Alcyone | Page 9

of all that
summer and love had dowered them,
Dream, sad-limbed, beholding
their pomp and treasure
Ruthlessly scattered:
Yet they quail not: Winter with wind and iron
Comes and finds them
silent and uncomplaining,
Finds them tameless, beautiful still and
gracious,
Gravely enduring.
Me too changes, bitter and full of evil,
Dream by dream have
plundered and left me naked,
Grey with sorrow. Even the days before
me
Fade into twilight,
Mute and barren. Yet will I keep my spirit
Clear and valiant, brother
to these my noble
Elms and maples, utterly grave and fearless,
Grandly ungrieving.
Brief the span is, counting the years of mortals,
Strange and sad; it
passes, and then the bright earth,
Careless mother, gleaming with
gold and azure,
Lovely with blossoms--
Shining white anemones, mixed with roses,
Daisies mild-eyed,
grasses and honeyed clover--
You, and me, and all of us, met and
equal,
Softly shall cover.

VOICES OF EARTH
We have not heard the music of the spheres,
The song of star to star,
but there are sounds
More deep than human joy and human tears,

That Nature uses in her common rounds;
The fall of streams, the cry
of winds that strain
The oak, the roaring of the sea's surge, might
Of
thunder breaking afar off, or rain
That falls by minutes in the summer
night.
These are the voices of earth's secret soul,
Uttering the
mystery from which she came.
To him who hears them grief beyond
control,
Or joy inscrutable without a name,
Wakes in his heart
thoughts bedded there, impearled,
Before the birth and making of the
world.
PECCAVI, DOMINE
O Power to whom this earthly clime
Is but an atom in the whole,
O
Poet-heart of Space and Time,
O Maker and Immortal Soul,
Within
whose glowing rings are bound,
Out of whose sleepless heart had
birth
The cloudy blue, the starry round,
And this small miracle of
earth:
Who liv'st in every living thing,
And all things are thy script and
chart,
Who rid'st upon the eagle's wing,
And yearnest in the human
heart;
O Riddle with a single clue,
Love, deathless, protean, secure,

The ever old, the ever new,
O Energy, serene and pure.
Thou, who art also part of me,
Whose glory I have sometime seen,

O Vision of the Ought-to-be,
O Memory of the Might-have-been,
I
have had glimpses of thy way,
And moved with winds and walked
with stars,
But, weary, I have fallen astray,
And, wounded, who
shall count my scars?
O Master, all my strength is gone;
Unto the very earth I bow;
I have
no light to lead me on;
With aching heart and burning brow,

I lie as
one that travaileth
In sorrow more than he can bear;
I sit in darkness

as of death,
And scatter dust upon my hair.
The God within my soul hath slept,
And I have shamed the nobler
rule;
O Master, I have whined and crept;
O Spirit, I have played the
fool.
Like him of old upon whose head
His follies hung in dark
arrears,
I groan and travail in my bed,
And water it with bitter tears.
I stand upon thy mountain-heads,
And gaze until mine eyes are dim;

The golden morning glows and spreads;
The hoary vapours break
and swim.
I see thy blossoming fields, divine,
Thy shining clouds,
thy blessed trees--
And then that broken soul of mine--
How much
less beautiful than these!
O Spirit, passionless, but kind,
Is there in all the world, I cry,

Another one so base and blind,
Another one so weak as I?
O Power,
unchangeable, but just,
Impute this one good thing to me,
I sink my
spirit to the dust
In utter dumb humility.
AN ODE TO THE HILLS
'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence
cometh my
help.'--PSALM CXXI. 1.
Æons ago ye were,
Before the struggling changeful race of man

Wrought into being, ere the tragic stir
Of human toil and deep desire
began:
So shall ye still remain,
Lords of an elder and immutable
race,
When many a broad metropolis of the plain,
Or thronging port
by some renownèd shore,
Is sunk in nameless ruin, and its place

Recalled no more.
Empires have come and gone,
And glorious cities fallen in their
prime;
Divine, far-echoing, names once writ in stone
Have vanished
in the dust and void of time;
But ye, firm-set, secure,
Like Treasure
in the hardness of God's palm,
Are yet the same for ever; ye endure

By virtue of an old slow-ripening word,
In your grey majesty and

sovereign calm,
Untouched, unstirred.
Tempest and thunderstroke,
With whirlwinds dipped in midnight at
the core,
Have torn strange furrows through your forest cloak,
And
made your hollow gorges clash and roar,
And scarred your brows in
vain.
Around your barren heads and granite steeps
Tempestuous
grey battalions of the rain
Charge and recharge, across the plateaued
floors,
Drenching the serried pines; and the hail sweeps
Your
pitiless scaurs.
The long midsummer heat
Chars the thin leafage of your rocks in fire:

Autumn with windy robe and ruinous feet
On your wide forests
wreaks his fell desire,
Heaping in barbarous wreck
The treasure of
your sweet and prosperous days;
And lastly the grim tyrant, at whose
beck
Channels are turned to stone and tempests wheel,
On brow
and breast and shining shoulder lays
His hand of steel.
And yet not harsh alone,
Nor wild, nor bitter are your destinies,
O
fair