* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada Ebook * This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please check with an FP administrator before proceeding. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. Title: Islands Author: Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson (1878-1962) Date of first publication: 1932 Edition used as base for this ebook: London: Macmillan, 1932 Date first posted: 17 February 2013 Date last updated: October 13, 2014 Faded Page ebook#20141059 This ebook was produced by Al Haines ISLANDS POEMS, 1930-1932 ISLANDS BY WILFRID GIBSON MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1932 COPYRIGHT PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH _By WILFRID GIBSON_ HAZARDS, 1930 THE GOLDEN ROOM, 1928 COLLECTED POEMS (1905-1925), 1926 SIXTY-THREE POEMS. A Selection for use in Schools and Colleges TO DOROTHY UNA RATCLIFFE Off MALOHAMN THE BALTIC _June_ 1932 CONTENTS ADVENTURE The Blue-Peter Jungle Drums Above the Storm Before the Wind The Dancing Spears Adventure The Feathers The White Stag Avalanche Dead Calm The Minaret Tempest The Storm In the King's Chamber The Unseen Rider The Sleeping Dragon The Peak Panic Coaster The Tryst Islands Guillemot Olympus Sail on, Sail on! TRAFFIC The Telephone The Linn The Glance Sal The Preacher The Recollection Taking them Unawares The Surprise The Years Between The Dream The Old Doctor The Bright Glance Her Death The Unrevealed The Cut The Dark Forest The Window The Appointment The Separate Bed The End of the Game Fruits of the Tree His Last April From Day to Day All Souls The Cows Jocelyn Come Life, come Death! In the Dead Hour The Broken Link The Unseen Housemate The Poplars The Shifted Chair Isolation The Last Visit Broken Toys Moonstruck Early to Bed Coming upon Them The Dark Gift The Old Man Listens The Easy Chair Gone to Bed The Sick Boy Time, Gentlemen, please! Marching on The Hunter's Moon SAILS Out of the Air _Sea Swallow_ The Outer Isles Skye Loch Shieldaig Singing Waters Canna The Island Bull The Primrose Gairloch The Stag unseen The Birds of Saint Bride Green Cormorant Dunvegan Scuir-nan-Gillean From Night to Night The Stormbow Drifters, Mallaig The Sleepers of the Isles The Sound of Sleat At Sea The Singing Island CORONACH In Exile Renewal (In Memoriam, R. B.) (_For E. M., W. de la M. and L. A._) Who shall remember? The Singer of the Trees (In Memoriam, John Freeman) No Son In No-Man's-Land Died of Wounds The Singer of the Isles (In Memoriam, Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser) Coronach Draw close the Curtains Are there no other Isles? HIGHLAND DAWN Song at Midnight Winter's Breath The Little Birds The Swooping Wings The Birch Hear You Nothing in the Glen? The Wishing-tree The Raider The Island Songs Not Proven Sheldrake Island Dawn The Last Word His Fetch On the Edge of the Tide The Return Too Late Glencoe The Old Wife Red Ranald The Little Croft The Island Graveyard The Golden Hill Highland Spring Flight The Exiles The First Flake Highland Dawn Eagles and Isles ADVENTURE THE BLUE-PETER The day has come for sailing; and at last The brisk blue-peter flutters at the mast. Too long beneath the mountains we have lain While winds and waters called to us in vain: Too long the inn has held us, and too long Our ears have hearkened to the tavern-song. The time has come to quit the company Of those who dread the isolating sea, Who, slumbering through night-watches, spend their days Carousing in the ingle's drowsy blaze: For what are they to us who are the sons Of tempest, in whose veins the salt tide runs, Whose pulses answer to the ebb and flow Of all the seas that travel to and fro, Whose feet have trod the tilting deck from birth And stumble only on the stable earth, Whose eyes can pierce the spindrift of the night And blunder blindfold in the tavern light, Whose hearts must ever in the throng and press Ache with intolerable loneliness Shut in by walls as in an airless grave, Whose home is the unwalled unraftered wave, Who each within himself can only find In solitude the comrade to his mind, And only in the lone sea-watch can be At ease at length in his own company. The brisk blue-peter beckons; and at last Our souls shall ride full-sailed before the blast Into the perilous security Of strife with the uncompromising sea. JUNGLE DRUMS Huddling among the scared baboons, he watches From his uneasy refuge in the boughs The battle-royal as the lions roll, A whirl of lashing tails and crashing limbs, Round the contested carcase of the quarry, But now, a lithe light-hearted springbok leaping In the still crystal of the wizard moon; When suddenly the snarls and skirls that rend The tense expectancy of jungle-night, Ripping his midriff, scooping out his vitals, Stop dead--those steely clutching claws of sound Blunted and muted to a thudding thrumming, A far dull thudding, as of the jungle's heart-beat Grown audible--the heart of occult evil Pulsating with slow measured palpitation Of sluggish blood, and the dumb sulking lions Skulk through the brush, awed by that mesmerising Monotonous redundant muttering menace, Relinquishing their quarry that not even One jackal stays to snuffle; and in the branches No shuddering baboon beside him huddles, All stolen off like soundless ghosts unheeded, As nearer, clearer, rolls that stunning drubbing, A ghostly rub-a-dubbing like the drumming Of ghostly marchers ever closer coming, The bloodless drumming of a bony army Beating again to unremembered battles On the taut tympan of the tom-toms rattling In cracking fusillades, then dully grumbling Like sullen thunder in far hills, then rumbling Like earthquake underfoot, then sharply shattering The zenith with a cataract of clattering That peters to a pattering stuttering mutter, Now seeming but the pulse of his own terror Feebly aflutter, now a spate full-flooding The strained walls of his thudding breast to bursting, Then a slow drub of bludgeon blows nigh clubbing His senses to unconsciousness, then startling His frayed and fretted nerves awake With crackles as of burning brake, Then sinking slowly to a lamentation Throbbing and sobbing through the wizard moonlight Until the sobbing strangles in the tangles Of crass embrangling creepers' throttling clutches And, suffocating under smothering lumber Of centuries that crashed in crushing cumber To a gross bloated fever-ridden slumber Glutted with all the blood-lust of the jungle, Is muted to a muffled moaning mumble Droning and dulling to a silent stupor More dread than death--then rousing of a sudden A rattling roulade on his very eardrums, Reverberating through his shuddering midriff Rending each anguished fibre of his being Till, just a stretched skin on earth's hollow gourd, He throbs and quivers, swinging at the thigh-bone Of the old inexorable skull-faced Drummer Madding the fearful hearts of men to war. ABOVE THE STORM Sheer through the storm into the sun the plane Shot, streaming silver from its wings; And he who'd won through volleys of blind rain And baffling smother of dense cloud To heights of rare And eager air, Keen-edged as icy wine, Where only man's heart sings In the celestial hyaline, Where only man's heart sings, adoring, Beyond the range even of the eagle's soaring-- He, who had braved the tempest's rage and roaring, Sang out above the loud Propeller's whirring As in the crystal light Above the curded white Of billowy snows He rose Even to his own heart's height; And happily in flashing flight He soared and swooped And zoomed and looped With ease unerring Through the unsearchable inane In dizzy circles of insane And death-defying insolence Of youth's delight Above the sunny dense And seething cloud whereunder Still rolled the thunder Over an earth already drowned in night. He soared and swooped again, Exulting in the flawless enginery Of hand and brain That, even in the heady urgency And wildest flight Of his insatiable soul, Obeying his intrepid will, Still kept serene control Of his frail plane That hung Ever on peril's edge and swung In thin and scarce-sustaining air As by a single hair, When one missed heart-beat or untaken breath Might lunge him in a fiery plunge to death. And still in aerial ecstasy, A flittering midge in the infinity Of heaven, he revelled till the light Drained even from that celestial height, And through the icy beryl of the night Star after star dawned silverly. BEFORE THE WIND Aboard her craft once more, she breathed the air Of hard-won freedom: standing by to take Her trick at the helm, she watched green-water break Over the bow; and, as she took the wheel, Thrilled to its tug and wrench and the mate's "Take care She doesn't gybe!" and thrilled again to feel The exultant sea-lift as the slicing keel Cut clean the flaking foamheads--body and mind Braced, mettled and strung tensely as the taut Mainsheet, to keep the ship before the wind, Enraptured to escape from brooding, caught Into the conflict of the wind and wave That shook her soul free from the thrall of thought, The dire obsession of futility That for so long had darkened all her life: And now she felt at last that she was free, Recovering in the elemental strife Her own identity and the zeal to save Her soul alive. Clear-eyed, with tossing hair And lifted brow, she breathed the sharp salt air, Nerved to an urgency that held her mind Steady on even keel, and proud to find Her seamanship sufficing still to keep Through the blind smother and welter of the deep The cutter running well before the wind. THE DANCING SPEARS By dark glass shielded from the utter glare Of colour razor-keen that cuts the air With fiery lancing Of purple emerald and ruby light, His young eyes yet can hardly bear The flicker and the flare Of icy pinnacles and needles glancing Beneath the flashing of the Dancing Spears; And as he lingers by the mast, While older shipmates huddle snug below In the close cabin's reek and glow, The Aurora of the Polar night Suffusing steepling berg and level floe, And the sharp perilous sense of vast Infinitudes of kindled ice and snow, Sting his young heart to tears, To tears that freeze Ere they can fall-- Tears from a heart overcharged with joy to know His dream come true, that he at last Has won through all The leaden labouring of sullen seas, Butting and buffeting and blundering Blindfold through fog and sleet and through the thundering Of shattering cascading brine, To this still crystalline World of his heart's desire, He who had hankered hungrily For the sheer icy ecstasy Of Boreal solitudes that hold The secret of eternity, Of Boreal solitudes whose spires Kindle and bicker with the burning cold Quick coloured fires And icy flames of youth's desires. And as he stands a tingling instant there, Ere he must seek the human warmth below, In the cold lustral glow Of purple emerald and ruby light, In quietude that only seems Intenser for the rumble and creak and screams Of far-off splitting bergs, he knows, As only youth can know, The utter ecstasy of solitude, and dreams The unchallengeable dream an instant there In a rapt trance, through which a shadowy bear Shuffling across the visionary snow Steals like the spirit of the Polar night. ADVENTURE As slowly from the gateways of the mills, Whose monster crystal cubes of lighted glass Still hum and glitter on the darkening hills, Into the frosty dusk the tired hands pass, They breathe the crisp chill of October air Edged with an eager hint of early snow With tingling lips; and grateful for the gloom, Eyes, aching from the mills' electric glare, Are lifted to the cold horizon where, Against the smouldering amber afterglow, Purple the dome of the gasometer And the