POEMS IN MANY LANDS

Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., EDINBURGH
CHANDOS STREET, LONDON

POEMS IN MANY LANDS

BY
RENNELL RODD

colophon

LONDON
DAVID BOGUE, 3, ST. MARTIN’S PLACE
TRAFALGAR SQUARE, W.C.
1883.

PREFACE.

The kind reception my first small volume of “Songs in the South” met with, has induced me to include a few of those poems in this more complete volume of early lyrics.

I have to acknowledge the permission to reprint one or two poems which have been previously published in magazines, or as songs.

R. R.

December, 1882.

CONTENTS.

	PAGE
A Star-Dream	1
The Daisy	3
“Those days are long departed”	4
In April	6
In the Woods	7
A Summer Song	8
The Burden of Autumn	10
“To Wonder and be Still”	11
An Answer	13
The Poet	14
Victory	15
“Ah! Wild Swans”	16
Day’s End	19
From the Roadside	20
A Dirge for Love	22
Nos Collines d’Autrefois	24
The Two Gates	25
Gettati al Vento	26
The Sea-King’s Grave	29
Disillusion	33
On the Border Hills	35
When he had finished	36
The Lonely Bay	37
Music	40
What holds thee back	41
Words for Music	42
Bella Donna	47
Joseph Bara	46
In Chartres Cathedral	53
By the Annio	55
By the Crucifix	58
“Une heure viendra qui tout paiera”	60
In the Alps	61
In Nôtre Dame de	62
Two Sonnets	67
At Lanuvium	69
A Roman Mirror	71
The Song of the Dead Child	73
Night at Avignon	78
Where the Rhone goes down to the Sea	80
At Tiber Mouth	82
Garibaldi in Rome	88
ἙΡΑΝ ΤΩΝ ἉΔΥΝΑΤΩΝ	89
Translations	92
Ave atque vale	96
“If any one return”	99
Hic Jacet	101
“When I am Dead”	103
St. Catharine of Egypt	105
Atalanta	109
Theoretikos	111
Rome—I. From the Hill of Gardens	114
II. In the Coliseum	116
III. In a Church	117
Sea-Pictures—France.
I. Sunset	120
II. Twilight	121
III. Storm	122
A Last Word	124

A STAR-DREAM.

There was a night when you and I
Looked up from where we lay,
When we were children, and the sky
Was not so far away.

We looked towards the deep dark blue
Beyond our window bars,
And into all our dreaming drew
The spirit of the stars.

We did not see the world asleep—
We were already there!
We did not find the way so steep
To climb that starry stair.

And faint at first and fitfully,
Then sweet and shrill and near,
We heard the eternal harmony
That only angels hear;

And many a hue of many a gem
We found for you to wear,
And many a shining diadem
To bind about your hair.

We saw beneath us faint and far
The little cloudlets strewn,
And I became a wandering star,
And you became my moon.

Ah! have you found our starry skies?
Where are you all the years?
Oh, moon of many memories!
Oh, star of many tears!

THE DAISY.

With little white leaves in the grasses,
Spread wide for the smile of the sun,
It waits till the daylight passes,
And closes them one by one.

I have asked why it closed at even,
And I know what it wished to say:
There are stars all night in the heaven,
And I am the star of day.

“THOSE DAYS ARE LONG DEPARTED.”

Those days are long departed,
Gone where the dead dreams are,
Since we two children started
To look for the morning star.

We asked our way of the swallow
In his language that we knew,
We were sad we could not follow
So swift the dark bird flew.

We set our wherry drifting
Between the poplar trees,
And the banks of meadows shifting
Were the shores of unknown seas.

We talked of the white snow prairies
That lie by the Northern lights,
And of woodlands where the fairies
Are seen in the moonlit nights.

Till one long day was over
And we grew too tired to roam,
And through the corn and clover
We slowly wandered home.

Ah child! with love and laughter
We had journeyed out so far;
We who went in the big years after
To look for another star;

But I go unbefriended
Through wind and rain and foam,—
One day was hardly ended
When the angel took you home.

IN APRIL.

The diamond dew lies cool
In the violet cups athirst,
The buds are ready to burst,
The heart of the spring is full;
Great clouds dream over the sky,
The drops on the grass-blades glisten,
The daffodil droops to listen
As the wind from the South goes by,
For it came through the sea cliffs hollow,
With the dawning over the bay,
And the swallow, it said, the swallow,
The swallow comes home to-day.

IN THE WOODS.

This is a simple song
That the world sings every day,
Hark! as ye pass along
Ye that go by the way!
For the nightingale up in the oak-bough sings,
“Be loyal, be true, true, true,”
And the wood-dove sits with its folded wings,
And answers “to you, to you.”
And the thrush in the hedge, “I am glad, be glad,”
And the linnet, “let love, let live,”
And the wind in the rushes says, “why so sad!”
And the wind in the trees “forgive!”
While ever so high in the skies above
The heart of the lark o’erflows,
And “I love, I love, and I love,”
Is the only song he knows.
Hark! as ye pass along
Ye that go by the way!
This is the simple song
That the world sings every day.

A SUMMER SONG.

Summer in the world and morning, the far hills were in the mist,
And we watched the river borders, how the rush and ripple kist,
While the bird sang “Whither, whither,” and the wind said, “Where I list.”

And we saw the yellow kingcup, and the arrowhead look through,
From the silent, shallow waters, where the mirrored skies were blue,
And the flags about the swan’s nest kept the secret that we knew.

