Poems | Page 9

god like to those grim Asgard lords, Who walk the fables of
the hordes From Scandinavian fjords,
Upheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven, Against the whirl-blast
and the levin, Defiant arms to Heaven.
When doom puffed out the stars, we might have said, It would decline
its heavy head, And see the world to bed.
For this firm yew did from the vassal leas, And rain and air, its
tributaries, Its revenues increase,
And levy impost on the golden sun, Take the blind years as they might
run, And no fate seek or shun.
But now our yew is strook, is fallen--yea Hacked like dull wood of
every day To this and that, men say.
Never! -To Hades' shadowy shipyards gone, Dim barge of Dis, down
Acheron It drops, or Lethe wan.
Stirred by its fall--poor destined bark of Dis! - Along my soul a bruit
there is Of echoing images,
Reverberations of mortality: Spelt backward from its death, to me Its
life reads saddenedly.
Its breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld; And boys, their creeping
unbeheld, A laughing moment dwelled.
Yet they, within its very heart so crept, Reached not the heart that
courage kept With winds and years beswept.
And in its boughs did close and kindly nest The birds, as they within its
breast, By all its leaves caressed.
But bird nor child might touch by any art Each other's or the tree's hid
heart, A whole God's breadth apart;
The breadth of God, he breadth of death and life! Even so, even so, in
undreamed strife With pulseless Law, the wife, -

The sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day, - Their souls at grapple in
mid-way, Sweet to her sweet may say:
"I take you to my inmost heart, my true!" Ah, fool! but there is one
heart you Shall never take him to!
The hold that falls not when the town is got, The heart's heart, whose
immured plot Hath keys yourself keep not!
Its ports you cannot burst--you are withstood - For him that to your
listening blood Sends precepts as he would.
Its gates are deaf to Love, high summoner; Yea, Love's great warrant
runs not there: You are your prisoner.
Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress In that unleaguerable
fortress; It knows you not for portress
Its keys are at the cincture hung of God; Its gates are trepidant to His
nod; By Him its floors are trod.
And if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath, Or blest aspersion sleek
His path, Is only choice it hath.
Yea, in that ultimate heart's occult abode To lie as in an oubliette of
God, Or as a bower untrod,
Built by a secret Lover for His Spouse; - Sole choice is this your life
allows, Sad tree, whose perishing boughs So few birds house!

DREAM-TRYST

The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern
Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord
seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn's grey
eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the sky, And mine
to Lucide.
There was no change in her sweet eyes Since last I saw those sweet
eyes shine; There was no change in her deep heart Since last that deep
heart knocked at mine. Her eyes were clear, her eyes were Hope's,
Wherein did ever come and go The sparkle of the fountain-drops From
her sweet soul below.
The chambers in the house of dreams Are fed with so divine an air,
That Time's hoar wings grow young therein, And they who walk there
are most fair. I joyed for me, I joyed for her, Who with the Past meet
girt about: Where our last kiss still warms the air, Nor can her eyes go

out.

A CORYMBUS FOR AUTUMN

Hearken my chant, 'tis As a Bacchante's, A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a
tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis! Suffer my singing, Gipsy of Seasons, ere
thou go winging; Ere Winter throws His slaking snows In thy
feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows! The sopped sun--toper as ever
drank hard - Stares foolish, hazed, Rubicund, dazed, Totty with thine
October tankard. Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet, And
breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip, And a mouth too red for the
moon to buss it, But her cheek unvow its vestalship; Thy mists enclip
Her steel-clear circuit illuminous, Until it crust Rubiginous With the
glorious gules of a glowing rust. Far other saw we, other indeed, The
crescent moon, in the May-days dead, Fly up with its slender white
wings spread Out of its nest in the sea's waved mead! How are the
veins of thee, Autumn, laden? Umbered juices, And pulped oozes
Pappy out of the cherry-bruises,