slim soaring stacks, each with its plume Of smoky purple shot with rosy fire, Over the labyrinthine city loom: And as the apocalypse of colour fills The eyes of lads and lasses, unaware They pause in silence, and each bosom thrills Pierced suddenly with pangs of sharp desire For some unknown, unknowable delight, Rapt an eternal instant in the dream Of some strange city on the edge of night... Till the glow shivers to an icy gleam And darkness closes down upon the hills. THE FEATHERS Stridently cutting through The diamond flame of heat That holds the city in a glassy trance, The searching chanting of the muezzin sings Above the empty street From the slim minaret whose lance Of ivory pierces the dense blue, Where on still planing wings A solitary kite, Dark as charred paper floating in the light, Hangs hovering; when, as the call to prayer Sinks to a murmur, suddenly a white And startled pigeon flutters through the air In tumbling flight, And from the glittering height Death drops on unheard wings; And as again the dark kite swings Into the blue, a snowy flutter Of feathers falls in the deserted square, And a lean mongrel snoozing in the gutter Opens one eye and blinks In the white glare, Licking warm blood-drops from his muzzle, and sinks Again in deep Undreaming sleep: But the child peering through the latticed shutter Shivers with sudden cold To see life stricken in mid-air And heaven darken with the wings of death, And instantly grown old Already feels the cruel talons tear His fluttering heart, and cowers with sobbing breath, Eyeing with frightened stare The scatter of white feathers lying there. THE WHITE STAG As down the mossy woodland ride the car Shivered the quietude of forest night, Our startled eyes saw suddenly afar, Bedazzled by the wheeling shaft of light, Under the boughs a young stag, strangely white In the cold brilliance, with uplifted head Of haughty-browed and antlered majesty. As though the wild, a moment brought to bay By our machine's invasion, sought to stay The shattering onset, for one moment he Challenged our coming, then unhurriedly Followed the rustling unseen herd that sped Through the dark brake, an undefeated king: And as, into the turnpike hurrying, We shot from out the brooding woodland shade As though by panic terror put to flight, Behind us once again the wild closed in, Unruffled by the flurry, glare and din Of our brief passage; and the undismayed Lord of the forest ranged the realms of night. AVALANCHE He had but crossed a crumbling bridge Of snow that crusted a crevasse And gained a foothold on a jutting scar, When his close-muffled ears Caught a dull rumbling from afar; And, glancing towards the ridge, It seemed the mountain shrugged its shoulders As if to shake off fleecing snows, And his blood froze To see the white folds stir And loosen and slip downwards in a mass With gathering roar and torrent race Towards the spur On which he stood, and almost instantly About him hurled A cataract of icy spears And smothering snow and crashing boulders-- About him hurled and swirled While he, Save for a spray of splinters in his face, Stood scatheless on that isle of rock In the glissading devastating sea Of terror shattering down the mountain-side: Then in his ears the roaring died, And once again the blizzard clearing Settled to white tranquillity Of smooth and scarcely ruffled snow, As speeding to the valley far below The avalanche swept out of sight and hearing: While stunned and shaken by the shock He stood with fluttering breath As one come through the cataract of death Trembling bewildered on the other side; And to his still dazed eyes the light Quietly shining on celestial snow Burned with a strange unearthly glow Intolerably bright; As, still unrealising, he Watched in tranced ecstasy A solitary eagle glide, A bird of gold Circling through cold Cerulean skies About serene unshadowed peaks of paradise. DEAD CALM The gale Dropped suddenly, And losing way with slatting sail We staggered on the sea As men, Bereft of breath, Borne on the crest of life, and then Dropped in the trough of death. THE MINARET Into the black gorge of an alleyway He stepped aside to let the yelling pack Of pariah dogs sweep down the moon-white street, When suddenly the startling pistol-crack Of a scared rider's whip rang out, and sent The yelping rabble into his retreat: And, overborne and tumbled in the mud By the mad onset of that ravening flood Glutting the alley's throat, nigh scared to death Beneath the pad of frantic scurrying feet, The panting bodies and the steamy breath Of frothing muzzles, helplessly he lay, Feeling as though the obscene and bestial herd Of all the world's brutalities, released From loathsome lairs and dens, in panic rout Were driven over him to trample out The breath of life: and even when at last The lamest laggard of the curs had passed, He lay there for a while and never stirred, Bruised, crushed and shaken, breathless and terror-spent, In the deserted alleyway still dazed, Staring into the narrow lane of sky That with the silver fire of moonlight blazed Between the cliff-like houses looming high Above him--still he lay with dazed eyes set On the white slender spiring minaret That soared into the still, cold, argent blaze Above the noisome city's huddled ways And noxious courts and kennels like the flame Of the soul's intense resilient diamond fire Of ardent unappeasable desire That, springing from the pits and sties of shame Ever towards heaven aspires: and gradually, As in the distance died that brutal yelling And healingly the assuaging quiet of night Settled, life's eager quickening flood came welling Back to his breast, and with eyes kindling bright To that heaven-piercing shaft of lovely light, Scarcely remembering the bestial pack That seeks to trample man's heart into mire, He rose and stumbled from the alley's black Foul throat into the full moon's crystal fire. TEMPEST Caught in the tempest as we leave the creek, With no return against the racing tide, We must run on into the night, and seek, All canvas save the storm-jib stowed, to ride The gale out in mid-ocean, stripped and stark To the dire fury of the raging dark. Lashed to the wheel, the helmsman can but strive To hold a course before the wind, and clear The headlands, his one chance to save alive The ship, to keep a steady helm and steer Beyond the limits of the land and brave The utter angers of the wind and wave-- Lost to the world, stript to the storm, and free At last to pit the soul's integrity Against the ultimate blast of destiny! THE STORM All night the fierce North-easter slashed the spray Against the cottage window as she lay With open aching eyes awaiting day; And all night long her heart in agony Tossed blindly in the welter of the sea, A little boat that battled desperately, Wave-scourged and stripped of sail and spar, to keep Her lover safe from the devouring deep. Wave after wave, she felt cold oceans sweep Over and over her; and now she hung On toppling precipices and was flung Down cataracts to bottomless gulfs and swung Up to the very stars it seemed, and fell Once more into the roaring pits of hell Whose icy swirl closed over her.... A bell Tinkled beside the bed; and up she leapt, Startled by the alarm, to find she'd slept: Yet even in sleep her heart its trust had kept; And she knew surely, as she watched the light Of windless dawn gild the still-seething white, His heart in hers had ridden out the night. IN THE KING'S CHAMBER In the King's Chamber, the cold empty heart Of Cheops' pyramid, he stands alone, Save for the fellahin who patiently By the dim shafted entrance wait apart In swart unhuman immobility Like statues hewn from immemorial stone To sentinel the vestibule of death And ward the crumbling pride of majesty-- Silent he stands in the dark heart of time... Still hearing in strained ears the crazing chime Of camel-bells, still peering through the glaze Of high-noon's merciless white blinding blaze That seems to search the tomb's marmoreal night With glancing needles of sharp stabbing light, Stinging his eyes with sparking particles Of flinty fire; still scorched and seared with glare Of white-hot sandy barrens and breathing in With labouring lungs the desert's furnace-breath, With burning bones and cracking shrivelled skin And fevered heart, he stands, awaiting there Some miracle of healing, 'waiting stands For an eternity with outstretched hands, Until the oblivion of the buried past Descends upon him gradually and fills His breast with healing cold tranquillity, And his way-weary heart finds peace at last As petrifying icy numbness steals Through all his being, and old darkness seals His vision and, no longer an agony Of quivering anguished human flesh and bone, He sinks in that stone chamber quietly To the undreaming quietude of stone. THE UNSEEN RIDER The roads blocked deep with drifts, when Helen died, We had to cross the fells, scoured clean of snow, To reach the little churchyard in the dale, Her coffin strapped across the saddlebow Of her young chestnut filly, Heatherbell, Bridling and restive under the deadweight Of that strange burden; when down Elkridgeside There swirled a scathing blast of blinding hail; And the young lad who held the bridle-rein, Stumbling among the tussocks, slipped and fell; And Heatherbell broke loose and plunged and reared; Then, as the scared lad snatched at her in vain, She dashed across the fell and disappeared In the dense flurry of the squall: too late We cantered after her; and never again Was she or the dread burden that she bore Seen by a living soul. Yet oft at night The muffled drumming hoofs of Heatherbell Are heard by lonely shepherds on the fell As, high of heart as she would ride of old, Helen, who that wild day in death's despite Escaped the durance of the churchyard mould, Ranges the fells she loved for evermore. THE SLEEPING DRAGON The sleeping dragon of the Gower Coast Basks in the sunshine with gold-glancing scales, Then slowly fades to a dim dreaming ghost As daylight fails-- As daylight fails, and slowly the blue night Droops over Carmarthen Bay her shadowy veils, Her shadowy veils of shifting drifting white Through which the full moon pours her witch's light Through the long watches of enchanted night That shrouds the slumbering dragon of old Wales. THE PEAK We sailed in sunshine; but the glen was black As Tartarus with raven clouds that swirled In a fantastic frenzy, closely furled One moment round the hills; now, streaming, torn To ribbons; then in bundling fleeces whirled As in a witch's cauldron, leaving bare The jagged ranges to the pallid glare Of lightning: and we heard the thunder crack In short sharp volleys like quick rifle-fire: Then once again the firth in instant night Was blotted out; while still in lively light We sailed serenely on through the blue morn Towards the islands of our heart's desire. But, ere we lost the land, a brooding cloud On the horizon, suddenly the shroud Slipped from the shoulders of a single peak That soared in sunshine like a soul set free Of the gross turmoil of mortality: And, as we gazed, our hearts, too full to speak, Found in that vision all we sailed to seek. PANIC Shrewd as the Northern wind that blows Iced with an inkling of near snows, The breath of unknown terror froze My courage, as I trod The crackling bracken underfoot, While the screech-owl's unhallowed hoot Rang like the cruel mocking brute Laugh of the woodland god: And as I hung in utter fear And shuddered like a stricken steer, I felt an unseen presence near And knew undying Pan Kept still his ancient haunts, although Men sang his dirge so long ago, But waiting for time's overthrow To sing the death of man. COASTER Blindly we steal Through the blind night with ship's lamps dully gleaming And siren screaming, And now a sudden whirling wheel And a sharp signal tinkling To warn the engineer As in a twinkling We shift our course and steer On the port-tack or the starboard-tack, to clear A bottom-ripping reef or the too near Suddenly looming ghost That bears down on us threateningly With bows that barely sheer Clear of catastrophe-- Blindly we steal With cautious searching keel Along the unseen coast Through the obscurity Of blind white night Momently mantling with the eerie gleam Of the far Longstone Light Whose baffled beam Can scarcely pierce the fog; while everywhere About us the incessant blare Of sirens rends the shuddering numb air With shriek and moan and howl As unseen groping coasters prowl So close we feel their wash about our hull. And now an instant lull When nothing stirs the brooding mystery That merges sky and sea Save the sharp eldritch yelling of a gull Whose solitary railing Sounds like the desolating scream Of nightmare terror wailing When the lost spirit, in uneasy sleep, Still plunges desperately more deep In suffocating labyrinths of fear: Then, as the soul wakes and in smothering dread Lies scarcely realising on the bed That the familiar and dear Daylight is glowing through the window-blind, We seem to waken suddenly to find The sea and sky swept clear To the horizon and the summer night Alive with glancing airs and scattering light Beneath a heaven miraculous with stars; And as we waken from blind dream Our dazed eyes dazzle to the gleam Of the far Longstone's wheeling beam That like a flourished scimitar's Cold flashing cuts the crystalline Blue lucency of June midnight: And like souls newly won Through the blind regions of oblivion We stand beneath the dripping spars And in divine And quivering delight Drink deep the quick air tanged with brine. THE TRYST Gulls, whose voice is the cry Of the ravening soul of the sea, You call on my heart, as we lie In harbour, to venture once more Out from the shelter of shore, Out where the hurricanes sweep Through a crashing and deluging sky Over the face of the deep. Gulls, whose voice is the cry Of my hungry unsatisfied breast, You call on my heart, as we lie In harbour, to venture once more Out from the shelter of shore, Out through the midnight to keep In the swirl of the sea and the sky My tryst with death on the deep. ISLANDS Six souls in one small craft, among the isles We cruised day after day in harmony, The glory of the mountains and the sea, Sky-shouldering bens and glittering firths and kyles, Holding us in enchantment, seemingly At one in all things, all desires and dreams Merged, as the voice of waves and mountain streams In one austere exultant symphony. One undivided soul we seemed; and yet It was but seeming: perilous as the kyles Whose torrent races separate the isles The deeps that sunder soul from soul--each set An individual island in life's sea, Dissevered each from each eternally. GUILLEMOT As quietly chill day is breaking Through storm-cleansed and unclouded skies, On a low wave-lapped shelf he lies With open but unseeing eyes Slowly awaking From the unconsciousness of deathly sleep-- Still desperately, it seems, Struggling to keep His head above the drowning wave And drag himself clear of the ravening deep-- To drag his waterlogged numb body free Of the cold clutching sea And from annihilation save Something that is, and yet is not, himself... And now becoming gradually aware Of the hard ridges of the rocky shelf, He feels a sense of some security-- When through the dwindling darkness riving screams That seem to tear The tympan of his ear Pierce the dark hollow of his heart with fear; And he hangs listening for a spell On the sharp brink of hell While flapping fiends about him skirl and yell: Then, as the sense of sight Slowly returns he lies dimly perceiving The living world about him, yet Hardly believing That he himself still lives, with vacant stare Watching dark shooting shuttles weaving A glittering fabric in the air With ravelling skeins of light As if they sought to snare His weary body in a magic net.... And now, as his dazed vision clears, Again those cries, No longer sinister, but sharp With the harsh urgency of life, he hears, And sees quick-flapping wings and breasts of white, As those dark shuttles suddenly Change to swift birds that ceaselessly Speed 'twixt the crag's high scarp And the bright level of the sea; And gradually The dear lifelong familiarity Of homely guillemot that come and go About their business fussily With clapping wings and breasts of snow And short stretched necks and anxious cries, Fills his tired heart with comfort and he lies Watching them with untroubled eyes, Glad but to know Life still is his, that he has won Through the black peril of shipwrecking night Back to a world that kindles to the sun, A world of lively airs and waves that fling Bright scattering manes into the light; And as he feels the sting Of sharp life shooting through numb limbs he tries With gasping breath to echo those harsh cries. OLYMPUS The clouds serenely parted and revealed Beyond the dark Ægean remote Olympus, The snow-cold empty throne of fallen gods, A moment, then once more the heavenly peak Resumed its ancient mystery of cloud. Long years have passed since then; and they who stood Beside me on the deck are long since dead; And long the very ship on which we sailed Has lain beneath the wave it rode so proudly: Yet, even as in that cloudy dawn, my soul, At moments in the strain and stress of life, On that serene celestial snow-cold peak Finds sanctuary with the forgotten gods. SAIL ON, SAIL ON! The day is dying and the steady breeze Grows wild and gusty, working to a gale; And through the threshing gloom the farther seas Flash angrily. Shall we not shorten sail And make for harbour while we have the light? _Sail on, sail on, sail on into the night!_ The night is on us with a swoop and roar That shudders through the ship from truck to keel: And we may never reach another shore On those uncharted deeps that surge and reel Beyond the gleam of the last island-light. _Sail on, sail on, sail on into the night!_ TRAFFIC THE TELEPHONE The shrill bell sings Through the silent house And scares to its hole A venturing mouse: But no other ear Pays heed to the call; And the form on the bed Never troubles at all-- For nothing at all To the form on the bed Is the unknown who tries To ring up the dead. THE LINN All day he broods beside the thunderous linn, His eyes on the sun-burnished steel-bright curve Of the sheer force, whose waters never swerve A hair's breadth from their course, until the din And steady dazzle make his senses spin In a dazed ecstasy that drugs the nerve Of anguish and the agonies that serve To rend a soul racked with a sense of sin. Though still he sees her drawn despairing face, The tortured eyes that searched him through and through, And hears that desolated cry, the race Of hill-born waters through his being heals His lacerated life: at last he feels That there was nothing else for him to do. THE GLANCE Catching a glance betwixt them as they turned To greet him smiling, in a flash he learned They to each other were all in all, while he To them was less than nothing, even though she Was his betrothed who so light-heartedly Greeted him with a smile. Without a word He stood before them smiling, but scarcely heard Their voices as they talked about the weather: And presently they strolled away together, Leaving him stricken by that lightning glance Of mutual understanding, in a trance Of dread prevision ... in a land of dream Lit only by the welkin's pallid gleam From which the chill rain dripped and dripped on three Neglected graves through all eternity. SAL A sudden spasm racked her; and they said, "Come, Sal, by rights you ought to be in bed." But, when they sought to help her from her chair, She, seeing death coming, with ignoring stare Looked clear beyond them and without their aid Stood up to death, serene and unafraid. THE PREACHER He stands in the deserted square and preaches To all the world, though not a soul is listening, His worn face white with fervour, his eyes glistening With unshed tears, as his old voice beseeches The world to heed his gospel and to save Its soul alive from the devouring grave. He speaks, unrealising that none hearkens; He only knows 'tis his to love and cherish His fellows and to warn them, lest they perish In stubborn pride; and while the dull square darkens, Entreating all to come to God he stands With flame-bright face and flickering white hands. THE RECOLLECTION Little I fancied he could make me cry-- And after all these years! I should have said I could have looked on Nicholas lying dead Dry-eyed: yet when at last I saw him lie Speechless and harmless, his one evil eye With no more power to hurt me, on the bed Wherein long since my last tear had been shed, Something stirred in my heart, long dead and dry; Something stirred in my heart as I recalled How at the circus, lad and lass, we'd laughed Together at the clown when he had chaffed The proud ringmaster who, offended, hauled The squealing fool by one ear round the ring; And tears were in my eyes, remembering. TAKING THEM UNAWARES... Taking them unawares, he only smiled And uttered no reproach; and yet they felt The thought he left unuttered had defiled Their innocent tenderness, and his glance had dealt A deathblow to their love, though his eyes dwelt Only an instant on them as they stood Embarrassed, stiff as figures carved in wood: Then murmuring, "A truly pleasant day!" He turned upon his heel and strolled away. THE SURPRISE Why do you start and stare? You don't see anyone behind my chair? I seem to feel ... Wife, say there's no one there! I cannot turn or rise, And my old heart's too weak to stand surprise.... I feel a cold breath on my scalp.... My eyes-- Someone's blindfolding me With icy fingers, and I cannot see.... Wife, wife, why don't you bid them let me be? For I'm too old, too old For hoodman-blind ... and I am growing cold As death.... Wife, give me your warm hand to hold. Wife, wife, are you not there? I'm falling, falling down an endless stair... And I, I cannot find you anywhere. THE YEARS BETWEEN The low light streams Through the open door, Turning to gold The sanded floor. I rise and look To the glowing west To see him come Over Harelaw crest; And as at last He tops the hill I catch a gleam Of his shouldered bill, And know a bare Ten minutes more Should bring him home... Through the open door The low light streams.... But how should he Through twelve dead years Come back to me? THE DREAM He could not sleep--and yet, if he'd not slept, How came he in the wood? His bed he'd kept Since first he'd taken to it years ago; He'd never risen from it once; and so It surely must have been in dream he'd stood At night within the dark heart of the wood-- The dark heart of the middle of the night Pierced only by one icy lance of light, And all unruffled by the faintest breeze-- Stood like a tree among those quiet trees, With arms outstretched like branches in the gleam, Like still unswaying branches, and in dream Upon his open hand the little bat Alighted suddenly and cowered flat And frightened in his palm--he still could feel The cold wee fluttering body, and the steel Of those sharp flinching eyes, that glittered bright As needles in that one ray of moonlight, Still pricked him to the heart--his heart that knew, Even as it 'lighted, 'twas her soul that flew To him for refuge from eternal night Wherein she wandered, exiled from the light She'd always