Poems. Volume 2

THE LARK ASCENDING

He rises and begins to round,He drops the silver chain of sound,Of many links without a break,In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,All intervolved and spreading wide,Like water-dimples down a tideWhere ripple ripple overcurlsAnd eddy into eddy whirls;A press of hurried notes that runSo fleet they scarce are more than one,Yet changeingly the trills repeatAnd linger ringing while they fleet,Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dearTo her beyond the handmaid ear,Who sits beside our inner springs,Too often dry for this he brings,Which seems the very jet of earthAt sight of sun, her music’s mirth,As up he wings the spiral stair,A song of light, and pierces airWith fountain ardour, fountain play,To reach the shining tops of day,And drink in everything discernedAn ecstasy to music turned,Impelled by what his happy billDisperses; drinking, showering still,Unthinking save that he may giveHis voice the outlet, there to liveRenewed in endless notes of glee,So thirsty of his voice is he,For all to hear and all to knowThat he is joy, awake, aglow;The tumult of the heart to hearThrough pureness filtered crystal-clear,And know the pleasure sprinkled brightBy simple singing of delight;Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustainedWithout a break, without a fall,Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,Perennial, quavering up the chordLike myriad dews of sunny swardThat trembling into fulness shine,And sparkle dropping argentine;Such wooing as the ear receivesFrom zephyr caught in choric leavesOf aspens when their chattering netIs flushed to white with shivers wet;And such the water-spirit’s chimeOn mountain heights in morning’s prime,Too freshly sweet to seem excess,Too animate to need a stress;But wider over many headsThe starry voice ascending spreads,Awakening, as it waxes thin,The best in us to him akin;And every face to watch him raised,Puts on the light of children praised;So rich our human pleasure ripesWhen sweetness on sincereness pipes,Though nought be promised from the seas,But only a soft-ruffling breezeSweep glittering on a still content,Serenity in ravishmentFor singing till his heaven fills,’Tis love of earth that he instils,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cup,And he the wine which overflowsTo lift us with him as he goes:The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,He is, the hills, the human line,The meadows green, the fallows brown,The dreams of labour in the town;He sings the sap, the quickened veins;The wedding song of sun and rainsHe is, the dance of children, thanksOf sowers, shout of primrose-banks,And eye of violets while they breathe;All these the circling song will wreathe,And you shall hear the herb and tree,The better heart of men shall see,Shall feel celestially, as longAs you crave nothing save the song.Was never voice of ours could sayOur inmost in the sweetest way,Like yonder voice aloft, and linkAll hearers in the song they drink.Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,Our passion is too full in flood,We want the key of his wild noteOf truthful in a tuneful throat;The song seraphically freeOf taint of personality,So pure that it salutes the sunsThe voice of one for millions,In whom the millions rejoiceFor giving their one spirit voice.Yet men have we, whom we revere,Now names, and men still housing here,Whose lives, by many a battle-dintDefaced, and grinding wheels on flint,Yield substance, though they sing not, sweetFor song our highest heaven to greet:Whom heavenly singing gives us new,Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,From firmest base to farthest leap,Because their love of Earth is deep,And they are warriors in accordWith life to serve, and, pass reward,So touching purest and so heardIn the brain’s reflex of yon bird:Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,Through self-forgetfulness divine,In them, that song aloft maintains,To fill the sky and thrill the plainsWith showerings drawn from human stores,As he to silence nearer soars,Extends the world at wings and dome,More spacious making more our home,Till lost on his aërial ringsIn light, and then the fancy sings.

PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS

IWhen by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,   Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,   Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe   Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,   Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.IIChirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks:   Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey:Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:   Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,   Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,   Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s gate.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.IIIWater, first of singers, o’er rocky mount and mead,   First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,   Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,   Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool   Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.IVMany swarms of wild bees descended on our fields:   Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,   Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins   Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice rose:Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;   Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.VFoot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft:   Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s teethGrin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;   Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped   Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new gold.Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead   Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.VITales we drank of giants at war with Gods above:   Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air!Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love   Ease because the creature was all too fair.Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good,   Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast.He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood   Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.VIILo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known,   Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,   After he had taught how the sweet sounds cameStretched about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see   Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.So began contention to give delight and be   Excellent in things aimed to make life kind.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.VIIIYou with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats,   You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!   Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,   You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!   Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.         God! of whom music         And song and blood are pure,         The day is never darkened         That had thee here obscure.

