Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 2

lovely words
Sound poor and rude.
Yet through this vapid surface, I?Seem to see old-time deeps; I see,?Past the dark painting of the hour,
Life's ecstasy.
Only a moment; as when day?Is set, and in the shade of night,?Through all the clouds that compassed her,
Stoops into sight
Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian,?Gleams on the prone Endymion,?Troubles the dulness of his dreams:
And then is gone.
REMEMBRANCE
The sky was like a waterdrop?In shadow of a thorn,?Clear, tranquil, beautiful,?Dark, forlorn.
Lightning along its margin ran;?A rumour of the sea?Rose in profundity and sank?Into infinity.
Lofty and few the elms, the stars?In the vast boughs most bright;?I stood a dreamer in a dream?In the unstirring night.
Not wonder, worship, not even peace?Seemed in my heart to be:?Only the memory of one,?Of all most dead to me.
TREACHERY
She had amid her ringlets bound?Green leaves to rival their dark hue;?How could such locks with beauty bound
Dry up their dew,?Wither them through and through?
She had within her dark eyes lit?Sweet fires to burn all doubt away;?Yet did those fires, in darkness lit,
Burn but a day,?Not even till twilight stay.
She had within a dusk of words?A vow in simple splendour set;?How, in the memory of such words,
Could she forget?That vow--the soul of it?
IN VAIN
I knocked upon thy door ajar,?While yet the woods with buds were grey;?Nought but a little child I heard
Warbling at break of day.
I knocked when June had lured her rose?To mask the sharpness of its thorn;?Knocked yet again, heard only yet
Thee singing of the morn.
The frail convolvulus had wreathed?Its cup, but the faint flush of eve?Lingered upon thy Western wall;
Thou hadst no word to give.
Once yet I came; the winter stars?Above thy house wheeled wildly bright;?Footsore I stood before thy door--
Wide open into night.
THE MIRACLE
Who beckons the green ivy up?Its solitary tower of stone??What spirit lures the bindweed's cup
Unfaltering on??Calls even the starry lichen to climb?By agelong inches endless Time?
Who bids the hollyhock uplift?Her rod of fast-sealed buds on high;?Fling wide her petals--silent, swift,
Lovely to the sky??Since as she kindled, so she will fade,?Flower above flower in squalor laid.
Ever the heavy billow rears?All its sea-length in green, hushed wall;?But totters as the shore it nears,
Foams to its fall;?Where was its mark? on what vain quest?Rose that great water from its rest?
So creeps ambition on; so climb?Man's vaunting thoughts. He, set on high,?Forgets his birth, small space, brief time,
That he shall die;?Dreams blindly in his dark, still air;?Consumes his strength; strips himself bare;
Rejects delight, ease, pleasure, hope,?Seeking in vain, but seeking yet,?Past earthly promise, earthly scope,
On one aim set:?As if, like Chaucer's child, he thought?All but "O Alma!" nought.
KEEP INNOCENCY
Like an old battle, youth is wild?With bugle and spear, and counter cry,?Fanfare and drummery, yet a child?Dreaming of that sweet chivalry,?The piercing terror cannot see.
He, with a mild and serious eye?Along the azure of the years,?Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by;?But he sees not death's blood and tears,?Sees not the plunging of the spears.
And all the strident horror of?Horse and rider, in red defeat,?Is only music fine enough?To lull him into slumber sweet?In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat.
O, if with such simplicity?Himself take arms and suffer war;?With beams his targe shall gilded be,?Though in the thickening gloom be far?The steadfast light of any star!
Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch,?Quickened with guilty lightnings--there?It shall in vain for terror search,?Where a child's eyes beneath bloody hair?Gaze purely through the dingy air.
And when the wheeling rout is spent,?Though in the heaps of slain he lie;?Or lonely in his last content;?Quenchless shall burn in secrecy?The flame Death knows his victors by.
THE PHANTOM
Wilt thou never come again,?Beauteous one??Yet the woods are green and dim,?Yet the birds' deluding cry?Echoes in the hollow sky,?Yet the falling waters brim?The clear pool which thou wast fain?To paint thy lovely cheek upon,
Beauteous one!
I may see the thorny rose
Stir and wake?The dark dewdrop on her gold;?But thy secret will she keep?Half-divulged--yet all untold,?Since a child's heart woke from sleep.
The faltering sunbeam fades and goes;?The night-bird whistles in the brake;
The willows quake;?Utter darkness walls; the wind
Sighs no more.?Yet it seems the silence yearns?But to catch thy fleeting foot;?Yet the wandering glowworm burns?Lest her lamp should light thee not--?Thee whom I shall never find;?Though thy shadow lean before,?Thou thyself return'st no more--
Never more.
All the world's woods, tree o'er tree,
Come to nought.?Birds, flowers, beasts, how transient they,?Angels of a flying day.?Love is quenched; dreams drown in sleep;?Ruin nods along the deep:?Only thou immortally
Hauntest on?This poor earth in Time's flux caught;?Hauntest on, pursued, unwon,?Phantom child of memory,
Beauteous one!
VOICES
Who is it calling by the darkened river?Where the moss lies smooth and deep,?And the dark trees lean unmoving arms,?Silent and vague in sleep,?And the bright-heeled constellations pass?In splendour through the gloom;?Who is it calling o'er the darkened river
In music, "Come!"?
Who is it wandering in the summer meadows?Where the children stoop and play?In the green faint-scented flowers, spinning?The guileless hours away??Who touches