loved.... And now again he stood In the dead heart of that phantasmal wood, A living man among cadaverous trees That rustled now, but with no earthly breeze; And strove to hold that quivering soul, and bear His frightened love back to the light and air Of living day, strove that she might regain Her own sweet living body, strove in vain.... The dead trees closed about him, rank on rank, Hiding the moon, and to the ground he sank, Sank down and down in darkness and despair ... And found again that he was lying there In his accustomed chamber in the gleam Of the unclouded moon whose crystal stream Flooded the snowy quilt: an eager breeze Ruffling and questing through the living trees Outside the open window; and he heard The flutter and cheep of the first wakened bird, Soon with its fellows to put dreams to flight In a full-throated chorus of delight. And yet that quivering soul, those frightened eyes, Shall haunt his heart until the day he dies. THE OLD DOCTOR Dropt dead at his own door they found The doctor, back from his last round. All day he had been listening To histories of suffering And seeking to alleviate For others the shrewd pangs of fate; Yet added not to their distress A hint of his uneasiness, Though but too well he knew that he, Even as he fought for them, must be The first to fall before the foe, To fall, but not to fail--and so Dead at his own door he was found When he had finished his last round. THE BRIGHT GLANCE Her bright glance flitted round the room and dwelt Unconsciously a moment on his face; And, his eyes meeting hers, he suddenly felt That they together out of time and space Were swept into the swirl of singing stars.... And she--complacently discussing cars With her companion, never even dreaming Of his existence--sped with gold hair streaming, The star of all that singing galaxy, One moment his and for eternity. HER DEATH Now death at last had taken her; and they Were free to live and let love have its way, They who had held themselves in check so long Lest they should hurt that tender heart, and wrong Their love itself by letting it destroy The affection that had been the only joy Of her poor crippled life.... Now they were free-- And yet they stood there, hesitatingly, And realised their love held in restraint By tenderness had with the years grown faint, That now between them there could only be The affection of familiarity And old habitual kindness.... Side by side Speechless they stood, regretting she had died. THE UNREVEALED Always a door within a door we find When curiously we venture to explore The obscure and labyrinthine corridor Of man's unsearchable immemorial mind-- Always a shrine within a shrine, when we Would seek through courts and chambers crystalline The temple's holy of holies, to divine The secret of the soul's flame-folded mystery. THE CUT We quarrelled sorely, and I cut him dead Day after day; then for a week or so I missed him in the street; and gradually The folly of it all came over me; So I at last determined I would go And make it up with him, but came too late, Though just in time to meet him at the gate, Leaving it for the last time; and as I Stood to one side to let the bearers by It seemed that there was nothing to be said, Since I had cut my friend, had cut him dead. THE DARK FOREST _You knew him?_ Knew him? Who can thread with ease The implications and intricacies Of the dark forest of another's mind? Why, even in my own, I stumble blind And baffled through crass midnight and the dense Thicket of cobwebbed branches, with no sense Of sure direction, tangled in the brake, Ever uncertain of the road to take Through thorn and brambled sprays that trip and rasp: And only rarely is it mine to grasp The trenchant thought that cuts a pathway clear Through matted undergrowths of doubt and fear. THE WINDOW I sit within the darkening room, Watching the window's growing gloom Until my eyes distinguish there No glimmer of the night-filled square, Thinking of her who, even now, Feels death-dew settle on her brow, Uneasy lest I suddenly A white face at the window see, And in the midnight silence hear Her fingers fumbling, numb with fear, The cold unseen dividing-glass The exiled dead may never pass. THE APPOINTMENT "I should have wired to put you off: I know I should have wired--I know I should have wired: Over and over to myself I said I ought to wire, I ought--but I was tired, So tired, so tired ... I was so tired; and so..." Then the old woman paused with trembling head And still unseeing eyes, and said no more A moment, as we stood beside the door. "You see, it happened all so suddenly-- One moment, he stood there and looked at me-- The next, and he was lying on the floor... And, after sixty years, to leave his wife Without a word--though what he's left 'twould seem Is little enough, God knows! I think my life Went out with his ... I felt so tired, so tired. I should have wired, I know I should have wired: I knew that you were coming; and I said I ought to wire ... and yet, 'twas all a dream In which I wandered round in my own head Where he lay staring at me with still eyes That followed me and looked me through and through, But never saw me.... And still there he lies Just where he fell: I couldn't move him, I Was much too tired, and had to let him lie; And no one else has been here.... But I knew That there was something that I ought to do-- And meant to wire.... I know I should have wired To put you off--but I was tired, so tired." THE SEPARATE BED "Is that you, Jenny?" His voice rang clear As he smiled in his sleep And turned his head: But how should she answer, Or even hear, Who six foot deep Had made her bed? THE END OF THE GAME A shower of pebbles rattles on the door; And then a scampering of little feet, And laughing cries as down the village street The children scatter into safe retreat-- The children scatter, and then turn and peep Round coign and corner, and with cruel bright Young eyes they watch the door in scared delight, Ready, when it shall open, to take flight: But nothing happens; and at length they tire Of waiting, and so turn to some fresh game, Since, for the first time, the old crazy dame Has failed to let them see her anger flame: While, colder than the ashes of her fire, Beyond all anger, stretched upon the floor, Safe from young cruelty, she lies asleep. FRUITS OF THE TREE No breath was stirring, and yet quietly The leaves were falling from the chestnut tree, Quietly through still air as clear as glass Floating to rest upon the rimy grass, Falling and falling in a golden shower Till the whole tree was stripped in one short hour, And naked on a golden carpet stood Against the purple of the dark pine wood. And from his chair beside the autumn blaze The old man watched them falling, as his days Were falling from him, leaf by shrivelled leaf, In the still autumn of his life, so brief, So endless-seeming in its golden quiet-- His days that once had been a glistening riot Of quickening buds that thrust in April air; And then a spreading foliage green and fair Lighted with blossoms through enchanted May And thrilled with song of birds the livelong day; Then tranced in the still glow of summer sun.... His leaves were falling, falling one by one, Quietly drifting to the earth, and now But few were left upon the drooping bough.... His days were falling ... and the chestnut tree Stood naked in the cold air.... Merrily His laughing grandson burst in through the door, Clutching in grubby hands a precious store Of ruddy burnished nuts that on the ground Beneath the naked branches he had found, And dancing round his chair in restless glee Held out his treasure for grandad to see. HIS LAST APRIL Silent he stands Looking across the lighted meadowlands, Remembering with tears The daffodils of other years: He stands alone Recalling other Aprils he has known, With eyes that see in dream The asphodels of Enna gleam. FROM DAY TO DAY... From day to day, not too unhappily We live, ignoring man's mortality, We sleep and wake and work and eat and drink-- But what would happen if we stopped to think? ALL SOULS Lying awake in his lone bed, Somehow he did not feel alone: The icy aching darkness searched His fevered body to the bone. A chill breath prickled through his hair, And as into the heart of fear He stared with sightless eyes, he felt That something slowly glided near-- Something that drew, in spite of him, His clenched reluctant hand outside The quilt; and as cold fingers closed On his, he knew his foe had died. THE COWS He had to milk the cows; he couldn't keep The poor beasts waiting, though he'd had no sleep, Tossing and tumbling all night on his bed, Turning things over and over in his head, Turning things over and over all the night Without a clue or hope of getting them right, Fumbling them over and over in his mind To the flap-flapping of the window-blind That through the livelong night of wind and rain The draught had fluttered at the window-pane-- The flap-flap-flapping that had seemed to be The sound of his own thoughts so uselessly, As he in sleepless torment tossed in bed, Beating their wings inside his aching head-- Bats in a loft that seek in flurried flight A chink to let them out into the night, When someone's stopped up their accustomed chink-- But bats were bats, and didn't have to think-- At least not his thoughts, and without a doubt They in the end would blunder their way out: While he, for all his thinking, could not see That any blundering would set him free. He had to milk the cows; and he must rise: They would be waiting; and their patient eyes Would turn towards him in the lanthorn light Calmly as though no storm had raged all night, Rattling the loose tiles of the milking shed; Ay, each would slowly turn a patient head And look at him with grave untroubled eyes That took things as they came without surprise, Without foreboding, greeting each new day, And, without brooding, munching their fresh hay: And wise they were--nay, 'twas stupidity That let them chew the cud contentedly Day after day; and they would never know The thoughts that tortured him.... But, even so, It would be healing to be with them now, To press to their calm sides his throbbing brow, And feel them heaving as the easy breath Moved them, unfluttered by the thought of death, To leave the tossing torment of his bed For the cool quiet of the milking shed, The quiet only broken by the sound Of streaming milk--the quiet only found With beasts that munch in deep placidity The fodder of each morn unquestioningly, Dreading no doomsday. And another night At least was over. He must strike a light, And rise and milk the cows: he couldn't keep The poor beasts waiting: though he'd had no sleep, They must be tended. 