The Englishman and Other Poems | Page 9

Poet, and sing
on.
Sing of
THE DAWN
The Virgin Night, all languorous with dreams
Of her beloved Darkness, rose in fear,
Feeling the presence of another
near.
Outside her curtained casement shone the gleams
Of burning orbs; and modestly she hid
Her brow and bosom with her
dusky hair.
When lo! the bold intruder lurking there
Leaped through the fragile lattice, all unbid,
And half unveiled her.

Then the swooning Night
Fell pale and dead, while yet her soul was
white
Before that lawless Ravisher, the Light.
The Muse said, Poet, nay; thou host not caught
My meaning. For
there lurks a thought
Back of thy song.
In art, all thought is wrong.
Re-string thy lyre;
and let the echoes bound
To nothing but sweet sound.
Strike now the chords
And sing of
WORDS
One day sweet Ladye Language gave to me
A little golden key.
I sat me down beside her jewel box
And turned its locks.
And oh,
the wealth that lay there in my sight.
Great solitaires of words, so
bright, so bright;
Words that no use can commonize; like God,
And Truth, and Love;
and words of sapphire blue;
And amber words; with sunshine
dripping through;
And words of that strange hue
A pearl reveals upon a wanton's hand.
Again the Muse:
Thou dost not understand;
A thought within thy song is lingering yet.

Sing but of words; all else forget, forget.
Nor let thy words convey one thought to men.
Try once again.
Down through the dusk and dew there fell a word;
Down through the dew and dusk.
And all the garments of the air it

stirred
Smelled sweet as musk;
And all the little waves of air it kissed
Turned cold and amethyst.
There in the dew and dusk a heart it found;
There in the dusk and dew
The sodden silence changed to fragrant
sound;
And all the world seemed new.
Upon the path that little word had
trod,
There shone the smile of God.
The Muse said, Drop thy lyre.
I tire, I tire.
THE SPINSTER
I
Here are the orchard trees all large with fruit;
And yonder fields are
golden with young grain.
In little journeys, branchward from the nest,

A mother bird, with sweet insistent cries,
Urges her young to use
their untried wings.
A purring Tabby, stretched upon the sward,

Shuts and expands her velvet paws in joy,
While sturdy kittens nuzzle
at her breast.
O mighty Maker of the Universe,
Am I not part and parcel of Thy
World,
And one with Nature? Wherefore, then, in me
Must this
great reproductive impulse lie
Hidden, ashamed, unnourished, and
denied,
Until it starves to slow and tortuous death?
I knew the hope
of spring-time; like the tree
Now ripe with fruit, I budded, and then
bloomed;
We laughed together through the young May morns;
We

dreamed together through the summer moons;
Till all Thy purposes
within the tree
Were to fruition brought. Lord, Thou hast heard
The
Woman in me crying for the Man;
The Mother in me crying for the
Child;
And made no answer. Am I less to Thee
Than lover forms of
Nature, or in truth
Dost Thou hold Somewhere in another Realm

Full compensation and large recompense
For lonely virtue forced by
fate to live
A life unnatural, in a natural world?
II
Thou who hast made for such sure purposes
The mightiest and the
meanest thing that is -
Planned out the lives of insects of the air

With fine precision and consummate care,
Thou who hast taught the
bee the secret power
Of carrying on love's laws 'twixt flower and
flower,
Why didst Thou shape this mortal frame of mine,
If
Heavenly joys alone were Thy design?
Wherefore the wonder of my
woman's breast,
By lips of lover and of babe unpressed,
If spirit
children only shall reply
Unto my ever urgent mother cry?
Why
should the rose be guided to its own,
And my love-craving heart beat
on alone?
III
Yet do I understand; for Thou hast made
Something more subtle than
this heart of me;
A finer part of me
To be obeyed.
Albeit I am a sister to the earth,
This nature self is not the whole of
me;
The deathless soul of me
Has nobler birth.
The primal woman hungers for the man;
My better self demands the
mate of me;
The spirit fate of me,
Part of Thy plan.
Nature is instinct with the mother-need;
So is my heart; but ah, the
child of me
Should, undefiled of me,
Spring from love's seed.

And if, in barren chastity, I must
Know but in dreams that perfect
choice of me,
Still will the voice of me
Proclaim God just.
BROTHERHOOD
When in the even ways of life
The old world jogs along,
Our little coloured flags we flaunt:
Our
little separate selves we vaunt:
Each pipes his native song.
And jealousy and greed and pride
Join their ungodly hands,
And this round lovely world divide
Into opposing lands.
But let some crucial hour of pain
Sound from the tower of time,
Then consciousness of brotherhood

Wakes in each heart the latent good,
And men become sublime.
As swarming insects of the night,
Fly when the sun bursts in,
Self fades, before love's radiant light,
And all the world is