Kitabı oku: «Poems», sayfa 4

AMONG THE ROCKS

 
Never can we be strangers, you and I,
Nor quite disown our mysteries of kin,
Grey Sea-rocks, since I sat an hour to-day
Companion of the Ocean and of you.
I, sensitive soft flesh a thorn invades,
The light breath of a rose can win aside,
Flesh fashioned to be hourly tried and thrill’d,
Delighted, tortured, to betray whose ward
The unready heart is ruler, still surprised,
With emissary flushes swift and false,
And tremulous to touches of the stars.
You, spiny ridges of the land, rude backs,
Clawless and wingless, half-created things,
Monsters at ease before the sun and sea,
Untamed, unshrinking, unpersuadable,
My kindred.
 
 
For the wide-delivering womb
Which casts abroad a mammoth as a man,
And still conceals the new and better birth,
Bore me and you. Old parents of the Sphinx
What words primeval murmured in my ears
To-day between the lapping of the waves?
What recognitions flashed and disappeared?
What rare faint touches passed of sympathy
From you to me, from me to you? What sense
Of the ancestral things shadowed the heart,
Cloud-like, and with the pleasure of a cloud.
Therefore I know from henceforth that the shrill
Short crying of the sea-lark when his feet
Touch where the wave slips off the shining sand
Pierces you; and the wide and luminous air
Impregnate with sharp sea smells is to you
A passion and allurement; and the sun
At mid-day loads your sense with drowsy warmth,
And in the waver and echo of your caves,
You cherish memories of the billowy chaunt,
And ponder its dim prophecy.
 
 
And I,—
Lo here I strike upon the granite too,
Something is here austere and obdurate
As you are, something rugged and untamed.
A strength behind the will. I am not all
The shapely, agile creature named a man,
So artful, with the quick-conceiving brain,
Nerve-network, and the hand to grasp and hold,
Most dexterous of kinds that wage the strife
Of being through the years. I am not all
This creature with the various heart, alive
To curious joys, rare anguish, skilled in shames,
Prides, hatreds, loves, fears, frauds, the heart which turns
A sudden venomous asp, the heart which bleeds
The red, great drops of glad self-sacrifice.
Pierce below these and seek the primal layer!
Behind Apollo loom the Earth-born Ones,
Half-god, half-brute; behind this symmetry,
This versatility of heart and brain
A strength abides, sustaining thought and love,
Untamed, unshrinking, unpersuadable,
At ease before the powers of Earth and Heaven,
Equal to any, of no younger years,
Calm as the greatest, haughty as the best,
Of imprescriptible authority.
 
 
Down upon you I sink, and leave myself,
My vain, frail self, and find repose on you,
Prime Force, whether amassed through myriad years
From dear accretions of dead ancestry,
Or ever welling from the source of things
In undulation vast and unperceived,
Down upon you I sink and lose myself!
 
 
My child that shouts and races on the sand
Your cry restores me. Have I been with Pan,
Kissing the hoofs of his goat-majesty?
You come, no granite of the nether earth,
Bright sea-flower rather, shining foam that flies,
Yet sweet as blossom of our inland fields.
 

TO A YEAR

 
Fly, Year, not backward down blind gulfs of night,
Thick with the swarm of miscreated things:
Forth, flying year, through calms and broader light,
Clear-eyed, strong-bosom’d year, on strenuous wings;
Bearing a song more high-intoned, more holy
Than the wild Swan’s melodious melancholy,
More rapturous than the atom lark outflings.
 
 
I follow on slow foot and unsubdued:
Have I not heard thy cry across the wind?
Not seen thee, Slayer of the serpent brood,—
Error, and doubt, and death, and anguish blind?
I follow, I shall know thee by thy plumes
Flame-tipped, when on that morn of conquered tombs,
I praise amidst my years the doom assigned.
 

A SONG OF THE NEW DAY

 
The tender Sorrows of the twilight leave me,
And shall I want the fanning of smooth wings?
Shall I not miss sweet sorrows? Will it grieve me
To hear no cooing from soft dove-like things?
 
 
Let Evening hear them! O wide Dawn uprisen,
Know me all thine; and ye, whose level flight
Has pierced the drear hours and the cloudy prison,
Cry for the pathless spaces and the light!
 