'Twould be good to be Again the servant of necessity, Working among the quiet beasts again With no dark blind flap-flapping in his brain. JOCELYN As one who finds in dews of dawn The crystal of the sprinkled lawn Printed with hoofmarks of a faun, That under the new moon all night Has danced in circles of delight-- So I with thrilling heart surprise The elfin light that gleams and glances In Jocelyn's enchanted eyes As her wild spirit dances, dances.... COME LIFE, COME DEATH! Come life with kindling strife, That I in life may lose the fear of life! Come death with drowsing breath That I in death may lose the fear of death! IN THE DEAD HOUR Startled instantly awake In the dead hour of the night By some unknown urgency Tingling through the icy air-- Knowing not if someone cries, Some lost soul in evil plight Sinking in the last despair Cries his name despairingly-- For a dire eternity Helpless in the dark he lies Till a blackbird in the pear Hails the reassuring light. THE BROKEN LINK She always seemed to flinch from him and shrink Farther into her shell when he appeared, Answering his sullen grunts as if she feared To speak and hardly even dared to think Her own thoughts in his presence, trained to sink Her own identity in servitude To his least whim, the slave of every mood, Till his caprice or death should snap the link. But when one winter night he did not come, And slowly she was brought to realise That he'd forsaken her, her stricken eyes Fixed on the open door, with anguished stare All night she watched and waited, deaf and dumb; And dead at dawn they found her in her chair. THE UNSEEN HOUSEMATE A shuffling step across the upper floor, Loose-fitting slippers flapping down the stair, The handle turns and stealthily the door Swings on its hinges, and there's no one there-- No one my eyes can see; but, happen, he Who dwelt here ere I came had keener sight-- At least I wonder what he saw the night He hanged himself from the old apple tree. THE POPLARS The poplars all the long unquiet night Tossed to unsleeping stars their ruffling plumes; But still gold flames tranced in the frosty light Of dawn they soar above the mounded tombs-- Soar like gold flames, as flake on flake they shed Their yellow fire, and bury yet more deep In drift on drift of rustling gold the dead Who never more shall waken from deep sleep-- Who never more shall waken in the night To hear the threshing of unquiet trees, Or see the poplars in the morning light Soar like gold flames above the frozen leaze. THE SHIFTED CHAIR It seemed to be a chair ... assuredly It was a chair, as far as he could see With sleepy eyes.... A chair? Why not a chair? And yet last night it surely wasn't there-- No chair had stood beside the bed last night When he'd blown out the guttering candlelight, Who could have moved the one chair from the wall To his bedside, or needed to at all? He'd lain for hours before he'd fallen asleep Staring into the past: but fast and deep He must have slumbered, or he should have heard If any footstep in the dumb house stirred-- If any foot ... but no foot, well he knew, Save his, had stirred the dust for years; and who Should enter the barred house at night, and there Sit, while he slept, beside him in a chair? If only it were day ... in this half-light He couldn't think: 'twas neither day nor night.... Yet, when he saw it first, the chair had been Empty ... but now a figure, vaguely seen, Sat drooping in the shadow.... Could it be-- And after all these years? But surely she Had died? Beside her grave long years ago-- Or was it yesterday?--he'd watched the snow Fall on the new-laid turf and bury deep And deeper in cold drifts his heart asleep Beside that silent sleeper.... And yet there She sat beside him slumbering in a chair. He must lie very quiet and not stir, He must lie quiet and not waken her-- Quiet.... His eyes closed gradually, and deep As hers in her dark grave was his last sleep. ISOLATION Knew him? I'd sworn I knew him through and through; Yet, after all, it seems, like others, I knew Only the surface he cared to let me see Or didn't mind me seeing; or, it may be, He'd no deliberate purpose to conceal Anything from me, that no one may reveal His innermost being even to a friend, But each must hold in secret to the end His self of selves; that even love can't find The key to unlock the mind within the mind, The heart within the heart; and though it seem, As we together watch the first star gleam Through the cold beryl of the afterglow Or dayspring wash with pearl an alp of snow, Our souls are one in mutual ecstasy, Merged in emotional identity Eternal and inviolable, that still Each soul is isolated as the hill, That even in love's embrace the lovers are Divided soul from soul as star from star. THE LAST VISIT Gently the doctor closed the door, and stole Between the borders of wet lavender Down to the wicket quietly as though His step from that deep sleep might startle her. Day after day so long now had it been His lot to visit unavailingly That unquelled soul in its frail cage of bones Racked on a bed of hopeless agony-- Day after day.... His fingers touched the latch, Chill in its silvering of dewy rime, For the last time--his fingers that at dawn Had closed those weary eyes for the last time. And then he sighed, though for her sake relieved By her release, as over him there came A sense of all that life for him had lost Since death had quenched that spirit's eager flame. BROKEN TOYS His toy is broken, and he seems to weep His very heart out, till he falls asleep; Yet when he wakes next morning some new toy Catches his fancy, and his heart with joy Brims bubbling over in a laughing stream.... But I must hug the fragments of my dream And never know, as sleeplessly I lie, The sweet relief of tears--too old to cry. MOONSTRUCK The moon has got into his blood And runs, quicksilver, through his veins And so he rambles all night long About the fields and lanes: And when he comes upon a pond Wherein her image glitters bright, He kicks his heels up in the air And dances with delight. He dances till the moon herself And the mock moon are dancing too-- Quicksilver in his toes and heels, He dances in the dew. EARLY TO BED... Lodged in the dead man's house, I climb the stair, And halt a moment by the gilded chair On the landing where he paused to rest half-way, Rest and recover his breath on that last day, Mounting the marble steps laboriously For the last time. "Sent like a child," said he, "Sent like a naughty child to bed by day! I who've not once, since I could have my way, Retired before midnight. Ah, well, they say "Early to bed" ... Perhaps I shall grow wise At last--the health and wealth I've had--and rise Early; I must rise early, if the rhyme Demands obedience"; and then for the last time He looked at the great pendent chandelier, Its numerous irised lustres glittering clear In sunshine through the crystal lantern streaming; And like a child's, enchanted by its gleaming, His old eyes kindled to the coloured lights; And then he slowly toiled up the last flights. And I, who sojourn in his house, still hear His chuckling words--"Perhaps I shall grow wise At last: I must rise early--I must rise...." And wonder what was in his mind when he Struggled to rise at dawn so desperately. COMING UPON THEM... Coming upon them where they stood embraced, His young wife and his bosom friend, he fell Dumb at their feet. They drew apart in haste, And stooped to succour him, but knew full well The shock had been too much for his old heart, That never now should he with eye or tongue Reproach their faithlessness.... And still apart They stood on either side of him, unstrung; And, shuddering and sick at soul, they knew That pitiful rigid body on the floor, Whose love for them had been so warm and true, Would lie betwixt them now for evermore. THE DARK GIFT "Led there be light!" God said; and there was light; And man rejoiced at dawn; but all too soon His eyes grew weary; and he cried at noon, "Let there be darkness!" and God gave him night. THE OLD MAN LISTENS Behind his chair an unseen robin's trilling Shivers the brittle silence to a tinkle Of crystal notes; and as the old man listens His worn face glistens and his thin mouth quivers, And bright as a new shilling his eyes twinkle; His old eyes twinkle bright as a new shilling To hear again those trilling notes that sprinkle, Sprinkle and spirtle in their crystal spilling The quiet of old age with thoughts that tinkle, Tinkle and twinkle like the clear bells shrilling, The crystal bells of youth whose ting-a-linging, Crystal in crystal, set a boy's heart ringing, In far Septembers through a boy's heart thrilling, Crystal Septembers thrilled with crystal singing, In far Septembers his old heart remembers, His heart that's now again a robin trilling. THE EASY CHAIR He drew the curtain to shut out the night, The pitchy welkin of low brooding storm, Hoping himself secure within the light Of his accustomed room so snug and warm: Yet, as he settled in his easy chair And held his hands to the familiar glow, A cold breath seemed to shiver through his hair, Cold as the wind that blows from Polar snow; And to his eyes the lamp's clear golden light Clouded with shadows; and he knew that he Had drawn in vain the curtains, for the night Was in his heart--that he was doomed to be Ever a traveller through the sleety gloom Of that black bitter night when, passion-torn, His bride had fled the comfort of his room And left him to his cosy hearth, forlorn-- Left him to stumble over craggy scars And through deep glens of his own heart's despair, Blinded by fog, or mocked by cruel stars-- An old man brooding in his easy chair. GONE TO BED Ay, he has gone to bed, for he was tired. What's that you say? "Early for him, at his age!" Nay, man, nay! He'd stayed up over-late and he was done: And as he tumbled into bed And turned to go to sleep he said, "It's been a gey long day." Ay, he has gone to bed, for he was tired. What's that you say? You wanted just a word with him? Nay, nay! You've come too late to have a word with him: You'll have to leave your word unsaid Until he rises from his bed At dawn of Judgement Day. THE SICK BOY He floated on the surface of the stream And could not sink, although so desperately He longed in some deep pool of night to lie And never look again upon the sky. On the bright surface of his hurrying dream 'Twixt sleep and waking all night restlessly The fevered boy tossed, longing in profound Oblivion of deep slumber to be drowned. Ever the roaring in his ears, the gleam And glitter in his eyes as towards the sea On the swift torrent 'neath the tropic day His weightless body spun upon its way-- Until a giant hand of ice, 'twould seem, Was pressed on his hot brow; and gradually Down, down he sank ... and watched the bubble beads Of breath rise slowly through the swaying weeds. Down, down he sank through icy deeps of dream, Down, down and down through all eternity ... Then, light of heart, new-risen from the dead, Smiled as he saw his mother by the bed. TIME, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! "Time, gentlemen, please!" The inexorable host Calls out above the chattering and the laughter, Flinging the door wide open to the night; And out we stumble from the warmth and light Into Hereafter-- One after one we go into the cold Lampless oblivion that so long has haunted Our hearts in pauses of the revelry, Our bosoms emptied of the pride that we So bravely flaunted. "Time, gentlemen, time!" And we who long hobnobbed With boon companions in the light and laughter, Each, willy-nilly, must set out alone, Stript to the naked soul, through the unknown Homeless Hereafter. MARCHING ON _John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave_... A rain-soaked shapeless huddle of sacks that showed Nor head nor limbs came shuffling down the road: And neither man nor woman could I descry Within that bundle as it passed me by: Yet from the sodden sackcloth hood a shrill Old reedy voice piped, singing with a will-- _And his soul goes marching on!