Alcyone | Page 5

star, behold--
Only
dusk it hath for cover,--
But a glamour soft with gold,
Through a
mist of dreamier essence
Than the dew of twilight, smiles
On
strange shafts and domes and crescents,
Lifting into eerie piles.
In its courts and hallowed places
Dreams of distant worlds arise,

Shadows of transfigured faces,
Glimpses of immortal eyes,
Echoes
of serenest pleasure,
Notes of perfect speech that fall,
Through an
air of endless leisure,
Marvellously musical.
And I wander there at even,
Sometimes when my heart is clear,

When a wider round of heaven
And a vaster world are near,
When
from many a shadow steeple
Sounds of dreamy bells begin,
And I
love the gentle people
That my spirit finds therein.

Men of a diviner making
Than the sons of pride and strife,
Quick
with love and pity, breaking
From a knowledge old as life;
Women
of a spiritual rareness,
Whom old passion and old woe
Moulded to
a slenderer fairness
Than the dearest shapes we know.
In its domed and towered centre
Lies a garden wide and fair,
Open
for the soul to enter,
And the watchful townsmen there
Greet the
stranger gloomed and fretting
From this world of stormy hands,

With a look that deals forgetting
And a touch that understands.
For they see with power, not borrowed
From a record taught or told,

But they loved and laughed and sorrowed
In a thousand worlds of
old;
Now they rest and dream for ever,
And with hearts serene and
whole
See the struggle, the old fever,
Clear as on a painted scroll.
Wandering by that grey and solemn
Water, with its ghostly quays--

Vistas of vast arch and column,
Shadowed by unearthly trees--

Biddings of sweet power compel me,
And I go with bated breath,

Listening to the tales they tell me,
Parables of Life and Death.
In a tongue that once was spoken,
Ere the world was cooled by Time,

When the spirit flowed unbroken
Through the flesh, and the
Sublime
Made the eyes of men far-seeing,
And their souls as pure
as rain,
They declare the ends of being,
And the sacred need of
pain.
For they know the sweetest reasons
For the products most malign--

They can tell the paths and seasons
Of the farthest suns that shine.

How the moth-wing's iridescence
By an inward plan was wrought,

And they read me curious lessons
In the secret ways of thought.
When day turns, and over heaven

To the balmy western verge
Sail
the victor fleets of even,
And the pilot stars emerge,
Then my city
rounds and rises,
Like a vapour formed afar,
And its sudden girth

surprises,
And its shadowy gates unbar.
Dreamy crowds are moving yonder
In a faint and phantom blue;

Through the dusk I lean, and wonder
If their winsome shapes are true;

But in veiling indecision
Come my questions back again--
Which
is real? The fleeting vision?
Or the fleeting world of men?
EVENING
From upland slopes I see the cows file by,
Lowing, great-chested,
down the homeward trail,
By dusking fields and meadows shining
pale
With moon-tipped dandelions. Flickering high,
A peevish
night-hawk in the western sky
Beats up into the lucent solitudes,
Or
drops with griding wing. The stilly woods
Grow dark and deep and
gloom mysteriously.
Cool night-winds creep, and whisper in mine ear

The homely cricket gossips at my feet.
From far-off pools and
wastes of reeds I hear,
Clear and soft-piped, the chanting frogs break
sweet
In full Pandean chorus. One by one
Shine out the stars, and
the great night comes on.
THE CLEARER SELF
Before me grew the human soul,
And after I am dead and gone,

Through grades of effort and control
The marvellous work shall still
go on.
Each mortal in his little span
Hath only lived, if he have shown

What greatness there can be in man
Above the measured and the
known;
How through the ancient layers of night,
In gradual victory secure,

Grows ever with increasing light
The Energy serene and pure:
The Soul, that from a monstrous past,
From age to age, from hour to
hour,
Feels upward to some height at last
Of unimagined grace and

power.
Though yet the sacred fire be dull,
In folds of thwarting matter furled,

Ere death be nigh, while life is full,
O Master Spirit of the world,
Grant me to know, to seek, to find,
In some small measure though it
be,
Emerging from the waste and blind,
The clearer self, the
grander me!
TO THE PROPHETIC SOUL
What are these bustlers at the gate
Of now or yesterday,
These
playthings in the hand of Fate,
That pass, and point no way;
These clinging bubbles whose mock fires
For ever dance and gleam,

Vain foam that gathers and expires
Upon the world's dark stream;
These gropers betwixt right and wrong,
That seek an unknown goal,

Most ignorant, when they seem most strong;
What are they, then,
O Soul,
That thou shouldst covet overmuch
A tenderer range of heart,
And
yet at every dreamed-of touch
So tremulously start?
Thou with that hatred ever new
Of the world's base control,
That
vision of the large and true,
That quickness of the soul;
Nay, for they are not of thy kind,
But in a rarer clay
God dowered
thee with an alien mind;
Thou canst not be as they.
Be strong therefore; resume thy load,
And forward stone by stone

Go singing, though the glorious road
Thou travellest alone.
THE LAND OF PALLAS
Methought I journeyed along ways that led for ever
Throughout a

happy land