SWALLOWS

 
Wide fields of air left luminous,
Though now the uplands comprehend
How the sun’s loss is ultimate:
The silence grows; but still to us
From yon air-winnowing breasts elate
The tiny shrieks of glee descend.
 
 
Deft wings, each moment is resigned
Some touch of day, some pulse of light,
While yet in poised, delicious curve,
Ecstatic doublings down the wind,
Light dash and dip and sidelong swerve,
You try each dainty trick of flight.
 
 
Will not your airy glee relent
At all? The aimless frolic cease?
Know ye no touch of quelling pain,
Nor joy’s more strict admonishment,
No tender awe at day-light’s wane,
Ye slaves of delicate caprice?
 
 
Hush, once again that cry intense!
High-venturing spirits have your will!
Urge the last freak, prolong your glee,
Keen voyagers, while still the immense
Sea-spaces haunt your memory,
With zests and pangs ineffable.
 
 
Not in the sunshine of old woods
Ye won your warrant to be gay
By duteous, sweet observances,
Who dared through darkening solitudes,
And ’mid the hiss of alien seas,
The larger ordinance obey.
 

MEMORIALS OF TRAVEL

I. COACHING

(In Scotland)

 
Where have I been this perfect summer day,
—Or fortnight is it, since I rose from bed,
Devour’d that kippered fish, the oatmeal bread,
And mounted to this box? O bowl away
Swift stagers through the dusk, I will not say
“Enough,” nor care where I have been or be,
Nor know one name of hill, or lake, or lea,
Or moor, or glen! Were not the clouds at play
Nameless among the hills, and fair as dreams?
On such a day we must love things not words,
And memory take or leave them as they are.
On such a day! What unimagined streams
Are in the world, how many haunts of birds,
What fields and flowers,—and what an evening Star!
 

II. IN A MOUNTAIN PASS

(In Scotland)

 
To what wild blasts of tyrannous harmony
Uprose these rocky walls, mass threatening mass,
Dusk, shapeless shapes, around a desolate pass?
What deep heart of the ancient hills set free
The passion, the desire, the destiny
Of this lost stream? Yon clouds that break and form,
Light vanward squadrons of the joyous storm,
They gather hither from what untrack’d sea?
Primeval kindred! here the mind regains
Its vantage ground against the world; here thought
Wings up the silent waste of air on broad
Undaunted pinion; man’s imperial pains
Are ours, and visiting fears, and joy unsought,
Native resolve, and partnership with God.
 

III. THE CASTLE

(In Scotland)

 
The tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore;
The tenderest light was in the western sky;—
Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly,
The sea articulated o’er and o’er
To comfort all tired things; and one might pore,
Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye,
On that slow-fading, amber radiancy
Past the long levels of the ocean-floor.
A turn,—the castle fronted me, four-square,
Holding its seaward crag, abrupt, intense
Against the west, an apparition bold
Of naked human will; I stood aware,
With sea and sky, of powers unowned of sense,
Presences awful, vast, and uncontrolled.
 

IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία

(In Ireland)

 
The sound is in my ears of mountain streams!
I cannot close my lids but some grey rent
Of wildered rock, some water’s clear descent
In shattering crystal, pine-trees soft as dreams
Waving perpetually, the sudden gleams
Of remote sea, a dear surprise of flowers,
Some grace or wonder of to-day’s long hours
Straightway possesses the moved sense, which teems
With fantasy unbid. O fair, large day!
The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea
Of life too broad, and yet the billows range,
The elusive footing glides. Come, Sleep, allay
The trouble with thy heaviest balms, and change
These pulsing visions to still Memory.
 

V. ON THE SEA-CLIFF

(In Ireland)

 
Ruins of a church with its miraculous well,
O’er which the Christ, a squat-limbed dwarf of stone,
Great-eyed, and huddled on his cross, has known
The sea-mists and the sunshine, stars that fell
And stars that rose, fierce winter’s chronicle,
And centuries of dead summers. From his throne
Fronting the dawn the elf has ruled alone,
And saved this region fair from pagan hell.
Turn! June’s great joy abroad; each bird, flower, stream
Loves life, loves love; wide ocean amorously
Spreads to the sun’s embrace; the dulse-weeds sway,
The glad gulls are afloat. Grey Christ to-day
Our ban on thee! Rise, let the white breasts gleam,
Unvanquished Venus of the northern sea!
 