_ THE HUNTER'S MOON Not yet the moon Had topped the hill; The moorland lay In shadow still: And still no tune His heart could find, No tune to sing His care away. But when at last The dreaming blind Dark leagues of ling Leapt into light Into the night His care was cast, And clear and high A lively tune Sang down the dale And through the sky Rang out to hail The hunter's moon. SAILS OUT OF THE AIR No song-bird will ever Come to my call; But when I am thinking Of nothing at all, Thinking of nothing And going nowhere, Out of the air The crystal notes fall. _SEA SWALLOW_ I Bright as a tern's wet breast Sea Swallow cleaves the crest Of each dark wave that shivers About her slender sprit, Each wave that spills and shivers In spray that pearls and quivers, Quicksilver on the foresail With iris lustres lit. A white thought through my mind, Sea Swallow cleaves the blind Dark waves of baffled dreaming That drowsed in deepest night-- Her white hull spills the dreaming Dark waves to a salt gleaming And glancing rainbow dazzle Of quivering delight. II Where, shivering into brilliants, the beryl waters spray The island crags and caverns, and gulls on silver wings Hover in airs of crystal the livelong summer day, My heart aboard the Sea Swallow for ever sails and sings: And where about the ramparts of dark embattled isles The unseen threshing tumult a moment flickers white, It rides the roaring darkness of the races of the kyles Through endless starry watches of the song-enchanted night. THE OUTER ISLES "Lee oh!" the cry rang, and scarce consciously He ducked just as the boom swung overhead With clack and rattle of blocks and slap of sail; And still across the steely heaving sea Of ever alternating hill and dale He watched the scudding squall that northward sped, Sweeping the Outer Islands with a trail Of golden showers through which the sunset burned; And as he looked through that translucent veil, Momently glowing to intenser fire, The sea-scourged islands of bleak rock were turned To the Hesperides of his desire; And even as the sun dipped and the squall Was but a flying darkness and the night Suddenly closed about the little yawl, Still in his eyes those islands glittered bright, Tranced in a glory of unearthly light. SKYE I The squall had swept the heavens clear At sundown and across the sea, Relinquishing her veils of rain, Skye burned, an emerald on our lee-- Over a tide of serpentine, Chiselled by the keen diamond light Out of the matrix of dark cloud, It burned and glittered, jewel-bright. The sun dipped swiftly, and the Isle, Its peaks dissolved in amethyst, As southerly we sailed, again Vanished in veils of opal mist. II But for a breathing-space the witch, Shedding her cloak of mystery, Unveils her beauty to the light Beyond the cold green glancing sea-- A moment, and then busily Spinning, she swathes herself again In a fresh web of mist and rain. LOCH SHIELDAIG After long pitching on uneasy seas, As peacefully with canvas stowed we lay In the unruffled and pelucid bay And the young moon swung clear of the dark trees, Shadow on shadow through the silvering gloam Athwart the unclouded amber afterglow We watched the heron sail, serenely slow, Like ghosts of unquelled heroes coming home-- Against the embers of day's dying fire They streamed in stately and unhurried flight, Like souls of heroes from some ancient fight Seeking the haven of their hearts' desire. SINGING WATERS One loud tumultuous deluge is the sky, And all the hills are laced with flashing falls, And clear from strath and glen as we sail by The voice of water calls-- The voice of singing water; and the deep Rock-cumbered wellspring that has slept so long In the dark cavern of my heart from sleep Wakens again to song. CANNA Our eyes peered through the rainy mirk until We saw a deeper shadow in the night, A square bluff sheerly rising from the sea, The island of our quest; and presently, Doubling the head, the winking harbour-light Flashed us a welcome from the little quay: And as to that dark dreaming isle that slept Unconscious of our coming we at last From the wild waste of the Atlantic came, Our hearts were lighted by the little flame Some friendly islander, now sleeping fast, Had kindled, and we blessed his unknown name. THE ISLAND BULL Within the four-foot span of his great horns, Beneath his brow's crisp curls of ruddy hair With a smoulder of blue fire his brown eyes stare At the unmastered snowy herds that sweep Over the windy pastures of the deep: And as he sees the breakers ranging free Over the shining meadows of the sea To even fiercer flame those unquelled fires Quicken with old far-wandering desires. THE PRIMROSE As that August eve I rambled Over benty braes and scrambled Up the Canna crags I found, Nestling closely to the ground In a corrie of the cliff-top One wee brave belated primrose Flourishing in eager air; And, as I stood dreaming there, Far from that stern Northern shore I was wandering once more Happily, a boy, through Cornwall's Primrose-lighted lanes of April-- Happily--yet more to me Than the spendthrift blooms of April In that chilly sunset hour Meant that solitary flower Blowing by the Northern sea. GAIRLOCH After long tossing on the uneasy swell Under storm-rent apocalyptic skies Along the embattled coast by hills that towered In sunlight like the peaks of paradise Above tormented clouds and straths that glowered Black under tempest as the mouth of hell, We ran our little boat in to the land And wandered idly on the friendly strand, Glad, after infinite visions, to explore The tiny glittering treasures of the shore, Glad for a while to rest awe-wearied eyes On the infinitesimal marvels of the sand, Each sparkling grain, each brittle rose-leaf shell, Each lucent pebble a new miracle... Until across the Minch the sunset light Kindled the Outer Isles with stormy flare, And winds and waters called to us once more To ride again the ruffling surge and dare The old adventure of Atlantic night. THE STAG UNSEEN Mist swathes the Coolins in a stormy swirl As under Rum we sail; and all in vain We peer through the grey glancing veils of rain, Straining to catch a sight of some young stag Exultant on an isolated crag Of Haiskeval, vaunting his antlered pride O'er unseen corries of the mountain-side-- Yet in our hearts a flying stormy gleam Gilds the proud antlers of the stag of dream. THE BIRDS OF SAINT BRIDE In the fringe of the tide All day in the sun That glitters so bright On bosom and back, With a dazzle of white And a kindling of black The birds of Saint Bride Flutter and run. Hither and thither Darting and dashing, Hither and thither Flirting and flashing, With a dazzle of white And a kindling of black They flutter and flitter To nowhere and back; They glance and they glitter In flickering flight, Then over the wall They wheel out of sight With a clear crystal call Like the voice of the light. GREEN CORMORANT On the wave-washed scarp of crag Broods the haggard hungry shag Over the green curdling sea, Like some ancient huddled hag Gloating o'er the witchery Of her seething cauldron, brewing Hell-broth for a king's undoing. DUNVEGAN Through the dark narrow channel in the night We stole into the little sleeping bay, And dropping anchor in the veiled starlight Under the shadow of Dunvegan lay-- We who had ventured far across the surge, Drawn as by siren music to that shore Since first our hearts had heard Dunvegan's dirge Sung by a voice that we should hear no more: And as in that strange anchorage we dreamed Under the haunted shadow of the hill, The coronach of proud Dunvegan seemed About his castle walls to echo still. SCUIR-NAN-GILLEAN The jagged Coolins through a stormy rent Thrust their clean-chiselled peaks into the light Of the last rays of the storm-harried sun That, hurtling from the clear horizon, smite The crest of Scuir-nan-gillean with red lances, And over straths and corries lapped in night He towers a moment with fire-blazoned helm; Then the sun sinks and from the East advances The host of cloudy shadows that overwhelm The old chieftain and his clan, and once again He vanishes in darkness from our sight Wrapped in his ragged maud of mist and rain. FROM NIGHT TO NIGHT The mainmast rakes the midnight sky As on the slanting deck we lie And watch the dark waves racing by-- The dark waves only flickering bright A moment in the starboard light, Then lost for ever in the night. From night to night the dark waves go: And we who watch them, even so One dancing dazzling moment know-- One moment kindling to the glow Of life as we too hurry by In our swift course from night to night. THE STORMBOW As setting sail we left the creek Within whose shelter all the night Under Ben Aslak we had lain, Lulled by the lap of waves and loud Threshing of torrents big with rain Cascading from the unseen peak, A quivering lance of stormy light Suddenly shivered the cold bleak Low-brooding bank of Eastern cloud: And, as we turned to bid farewell To birchen brae and ferny dell And the high-soaring cloud-capped ben, A stormbow spanned the misty-glen; And in our hearts through all that day Of crashing showers and lashing spray That miracle of rainy light Quivered and sparkled Eden-bright. DRIFTERS, MALLAIG As, beating up against the wind, at last We make the harbour in the failing light, A fleet of smoky drifters, steaming past Our little yawl, rides out into the night-- Rides out into the darkness and the storm To labour night-long on the turbulent deep, While in our quiet cabins snug and warm We lie securely in untroubled sleep: And when at last in sounder sleep we lie In the last anchorage, men will yet dare The midnight menace of the sea and sky And vigilant through crashing darkness fare. THE SLEEPERS OF THE ISLES Who calls, who calls the sleepers of the Isles? Who calls, who calls? Only the low voice of the starlit kyles And the deep voice of mountain waterfalls. And do they turn, the sleepers in their graves, And answer in their sleep-- Who ever loved the voices of the waves And torrent waters crashing down the steep? Who calls, who calls the sleepers of the Isles, Who calls, who calls? Only the low voice of the starlit kyles And the deep voice of mountain waterfalls. THE SOUND OF SLEAT Squalls swirling round the mountain-side Rush out on us from strath and glen As down the Sound of Sleat we ride With straining sails the racing tide That bears us home again. Lee oh! to let the great boom swing We duck and scarce can keep our feet As like a crazy living thing With quivering keel and shrouds that sing Sea Swallow rides the Sound of Sleat. AT SEA Only the wash of waves and creak Of timbers as awake I lie And watch the starry patch of sky Through the companion.... Oh, that I On that last night of all may be Still sailing in a ship at sea; And even as I sink, too weak To turn my heavy head or speak, May I still hear the wash and creak And see the starry sky! THE SINGING ISLAND Grass of Parnassus stars the salty turf Of my heart's island in the Western seas With blossoms cold and snowy as the surf That breaks for ever on the Hebrides. Star after star the blue unclouded night Blossoms above Sea Swallow's raking spars-- And I shall see again at morning light The singing island of the snowy stars. CORONACH IN EXILE How shall he rest With the lift and the shiver and swing Of seas in his breast? How shall he rest With the soar and the flutter and sweep Of wings in his breast? Inland he lies; But how in the grave shall he sleep When the mallard's keen cries Startle the night As seaward in starlight they wing Flight upon flight? How shall he rest While still the waves shiver and swing Round the isles in his breast? RENEWAL (IN MEMORIAM, R. B.) (_For E. M., W. de la M. and L. A._) Gathered together in the room he loved About the fire that to a jewelled glow, As of some fabulous Arabian cavern, Kindles the picture-covered walls, we talk Of things that were the very breath of life To him who, all the while, no dubious shade, But a quick golden presence in the room, Listens with smiling eyes to his old friends Still talking, talking.... Time has dealt with us After its wont; and something we have lost Of the old resilience, under the long stress Of troubled years