A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems | Page 3

or herbage harsh and chill; Here the full clove pinks and wallflowers crown the love they claim. Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill!
All the place breathes low, but not for fear lest ill betide, Soft as roses answering roses, or a dove's recall.?Little heeds it how the seaward banks may stoop and slide,?How the winds and years may hold all outer things in thrall, How their wrath may work on hoar church tower and boundary wall. Far and wide the waste and ravin of their rule proclaim?Change alone the changeless lord of things, alone the same: Here a flower is stronger than the winds that work their will, Or the years that wing their way through darkness toward their aim. Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill!
Friend, the home that smiled us welcome hither when we came, When we pass again with summer, surely should reclaim?Somewhat given of heart's thanksgiving more than words fulfil-- More than song, were song more sweet than all but love, might frame. Fair befall the fair green close that lies below the mill!
A SEA-MARK.
Rains have left the sea-banks ill to climb:?Waveward sinks the loosening seaboard's floor:?Half the sliding cliffs are mire and slime.?Earth, a fruit rain-rotted to the core,?Drops dissolving down in flakes, that pour?Dense as gouts from eaves grown foul with grime.?One sole rock which years that scathe not score?Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Time were even as even the rainiest clime,?Life were even as even this lapsing shore,?Might not aught outlive their trustless prime:?Vainly fear would wail or hope implore,?Vainly grief revile or love adore?Seasons clothed in sunshine, rain, or rime?Now for me one comfort held in store?Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Once, by fate's default or chance's crime,?Each apart, our burdens each we bore;?Heard, in monotones like bells that chime,?Chime the sounds of sorrows, float and soar?Joy's full carols, near or far before;?Heard not yet across the alternate rhyme?Time's tongue tell what sign set fast of yore?Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
Friend, the sign we knew not heretofore?Towers in sight here present and sublime.?Faith in faith established evermore?Stands a sea-mark in the tides of time.
THE CLIFFSIDE PATH.
Seaward goes the sun, and homeward by the down?We, before the night upon his grave be sealed.?Low behind us lies the bright steep murmuring town,?High before us heaves the steep rough silent field.?Breach by ghastlier breach, the cliffs collapsing yield:?Half the path is broken, half the banks divide;?Flawed and crumbled, riven and rent, they cleave and slide?Toward the ridged and wrinkled waste of girdling sand?Deep beneath, whose furrows tell how far and wide?Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
Star by star on the unsunned waters twiring down.?Golden spear-points glance against a silver shield.?Over banks and bents, across the headland's crown,?As by pulse of gradual plumes through twilight wheeled,?Soft as sleep, the waking wind awakes the weald.?Moor and copse and fallow, near or far descried.?Feel the mild wings move, and gladden where they glide:?Silence, uttering love that all things understand,?Bids the quiet fields forget that hard beside?Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
Yet may sight, ere all the hoar soft shade grow brown,?Hardly reckon half the lifts and rents unhealed?Where the scarred cliffs downward sundering drive and drown, Hewn as if with stroke of swords in tempest steeled,?Wielded as the night's will and the wind's may wield.?Crowned and zoned in vain with flowers of autumn-tide,?Soon the blasts shall break them, soon the waters hide,?Soon, where late we stood, shall no man ever stand.?Life and love seek harbourage on the landward side:?Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
Friend, though man be less than these, for all his pride,?Yet, for all his weakness, shall not hope abide??Wind and change can wreck but life and waste but land:?Truth and trust are sure, though here till all subside?Wind is lord and change is sovereign of the strand.
IN THE WATER.
The sea is awake, and the sound of the song
of the joy of her waking is rolled?From afar to the star that recedes, from anear
to the wastes of the wild wide shore.?Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward:
if dawn in her east be acold,?From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle
the life that it kindled before,?Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us,
her kisses to bless as of yore??For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause
in the sky, neither fettered nor free,?Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter
and fain would the twain of us be?Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under
the curve of the deep dawn's dome,?And, full of the morning and fired with the pride
of the glory thereof and the glee,?Strike out from the shore as the heart in