Later Poems | Page 2

Oh what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!
To this misgiving breast
The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest

Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.
Unhoped, unsought!
A little tenderness, this mother thought
The utmost of her meed
She looked for gratitude; content indeed

With thus much that her nine years' love had bought.
Nay, even with less.
This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress,
Desired ah! not so much
Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing
touch
Expected, and the slight, the brief caress.
Oh filial light
Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright
Intelligible stars! Their rays
Are near the constant earth, guides in the
maze,
Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days.
WEST WIND IN WINTER
Another day awakes. And who--
Changing the world--is this?
He comes at whiles, the Winter through,
West Wind! I would not miss
His sudden tryst: the long, the new
Surprises of his kiss.
Vigilant, I make haste to close
With him who comes my way.
I go to meet him as he goes;
I know his note, his lay,
His colour and his morning rose;

And I confess his day.
My window waits; at dawn I hark
His call; at morn I meet
His haste around the tossing park
And down the softened street;
The gentler light is his; the dark,
The grey--he turns it sweet.
So too, so too, do I confess
My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess
With his immortal things.
I feel, I know him. On I press--
He finds me 'twixt his wings.
NOVEMBER BLUE
_The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a
complementary tint to the air in the early evening_.--ESSAY ON
LONDON.
O, Heavenly colour! London town
Has blurred it from her skies;
And hooded in an earthly brown,
Unheaven'd the city lies.
No longer standard-like this hue
Above the broad road flies;
Nor does the narrow street the blue
Wear, slender pennon-wise.
But when the gold and silver lamps
Colour the London dew,
And, misted by the winter damps,

The shops shine bright anew--
Blue comes to earth, it walks the
street,
It dyes the wide air through;
A mimic sky about their feet,
The throng go crowned with blue.
CHIMES
Brief, on a flying night,
From the shaken tower,
A flock of bells
take flight,
And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,
Abrupt--O hark!
A fleet of
bells set sails,
And go to the dark.
Sudden the cold airs swing.
Alone, aloud,
A verse of bells takes
wing
And flies with the cloud.
UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN
Given, not lent,
And not withdrawn--once sent--
This Infant of
mankind, this One,
Is still the little welcome Son.
New every year,
New-born and newly dear,
He comes with tidings
and a song,
The ages long, the ages long.
Even as the cold
Keen winter grows not old;
As childhood is so
fresh, foreseen,
And spring in the familiar green;
Sudden as sweet
Come the expected feet.
All joy is young, and new
all art,
And He, too, Whom we have by heart.
A DEAD HARVEST
[IN KENSINGTON GARDENS]
Along the graceless grass of town
They rake the rows of red and
brown,
Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay,
Delicate, neither gold

nor grey,
Raked long ago and far away.
A narrow silence in the park;
Between the lights a narrow dark.
One
street rolls on the north, and one,
Muffled, upon the south doth run.

Amid the mist the work is done.
A futile crop; for it the fire
Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.
So
go the town's lives on the breeze,
Even as the sheddings of the trees;

Bosom nor barn is filled with these.
THE TWO POETS
Whose is the speech
That moves the voices of this lonely beech?

Out of the long West did this wild wind come--
Oh strong and silent!
And the tree was dumb,
Ready and dumb, until
The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.
Two memories,
Two powers, two promises, two silences
Closed in
this cry, closed in these thousand leaves
Articulate. This sudden hour
retrieves
The purpose of the past,
Separate, apart--embraced, embraced at last.
"Whose is the word?
Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?"

"Thine earth was solitary; yet I found thee!"
"Thy sky was pathless,
but I caught, I bound thee,
Thou visitant divine."
"O thou my Voice, the word was thine."
"Was thine."
A POET'S WIFE
I saw a tract of ocean locked in-land
Within a field's embrace--
The very sea! Afar it fled the strand

And gave the seasons chase,
And met the night alone, the tempest
spanned,
Saw sunrise face to face.
O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier!
In inaccessible rest
And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost stir,
Scattered through east to west,--
Now, while thou closest with the
kiss of her
Who locks thee to her breast.
VENERATION OF IMAGES
Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat,
Gather, clasp, welcome, bind,
Lack, or remember! whose warm
pulses beat
With love of thine own kind;
Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea,