Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 3

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 their bright hair? who puts
A
wind-shell to each cheek,
Whispering betwixt its breathing silences,
"Seek! seek!"?
Who is it watching in the gathering twilight
When the curfew bird
hath flown
On eager wings, from song to silence,
To its darkened
nest alone?
Who takes for brightening eyes the stars,
For locks the
still moonbeam,
Sighs through the dews of evening peacefully
Falling, "Dream!"?
THULE
If thou art sweet as they are sad
Who on the shores of Time's salt sea

Watch on the dim horizon fade
Ships bearing love to night and

thee;
If past all beacons Hope hath lit
In the dark wanderings of the deep

They who unwilling traverse it
Dream not till dawn unseal their
sleep;
Ah, cease not in thy winds to mock
Us, who yet wake, but cannot see

Thy distant shores; who at each shock
Of the waves' onset faint for
thee!
THE BIRTHNIGHT: TO F.
Dearest, it was a night
That in its darkness rocked Orion's stars;
A
sighing wind ran faintly white
Along the willows, and the cedar
boughs
Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across
The starry
silence of their antique moss:
No sound save rushing air
Cold, yet
all sweet with Spring,
And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping
there,
Thou, lovely thing.
THE DEATH-DREAM
Who, now, put dreams into thy slumbering mind?
Who, with bright
Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand
Athwart its beam, and stooping,
truth maligned,
Spake so thy spirit speech should understand,
And
with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal
Of frenzied bells along the
vacant ways
Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal,
Like
dawn distraught upon unhappy days,
To prove nought, nothing? Was
it Time's large voice
Out of the inscrutable future whispered so?
Or
but the horror of a little noise
Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does
Love know
When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even
In
sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse?
Or, haply, was it I who out of
dream
Stole but a little where shadows course,
Called back to thee
across the eternal stream?

"WHERE IS THY VICTORY?"
None, none can tell where I shall be
When the unclean earth covers
me;
Only in surety if thou cry
Where my perplexed ashes lie,

Know, 'tis but death's necessity
That keeps my tongue from
answering thee.
Even if no more my shadow may
Lean for a moment in thy day;
No
more the whole earth lighten, as if,
Thou near, it had nought else to
give:
Surely 'tis but Heaven's strategy
To prove death immortality.
Yet should I sleep--and no more dream,
Sad would the last
awakening seem,
If my cold heart, with love once hot,
Had thee in
sleep remembered not:
How could I wake to find that I
Had slept
alone, yet easefully?
Or should in sleep glad visions come:
Sick, in an alien land, for home

Would be my eyes in their bright beam;
Awake, we know 'tis not a
dream;
Asleep, some devil in the mind
Might truest thoughts with
false enwind.
Life is a mockery if death
Have the least power men say it hath.
As
to a hound that mewing waits,
Death opens, and shuts to, his gates;

Else even dry bones might rise and say,--
"'Tis ye are dead and laid
away."
Innocent children out of nought
Build up a universe of thought,

And out of silence fashion Heaven:
So, dear, is this poor dying even,

Seeing thou shall be touched, heard, seen,
Better than when dust
stood between.
FOREBODING
Thou canst not see him standing by--
Time--with a poppied hand

Stealing thy youth's simplicity,
Even as falls unceasingly

His waning sand.
He will pluck thy childish roses, as
Summer from her bush
Strips all the loveliness that was;
Even to
the silence evening has
Thy laughter hush.
Thy locks too faint for earthly gold,
The meekness of thine eyes,
He will darken and dim, and to his fold

Drive, 'gainst the night, thy stainless, old
Innocencies;
Thy simple words confuse and mar,
Thy tenderest thoughts delude,
Draw a long cloud athwart thy star,

Still with loud timbrels heaven's far
Faint interlude.
Thou canst not see; I see, dearest;
O, then, yet patient be,
Though love refuse thy heart all rest,

Though even love wax angry, lest
Love should lose thee?
VAIN FINDING
Ever before my face there went
Betwixt earth's buds and me
A
beauty beyond earth's content,
A hope--half memory:
Till in the
woods one evening--
Ah! eyes as dark as they,
Fastened on mine
unwontedly,
Grey, and dear heart, how grey!
NAPOLEON

"What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant