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POEMS.

LOVE‐TRILOGY.

I.

• SHE stood against the Orient sun,
• Her face inscrutable for light;
• A myriad larks in unison
• Sang o’er her, soaring out of sight.

• A myriad flowers around her feet
• Burst flame‐like from the yielding sod,
• Till all the wandering airs were sweet
• With incense mounting up to God.

• A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
• Towards her, from the Occident,
• Girdling the cloud‐wrack which enshrined
• Half the light‐bearing firmament.

• Lit showers flashed golden o’er the hills,
• And trees flung silver to the breeze,
• And, scattering diamonds, fleet‐foot rills
• Fled laughingly across the leas.

• Yea Love, the skylarks laud but thee,
• And writ in flowers thine awful name;
• Spring is thy shade, dread Ecstasy,
• And life a brand which feeds thy flame.

II.

• WINDING all my life about thee,
• Let me lay my lips on thine;
• What is all the world without thee,
• Mine—oh mine!

• Let me press my heart out on thee,
• Crush it like a fiery vine,
• Spilling sacramental on thee
• Love’s red wine.

• Let thy strong eyes yearning o’er me
• Draw me with their force divine;
• All my soul has gone before me
• Clasping thine.

• Irresistibly I follow,
• As wherever we may run
• Runs our shadow, as the swallow
• Seeks the sun.

• Yea, I tremble, swoon, surrender
• All my spirit to thy sway,
• As a star is drowned in splendour
• Of the day.

III.

• I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
• That ye blow o’er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.

• I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
• That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

• I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
• That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.

• I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
• That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

• O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
• A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

• Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love’s fire,
• Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

• I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
• That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

• I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way
• To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

• The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
• The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

• The pale‐faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
• My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne’er soothed into sleep.

• The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
• But Love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.

DEAD LOVE.

• MOTHER of the unfortunate, mystic form,
• Who calm, immutable, like oldest fate,
• Sittest, where through the sombre swinging gate
• Moans immemorial life’s encircling storm.
• My heart, sore stricken by grief’s leaden arm,
• Lags like a weary pilgrim knocking late,
• And sigheth—toward thee staggering with its weight—
• Behold Love conquered by thy son, the worm!

• He stung him mid the roses’ purple bloom,
• The Rose of roses, yea, a thing so sweet,
• Haply to stay blind Change’s flying feet,
• And stir with pity the unpitying tomb.
• Here, take him, cold, cold, heavy and void of breath!
• Nor me refuse, O Mother almighty, death.

A DREAM.

• IN dreams I met my Love; he stood alone,
• A sadness like pale mist lay on his face;
• His eyes met mine, then as with anguish prone,
• Or yet in shame—he turned away his gaze.

• I made no moan, but even as one in sleep
• Helplessly murmurs, murmuring fell his name,
• Like tears which tremulous eyelids may not keep,
• Or flicker of involuntary flame.

• Sharply he turned: I neither moved nor spoke,
• But all life’s pent‐up passion gathered form,
• Till on our eyes the full‐orbed lovelight broke,
• Even as the sun will break upon a storm,

• And opening wide his arms, he stood! But I,
• Like a pale wave with backward fluttering crest,
• Wavered awhile, then with a rapturous cry,
• Shivering in ecstasy, fell on his breast.

LOVE’S PHANTOM.

• SHUT out day’s wintry beams!
• Sleep, brood upon my brain!
• For sweet sleep bringeth dreams
• And love again!
• Love cold and wan and sere
• Heaped over with tears and snows;
• Lo, born within its bier,
• Blooms like a rose!

• Its fragrance fills each vein,
• Its fervour flushes my heart,
• I feel through breast and brain
• Its rapturous smart;
• The look, the tone, the deep
• Supreme smile of delight:
• Ah, fickle as love, false sleep,
• Why take thy flight?

SNOW OR SNOWDROPS?

• IS it snow or snowdrops’ shimmer
• Whitens thus the bladed grass,
• With a faint aërial glimmer,—
• Spring or winter, which did pass?
• For the sky is dim and tender
• With the evanescent light,
• And the fading fields are white,
• White with snow or snowdrops, under
• The fair firstling stars of night.

• Little robin, softly, cheerly
• Piping on yon wintry bough,
• Why have all the fields that pearly
• Iridescence, knowest thou?
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• Did old Winter, grim and hoary,
• Aim a parting dart at Spring
• As she fled on azure wing,
• Or did she with rainbow glory
• In his face her snowdrops fling?

PAUPER POET’S SONG.

• SUN, moon, and stars, the ample air,
• The birds shrill whistling everywhere,
• Fields white with lambs and daisies;
• The pearls of eve, the jewelled morn,
• The rose rich blowing on the thorn,
• The glow of blush‐rose faces;
• The silver glint of sun‐smit rain;
• The shattered sun‐gold of the main,
• And heaven’s sweet breath that moves it;
• The earth, our myriad‐bosomed nurse,
• This whole miraculous universe
• Belongs to him who loves it!

• Why fret then for the gold of this,
• The fame of that man, or the bliss,
• Or such another’s graces?
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• Oh heart that chim’st with golden verse,
• My heart, thou art the magic purse
• Which all dull trouble chases;
• Thine too fruition of all fame
• When the live soul, as flame with flame,
• Weds the dead soul that moves it;
• Then sing for aye, and aye rehearse,
• This whole miraculous universe
• Belongs to him who loves it!

SUNDERED PATHS.

• TWO travellers, worn with sun and rain
• And gropings o’er dim paths unknown,
• Meet where long separate ways have grown
• To one, and then diverge again.

• They halt anigh the green wayside,
• Where groves pant with the impassioned song
• Of nightingales; wild roses throng
• There round them leaning side by side.

• As close and still more close they cling,
• Like some weird tale—once more in dreams
• Lived through with ghastlier horror—seems
• That old, cold, lonely wayfairing.

• Oh close sweet clasp of hands! oh sweet
• Close beat of heart on happy heart;
• Beating as though no more apart
• Their pulses ever again should beat!

• One look of love! one long embrace!
• One kiss that welds two lives in one!
• And lo, the sudden lifted sun
• Lights their slow feet on separate ways.

• Fledged by strong love, their wingèd speech
• Is borne awhile from soul to soul,
• Then ever‐widening waters roll
• And drown their voices each from each.

LINES.

• THOU camest with the coming Spring!
• With swallows, and the murmuring
• Of unloosed waters, with the birth
• Of daisies dimpling the green earth.

• And when the perfect rose of June
• Responded to the golden noon,
• My heart’s deep core, suffused with bliss,
• Broke into flower beneath thy kiss.

• But now the swallows seaward fly,
• The winds in chorus wail, “Good‐bye!”
• The dead leaves whirl, and like a leaf
• My heart shakes on the gusts of grief.

• And yet awhile earth’s flowerless breast
• In lethal folds of snow will rest;
• On thee too heart, with all thy woe,
• Death falls one day like falling snow.

LOVE AND THE MUSE.

• STRUCK down by Love in cruel mood,
• That I ever met Love I rued,
• Bleeding and bruised I lay,
• Wet was my face as with the salt sea spray.

• A lovely Muse on sparkling wing
• A painless elemental thing,
• Free as bird did float,
• Swift flames of song light leaping from her throat.

• And being more pitiful than Love
• Stooped glowing from her path above,
• And an unearthly kiss
• Laid on my lips: Muse, answer, what is this?

• In dreams or drunkenness divine
• My life is all transfused with thine;
• Like bubbles swept along,
• My tears dissolve on cataracts of song.

SONG.

• OH haste while roses bloom below,
• Oh haste while pale and bright above
• The sun and moon alternate glow,
• To pluck the rose of love.

• Yea, give the morning to the lark,
• The nightingale its glimmering grove,
• Give moonlight to the hungry dark,
• But to man’s heart give love!

• Then haste while still the roses blow,
• And pale and bright in heaven above
• The sun and moon alternate glow,
• Pluck, pluck the rose of love.

SONG.

• ALL my heart is stirring lightly
• Like dim violets winter‐bound,
• Quickening as they feel the brightly
• Glowing sunlight underground.

• Yea, this drear and silent bosom,
• Hushed as snow‐hid grove but now,
• Breaketh into leaf and blossom
• Like a gleaming vernal bough.

• Oh the singing, singing, singing!
• Callow hopes that thrill my breast!
• Can the lark of love be winging
• Back to its abandoned nest?

IN SPRING.

• THE young birds shy twitter
• In hedges and bowers,
• Fields brighten and glitter
• With dewdrops and flowers.
• Over flood, over fallow,
• Impelled by old yearning,
• The nest‐building swallow
• Exults at returning;
• For dark days and hoary
• Are routed and over,
• Dark Winter is gone;
• Resplendent in glory,
• The earth meets her lover,
• Her bridegroom the Sun.

• Must I alone sorrow,
• Despairingly languish,
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• Breaks never a morrow
• On the night of my anguish?
• The jubilant gladness
• In bird, beam, and blossom,
• But deepens the sadness
• That weighs on my bosom.
• Oh, Spring, in whose azure
• Wake follow the starling,
• The daisy, the dove;
• Sweet spendthrift of pleasure,
• Brings also my darling,
• Oh bring me my love!

RENUNCIATION.

When ich Dich liebe was geht es Dich an?

I.

• THE air is full of the peal of bells,
• The rhythmical pealing of marriage bells;
• But athwart and above their ringing—
• Throbbing clear like the light of a star
• Lost in the sunrise—I hear afar
• The skylark’s jubilant singing.

II.

• The clouds all woollen and white on high,
• Like flocks of heavenly sheep go by,
• Go through heaven’s sapphire meadows;
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• While here on the earth’s green meadows, deep
• In sapphire flowers, our earthly sheep
• Loll in their loitering shadows.

III.

• Come, we will sit by the wayside here,
• They must cross this field to the chapel, dear,
• The loved by the side for her lover.
• Grey, through the glimmer of vernal green,
• Its time‐worn tower may just be seen
• Through the yews which curtain it over.

IV.

• Nay, little brother, why should I pine?
• Dare a violet ask that the sun should shine,
• The shining sun shine for it solely?
• Lowly it lifteth its meek blue eye,
• And yields up its soul to the sun on high,
• Nor asks for love, loving so wholly.

V.

• He passed by the garden where, snow‐white and red,
• I tended the flowers which give us our bread,
• And watered my lilies and roses;
• He passed and repassed both early and late,
• And lingering, often would lean on the gate
• While I tied for him one of my posies.

VI.

• Day after day would he pass this way,
• And his smiling was sweet as the flowers of May,
• Or the scent of the bee‐haunted clover;
• And a softer flame seemed to light up his eye
• Than the lily‐white moon’s in the rose‐hued sky,
• Ere the blush of the May‐day is over.

VII.

• Aye, day after day he would stop on his way,
• While the trees were in leaf and the meadows were gay,
• And the curled little lambs were grazing;
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• As he went, or returned in the waning light
• From the smoke‐capped city whose lamps by night
• Turn the black clouds red with their blazing.

VIII.

• It’s a year to‐day when the young sun sets
• Since I gave him that first bunch of violets
• From the root on the grave of our mother.
• Though thou seest them not with the bodily eye,
• The language of flowers much better than I
• I know that thou knowest, my brother.

IX.

• Violets—then golden daffodils
• Which the light of the sun like a wine‐cup fills—
• Tall tulips like flames upspringing—
• Golden‐brown wallflowers bright as his locks—
• Marigolds—balsams—and perfumed stocks
• Whose scent’s like a blackbird’s singing.

X.

• You see, my darling, I never forget!
• Aye, those were your own very words—ere yet
• Our father lost his all in yon city,
• Where the people, they say, in their struggle for gold,
• Become like wild beasts, and the feeble and old
• Are trampled upon without pity.

XI.

• Poor father was better to‐day: for the smile
• Of the sun seemed to gladden him too for awhile
• As he sat by the bright little casement,
• With buttercups heaped on his knees without stint,
• Which, deeming them childishly fresh from the mint,
• He counted in chuckling amazement.

XII.

• The air is full of the peal of bells—
• The rhythmical pealing of marriage bells!
• And there floats o’er the fields, o’er the fallows,
• Borne on the wind with the wind‐blown chimes,
• From the old house hidden in older limes,
• A chatter of maidens and swallows.

XIII.

• Ah, give me the flowers!—the last year was all
• In tune with the flowers from the spring to the fall,
• And with singing of birds in the bowers;
• And once—ah, look not so angry, dear!—
• He whispered so softly I scarce could hear,
• “You yourself are the flower of all flowers!”

XIV.

• But oh, when the wind was loud in the trees,
• When the fluttering petals snowed down on the leas,
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• And the dim sun went out like an ember,
• He stood by the gate all drenched with the mist,
• And I gave him my last Christmas rose, which he kissed
• For the last time that last of November.

XV.

• Say, could he help if a hope as sweet
• As the wild thyme had sprouted under his feet?
• If his face in my heart is enfolden,
• As the sun‐smit globes of the summer rain
• Reflect and hold and refract again
• The sun, the eternally golden.