and numbing hammer-blows Of all the unbearable things that men must bear: Yet, as we pause, the undiminished flame Of his unchallengeable singing youth Ripples and quivers through our lighted veins, Requickening the Phoenix in each heart, Till, the dun plumage of mortality Consumed, our souls, fledged with immortal youth, Are one with the young singer and his song. 1930 WHO SHALL REMEMBER? Who shall remember when the day is done The lark-song ere the rising of the sun? Who shall remember at the fall of night The rosy feathering of dawning light? Who shall remember when the day is over The silvering of the dew-pearls in the clover? Who shall remember when an old man dies The morning light and laughter of his eyes? THE SINGER OF THE TREES (IN MEMORIAM, JOHN FREEMAN) Like golden torches all about the land Above the frozen fields the great elms stand, Their massy darkness kindled to clear flame.... And thus they stood the day their singer came, Came and rejoiced with us to see them there In the cold glitter of November air Like fires within a magic crystal burning.... Once more they burn; but there is no returning For him within whose eyes the golden bright Exultant beauty quickened such delight, For him who sought so soon the shadow land, Exiled from all he loved.... The great elms stand Like golden torches year by year until The slashing squalls of sudden tempest spill Their glory broadcast, as on that wild day Of wind and rain the singer went away From these beloved fields to fields that know No flower-foamed springtide or autumnal glow, And where no trees, the best beloved of all, No trees to beauty burn and no leaves fall. NO SON No son to stand at last beside the bed Where she lies dead; And yet on that same bed with labour sore Three sons she bore-- Sons who when death should come to her might still Her life fulfil-- Three sons war took ere half her years were told, Leaving her old Before her time with heart too numb for tears To face the years-- The empty widowed childless years, and live With naught to give-- She who had given all; and so was left To die bereft Even of the last despairing tenderness Of love's caress-- She who four deaths had died, yet lived, to find Only death kind At last: but safe from life at length she lies With dreamless eyes. IN NO-MAN'S-LAND I shot him as he stooped to finish me; And all night long across my shattered chest His stiffening body lay--an enemy No longer, but a weary lad at rest, Dropped from that devil's conflict suddenly Into deep slumber on a brother's breast. DIED OF WOUNDS He died of wounds, they wrote me--not a word To say how he was wounded, yet I know. How could they hope to keep the truth from me When I was with him in the agony Of his last dawn? Had I not seen him go, The night they took him from me, with the eyes Of a poor frightened child who fears the night-- The eyes of the poor baby-boy who'd clung To me, his mother, as he went to bed? They took him ... and he died of wounds they said. How could they hope to fool me--I who heard The rattle of the rifles and the cries He never uttered? He who loved the light, Because he was so innocent and young And could not face old evil, could not fight Fear, into the most fearful night of all He had to go without me.... They just said He died of wounds ... and in his last lone bed They laid him, little dreaming I was there, I who had stood with him against the wall, Though my eyes were not bandaged.... They would keep The truth from me: but where he lies asleep I soon shall lie beside him, sleeping light Lest he should wake in terror in the night. THE SINGER OF THE ISLES (IN MEMORIAM, MARJORIE KENNEDY-FRASER) Night settles on the Coolins and its wing Shadows the restless waters of the kyles As slowly with a heart too tired to sing Sails home the weary Singer of the Isles-- Sails home in silence, she who sang of home To island hearts exiled beyond the seas, Seeking at last beyond the surge and foam Some heavenly haven in the Hebrides. CORONACH Cold the fires of sunset smoulder Over Scuir-nan-gillean's shoulder, And the sunset wind blows colder Over the cold moaning surge. Moaning surge and cold wind sighing, Singing spray and seamews crying, Voices of the day's cold dying Sound the island singer's dirge. DRAW CLOSE THE CURTAINS Draw close the curtains, make the windows fast, Shut out the restless voices of the night. _Nay, but he loved the soughing of the trees And the far murmur of the island seas!_ But what to him, so still and sleeping fast, Are now the restless voices of the night, The soughing of the wind among the trees And the far murmur of the island seas? He cannot hear them where he sleeps so fast In the deaf grave, the voices of the night. _And yet he loved the soughing of the trees And the far murmur of the island seas._ He loved ... but I ... Oh, make the windows fast Against the restless voices of the night-- The old heart-breaking soughing of the trees, The old heart-breaking murmur of the far seas! ARE THERE NO OTHER ISLES? Are there no other isles beyond The waters of the west? If we set sail with questing keel At sundown towards the dying gleam Shall not another dawn reveal The unknown islands of our dream, The summer isles of rest? Are there no other isles beyond The waters of the west? Through wastes of windy dark must we Venture in endless quest, Through everduring midnight sail A havenless eternity. And in no virgin dayspring hail Over a yet unvoyaged sea The inviolable crest Of dream-familiar isles beyond The waters of the west? HIGHLAND DAWN SONG AT MIDNIGHT Something flutters through my mind Like a bird at dead of night From its perch in slumber shaken, Hither, thither, beating blind In a wild bewildered flight Through the thicket's baffling branches. Yet at length the dawn will come, And to greet the living light From the greenwood's highest tree-top Happily the bird will sing Dewy songs of welcoming, All its midnight fear forgotten. Something flutters blind and dumb Through the thicket of my mind Hither, thither, panic-stricken-- Yet it, too, will hail the light With a sudden song and find All its fear resolved in singing. WINTER'S BREATH When winter's breath has strewn with diamond splinters The brambled brake and steeled the lake And stripped the rowan trees through which we rambled And glassed the granite screes up which we scrambled, The heart that still remembers The scarlet and the amber of September's Last flaring of the summer's smouldering embers Rejoices yet, rekindling to December's Austerer flame of icy fire, and glows With crystal ardours of the Cairngorm snows. THE LITTLE BIRDS No weasel's yelp Or fox's bark Shivers the brooding Leafy dark: No screech-owl's cry Comes shudderingly; Yet on the branches Of each tree The little birds' Hearts quake, aware Of stealthy hunters Everywhere. THE SWOOPING WINGS Suddenly, as I crouched low on a ledge For shelter as a hailstorm raked the crag, An eagle swooped, the gust of his descent Fanning me as he passed, and smote a stag That unaware belled on the precipice edge A blinding blow with his death-dealing wing, And toppled him from his precarious perch Where he had stood exultant, challenging The stags of all the earth in royal pride. And sent him hurtling down the mountain-side, Helplessly crashing through the silver birch; Then, swerving to recover poise, once more Swooped on his mangled victim, lying spent Among the boulders of the Atlantic shore, Soused in the spindrift of the flowing tide. The squall ceased; and the wet walls of the pass In instant sunshine gleamed like burnished glass: But still I huddled there with sobbing breath, My soul still shaken by the winnowing Of the down-rushing of the wings of death. THE BIRCH The birch grew weary of her leaves And shed them on the sward, And danced in naked loveliness Before the sun, her lord-- And as that blue October day She danced and waved to him He gilded with his loving light Each glancing naked limb. HEAR YOU NOTHING IN THE GLEN? Hear you nothing in the glen Save the singing of the waters When the light of day is failing And the hosts of darkness gather, Sweeping over bent and heather? Hear you nothing in the glen-- No unearthly pibroch wailing Through the singing of the waters, Summoning the ghostly clan When the light of day is failing? Hear you nothing in the glen-- No gruff muttering of men, Ghosts of men o'er brae and corrie To the pibroch's ghostly wailing Swarming to the midnight foray? Hear you nothing in the glen Save the singing of the waters When the light of day is failing-- No low sound of women weeping, No lament of wives and daughters Over mounds of heroes sleeping, Ghostly wives and ghostly daughters To the pibroch's ghostly wailing Keening for the slaughtered clan, Women bowed in unavailing Sorrow since the world began, Mourning for the sons of men? When the light of day is failing Hear you nothing in the glen Save the singing of the waters? THE WISHING-TREE Year after year each pilgrim who has come To this green rustling isle of Loch Maree Has wedged his penny in the soft birch-bark Of the old Wishing-tree. And now there's scarce a chink left in the trunk To take another coin and we must search On tiptoe straining if we'd try our luck With the old wizard birch. So thickly copper-studded is the bark The birch is now just a dead metal tree: And they who wished--how many ever came Again to Loch Maree? THE RAIDER Through the witchlight of the glen, Like a sudden skirl of pipes Summoning the scattered clan, Sings the screech-owl's hunting cry, As through ghostly silver birches The night-raiding restless spirit Of some ancient cateran To the foray brushes by. THE ISLAND SONGS As the lift of the wave to the venturing keel, As the spark that is stricken from steel upon steel As the sea-light that lures in the eyes of the seal, As the soar and the swoop of the seagull in flight, As the grip of the foe in the thick of the fight, As the grasp of a friend in the heart of the night, As a loved sail lost in the gold of the west, As the laughter of God in a baby's breast, As the lights of the haven, the end of the quest-- To me, these songs in the island tongue That reivers and weavers and fishers have sung-- Songs that are old as the earth, and as young. 