A Reading of Life, with Other Poems

THE HUELESS LOVE

 
Unto that love must we through fire attain,
   Which those two held as breath of common air;
   The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;
Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.
 
 
Midway the road of our life’s term they met,
   And one another knew without surprise;
   Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;
Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.
 
 
To them it was revealed how they had found
   The kindred nature and the needed mind;
   The mate by long conspiracy designed;
The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.
 
 
Avowed in vigilant solicitude
   For either, what most lived within each breast
   They let be seen: yet every human test
Demanding righteousness approved them good.
 
 
She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
   Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
   Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,
Life rosier were she but less revered.
 
 
An arm that never shook did not obscure
   Her woman’s intuition of the bliss—
   Their tempter’s moment o’er the black abyss,
Across the narrow plank—he could abjure.
 
 
Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
   And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,
   Was all of earthly in their love untold,
Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.
 
 
So has there come the gust at South-west flung
   By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,
   When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,
And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.
 

SONG IN THE SONGLESS

 
They have no song, the sedges dry,
      And still they sing.
It is within my breast they sing,
      As I pass by.
Within my breast they touch a string,
      They wake a sigh.
There is but sound of sedges dry;
In me they sing.
 

UNION IN DISSEVERANCE

 
Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;
She that star overhead in slow descent:
That white star with the front of angel she;
He undone in his rays of glory spent
 
 
Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,
He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest
Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,
Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.
 
 
Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;
Life’s full throb over breathless and abased:
Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,
One, more one than the bridally embraced.
 

THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH

 
If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
Else in a giant’s grasp until the end
A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.
 

THE MAIN REGRET

WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM

I

 
Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
   Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.
They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;
   Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.
 

II

 
Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered
   Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.
Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered
   Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.
 

ALTERNATION

 
Between the fountain and the rill
I passed, and saw the mighty will
To leap at sky; the careless run,
As earth would lead her little son.
 
 
Beneath them throbs an urgent well,
That here is play, and there is war.
I know not which had most to tell
Of whence we spring and what we are.
 

HAWARDEN

 
When comes the lighted day for men to read
Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands
Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,
Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands
Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;
Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.
The sun that dropped down our horizon’s verge,
Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,
Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known
By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.
A splendid image built of man has flown;
His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.
Ours the great privilege to have had one
Among us who celestial tasks has done.
 

AT THE CLOSE

 
To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
Who straightway sound the call to arms.  Thou know’st;
And that black spot in each embattled host,
Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.
Now is it red artillery and white steel;
Till on a day will ring the victor’s boast,
That ’tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,
Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.
So in all times of man’s descent insane
To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,
Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.
But at the close he entered Thy domain,
Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like
He tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe.
 

FOREST HISTORY

I

 
Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in.
   Heroic who came out; for round them hung
   A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue,
With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:
 

II

 
Old Earth’s original Dragon; there retired
   To his last fastness; overthrown by few.
   Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.
Then man to play devorant straight was fired.
 

III

 
More intimate became the forest fear
   While pillared darkness hatched malicious life
   At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife
And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.
 

IV

 
In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,
   The forest’s heart of fog on mossed morass,
   On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,
Revealed where lured the swallower byway.
 

V

 
Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound
   Off walls of distance, left each mounted height.
   It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite
Of humble human being, held the ground.
 

VI

 
Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow
   The feet sustained by track of feet pursued
   Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood
By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.
 

VII

 
Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight,
   And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode.
   They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;
Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.
 

VIII

 
What words they taught were nails to scratch the head.
   Benignant works explained the chanting brood.
   Their monastery lit black solitude,
As one might think a star that heavenward led.
 

IX

 
Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,
   Like some gold flower nightly inward curled,
   Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,
Or played with it, and had their white retreat.
 

X

 
Into big books of metal clasps they pored.
   They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays.
   The treasures women are whose aim is praise,
Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.
 

XI

 
A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,
   With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam.
   For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home,
The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.
 

XII

 
Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:
   And inmost spots of ancient horror shone
   As temples under beams of trials bygone;
For in them sang brave times with God in view.
 

XIII

 
Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green,
   Like night’s first little stars through clearing showers.
   Was rumoured how a castle’s falcon towers
The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.
 

XIV

 
Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;
   For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout.
   Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,
Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.
 

XV

 
It might be that two errant lords across
   The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry
   They charged forthwith, the better man to try.
One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.
 

XVI

 
Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,
   The robbers into gruesome durance drew.
   Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s blue!
She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.
 

XVII

 
As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,
   Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:
   A toady cave beside an ague fen,
Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.
 

XVIII

 
By daylight now the forest fear could read
   Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went.
   Straight for the roebuck’s neck the bowman spent
A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.
 

XIX

 
Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate
   Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;
   And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,
But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.
 

XX

 
Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;
   At dawn the deer’s wet nostrils blew their last.
   To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,
With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.
 

XXI

 
The city urchin mooned on forest air,
   On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick
   As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed him sick
For thinking that his dearer home was there.
 

XXII

 
Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang
   An old-world echo, like no mortal thing.
   The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund ring,
But held in ear it had a chilly clang.
 

XXIII

 
Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;
   Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,
   As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged
To hear an axe and see a township climb.
 

XXIV

 
The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve
   Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales.
   At midnight a small people danced the dales,
So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve
 

XXV

 
Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,
   Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much.
   The pensioned forester beside his crutch,
Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.
 

XXVI

 
Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;
   Devourer, and insensibly devoured;
   In whom the city over forest flowered,
The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.
 

XXVII

 
There found he in new form that Dragon old,
   From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught
   How blindly each its antidote besought;
For either’s breath the needs of either told.
 

XXVIII

 
Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone,
   He showed what charm the human concourse works:
   Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks
Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.
 

XXIX

 
Our conquest these: if haply we retain
   The reverence that ne’er will overrun
   Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,
Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.