XVI.

• He cometh, he cometh, oh brother, there!
• Ah would that you saw the glint of his hair,
• For he looks like that saint in the story
• Whom you loved so to hear of in days of old,
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• Till he lit up your dreams with his curls of gold,
• Exhaling a mystical glory.

XVII.

• The unseen wings of the morning air
• Fan his brow and ruffle his hair
• As he steps with a stately measure;
• White daisies under his feet are spread,
• White butterflies hover above his head,
• White clouds high up in the azure:

XVIII.

• Pelt him with sunlit April rain,
• Rain which ripens the earth‐hid grain,
• Which brings up the grass and the heather!
• Hark at the peal of the bridal bells,
• How their musical chiming swells and swells
• As they enter the church door together.

XIX.

• Let us go hence now—’tis over—the twain
• One will they be when they pass here again:
• All my flowers in their pathway I scatter;
• Though he forget me as yesterday’s rose,
• My heart with a sweet tender feeling o’erflows:
• If I love him, to whom can it matter?

XX.

• Yea, let us go now; the stile, love, is here:
• Henceforth I live but for thee. What! a tear
• Splashed on thy hand? Nay, a drop from the shower
• That has passed over, for yon, on that dark
• Ominous cloud, dearest brother, the arc
• Of the Lord’s bow now breaks into flower.

THE ABANDONED.

• SHE sat by the wayside and wept, where roses, red roses and white,
• Lay wasted and withered and sere, like her life and its ruined delight;
• Like chaff blown about in the wind whirled roses, white roses and red,
• And pale, on night’s threshold, the moon bent over the day that was dead.

• She sat by the wayside and wept; far over the desolate plain
• A noise as of one that is weeping re‐echoed in wind and in rain,
• And the long dim line of the spectral poplars with dolorous wail
• Nodded their bald‐headed tops as they chattered with cold in the gale.

• She sat by the wayside and wept in a passion of vain desire,
• And her weak heart fluttered and failed like the flame of a faltering fire,
• Fluttered and failed in her breast like the broken wing of a bird
• When its feathers are dabbled with gore, and the low last gurgle is heard.

• And behold, like balm on her soul, while she sat by the wayside and wept,
• There came a forgetting of sorrow, a lulling of grief, and she slept;
• Yea, like the wings of a dove when cooing it broods on the nest,
• So the wings of slumber about her assuaged and filled her with rest.

• And a light that was not the sun’s nor the moon’s light illumined her brain;
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• From afar in the country of dreams three maidens stole over the plain,
• Three loveliest maidens they were, like roses, red roses and white;
• And behold the earth and the heavens were glorified in their light.

• And the first of the maidens was fair, as fair as the blue‐kirtled Spring,
• When she comes with a snowfall of blossoms and a rustling of birds on the wing,
• When a glimmer of green like a tide rolls over the woodland and vales,
• And odours are blown on the winds with the song of the nightingales.

• The second was loftier of stature, a huntress of grief;
• The wilderness glowed as she passed and broke into blossom and leaf;
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• Yea, it seemed that her upturned eyes, with their fathomless gaze,
• Could pierce to the shining stars through the veil of the noonday blaze.

• But the third was a splendour incarnate, a luminous form,
• Thrilling with raptures that keep the heart of the cold earth warm,
• Who hidden far in the mystical glory of quivering rays
• Sets the whole world on fire for an absolute sight of her face.

• But darkling ever they see her, and ever as through a veil,
• For if naked she lightens upon them, their lives must shrivel and fail,
• Must fail and shrivel consumed by that burst of insufferable light,
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• As a tree set on fire by lightning which burns to the ground in a night.

• The first one kissed her cheek, her cheek grew pallid and wan:
• “Goodbye,” she cried, “we must part; I am Youth, and I follow the sun;
• I am Youth, and I love to build in the heart that is buoyant and gay;
• Goodbye, we shall meet not again,” she cried, as she fluttered away.

• The second she kissed her eyes, then the glamour went out of their gaze,
• Through the magical show she beheld life staring her straight in the face;
• With a terrible Gorgon stare that turned her heart into stone—
• “Adieu,” she sighed, “I am Hope, all is over between us and done.”

• The third one she kissed her lips, and the kiss was a quenchless fire,
• It burned up her life like a victim’s in the flames of a funeral pyre—
• “Farewell,” she wailed, “I am Love,” and her wings were spread as for flight—
• It seemed like the wail of the wind as they left her alone with the night.