VI. ASCETIC NATURE

(In Ireland)

 
Passion and song, and the adornèd hours
Of floral loveliness, hopes grown most sweet,
And generous patience in the ripening heat,
A mother’s bosom, a bride’s face of flowers
—Knows Nature aught so fair? Witness ye Powers
Which rule the virgin heart of this retreat
To rarer issues, ye who render meet
Earth, purged and pure, for gracious heavenly dowers!
The luminous pale lake, the pearl-grey sky,
The wave that gravely murmurs meek desires,
The abashed yet lit expectance of the whole,
—These and their beauty speak of earthly fires
Long quenched, clear aims, deliberate sanctity,—
O’er the white forehead lo! the aureole.
 

VII. RELICS

(In Switzerland)

 
What relic of the dear, dead yesterday
Shall my heart keep? The visionary light
Of dawn? Alas! it is a thing too bright,
God does not give such memories away.
Nor choose I one fair flower of those that sway
To the chill breathing of the waterfall
In rocky angles black with scattering spray,
Fair though no sunbeam lays its coronal
Of light on their pale brows; nor glacier-gleam
I choose, nor eve’s red glamour; ’twas at noon
Resting I found this speedwell, while a stream,
That knew the immemorial inland croon,
Sang in my ears, and lulled me to a dream
Of English meadows, and one perfect June.
 

VIII. ON THE PIER OF BOULOGNE

(A Reminiscence of 1870)

 
A venal singer to a thrumming note
Chanted the civic war-song, that red flower
Of melody seized in a sudden hour
By frenzied winds of change, and borne afloat
A live light in the storm; and now by rote
To a cold crowd, while vague and sad the tide
Loomed after sunset and the grey gulls cried,
The verses quavered from a hireling throat.
Wherefore should English eyes their right forbear,
Or droop for smitten France? let the tossed sou,
Before they turn, be quittance for the stare.
O Lady, who, clear-voiced, with impulse true
To lift that cry “To Arms!” alone would dare,
My heart received a golden alms from you!
 

IX. DOVER

(In a Field)

 
A joy has met me on this English ground
I looked not for. O gladness, fields still green!
Listen,—the going of a murmurous sound
Along the corn; there is not to be seen
In all the land a single pilèd sheaf
Or line of grain new-fallen, and not a tree
Has felt as yet within its lightest leaf
The year’s despair; nay, Summer saves for me
Her bright, late flowers. O my Summer-time
Named low as lost, I turn, and find you here—
Where else but in our blessed English clime
That lingers o’er the sweet days of the year,
Days of long dreaming under spacious skies
Ere melancholy winds of Autumn rise.
 

AN AUTUMN SONG

 
Long Autumn rain;
White mists which choke the vale, and blot the sides
Of the bewildered hills; in all the plain
No field agleam where the gold pageant was,
And silent o’er a tangle of drenched grass
The blackbird glides.
 
 
In the heart,—fire,
Fire and clear air and cries of water-springs,
And large, pure winds; all April’s quick desire,
All June’s possession; a most fearless Earth
Drinking great ardours; and the rapturous birth
Of wingèd things.
 

BURDENS

 
Are sorrows hard to bear,—the ruin
Of flowers, the rotting of red fruit,
A love’s decease, a life’s undoing,
And summer slain, and song-birds mute,
And skies of snow and bitter air?
These things, you deem, are hard to bear.
 
 
But ah, the burden, the delight
Of dreadful joys! Noon opening wide,
Golden and great; the gulfs of night,
Fair deaths, and rent veils cast aside,
Strong soul to strong soul rendered up,
And silence filling like a cup.
 

SONG
(From “’Tis Pity she’s a Queen.”—A.D. 1610.)

ACT IV. SCENE 2

The Lady Margaret, with Susan and Lucy; Lady M. at her embroidery frame, singing

 
Girls, when I am gone away,
On this bosom strew
Only flowers meek and pale,
And the yew.
 
 
Lay these hands down by my side,
Let my face be bare;
Bind a kerchief round the face,
Smooth my hair.
 
 
Let my bier be borne at dawn,
Summer grows so sweet,
Deep into the forest green
Where boughs meet.
 
 
Then pass away, and let me lie
One long, warm, sweet day
There alone with face upturn’d,
One sweet day.
 
 
While the morning light grows broad,
While noon sleepeth sound,
While the evening falls and faints,
While the world goes round.
 
 
Susan. Whence had you this song, lady?
 
 
L. Mar. Out of the air;
From no one an it be not from the wind
That goes at noonday in the sycamore trees.
—When said the tardy page he would return?
 
 
Susan. By twelve, upon this very hour.
 
 
L. Mar. Look now,
The sand falls down the glass with even pace,
The shadows lie like yesterday’s. Nothing
Is wrong with the world. You are a part of it,—
I stand within a magic circle charm’d
From reach of anything, shut in from you,
Leagues from my needle, and this frame I touch,
Waiting till doomsday come—
[Knocking heard] The messenger!
Quick, I will wait you here, and hold my heart
Ready for death, or too much ravishment.
 
 
[Exeunt both Girls.]
 
 
How the little sand-hill slides and slides; how many
Red grains would drop while a man’s keen knife drawn
Across one’s heart let the red life out?
 
 
Susan. [returning] Lady!
 
 
L. Mar. I know it by your eyes. O do not fear
To tell all punctually: I am carved of stone.
 

BY THE WINDOW

 
Still deep into the West I gazed; the light
Clear, spiritual, tranquil as a bird
Wide-winged that soars on the smooth gale and sleeps,
Was it from sun far-set or moon unrisen?
Whether from moon, or sun, or angel’s face
It held my heart from motion, stayed my blood,
Betrayed each rising thought to quiet death
Along the blind charm’d way to nothingness,
Lull’d the last nerve that ached. It was a sky
Made for a man to waste his will upon,
To be received as wiser than all toil,
And much more fair. And what was strife of men?
And what was time?
 
 
Then came a certain thing.
Are intimations for the elected soul
Dubious, obscure, of unauthentic power
Since ghostly to the intellectual eye,
Shapeless to thinking? Nay, but are not we
Servile to words and an usurping brain,
Infidels of our own high mysteries,
Until the senses thicken and lose the world,
Until the imprisoned soul forgets to see,
And spreads blind fingers forth to reach the day,
Which once drank light, and fed on angels’ food?
 
 
It happened swiftly, came and straight was gone.
One standing on some aery balcony
And looking down upon a swarming crowd
Sees one man beckon to him with finger-tip
While eyes meet eyes; he turns and looks again—
The man is lost, and the crowd sways and swarms.
Shall such an one say “Thus ’tis proved a dream,
And no hand beckoned, no eyes met my own?”
Neither can I say this. There was a hint,
A thrill, a summons faint yet absolute,
Which ran across the West; the sky was touch’d,
And failed not to respond. Does a hand pass
Lightly across your hair? you feel it pass
Not half so heavy as a cobweb’s weight,
Although you never stir; so felt the sky
Not unaware of the Presence, so my soul
Scarce less aware. And if I cannot say
The meaning and monition, words are weak
Which will not paint the small wing of a moth,
Nor bear a subtile odour to the brain,
And much less serve the soul in her large needs.
I cannot tell the meaning, but a change
Was wrought in me; it was not the one man
Who come to the luminous window to gaze forth,
And who moved back into the darkened room
With awe upon his heart and tender hope;
From some deep well of life tears rose; the throng
Of dusty cares, hopes, pleasures, prides fell off,
And from a sacred solitude I gazed
Deep, deep into the liquid eyes of Life.
 

SUNSETS

 
Did your eyes watch the mystic sunset splendours
Through evenings of old summers, slow of parting,—
Wistful while loveliest gains and fair surrenders
Hallow’d the West,—till tremulous tears came starting?
 
 
Did your soul wing her way on noiseless pinion
Through lucid fields of air, and penetrated
With light and silence roam the wide dominion
Where Day and Dusk embrace,—serene, unmated?
 
