Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure | Page 3

a day.
WIND?We are they.
CLOUD, (echoing)
We are they.?But whither now doth Randolph stray,?And why the mail, and why the steed?
RANDOLPH?This is my father's mail indeed,?Bequeathed with message to his son:?"Stand straight in it and yield to none."
WIND?But whither off and why away?
RANDOLPH?Off to the world; I cannot stay--?That world I have so often viewed?Here from this upper solitude--?This bulwark barring strife and trade.?Love calls me off. I love a maid,?Loving her silently and long,?Learning for her to hate the wrong,
Learning for her to seek the right,?To hew at sloth and faint resolve?And thoughts that round but self revolve,?And pray for grace and virtue--wings?That bear men to the highest things,
Enwrapt and rising into light.?For her, for her, O Cloud and Wind!?I trained my limbs and taught my mind,?Ran, wrestled, clomb, and learned to bend?The cross-bow with each village friend;?And by my hermit-guardian spent?The earliest dimness morning lent,?And the faint torch that evening bore,?In science and in saintly lore,?Reading the stars and signs of rain,?Noting each tree and herb and grain;?Each bird that flutters through the leaves,?Each beast, each fish that green lake cleaves,?The curious deeds Devotion paints?In missals and in lives of saints,?And every olden subtle trick?Of grammar, logic, rhetoric.?But most on chivalry I turned?A torrent eagerness, and burned?To hear of wrong repaired, or read?The working of some famous deed,?Like those I dreamt that I could do?When what I set myself was through:?Vexed lest the inward clock of fate?That ticked "Too soon!" might tick "Too late!"?But now that dial points the hour?When I must test my gathered power,?And leave my books and leave my dreams?Of steeds and towers and knightly themes,?Of tourney gay and woodland quest,?Of Perceval and Perceforest,?Of Richard, Arthur, Charlemain,?Amadis and the Cid of Spain--?Must leave them all and seek alone?Some grand adventure of my own.
CLOUD?Yet if you seek and cannot find?Or fail to work what you designed,?Be it but as the steadfast sun?Who bright or dim his course doth run,?And last doth reach as far a spot?Whether he seems to shine or not.
RANDOLPH?The height, the fynial of my aim?Is to be worthy of her name.
CLOUD?You mortals are a curious race--?More whirled by passions, hot in chase?Of passions, than myself am whirled?When tempests tug me o'er the world;?I cannot understand your ways.?We clouds live our divinest days?Beneath great sunny depths of sky,?High above all that you think high,?Drifting through sunset's surf of gold,?Dawn-lakes and moonlight's clear waves cold,?In realms so distant, chill and lone,?That Love, impatient, leaves the throne?To meditative Amity.
RANDOLPH?So would my guardian have it be,?So flowed his constant voice to me,?Of those to make me one, he sought,?Who watch from mountain towers of thought,?Or wandering into paths apart?Pursue the lonely star of art.
WIND?But you would rather love and do.?Well said, so much the wiser you!?But let your love be false as maid's,?Your every fire a flame that fades--?A word, a smile, an easy thing?To fledge and easy taking wing.?Kiss every lip, as tired of rest?As I am now. I'm off to west?Good-bye, and some day when you're hot?I'll meet you cool.
CLOUD?And I should not?Delay my showers so long as this.?God speed! Good-bye!
RANDOLPH
Good-bye.
I miss
Their wonderful companionship.?So onward seems the world to slip.?Now one glance backward firmly cast;?Thy next foot forward bears thee past?The mountain's crest. Ah, I behold?Our reckless river leaping bold?Down all its ledges. And I see?The castle where Elaine must be.?Lo, in yon window sits she oft.--?From yon green maze of willows soft?I hear our hermitage's bell.?Sweet sound, sweet many scenes, farewell.
Elaine! Elaine!
CUJUS ANIM? PROPICIETUR DEUS.
A quiet, old cathedral folds apart?At Oxford, from the world of colleges?A world of tombs, and shades them in its heart;?Contrasting with the busy knowledges?This wisdom, that they all shall end in peace.--?"Vex you not, slaves of truth! there is release."
There every window is a monument?Emblazoned: every slab along the pave,?Each effigy with knees devoutly bent,--?Or prone, with folded gauntlets,--is a grave.?Unnoticed down the sands of Kronos run:?Slow move the sombre shadows with the sun.
Hard by a Norman shaft, along the floor?A portraiture on ancient bronze designed?In Academic hood and robes of yore,?Commemorates some by-gone lord of mind.?Mournful the face and dignified the head:?A man who pondered much upon the dead.
Repose unbroken now his dust surrounds,?He is with those whom mortals honor most.?Respect and tender sighs and holy sounds?Of choirs, and the presence of the Holy Ghost?And fellow spirits and shadowy mem'ries dear?Make for his rest a sacred atmosphere.
Sometime a gentle and profound Divine,?Father revered of spiritual sons.?He died. They laid him here. About his shrine,?Of what they wrote this