
   For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
   I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
   My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
   Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
   Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
   How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
   I am the captain of my soul.

1875

I am the Reaper.
All things with heedful hook
Silent I gather.
Pale roses touched with the spring,
Tall corn in summer,
Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms—
Reaping, still reaping—
All things with heedful hook
Timely I gather.

Maker and breaker,
I am the ebb and the flood,
Here and Hereafter.
Sped through the tangle and coil
Of infinite nature,
Viewless and soundless I fashion all being.
Taker and giver,
I am the womb and the grave,
The Now and the Ever.

1875

Praise the generous gods for giving
   In a world of wrath and strife
With a little time for living,
   Unto all the joy of life.

At whatever source we drink it,
   Art or love or faith or wine,
In whatever terms we think it,
   It is common and divine.

Praise the high gods, for in giving
   This to man, and this alone,
They have made his chance of living
   Shine the equal of their own.

1875

Fill a glass with golden wine,
   And the while your lips are wet
Set their perfume unto mine,
         And forget,
Every kiss we take and give
Leaves us less of life to live.

Yet again! Your whim and mine
   In a happy while have met.
All your sweets to me resign,
         Nor regret
That we press with every breath,
Sighed or singing, nearer death.

1875

We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.
We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.

We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.
We’ll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.

1875

Madam Life’s a piece in bloom
   Death goes dogging everywhere:
She’s the tenant of the room,
   He’s the ruffian on the stair.

You shall see her as a friend,
   You shall bilk him once and twice;
But he’ll trap you in the end,
   And he’ll stick you for her price.

With his kneebones at your chest,
   And his knuckles in your throat,
You would reason—plead—protest!
   Clutching at her petticoat;

But she’s heard it all before,
   Well she knows you’ve had your fun,
Gingerly she gains the door,
   And your little job is done.

1877

The sea is full of wandering foam,
   The sky of driving cloud;
My restless thoughts among them roam . . .
   The night is dark and loud.

Where are the hours that came to me
   So beautiful and bright?
A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . .
   O, dark and loud’s the night!

1876

Thick is the darkness—
   Sunward, O, sunward!
Rough is the highway—
   Onward, still onward!

Dawn harbours surely
   East of the shadows.
Facing us somewhere
   Spread the sweet meadows.

Upward and forward!
   Time will restore us:
Light is above us,
   Rest is before us.

1876

To me at my fifth-floor window
   The chimney-pots in rows
Are sets of pipes pandean
   For every wind that blows;

And the smoke that whirls and eddies
   In a thousand times and keys
Is really a visible music
   Set to my reveries.

O monstrous pipes, melodious
   With fitful tune and dream,
The clouds are your only audience,
   Her thought is your only theme!

1875

Bring her again, O western wind,
   Over the western sea:
Gentle and good and fair and kind,
   Bring her again to me!

Not that her fancy holds me dear,
   Not that a hope may be:
Only that I may know her near,
   Wind of the western sea.

1875

The wan sun westers, faint and slow;
The eastern distance glimmers gray;
An eerie haze comes creeping low
Across the little, lonely bay;
And from the sky-line far away
About the quiet heaven are spread
Mysterious hints of dying day,
Thin, delicate dreams of green and red.

And weak, reluctant surges lap
And rustle round and down the strand.
No other sound . . . If it should hap,
The ship that sails from fairy-land!
The silken shrouds with spells are manned,
The hull is magically scrolled,
The squat mast lives, and in the sand
The gold prow-griffin claws a hold.

1875

There is a wheel inside my head
   Of wantonness and wine,
      An old, cracked fiddle is begging without,
But the wind with scents of the sea is fed,
   And the sun seems glad to shine.

The sun and the wind are akin to you,
   As you are akin to June.
      But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about,
And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?—
   He’s playing your favourite tune.

1875

While the west is paling
   Starshine is begun.
While the dusk is failing
   Glimmers up the sun.

So, till darkness cover
   Life’s retreating gleam,
Lover follows lover,
   Dream succeeds to dream.

Stoop to my endeavour,
   O my love, and be
Only and for ever
   Sun and stars to me.

1876

The sands are alive with sunshine,
   The bathers lounge and throng,
And out in the bay a bugle
   Is lilting a gallant song.

The clouds go racing eastward,
   The blithe wind cannot rest,
And a shard on the shingle flashes
   Like the shining soul of a jest;

While children romp in the surges,
   And sweethearts wander free,
And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . .
   I would it were deep over me!

1875

The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
   The lark’s is a clarion-call,
And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
   But I love him best of all.

For his song is all of the joy of life,
   And we in the mad, spring weather,
We two have listened till he sang
   Our hearts and lips together.

1876

Your heart has trembled to my tongue,
   Your hands in mine have lain,
Your thought to me has leaned and clung,
            Again and yet again,
               My dear,
            Again and yet again.

Now die the dream, or come the wife,
   The past is not in vain,
For wholly as it was your life
            Can never be again,
               My dear,
            Can never be again.

1876

The surges gushed and sounded,
   The blue was the blue of June,
And low above the brightening east
   Floated a shred of moon.

The woods were black and solemn,
   The night winds large and free,
And in your thought a blessing seemed
   To fall on land and sea.

1877

We flash across the level.
   We thunder thro’ the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
   We sway along the ridges.

A rush of streaming hedges,
   Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
   Of racing woods and meadows.

We charge the tunnels headlong—
   The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments—
   The open spins and scatters.

We shake off the miles like water,
   We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
   And long for a common hansom.

1876

The West a glimmering lake of light,
   A dream of pearly weather,
The first of stars is burning white—
   The star we watch together.
Is April dead?  The unresting year
   Will shape us our September,
And April’s work is done, my dear—
   Do you not remember?

O gracious eve!  O happy star,
   Still-flashing, glowing, sinking!—
Who lives of lovers near or far
   So glad as I in thinking?
The gallant world is warm and green,
   For May fulfils November.
When lights and leaves and loves have been,
   Sweet, will you remember?

1876

The skies are strown with stars,
   The streets are fresh with dew
A thin moon drifts to westward,
The night is hushed and cheerful.
   My thought is quick with you.

Near windows gleam and laugh,
   And far away a train
Clanks glowing through the stillness:
A great content’s in all things,
   And life is not in vain.

1877

The full sea rolls and thunders
   In glory and in glee.
O, bury me not in the senseless earth
   But in the living sea!

Ay, bury me where it surges
   A thousand miles from shore,
And in its brotherly unrest
   I’ll range for evermore.

1876

In the year that’s come and gone, love, his flying feather
Stooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk together.
In the year that’s coming on, though many a troth be broken,
We at least will not forget aught that love hath spoken.

In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tether
All of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together.
In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of roses
We shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes.

1877

In the placid summer midnight,
   Under the drowsy sky,
I seem to hear in the stillness
   The moths go glimmering by.

One by one from the windows
   The lights have all been sped.
Never a blind looks conscious—
   The street is asleep in bed!

But I come where a living casement
   Laughs luminous and wide;
I hear the song of a piano
   Break in a sparkling tide;

And I feel, in the waltz that frolics
   And warbles swift and clear,
A sudden sense of shelter
   And friendliness and cheer . . .

The blind goes out, and I wander
   To the old, unfriendly sea,
The lonelier for the memory
   That walks like a ghost with me.

She sauntered by the swinging seas,
   A jewel glittered at her ear,
And, teasing her along, the breeze
   Brought many a rounded grace more near.

So passing, one with wave and beam,
   She left for memory to caress
A laughing thought, a golden gleam,
   A hint of hidden loveliness.

1876

Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
   And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
   In the dawning and the dew.
O’erblown with sunny shadows,
   O’ersped with winds at play,
The woodlands and the meadows
   Are keeping holiday.
Wild foals are scampering, neighing,
   Brave merles their hautboys blow:
Come! let us go a-maying
   As in the Long-Ago.

Yet beautiful and spacious
   The wise, old world appears.
Yet frank and fair and gracious
   Outlaugh the jocund years.
Our arguments disputing,
   The universal Pan
Still wanders fluting—fluting—
   Fluting to maid and man.
Our weary well-a-waying
   His music cannot still:
Come! let us go a-maying,
   And pipe with him our fill.

1878

A child,
Curious and innocent,
Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing
Loses himself in the Fair.

Thro’ the jostle and din
Wandering, he revels,
Dreaming, desiring, possessing;
Till, of a sudden
Tired and afraid, he beholds
The sordid assemblage
Just as it is; and he runs
With a sob to his Nurse
(Lighting at last on him),
And in her motherly bosom
Cries him to sleep.

1876

Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams,
   Still debating, still delay,
And the world’s a ghost that gleams—
   Wavers—vanishes away!

We must live while live we can;
   We should love while love we may.
Dread in women, doubt in man . . .
   So the Infinite runs away.

1876

O, have you blessed, behind the stars,
   The blue sheen in the skies,
When June the roses round her calls?—
Then do you know the light that falls
   From her belovèd eyes.

