The Englishman and Other Poems | Page 8

make their music audible to ears?Which will be tuned to those high harmonies.
Mine is the work to fashion, step by step,?The shining Way that leads from man to God.?Though I demolish obstacles of creeds?And blast tradition, from the face of earth,?My hand shall open wide the door of Truth,?Whose other name is Faith: and at the end?Of this most holy labour, I shall turn?To see Religion, with enlightened eyes,?Seeking the welcome of my outstretched arms.?While all the world stands hushed and awed before?The proven splendour of the Fact Supreme.
THE EARTH
To build a house, with love for architect,?Ranks first and foremost in the joys of life.?And in a tiny cabin, shaped for two,?The space for happiness is just as great?As in a palace. What a world were this?If each soul born received a plot of ground;?A little plot, whereon a home might rise,?And beauteous green things grow!
We give the dead,?The idle vagrant dead, the Potter's Field;?Yet to the living not one inch of soil.?Nay, we take from them soil, and sun, and air,?To fashion slums and hell-holes for the race.?And to our poor we say, 'Go starve and die?As beggars die; so gain your heritage.'
II
That was a most uncanny dream; I thought the wraiths of those Long buried in the Potter's Field, in shredded shrouds arose;
They said, 'Against the will of God?We have usurped the fertile sod,?Now will we make it yield.'
Oh! but it was a gruesome sight, to see those phantoms toil; Each to his own small garden bent; each spaded up the soil;
(I never knew Ghosts laboured so.)?Each scattered seed, and watched, till lo!?The Graves were opulent.
Then all among the fragrant greens, the silent, spectral train Walked, as if breathing in the breath of plant, and flower, and grain.
(I never knew Ghosts loved such things;?Perchance it brought back early springs?Before they thought of death.)
'The mothers' milk for living babes; the earth for living hosts; The clean flame for the un-souled dead.' (Oh, strange the words of Ghosts.)
'If we had owned this little spot?In life, we need not lie and rot?Here in a pauper's bed.'
THE MUSE AND THE POET
The Muse said, Let us sing a little song
Wherein no hint of wrong,?No echo of the great world need, or pain,
Shall mar the strain.?Lock fast the swinging portal of thy heart;
Keep sympathy apart.?Sing of the sunset, of the dawn, the sea;
Of any thing or nothing, so there be?No purpose to thy art.
Yea, let us make, art for Art's sake.?And sing no more unto the hearts of men,
But for the critic's pen.?With songs that are but words, sweet sounding words,
Like joyous jargon of the birds.?Tune now thy lyre, O 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