Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces | Page 8

the water's brim,?And hers come up to meet it, as a dim?Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere,?And mariners wonder as they traverse near,
Unknowing of her and him.
VIII
One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:?"O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line;?Where are those songs, O poetess divine?Whose very arts are love incarnadine?"?And her smile back: "Disciple true and warm,
Sufficient now are thine." . . .
IX
So here, beneath the waking constellations,?Where the waves peal their everlasting strains,?And their dull subterrene reverberations?Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains -?Him once their peer in sad improvisations,?And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes -?I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines
Upon the capes and chines.
BONCHURCH, 1910.
A PLAINT TO MAN
When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,?And gained percipience as you grew,?And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,
Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you?The unhappy need of creating me -?A form like your own--for praying to?
My virtue, power, utility,?Within my maker must all abide,?Since none in myself can ever be,
One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide?Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,?And by none but its showman vivified.
"Such a forced device," you may say, "is meet?For easing a loaded heart at whiles:?Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat
Somewhere above the gloomy aisles?Of this wailful world, or he could not bear?The irk no local hope beguiles."
? But since I was framed in your first despair The doing without me has had no play In the minds of men when shadows scare;
And now that I dwindle day by day?Beneath the deicide eyes of seers?In a light that will not let me stay,
And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,?The truth should be told, and the fact be faced?That had best been faced in earlier years:
The fact of life with dependence placed?On the human heart's resource alone,?In brotherhood bonded close and graced
With loving-kindness fully blown,?And visioned help unsought, unknown.
1909-10.
GOD'S FUNERAL
I
I saw a slowly-stepping train -?Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar -?Following in files across a twilit plain?A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.
II
And by contagious throbs of thought?Or latent knowledge that within me lay?And had already stirred me, I was wrought?To consciousness of sorrow even as they.
III
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,?At first seemed man-like, and anon to change?To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,?At times endowed with wings of glorious range.
IV
And this phantasmal variousness?Ever possessed it as they drew along:?Yet throughout all it symboled none the less?Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.
V
Almost before I knew I bent?Towards the moving columns without a word;?They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,?Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:-
VI
"O man-projected Figure, of late?Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive??Whence came it we were tempted to create?One whom we can no longer keep alive?
VII
"Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,?We gave him justice as the ages rolled,?Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,?And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.
VIII
"And, tricked by our own early dream?And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,?Our making soon our maker did we deem,?And what we had imagined we believed.
IX
"Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,?Uncompromising rude reality?Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,?Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.
X
"So, toward our myth's oblivion,?Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope?Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,?Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.
XI
"How sweet it was in years far hied?To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,?To lie down liegely at the eventide?And feel a blest assurance he was there!
XII
"And who or what shall fill his place??Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes?For some fixed star to stimulate their pace?Towards the goal of their enterprise?" . . .
XIII
Some in the background then I saw,?Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,?Who chimed as one: "This figure is of straw,?This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!"
XIV
I could not prop their faith: and yet?Many I had known: with all I sympathized;?And though struck speechless, I did not forget?That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.
XV
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed?The insistent question for each animate mind,?And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed?A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,
XVI
Whereof to lift the general night,?A certain few who stood aloof had said,?"See you upon the horizon that small light -?Swelling somewhat?" Each mourner shook his head.
XVII
And they composed a crowd of whom?Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . .?Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom?Mechanically I followed with the rest.
1908-10.
SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE
"It is not death that harrows us," they lipped,?"The soundless cell is in itself relief,?For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped?At unawares, and at its best but brief."
The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,?Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,?As if the palest of sheet