Poems of the Past and the Present | Page 9

that thou would'st please?Inflict on us thine agonies,"
I said to him.
I said to Love,?"Thou art not young, thou art not fair,?No faery darts, no cherub air,
Nor swan, nor dove?Are thine; but features pitiless,?And iron daggers of distress,"
I said to Love.
"Depart then, Love! . . .?- Man's race shall end, dost threaten thou??The age to come the man of now
Know nothing of? -?We fear not such a threat from thee;?We are too old in apathy!?Mankind shall cease.--So let it be,"
I said to Love.
A COMMONPLACE DAY
The day is turning ghost,?And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host?Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.
I part the fire-gnawed logs,?Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
Upon the shining dogs;?Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,
And beamless black impends.
Nothing of tiniest worth?Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,
Since the pale corpse-like birth?Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays -
Dullest of dull-hued Days!
Wanly upon the panes?The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet
Here, while Day's presence wanes,?And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,
He wakens my regret.
Regret--though nothing dear?That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,
Or bloomed elsewhere than here,?To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,
Or mark him out in Time . . .
--Yet, maybe, in some soul,?In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,
Or some intent upstole?Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows
The world's amendment flows;
But which, benumbed at birth?By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be
Embodied on the earth;?And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity
May wake regret in me.
AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,?Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine?In even monochrome and curving line?Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry?With the torn troubled form I know as thine,?That profile, placid as a brow divine,?With continents of moil and misery?
And can immense Mortality but throw?So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme?Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,?Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,?Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?
THE LACKING SENSE?SCENE.--A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale
I
"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
As of angel fallen from grace?"
II
? "Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly: In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves. The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly, Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
? Such deeds her hands have done."
III
? "And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures, These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,
? Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
? Distress into delights?"
IV
? "Ah! know'st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience, Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves?
? That sightless are those orbs of hers?--which bar to her omniscience Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones
? Whereat all creation groans.
V
"She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,
When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves; Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever; Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch
That the seers marvel much.
VI
"Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;
Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;
And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction, Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,
For thou art of her clay."
TO LIFE
O life with the sad seared face,
I weary of seeing thee,?And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
And thy too-forced pleasantry!
I know what thou would'st tell
Of Death, Time, Destiny -?I have known it long, and know, too, well
What it all means for me.
But canst thou not array
Thyself in rare disguise,?And feign like truth, for one mad day,
That Earth is Paradise?
I'll tune me to the mood,
And mumm with thee till eve;?And maybe what as interlude
I feign, I shall believe!
DOOM AND SHE
I
There dwells a mighty pair -?Slow, statuesque, intense -?Amid the vague Immense:?None can their chronicle declare,
Nor why they be, nor whence.
II
Mother of all things made,?Matchless in artistry,?Unlit with sight is she. -?And though her ever well-obeyed
Vacant of feeling he.
III
The Matron mildly asks -?A throb in every word -?"Our clay-made creatures, lord,?How fare they in their mortal tasks
Upon Earth's bounded bord?
IV
"The fate of those I bear,?Dear lord,