 
And they are past the shining hours and tender,
And snows are fallen between, and winds are driven?
Nay, for I find across your face the splendour,
And in your wings the central winds of heaven.
 
 
They reach me, those lost sunsets. Undivining
Your own high mysteries you pause and ponder;
See, in my eyes the vanished light is shining,
Feel, through what spaces of clear heaven I wander!
 

OASIS

 
Let them go by—the heats, the doubts, the strife;
I can sit here and care not for them now,
Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life
Once more,—I know not how.
 
 
There is a murmur in my heart, I hear
Faint, O so faint, some air I used to sing;
It stirs my sense; and odours dim and dear
The meadow-breezes bring.
 
 
Just this way did the quiet twilights fade
Over the fields and happy homes of men,
While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade,
Long since,—I know not when.
 

FOREIGN SPEECH

 
Ah, do not tell me what they mean,
The tremulous brook, the scarcely stirred
June leaves, the hum of things unseen,
This sovran bird.
 
 
Do they say things so deep, and rare,
And perfect? I can only tell
That they are happy, and can bear
Such ignorance well;
 
 
Feeding on all things said and sung
From hour to hour in this high wood
Articulate in a strange, sweet tongue
Not understood.
 

IN THE TWILIGHT

 
A noise of swarming thoughts,
A muster of dim cares, a foil’d intent,
With plots and plans, and counterplans and plots;
And thus along the city’s edges grey
Unmindful of the darkening autumn day
With a droop’d head I went.
 
 
My face rose,—through what spell?—
Not hoping anything from twilight dumb:
One star possessed her heaven. Oh! all grew well
Because of thee, and thy serene estate:
Silence … I let thy beauty make me great;
What though the black night come.
 

THE INNER LIFE

I. A DISCIPLE

 
Master, they argued fast concerning Thee,
Proved what Thou art, denied what Thou art not,
Till brows were on the fret, and eyes grew hot,
And lip and chin were thrust out eagerly;
Then through the temple-door I slipped to free
My soul from secret ache in solitude,
And sought this brook, and by the brookside stood
The world’s Light, and the Light and Life of me.
It is enough, O Master, speak no word!
The stream speaks, and the endurance of the sky
Outpasses speech: I seek not to discern
Even what smiles for me Thy lips have stirred;
Only in Thy hand still let my hand lie,
And let the musing soul within me burn.
 

II. THEISTS

 
Who needs God most? That man whose pulses play
With fullest life-blood; he whose foot dare climb
To Joy’s high limit, solitude sublime
Under a sky whose splendour sure must slay
If Godless; he who owns the sovereign sway
Of that small inner voice and still, what time
His whole life urges toward one blissful crime,
And Hell confuses Heaven, and night, the day.
It is he whose faithfulness of love puts by
Time’s anodyne, and that gross palliative,
A Stoic pride, and bears all humanly;
He whose soul grows one long desire to give
Measureless gifts; ah! let him quickly die
Unless he lift frail hands to God and live.
 

III. SEEKING GOD

 
I said “I will find God,” and forth I went
To seek Him in the clearness of the sky,
But over me stood unendurably
Only a pitiless, sapphire firmament
Ringing the world,—blank splendour; yet intent
Still to find God, “I will go and seek,” said I,
“His way upon the waters,” and drew nigh
An ocean marge weed-strewn and foam-besprent;
And the waves dashed on idle sand and stone,
And very vacant was the long, blue sea;
But in the evening as I sat alone,
My window open to the vanishing day,
Dear God! I could not choose but kneel and pray
And it sufficed that I was found of Thee.
 

IV. DARWINISM IN MORALS

 
High instincts, dim previsions, sacred fears,
—Whence issuing? Are they but the brain’s amassed
Tradition, shapings of a barbarous past,
Remoulded ever by the younger years,
Mixed with fresh clay, and kneaded with new tears?
No more? The dead chief’s ghost a shadow cast
Across the roving clan, and thence at last
Comes God, who in the soul His law uprears?
Is this the whole? Has not the Future powers
To match the Past,—attractions, pulsings, tides,
And voices for purged ears? Is all our light
The glow of ancient sunsets and lost hours?
Advance no banners up heaven’s eastern sides?
Trembles the margin with no portent bright?