Songs of Travel | Page 6

nobler strain;
But Heaven decreed I
should not pipe in vain,
For, lo! not far from there, in secret dale,

All silent, sat an ancient nightingale.
My sparrow notes he heard;
thereat awoke;
And with a tide of song his silence broke.
XX - TO -
I KNEW thee strong and quiet like the hills;
I knew thee apt to pity,
brave to endure,
In peace or war a Roman full equipt;
And just I
knew thee, like the fabled kings
Who by the loud sea-shore gave
judgment forth,
From dawn to eve, bearded and few of words.
What,
what, was I to honour thee? A child;
A youth in ardour but a child in
strength,
Who after virtue's golden chariot-wheels
Runs ever
panting, nor attains the goal.
So thought I, and was sorrowful at heart.
Since then my steps have visited that flood
Along whose shore the
numerous footfalls cease,
The voices and the tears of life expire.

Thither the prints go down, the hero's way
Trod large upon the sand,
the trembling maid's:
Nimrod that wound his trumpet in the wood,

And the poor, dreaming child, hunter of flowers,
That here his
hunting closes with the great:
So one and all go down, nor aught
returns.
For thee, for us, the sacred river waits,
For me, the unworthy, thee,
the perfect friend;
There Blame desists, there his unfaltering dogs

He from the chase recalls, and homeward rides;
Yet Praise and Love

pass over and go in.
So when, beside that margin, I discard
My
more than mortal weakness, and with thee
Through that still land
unfearing I advance:
If then at all we keep the touch of joy
Thou
shalt rejoice to find me altered - I,
O Felix, to behold thee still
unchanged.
XXI
THE morning drum-call on my eager ear
Thrills unforgotten yet; the
morning dew
Lies yet undried along my field of noon.
But now I pause at whiles in what I do,
And count the bell, and
tremble lest I hear
(My work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon.
XXII
I HAVE trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured
and done in days before;
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to
hope;
And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.
XXIII
HE hears with gladdened heart the thunder
Peal, and loves the falling
dew;
He knows the earth above and under -
Sits and is content to
view.
He sits beside the dying ember,
God for hope and man for friend,

Content to see, glad to remember,
Expectant of the certain end.
XXIV
FAREWELL, fair day and fading light!
The clay-born here, with
westward sight,
Marks the huge sun now downward soar.
Farewell.
We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh
My late contemned occasion die.


I linger useless in my tent:
Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God
At all consider this poor clod,
He
who the fair occasion sent
Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take -
Give me to sleep, give me to wake

Girded and shod, and bid me play
The hero in the coming day!
XXV - IF THIS WERE FAITH
GOD, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up
to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in the
husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God, if
this were faith?
Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having
seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes,
the work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with
blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the
sun
And the lost battle, run:
If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I still
accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to
battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough?
If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins
of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a
secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of
battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go on
for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and
arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with
the eyes:
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night

That
somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the
rough:
Lord, if that were enough?
XXVI - MY WIFE

TRUSTY, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,

Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death
quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,

Heart-whole and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.
XXVII - TO THE MUSE
RESIGN the rhapsody, the dream,
To men of larger reach;
Be ours
the quest of a plain theme,
The piety of speech.
As monkish scribes from morning break
Toiled till the close of light,

Nor thought a day too long to make
One line or letter bright:
We