MELAMPUS

IWith love exceeding a simple love of the things   That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings   From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;   Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;The good physician Melampus, loving them all,   Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.IIFor him the woods were a home and gave him the key   Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we   To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours:And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined   Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flowsIn them, in us, from the source by man unattained   Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.IIIAnd this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast   Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best   Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape.For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk,   As babes they learn where her motherly help is great:They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,   And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.IVOf earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,   Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and painLike swimmers varying billows: never in woods   Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all saneThe woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns   To some resemblance in motion, the rooted lifeRestrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns   Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.VNow sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,   A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regretThat death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,   Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and setTheir tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue   Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his earsA forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,   He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!VIA bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech   Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He movesTo learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;   He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.No fears have I of a man who goes with his head   To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand:I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;   I pipe him much for his good could he understand.VIIMelampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist   He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,   He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird.His cushion mosses in shades of various green,   The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snakeSlipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,   It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake.VIIIDivinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full,   As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth,Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool   To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth.The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;   The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,   The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.IXHe knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed   Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by oneThey winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed   For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun,Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,   Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned:He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,   The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.XNot unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,   By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growthWith brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat,   Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth,The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,   Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,   The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.XISo passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates   We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were chargedWith tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,   With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged.Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,   He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled,To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root   A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.XIIHim Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form   Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave,Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,   And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave,And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,   And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere;And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,   He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.XIIISweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze   In heat, the run of the river on root and stone,All senses joined, as the sister Pierides   Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own.In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,   From sight to sound intershifting, the man descriedThe growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,   Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.XIVAnd there vitality, there, there solely in song,   Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,   The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),   In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount   To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.XVMelampus dwelt among men: physician and sage,   He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage   Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings   Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,Through love exceeding a simple love of the things   That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.

LOVE IN THE VALLEY

Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,   Couched with her arms behind her golden head,Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,   Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,   Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:   Then would she hold me and never let me go?* * *Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,   Swift as the swallow along the river’s lightCircleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,   Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,   Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,   Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!* * *When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,   Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,   More love should I have, and much less care.When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,   Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,   I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.* * *Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows   Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:   Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure,   Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones   Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.* * *Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping   Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,   Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:   So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,   Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.* * *Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,   Arm in arm, all against the raying West,Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,   Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking   Whispered the world was; morning light is she.Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;   Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.* * *Happy happy time, when the white star hovers   Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,   Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens   Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;   Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.* * *Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting   Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter   Chill as a dull face frowning on a song.Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom   Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascendScaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset   Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.* * *When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window   Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily   Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle   In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily   Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.* * *Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight,   Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim,Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,   Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,   Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever   Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.* * *All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;   Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,   Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,   Coming the rose: and unaware a crySprings in her bosom for odours and for colour,   Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.* * *Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips,   Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain:Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel   She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way:   She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder,   Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.* * *Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,   Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.   O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,   Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,   You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way.* * *Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,   Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine   Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest   Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes,Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine   Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.* * *Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;   Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;   Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;   Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,   Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.* * *This I may know: her dressing and undressing   Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sportShift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder   Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into portWhite sails furl; or on the ocean borders   White sails lean along the waves leaping green.Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight   Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.* * *Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse   Open with the morn, and in a breezy linkFreshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,   Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.Busy in the grass the early sun of summer   Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notesCall my darling up with round and roguish challenge:   Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!* * *Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy   Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;   O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher   Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,   Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laughed and leaned her cheek.* * *Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof   Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way   Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,   Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,   Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.* * *O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!   O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!O the treasure-tresses one another over   Nodding!  O the girdle slack about the waist!Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet   Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist,Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness!   O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!* * *Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops,   Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise,   Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree   Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.Here may life on death or death on life be painted.   Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!* * *Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber   Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers,   Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled:   Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy   Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.* * *Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,   Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surpriseHigh rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;   Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,   Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.—Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,   Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.* * *Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.   Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye,Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,   Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.   Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,   Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.* * *Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April   Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, youLucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,   Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:   Fair as in image my seraph love appearsBorne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids:   Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.* * *Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,   I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,   Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;   Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:   All seem to know what is for heaven alone.