A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 8

the phantom sail.
Poem: The Hueless Love
Unto that love must we through fire attain,?Which those two held as breath of common air;?The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;?Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.
Midway the road of our life's term they met,?And one another knew without surprise;?Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;?Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.
To them it was revealed how they had found?The kindred nature and the needed mind;?The mate by long conspiracy designed;?The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.
Avowed in vigilant solicitude?For either, what most lived within each breast?They let be seen: yet every human test?Demanding righteousness approved them good.
She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared?Abandonment to help if heaved or sank?Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,?Life rosier were she but less revered.
An arm that never shook did not obscure?Her woman's intuition of the bliss -?Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss,?Across the narrow plank--he could abjure.
Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,?And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,?Was all of earthly in their love untold,?Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.
So has there come the gust at South-west flung?By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,?When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,?And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.
Poem: Song In The Songless
They have no song, the sedges dry,?And still they sing.?It is within my breast they sing,?As I pass by.?Within my breast they touch a string,?They wake a sigh.?There is but sound of sedges dry;?In me they sing.
Poem: Union In Disseverance
Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;?She that star overhead in slow descent:?That white star with the front of angel she;?He undone in his rays of glory spent
Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,?He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest?Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,?Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.
Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;?Life's full throb over breathless and abased:?Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,?One, more one than the bridally embraced.
Poem: The Burden Of Strength
If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know?Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;?Else in a giant's grasp until the end?A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.
Poem: The Main Regret
[Written for the Charing Cross Album]
I.
Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.?They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;?Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.
II.
Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.?Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered?Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.
Poem: Alternation
Between the fountain and the rill?I passed, and saw the mighty will?To leap at sky; the careless run,?As earth would lead her little son.
Beneath them throbs an urgent well,?That here is play, and there is war.?I know not which had most to tell?Of whence we spring and what we are.
Poem: Hawarden
When comes the lighted day for men to read?Life's meaning, with the work before their hands?Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,?Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands?Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge;?Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.?The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge,?Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,?Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known?By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.?A splendid image built of man has flown;?His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.?Ours the great privilege to have had one?Among us who celestial tasks has done.
Poem: At The Close
To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,?Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st;?And that black spot in each embattled host,?Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.?Now is it red artillery and white steel;?Till on a day will ring the victor's boast,?That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,?Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.?So in all times of man's descent insane?To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,?Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.?But at the close he entered Thy domain,?Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like?He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe.
Poem: Forest History
I.
Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in.?Heroic who came out; for round them hung?A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue,?With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:
II.
Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired?To his last fastness; overthrown by few.?Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.?Then man to play devorant straight was fired.
III.
More intimate became the forest fear?While pillared darkness hatched malicious life?At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife?And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.
IV.
In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,?The forest's heart of fog on mossed