In the hedge a thrush was singing, where the wild hopclusters are,
And the lowly ragged-robin, with its frailly fretted star,
While a soft wind brought the fragrance of the meadow-sweet from far.

All its blushing bells a’ ringing, on a bank the foxglove grows,
Where the honeysuckle tangles in the thorns of the wild rose,
And a sudden sea of blue-bells from the wood-side overflows.

And we watched the silver crescent of the wings of the wild dove
Circle swiftly in the sunlight through the aspen tops above,
And we felt the great world’s heart beat, in the gladness of our love.

THE BURDEN OF AUTUMN.

We are dying, said the flowers,
All the days are out of tune,
Spent are all the sungold hours,
And the glory that was June,
Dying, dying said the flowers.
The snow will hide the garden bed
While they sleep underground,
Wild winds will drift it overhead,
But they will slumber sound.

We are going, said the swallows,
All the singing days are done,
Summer’s over, winter follows,
And we seek a warmer sun,
Going southward, said the swallows.
And I must watch them all depart
And find no song to sing,
Oh take the autumn from my heart
And give me back the spring!

“TO WONDER AND BE STILL.”

Oft in the starry middle night
I vex my heart in vain,
To set its mystic music right,
And find the hidden strain.

To-night the summer moon is strong,
The little clouds drift past,—
The wonder is too deep for song—
The silence speaks at last.

“Thou canst not match those harmonies
On moon-enamoured lute,
Serenely silent arch the skies,
And the great stars are mute;

“Thou canst not tune to thine unrest
Their solemn calm above;
In silence thou shalt worship best,
And reverently love.

“Beyond this night in which thou art,
There is a voice of spheres,
Which the eternal in thine heart
Remembers and reveres.

“But how they sing in unison
Earth’s ear hath never heard,
So only in thine heart rings on
The song that has no word.”

AN ANSWER.

Take again thy shallow hearted reason
Groping dimly through the night in which thou art!
Very harmless fall the arrows of thy treason
On the worship and the wonder in my heart.

I have drunk the everlasting fountains
Flowing downward from the infinite to me,
Seen the wonder of the moonrise in the mountains
And the glory of the sunset on the sea.

THE POET.

He will come again as oft of old among you,
With his burden to fulfil;—
Did ye hearken ever to the songs they sung you
Till the song was still?

He will bear again the scorn, the idle wonder,
And heart-hunger and love’s need;
You will drown the sound of music in your thunder,
And he will not heed.

Singing unperplexed above the mocking laughter
Till his day be overpast;
Till the music dies, and silence follows after
And ye turn at last,—

Then when all the echoes breathe it and ye know it,
Ye will seek him to revere;
Cry aloud, and call him, master, lover, poet!
And he will not hear.

VICTORY.

This then—to live and have no joy thereof,
To thirst and hunger and be very tired,
To walk unloved, or know if one should love
It were a bitter thing that he desired,
To have no home in all the earth, to be
Mocked and derided and outcast of men,
To squander love and labour, and to see
No fruit of it, and yet to love, and then
Bearing all slander silently alway,
Serenely when the last reproach is hurled
To look Death in the face alone, and say
“Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”

“AH! WILD SWANS!”

“Ah! wild swans winging southward, I would fly with you to-night;
Southward, ever swiftly southward, through the autumn grey twilight.

“You will leave these downs and gullies, and the white cliffs far behind,
Sailing on above the waters in the music of the wind.

“And the seamen on their highway looking up will see you fly,
Like a misty shadow moving o’er the moon-illumined sky.

“Day and night and all things changing,—sunny skies and overcast,—
Till the cloud-engirdled mountains and the snowy peaks are passed.

“We should near the lands of laughter and the vines and olive trees,
Watch the little sails at sundown sparkle out on summer seas;

“Day and night and ever flying till we reached the wonderland,
And the seaward branching river, and the desert ways of sand;

“Saw beneath us standing lonely that grave bird that never sings,
Like a solemn sentry guarding by the giant tombs of kings.

“And I think it would be sunset when our journeying was done,
And the silver of your plumage would be crimsoned in the sun;

“In a pleasant land of palm-trees, where the lotus lilies grow,
And the fruits of many flood-tides by the river borders blow;

“There forgetting and forgotten, and not any one to hear,
I would sing to you, that sing not, all the winter of the year.”

Brighter burn the stars and colder, twilight deepens into night,
Moans the wind among the willows, and the swans fade out of sight.

DAY’S END.

We watched how robed in royal red
The slow sun sailed to rest,
Through crimson cloud streaks islandèd
In seas of glory o’er the west,
I held your hand, and I heard you say,
“What have we done for the world to-day?”

While still the mountain-heather glowed
All songs were hushed, and through
The twilight east the young moon showed
Her frail white crescent in the blue;
The silence sank profound and deep,
The ways of earth were full of sleep;
And the spirit of silence seemed to say,
“What have ye done for the world to-day?”

FROM THE ROADSIDE.

Peace be with the little red-roofed church out yonder,
With its quiet English village gathered round;
With shade of great beech-trees on the grave-mounds under,
And leaves of the Autumn over all the ground!

There go the rooks at even homeward flying!
The sweet sense of home lies over all that land;
The glow is on the tower of the daylight dying,
And lovers in the shadow are walking hand-in-hand.

Here comes no voice from the middle world to move them,
All the year round no memorable thing;
Yet the great skies arch as beautiful above them,
All the year through there are birds with them that sing.

Ah! well with you who calm and little knowing,
Here in submission to your uneventful days,
Leave the mad world to its coming and its going,
Safe with God’s shadow on your evening ways!