A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 8

breasts, to bid it feel
It
lived in such divine conceit
As envies aught we stamp for real.
To either then an untold tale
Was Life, and author, hero, we.
The
chapters holding peaks to scale,
Or depths to fathom, made our glee;

For we were armed of inner fires,
Unbled in us the ripe desires;

And passion rolled a quiet sea,
Whereon was Love 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