And have you felt the sense of peace
   That morning meadows give?—
Then do you know the spirit of grace,
The angel abiding in her face,
   Who makes it good to live.

She shines before me, hope and dream,
   So fair, so still, so wise,
That, winning her, I seem to win
Out of the dust and drive and din
   A nook of Paradise.

1877

O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay,
And I wish from my heart it’s there I was to-day;
I wish from my heart I was far away from here,
Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear.
      For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.
      Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.
      O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
      They’re all growing green in the old countrie.

In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet
With her babe on her arm, as she came down the street;
And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing ready
For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie.
      And it’s home, dearie, home . . .

O, there’s a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,
And that of all the winds is the one I like the best,
For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free,
And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie.
      For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.
      Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.
      O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
      They’re all growing green in the old countrie.

1878

Note.—The burthen and the third stanza are old.

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
   Of the young year’s fairest daughter.
O, the shadows that fleet o’er the springing wheat!
   O, the magic of running water!
The spirit of spring is in every thing,
   The banners of spring are streaming,
We march to a tune from the fifes of June,
   And life’s a dream worth dreaming.

It’s all very well to sit and spell
   At the lesson there’s no gainsaying;
But what the deuce are wont and use
   When the whole mad world’s a-maying?
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
   And the air’s with love-motes teeming,
When fancies break, and the senses wake,
   O, life’s a dream worth dreaming!

1878

Love blows as the wind blows,
Love blows into the heart.—Nile Boat-Song.

Life in her creaking shoes
Goes, and more formal grows,
A round of calls and cues:
Love blows as the wind blows.
Blows! . . . in the quiet close
As in the roaring mart,
By ways no mortal knows
Love blows into the heart.

The stars some cadence use,
Forthright the river flows,
In order fall the dews,
Love blows as the wind blows:
Blows! . . . and what reckoning shows
The courses of his chart?
A spirit that comes and goes,
Love blows into the heart.

1878

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day’s work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.

1876

I gave my heart to a woman—
   I gave it her, branch and root.
She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,
   She cast it under foot.

Under her feet she cast it,
   She trampled it where it fell,
She broke it all to pieces,
   And each was a clot of hell.

There in the rain and the sunshine
   They lay and smouldered long;
And each, when again she viewed them,
   Had turned to a living song.

Or ever the knightly years were gone
   With the old world to the grave,
I was a King in Babylon
   And you were a Christian Slave.

I saw, I took, I cast you by,
   I bent and broke your pride.
You loved me well, or I heard them lie,
   But your longing was denied.
Surely I knew that by and by
   You cursed your gods and died.

And a myriad suns have set and shone
   Since then upon the grave
Decreed by the King in Babylon
   To her that had been his Slave.

Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
   The deed beyond the grave,
When I was a King in Babylon
   And you were a Virgin Slave.

On the way to Kew,
By the river old and gray,
Where in the Long Ago
We laughed and loitered so,
I met a ghost to-day,
A ghost that told of you—
A ghost of low replies
And sweet, inscrutable eyes
Coming up from Richmond
As you used to do.

By the river old and gray,
The enchanted Long Ago
Murmured and smiled anew.
On the way to Kew,
March had the laugh of May,
The bare boughs looked aglow,
And old, immortal words
Sang in my breast like birds,
Coming up from Richmond
As I used with you.

The Past was goodly once, and yet, when all is said,
The best of it we know is that it’s done and dead.

Dwindled and faded quite, perished beyond recall,
Nothing is left at last of what one time was all.

Coming back like a ghost, staring and lingering on,
Never a word it speaks but proves it dead and gone.

Duty and work and joy—these things it cannot give;
And the Present is life, and life is good to live.

Let it lie where it fell, far from the living sun,
The Past that, goodly once, is gone and dead and done.

The spring, my dear,
Is no longer spring.
Does the blackbird sing
What he sang last year?
Are the skies the old
Immemorial blue?
Or am I, or are you,
Grown cold?

Though life be change,
It is hard to bear
When the old sweet air
Sounds forced and strange.
To be out of tune,
Plain You and I . . .
It were better to die,
And soon!

The Spirit of Wine
Sang in my glass, and I listened
With love to his odorous music,
His flushed and magnificent song.

—‘I am health, I am heart, I am life!
For I give for the asking
The fire of my father, the Sun,
And the strength of my mother, the Earth.
Inspiration in essence,
I am wisdom and wit to the wise,
His visible muse to the poet,
The soul of desire to the lover,
The genius of laughter to all.

‘I am life, I am wealth, I am fame:
For I captain an army
Of shining and generous dreams;
And mine, too, all mine, are the keys
Of that secret spiritual shrine,
Where, his work-a-day soul put by,
Shut in with his saint of saints—
With his radiant and conquering self—
Man worships, and talks, and is glad.

‘Come, sit with me, ye that are lovely,
Ye that are paid with disdain,
Ye that are chained and would soar!
I am beauty and love;
I am friendship, the comforter;
I am that which forgives and forgets.’—

The Spirit of Wine
Sang in my heart, and I triumphed
In the savour and scent of his music,
His magnetic and mastering song.

A wink from Hesper, falling
   Fast in the wintry sky,
Comes through the even blue,
Dear, like a word from you . . .
   Is it good-bye?

Across the miles between us
   I send you sigh for sigh.
Good-night, sweet friend, good-night:
Till life and all take flight,
   Never good-bye.

Friends . . . old friends . . .
One sees how it ends.
A woman looks
Or a man tells lies,
And the pleasant brooks
And the quiet skies,
Ruined with brawling
And caterwauling,
Enchant no more
As they did before.
And so it ends
With friends.

Friends . . . old friends . . .
So it breaks, so it ends.
There let it rest!
It has fought and won,
And is still the best
That either has done.
Each as he stands
The work of its hands,
Which shall be more
As he was before? . . .
What is it ends
With friends?

If it should come to be,
This proof of you and me,
      This type and sign
Of hours that smiled and shone,
And yet seemed dead and gone
      As old-world wine:

Of Them Within the Gate
Ask we no richer fate,
      No boon above,
For girl child or for boy,
My gift of life and joy,
      Your gift of love.

From the brake the Nightingale
   Sings exulting to the Rose;
Though he sees her waxing pale
   In her passionate repose,
While she triumphs waxing frail,
   Fading even while she glows;
         Though he knows
         How it goes—
Knows of last year’s Nightingale
   Dead with last year’s Rose.

In the waste hour
Between to-day and yesterday
We watched, while on my arm—
Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone—
Dabbled in sweat the sacred head
Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:
Till the dear face turned dead,
And to a sound of lamentation
The good, heroic soul with all its wealth—
Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,
Suffering and passionate faith—was reabsorbed
In the inexorable Peace,
And life was changed to us for evermore.

Nay, there were we,
Her five strong sons!
To her Death came—the great Deliverer came!—
As equal comes to equal, throne to throne.
She was a mother of men.

The stars shine as of old.  The unchanging River,
Bent on his errand of immortal law,
Works his appointed way
To the immemorial sea.
And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home:—
That she in us yet works and shines,
Lives and fulfils herself,
Unending as the river and the stars.

Between the river and the stars,
O royal and radiant soul,
Thou dost return, thine influences return
Upon thy children as in life, and death
Turns stingless!  What is Death
But Life in act?  How should the Unteeming Grave
Be victor over thee,
Mother, a mother of men?

Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me.
One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me.
I have worked and dreamed, and I’ve talked at will.
Of art and drink I have had my fill.
I’ve comforted here, and I’ve succoured there.
I’ve faced my foes, and I’ve backed my friends.
I’ve blundered, and sometimes made amends.
I have prayed for light, and I’ve known despair.
Now I look before, as I look behind,
Come storm, come shine, whatever befall,
With a grateful heart and a constant mind,
For the end I know is the best of all.

1888–1889

(To Charles Whibley)

1890–1892

                     Let us too pass—
Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows—
Through these long, blindfold rows
Of casements staring blind to right and left,
Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece
Of life in death’s own likeness—Life bereft
Of living looks as by the Great Release—
Pass to an exquisite night’s more exquisite close!

Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel,
These colonies of dreams!  And as we steal
Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze,
Fitfully frolicking to heel
With news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas,
We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are—
Be wandering some dispeopled star,
Some world of memories and unbroken graves,
So broods the abounding Silence near and far:
Till even your footfall craves
Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.

Down through the ancient Strand
The spirit of October, mild and boon
And sauntering, takes his way
This golden end of afternoon,
As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,
And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.

Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellarage of hell,
The Wind-Fiend, the abominable—
The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light—
Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,
Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;
And in a cloud unclean
Of excremental humours, roused to strife
By the operation of some ruinous change,
Wherever his evil mandate run and range,
Into a dire intensity of life,
A craftsman at his bench, he settles down
To the grim job of throttling London Town.