Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. | Page 4

sleep the owl?Through the dewy air to prowl.
Hawking the meadows swiftly he flits,?While the small mouse atrembling sits?With tiny eye of fear upcast?Until his brooding shape be past,?Hiding her where the moonbeams beat,?Casting black shadows in the wheat.
Now all is still: the field-man is?Lapped deep in slumbering silentness.?Not a leaf stirs, but clouds on high?Pass in dim flocks across the sky,?Puffed by a breeze too light to move?Aught but these wakeful sheep above.
O what an arch of light now spans?These fields by night no longer Man's!?Their ancient Master is abroad,?Walking beneath the moonlight cold:?His presence is the stillness, He?Fills earth with wonder and mystery.
NIGHT
All from the light of the sweet moon
Tired men lie now abed;?Actionless, full of visions, soon
Vanishing, soon sped.
The starry night aflock with beams
Of crystal light scarce stirs:?Only its birds--the cocks, the streams,
Call 'neath heaven's wanderers.
All silent; all hearts still;
Love, cunning, fire fallen low:?When faint morn straying on the hill
Sighs, and his soft airs flow.
THE UNIVERSE
I heard a little child beneath the stars
Talk as he ran along?To some sweet riddle in his mind that seemed
A-tiptoe into song.
In his dark eyes lay a wild universe,--
Wild forests, peaks, and crests;?Angels and fairies, giants, wolves and he
Were that world's only guests.
Elsewhere was home and mother, his warm bed:--
Now, only God alone?Could, armed with all His power and wisdom, make
Earths richer than his own.
O Man!--thy dreams, thy passions, hopes, desires!--
He in his pity keep?A homely bed where love may lull a child's
Fond Universe asleep!
GLORIA MUNDI
Upon a bank, easeless with knobs of gold,?Beneath a canopy of noonday smoke,?I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold,?With eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke,?Who stares upon the daylight in despair?For very terror of the nothing there.
This beast in one flat hand clutched vulture-wise?A glittering image of itself in jet,?And with the other groped about its eyes?To drive away the dreams that pestered it;?And never ceased its coils to toss and beat?The mire encumbering its feeble feet.
Sharp was its hunger, though continually?It seemed a cud of stones to ruminate,?And often like a dog let glittering lie?This meatless fare, its foolish gaze to sate;?Once more convulsively to stoop its jaw,?Or seize the morsel with an envious paw.
Indeed, it seemed a hidden enemy?Must lurk within the clouds above that bank,?It strained so wildly its pale, stubborn eye,?To pierce its own foul vapours dim and dank;?Till, wearied out, it raved in wrath and foam,?Daring that Nought Invisible to come.
Ay, and it seemed some strange delight to find?In this unmeaning din, till, suddenly,?As if it heard a rumour on the wind,?Or far away its freer children cry,?Lifting its face made-quiet, there it stayed,?Till died the echo its own rage had made.
That place alone was barren where it lay;?Flowers bloomed beyond, utterly sweet and fair;?And even its own dull heart might think to stay?In livelong thirst of a clear river there,?Flowing from unseen hills to unheard seas,?Through a still vale of yew and almond trees.
And then I spied in the lush green below?Its tortured belly, One, like silver, pale,?With fingers closed upon a rope of straw,?That bound the Beast, squat neck to hoary tail;?Lonely in all that verdure faint and deep,?He watched the monster as a shepherd sheep.
I marvelled at the power, strength, and rage?Of this poor creature in such slavery bound;?Tettered with worms of fear; forlorn with age;?Its blue wing-stumps stretched helpless on the ground;?While twilight faded into darkness deep,?And he who watched it piped its pangs asleep.
IDLENESS
I saw old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks?Puffed to the huge circumference of a sigh,?But past all tinge of apples long ago.?His boyish fingers twiddled up and down?The filthy remnant of a cup of physic?That thicked in odour all the while he stayed.?His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up?And stare upon an element not theirs?Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then?Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down,?Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream.?His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it;?And never were such meagre puppets made?The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts?Of that obese epitome of ills.?Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself;?And when upon the wan green of his eye?I marked the gathering lustre of a tear,?Thought I myself must weep, until I caught?A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch?His pallid features at his misery.?And laugh did I, to see the little snares?He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet?Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool?To seat such elephantine parts as his;?Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible;?And, to incite a gross and backward wit,?An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and?A foxy Ovid bound in dappled calf.
GOLIATH
Still as a mountain with dark pines and sun?He stood between the armies, and his shout?Rolled from the empyrean above the host:?"Bid any little flea ye have come forth,?And wince at death