A Century of Roundels | Page 4

scarce should hope to please
Ears tuned to
strains of loftier thoughts than throng

Songs light as these.
Yet grace may set their sometime doubt at ease,
Nor need their too
rash reverence fear to wrong
The shrine it serves at and the hope it
sees.
For childlike loves and laughters thence prolong
Notes that bid enter,
fearless as the breeze,
Even to the shrine of holiest-hearted song,
Songs light as these.
IN HARBOUR
I.
Goodnight and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us
As
mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by;
To the waters of
gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us
Goodnight and goodbye.
A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh;
But were we not
fools and blind, by day to devote us
As thralls to the darkness, unseen
of the sundawn's eye?
We have drunken of Lethe at length, we have eaten of lotus; What hurts
it us here that sorrows are born and die?
We have said to the dream
that caressed and the dread that smote us
Goodnight and goodbye.
II.
Outside of the port ye are moored in, lying
Close from the wind and
at ease from the tide,
What sounds come swelling, what notes fall
dying

Outside?
They will not cease, they will not abide:
Voices of presage in
darkness crying
Pass and return and relapse aside.
Ye see not, but hear ye not wild wings flying
To the future that wakes
from the past that died?
Is grief still sleeping, is joy not sighing
Outside?
THE WAY OF THE WIND
The wind's way in the deep sky's hollow
None may measure, as none
can say
How the heart in her shows the swallow
The wind's way.
Hope nor fear can avail to stay
Waves that whiten on wrecks that
wallow,
Times and seasons that wane and slay.
Life and love, till the strong night swallow
Thought and hope and the
red last ray,
Swim the waters of years that follow
The wind's way.
'HAD I WIST'
Had I wist, when life was like a warm wind playing
Light and loud
through sundawn and the dew's bright trust,
How the time should
come for hearts to sigh in saying
'Had I wist' -
Surely not the roses, laughing as they kissed,
Not the lovelier laugh
of seas in sunshine swaying,
Should have lured my soul to look
thereon and list.

Now the wind is like a soul cast out and praying
Vainly, prayers that
pierce not ears when hearts resist:
Now mine own soul sighs, adrift as
wind and straying,
'Had I wist.'
RECOLLECTIONS
I.
Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the
ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of
remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.
Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that
forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened
the sealed-up springs of tears.
Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for
love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of
years that quicken -
Years upon years.
II.
Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar
Trembles and
sinks, and the sense of listening ears
Heeds not the sound that it heard
of love's blithe psalter
Years upon years.
Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,
Louder than dreams
that assail and doubts that palter,
Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere
sundawn peers.

Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,
Faces of
children as stars unknown of, spheres
Seen but of love, that endures
though all things alter,
Years upon years.
III.
Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light
of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life
amasses
Years upon years.
Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres
Lighten the shadows
reverberate from the glasses
Held in their hands as they pass among
their peers.
Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses,
Moving on
paths that the moon of memory cheers,
Shew but as mists over cloudy
mountain passes
Years upon years.
TIME AND LIFE
I.
Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken
Heart of life, laid waste
with wasting flame
Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken,
Time, thy name.
Girt about with shadow, blind and lame,
Ghosts of things that smite
and thoughts that sicken
Hunt and hound thee down to death and
shame.

Eyes of hours whose paces halt or quicken
Read in bloodred lines of
loss and blame,
Writ where cloud and darkness round it thicken,
Time, thy name.
II.
Nay, but rest is born of me for healing,
- So might haply time, with
voice represt,
Speak: is grief the last gift of my dealing?
Nay, but rest.
All the world is wearied, east and west,
Tired with toil to watch the
slow sun wheeling,
Twelve loud hours of life's laborious quest.
Eyes forspent with vigil, faint and reeling,
Find at last my comfort,
and are