Primavera | Page 6

saying: 'I heard a cry by night!?Go thou, and question not; within thy halls?My will awaits fulfilment. Lo, the dead?Cries out before me in the under-world.?Seek not to justify thyself: in me?Be strong, and I will show thee wise in time;?For, though my face be dark, yet unto those?Who truly follow me through storm or shine,?For these the veil shall fall, and they shall see?They walked with Wisdom, though they knew her not.'?So sped I home; and from the under-world?Forever came a wind that fill'd my sails,?Cold, like a spirit! and ever her still voice?Spoke over shoreless seas and fathomless deeps,?And in great calms, as from a colder world;?Nor slack'd I sail by day, nor yet when night?Fell on my running keel, and now would burn,?With all her eyes, my errand into me.?So sped I on, fill'd with a voice divine:?And hardly wist I whom I was to slay,?My mother! but a vague, heroic dream?Possess'd me; fired to do the will of gods,?I lost the man in minister of Heaven;?Nor took I note of sandbank, nor of storm,?Nor of the ocean's thunders, when the shores?All round had faded, leaving me alone:?I knew I could not die, till I had slain!?But, when I came once more upon the land?That rear'd me, all the sweetness of old days?Came back on me: I stood, as from a dream?Waked to a sudden, sad reality.?And when, far off, I saw those ancient towers,?The palaces and places of my youth,?I long'd to fall into my mother's arms,?And tell a thousand tales of near escapes.?And lo! the nurse, that fondled me of yore,?Fell with glad tears upon my neck, and told?How she, and how my mother, all this while?Had dream'd of all I was to do, and said?How dear I should be to my mother's eyes.?Her words shook me, but shook not my resolve.?For even then there came that sterner voice,?Echoing to what was highest in the soul.?Then, like to those who have a work on earth,?And put far from them lips of wife or child,?And gird them to the accomplishment; so I?Strode in, nor saw at all mine ancient halls;?And struck my father's murderess, not my mother.?And, when I had smitten, lo, the strength of gods?Pass'd from me, and the old, familiar halls?Reel'd back on me; dim statues, that of old?Holding my mother's hand I marvell'd at,?And questioned her of each. And she lies there,?My mother! ay, my mother now; O hair?That once I play'd with in these halls! O eyes?That for a moment knew me as I came,?And lighten'd up, and trembled into love;?The next were darkened by my hand! Ah me!?Ye will not look upon me in that world.?Yet thou, perchance, art happier, if thou go'st?Into some land of wind and drifting leaves,?To sleep without a star; but as for me,?Hell hungers, and the restless Furies wait.?Then the dark Curse, that sits upon the towers,?Bow'd down her awful head, thus satisfied,?And I fled forth, a murderer, through the world.
STEPHEN PHILLIPS.
THE SEASONS' COMFORT
Dry thine eyes, Doll! the stars above us shine;?God of His goodness made them mine and thine;?His silver have we gotten, and His gold,?Whilst there's a sun to call us in the morn?To ply the hook among amid the yellow corn,?That such a mine of pretty gems doth hold:?For there's the poppy half in sorrow,?Greeting sleepy-eyed the morrow,?And the corn-flower, dainty tire for a sweetheart sunny-poll'd.
Dry thine eyes, Doll! the woods are all our own,?The woods that soon shall take a braver tone,?What time the frosts first silver Nature's hair;?The birds shall sing their best for thee and me;?And every sunrise listeners will we be,?And so of singing get the goodliest share;?When the thrushes sing so sweetly,?We would fain be footing featly,?But our hearts dance time instead in the throbbing matin air.
Dry thine eyes, Doll! there's Love to feed our fire,?Not for the buying, but for the desire;?Winter ne'er quenched a blaze so bravely fed.?And Sleep, I wot, will grudge us not his best:?In winter earlier sink the suns to rest,?And eke the sooner shall our toils be sped;?When in the embers glowing?There'll be love-charms worth the knowing,?Or, at Yule-tide, mazes threaded, with the mistletoe o'erhead.
ARTHUR S. CRIPPS.

O Summer sun, O moving trees!?O cheerful human noise, O busy glittering street!?What hour shall Fate in all the future find,?Or what delights, ever to equal these:?Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind,?Only to be alive, and feel that life is sweet?
LAURENCE BINYON.
MENTEM MORTALIA TANGUNT
Now lonely is the wood:?No flower now lingers, none!?The virgin sisterhood?Of roses, all are gone;?Now Autumn sheds her latest leaf;?And in my heart is grief.
Ah me, for all earth rears,?The appointed bound is placed!?After a thousand years?The great oak falls at last:?And thou, more lovely, canst not stay,?Sweet rose, beyond thy day.
Our life is not the life?Of roses and of