Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 8

rest,
On vacant
stall, gold, refuse, worst and best,
Abandoned utterly in haste and
fear.
ANATOMY
By chance my fingers, resting on my face,
Stayed suddenly where in
its orbit shone
The lamp of all things beautiful; then on,
Following
more heedfully, did softly trace
Each arch and prominence and
hollow place
That shall revealed be when all else is gone--
Warmth,
colour, roundness--to oblivion,
And nothing left but darkness and
disgrace.

Life like a moment passed seemed then to be;
A transient dream this
raiment that it wore;
While spelled my hand out its mortality
Made
certain all that had seemed doubt before:
Proved--O how vaguely, yet
how lucidly!--
How much death does; and yet can do no more.
EVEN IN THE GRAVE
I laid my inventory at the hand
Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour
sate;
And while he conned it, sweet and desolate
I heard Love
singing in that quiet land.
He read the record even to the end--
The
heedless, livelong injuries of Fate,
The burden of foe, the burden of
love and hate;
The wounds of foe, the bitter wounds of friend:
All, all, he read, ay, even the indifference,
The vain talk, vainer
silence, hope and dream.
He questioned me: "What seek'st thou then
instead?"
I bowed my face in the pale evening gleam.
Then gazed
he on me with strange innocence:
"Even in the grave thou wilt have
thyself," he said.
BRIGHT LIFE
"Come now," I said, "put off these webs of death,
Distract this leaden
yearning of thine eyes
From lichened banks of peace, sad mysteries

Of dust fallen-in where passed the flitting breath:
Turn thy sick
thoughts from him that slumbereth
In mouldered linen to the living
skies,
The sun's bright-clouded principalities,
The salt deliciousness
the sea-breeze hath!
"Lay thy warm hand on earth's cold clods and think
What exquisite
greenness sprouts from these to grace
The moving fields of summer;
on the brink
Of archèd waves the sea-horizon trace,
Whence wheels
night's galaxy; and in silence sink
The pride in rapture of life's
dwelling-place!"
HUMANITY

"Ever exulting in thyself, on fire
To flaunt the purple of the Universe,

To strut and strut, and thy great part rehearse;
Ever the slave of
every proud desire;
Come now a little down where sports thy sire;

Choose thy small better from thy abounding worse;
Prove thou thy
lordship who hadst dust for nurse,
And for thy swaddling the
primeval mire!"
Then stooped our Manhood nearer, deep and still,
As from earth's
mountains an unvoyaged sea,
Hushed my faint voice in its great
peace until
It seemed but a bird's cry in eternity;
And in its future
loomed the undreamable,
And in its past slept simple men like me.
VIRTUE
Her breast is cold; her hands how faint and wan!
And the deep
wonder of her starry eyes
Seemingly lost in cloudless Paradise,
And
all earth's sorrow out of memory gone.
Yet sings her clear voice
unrelenting on
Of loveliest impossibilities;
Though echo only
answer her with sighs
Of effort wasted and delights foregone.
Spent, baffled, 'wildered, hated and despised,
Her straggling warriors
hasten to defeat;
By wounds distracted, and by night surprised,
Fall
where death's darkness and oblivion meet:
Yet, yet: O breast how
cold! O hope how far!
Grant my son's ashes lie where these men's
are!

MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

REVERIE
Bring not bright candles, for his eyes
In twilight have sweet company;

Bring not bright candles, else they fly--
His phantoms fly--

Gazing aggrieved on thee!

Bring not bright candles, startle not
The phantoms of a vacant room,

Flocking above a child that dreams--
Deep, deep in dreams,--
Hid,
in the gathering gloom!
Bring not bright candles to those eyes
That between earth and stars
descry,
Lovelier for the shadows there,
Children of air,
Palaces in
the sky!
THE MASSACRE
The shadow of a poplar tree
Lay in that lake of sun,
As I with my
little sword went in--
Against a thousand, one.
Haughty and infinitely armed,
Insolent in their wrath,
Plumed high
with purple plumes they held
The narrow meadow path.
The air was sultry; all was still;
The sun like flashing glass;
And
snip-snap my light-whispering steel
In arcs of light did pass.
Lightly and dull fell each proud head,
Spiked keen without avail,

Till swam my uncontented blade
With ichor green and pale.
And silence fell: the rushing sun
Stood still in paths of heat,
Gazing
in waves of horror on
The dead about my feet.
Never a whir of wing, no bee
Stirred o'er the shameful slain;

Nought but a thirsty wasp crept in,
Stooped, and came out again.
The very air trembled in fear;
Eclipsing shadow seemed
Rising in
crimson waves of gloom--
On one who dreamed.
ECHO
"Who called?" I said, and the words
Through the whispering glades,

Hither, thither, baffled the birds--
"Who called? Who called?"

The leafy boughs on high
Hissed in the sun;
The dark air carried
my cry
Faintingly on:
Eyes in the green, in the shade,
In the motionless brake,
Voices that
said what I said,
For mockery's sake:
"Who cares?" I bawled through my tears;
The wind fell low:
In the
silence, "Who cares? who cares?"
Wailed to and fro.
FEAR
I know where lurk
The eyes of Fear;
I, I alone,
Where
shadowy-clear,
Watching for me,
Lurks Fear.
'Tis ever still
And dark, despite
All singing and
All candlelight,

'Tis ever cold,
And night.
He touches me;
Says quietly,
"Stir not, nor whisper,
I am nigh;

Walk noiseless on,
I