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

or have thy wings
Wearied of my unchanging skies?

Or, haply, is it fading dreams
Are in my eyes?
Not even an echo in my heart
Tells me the courts thy feet trod last,

Bare as a leafless wood it is,
The summer past.
My inmost mind is like a book
The reader dulls with lassitude,

Wherein the same old 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--