1909 NOT PROVEN Somebody stirring in the glen--a light Stealing among the birches, ghostly white.... Yet who would venture up the strath at night? In all the dreary years she'd dwelt alone Since Donald's killing, never had she known A visitor to cross her threshold-stone-- Since Donald came at midnight as the clock Struck twelve.... Again she hears his knuckles knock On the half-door--and left, as the byre-cock Sang out the hour ere daybreak.... He was found Among the birches, as though sleeping sound; And sound he slumbered on the blood-soaked ground. They found him sleeping with her knife between His shoulder-blades: and not a soul had been Across her threshold, she had hardly seen A neighbour from the clachan, since the day They tried her, and they let her come away, Her guilt, not proven. She'd grown old and grey Since then, a wrinkled shuffle-footed crone Living in the dark haunted glen alone Until her heart was turned into a stone: But young she'd been, as Donald, on the night He left, in spite of all that she.... The light Stole nearer: she could see his face dead-white, White as the silver birches: like a flame It burned among the birches: Donald came, Came back at last to end the years of shame.... And now his knuckles ... Donald at the door; And she must let him in, to leave no more-- But she, she could not cross the rocking floor.... And still he kept on knocking, knock, knock, knock, To the floors rocking; and the long-dumb clock Was striking twelve ... and, hark, a crowing cock! SHELDRAKE The sheldrake streaming in clean arrowed flight Into the sunset of the western tide, Their burnished plumage gilded by the light Of the last radiance, swiftly out of sight, Like fire-birds fleeing from pursuing night, Into the glory glide-- Like fire-birds homing to the heart of fire: And as she watches them her arrowy bright Young dreams on flaming pinions of delight Take wing with them towards her heart's desire. ISLAND DAWN At dawn the seamews shrill and wrangle About the storm-wrack of sea-tangle And clotted froth of curded waves That glut the entrance to the caves: And little heeds he, who lies there With cold sea-tangle in his hair, The gulls that wrangle in the air. At dawn the wife's eyes desperately Search all the sail-less leagues of sea; And she as little heeds the wrangle Of seagulls over the sea-tangle; And little guesses who lies there With cold sea-tangle in his hair While gulls still wrangle in the air. Yet, though no more his heart shall heed The gulls that shrill above the weed, Her heart shall lie in cold sea-tangle For evermore and hear the wrangle, Her heart shall lie, as he lies there, In the cold tangle of despair While gulls still wrangle in the air. THE LAST WORD Speechless at last she seemed, as on the bed She sank, and too far gone to see or hear: But, when he signed to us the end was near, Towards the doctor craning her old head, She fixed him with a kindling eye, and said-- "You, Jock McCall, you've always been a fool, Ay, from the day I knew you first at school Till double-fool you turned the day you wed-- A fool and liar; and if you fancy I, Because you choose to say so, mean to die, You're sore mistaken! Die? not I, my lad-- Not if I know it!" and she, who'd always had The last word, even with her latest breath Gasped her defiance in the face of death. HIS FETCH "You come again?" she said-- "You come again to bid a last 'Good-bye '?" He stood bewildered by his mother's bed-- For what could he reply-- He who had not till then Set foot within his mother's house all day? "I'd hardly looked to see you, lad, again Before you went away. "But, son, you must not miss The tide for me," she murmured with a smile. "Come, give your mother one last hug and kiss. We part but for a while." Speechless to her he bent, Then stumbled from the cottage towards the shore Knowing too surely that the way he went His fetch had gone before. ON THE EDGE OF THE TIDE She stands on the edge of the tide With eyes that stare into the sea; And, as I creep up to her side, Knows nothing of me. And my heart quivers cold as I steal From my love where she dreams by the sea, Lest the dark yearning eyes of a seal She turn upon me. THE RETURN She saw him, smiling on the threshold-stone, Home from his voyage unexpectedly, And stepped to greet him ... yet it was not he Who'd left her, but a week ago, alone-- Not Neil, her husband, dour and gnarled and grey, Who but a week ago had left her there-- This lad with crisp and curly yellow hair And young eyes smiling like the break of day? Yet, surely Neil, the very lad she'd wed Just forty years ago, young Neil, come back.... And then she saw with reeling sense the black Cold widowing waters close above his head. TOO LATE And he had turned and left without a word, While she stood hearkening to a silly bird, Hearkening, although she scarcely knew she heard A single note as she stayed rooted there: But ever after she could hardly bear To hear that tinkling through the crystal air, And almost hated robins: he had gone, Leaving her in dumb wretchedness alone; And still the silly sun in heaven shone And all the frosted bracken spangled bright With brittle glitter of cold splintered light Prickling dry eyes that ached and ached for night, For never-ending night: and night at last Had come, clear-starred and staring, and had passed, Leaving her heart unsolaced; and, overcast, New day had stolen on a bleak empty earth Of glooming mountain and ungleaming firth: And still she pined through days and nights of dearth Because her foolish traitor of a tongue Let slip the bitter idle word that stung, And could not, though her very heart was wrung With anguish as she saw his agony, Utter her quick remorse, struck suddenly Dumb till too late, too late: and ever she, When robins sing in bracken bright with rime, Hears in her hollow heart the dark words chime Too late, too late, until the end of time. GLENCOE On the big tops still deep Snow dwells and April squalls Between the mountain walls In feathery flurries sweep. Low on the hills, the deer Amid the dithering flakes Like phantoms through dim brakes Appear and disappear: Bewildered by the snow They haunt the shadowy brae Like souls that lost their way When death swept down Glencoe. THE OLD WIFE "Is that you, Donald?" the old wife said, Peeking and peering with dithering head And craning neck at the darkening door: But the shape that cheated her failing sight Was only a deeper shadow of night, And the step that sounded in her old head Was only the echo of days long dead, And never would waken her threshold more. RED RANALD With the yelp of a weasel He sprang from the corrie Where crouched in the bracken He'd watched from the ben, And slinging his ragged Plaid over his shoulder Headlong through the bracken He plunged down the glen. Through bracken and birches He crashed in red anger Till he came to the sheiling That stood by the stream, And stealthily striding Across the dark threshold Stooped over the lovers Still clasped in their dream-- Stooped over the lovers Still lapped in sweet slumber And muttered above them-- "So doucely you sleep, O blithe bonnie lovers, 'Twere pity to wake you! Sleep on and sleep deeper...." And drove his dirk deep. THE LITTLE CROFT Sheer from the mountain shoulder to the foam Of the salt tide the flashing torrent falls, And to the seaman slowly making home Clear through the wash of waves its loved voice calls-- Calls to his heart, and as he sways aloft, Trapping the slatting topsail with a will, His heart already seeks the little croft In a green pocket of the craggy hill. THE ISLAND GRAVEYARD In shallow rocky graves among the roots Of old wind-writhen silver birches sleep These Highland hearts as sound as they who lie In rich mould of the Lowlands buried deep. They sleep as sound in their last island home, Lulled by the whispering waves of Loch Maree-- The water's susurration rippling through The silver birch's sighing threnody. They sleep as sound--and yet when winter pipes His skirling challenge down dark strath and glen, Do they not turn in shallow sleep and sigh To face the blast again as living men? THE GOLDEN HILL She watched the light fade from the golden fleece Of silver birches in October leaf That shawled the slopes and shoulders of the ben-- She watched the light fade slowly that with brief Glory of rainy gold had filled the glen And filled her tempest-troubled heart with peace-- A shining peace that failed not as the light Faded from crag and corrie, peace that still Would soar, a glowing presence, in her mind, A golden-peaked inviolable hill Of refuge when the valley-ways were blind Beneath the roaring cataract of night. HIGHLAND SPRING Caught in the white squall sweeping down the pass, On baffled wings the old raven flaps in vain Against the blast, then with a raucous cry Drops like a stone, dead in the whitening grass; When, answering life's last despairing call, From a snug bield of birchen brake hard by The first lamb bleats; and life's voice once again Re-echoes from the mountain's granite wall. FLIGHT Slowly he labours up the sun-baked strath Over sparse bracken and the blackened peat And charred heath-stalks that crackle in the heat, When suddenly across the scorching path A wide-winged shadow sweeps: he lifts his head And sees with eyes that tingle in the glare Above him hanging in the quivering air A golden eagle with great pinions spread: And he no longer labours; from him falls The burden of day, as, on imperious wings He hovers over the glen and sweeps and swings In the cool swirls and eddies of his own flight, Then soars with eyes undazzled by the light And to his mate in their far eyrie calls. THE EXILES Their souls return, though far from home they sojourn. Whose eyes still keep the sea-light of the Isles, Their souls return at night while they lie sleeping And cry among the seamews of the kyles. Their souls return, flight after flight the exiles Flock home at midnight from the foreign shore; And when the sea-light from their eyes has perished Their souls return, to leave the Isles no more. THE FIRST FLAKE Stript by the eager wind that sings and searches All day among the granite screes and corries And round the pinnacles and eagle-perches Of needle-scars that stab the steely glitter Of bleak November's icy blue, October's Fleeces of gold have fallen from the birches That clamber up the ben and bloom with purple The steeper braes, beyond the lucent amber Of sun-filled bracken, slashed with bramble-scarlet-- October's gold has fallen from the birches, And soon the steely wind that sings and searches All day among the granite screes and corries, Clouding with falling flakes the eagle-perches, Will veil the purple bloom of trees that clamber The steeper braes and veil the lucent amber, The scarlet-brambled amber of the bracken; Shrouding in one white sheet November's glories. And even now the first chill crystal flutters Out of the blue and settles on the forehead Of the old shepherd as he seeks the clachan; And as he feels the first flake's death-cold tingle Upon his brow, his old heart knows too surely His eyes have looked their last on gold and purple, Amber and scarlet, his eyes already dazzled By the blind snows of unawakening winter. HIGHLAND DAWN I watched a stag that snuffed the kindling air, A golden eagle gliding in the light; Then, glancing up the brae, I saw you there, The wind of morning rippling through your hair, And bade farewell to night. The stag sped up the mountain out of sight; The eagle dwindled in the dazzling blue; But fleeter yet my happy heart took flight From the last valley-shadows of the night To lose itself in you. EAGLES AND ISLES Eagles and isles and uncompanioned peaks, The self-reliant isolated things, Release my soul, embrangled in the stress Of all day's crass and cluttered business, Release my soul in song and give it wings-- And even where the traffic roars and rings, With senses stunned and beaten deaf and blind, My soul withdraws into itself and seeks The peaks and isles and eagles of the mind. THE END Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh. BY WILFRID GIBSON HAZARDS: Poems, 1928-1930. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. THE GOLDEN ROOM AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. 6s. net. COLLECTED POEMS, 1905-1925. With a Portrait. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net. BETWEEN FAIRS. A Comedy. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. KESTREL EDGE AND OTHER PLAYS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. KRINDLESYKE. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. LIVELIHOOD: Dramatic Reveries. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. I HEARD A SAILOR. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. NEIGHBOURS. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. THOROUGHFARES. Crown 8vo. 3s. net. BORDERLANDS. Crown 8vo. 3s. net. SIXTY-THREE POEMS. Selected, for use in Schools and Colleges, by Prof. E. A. PARKER, Ph.D. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. NEW VOLUMES OF POEMS POEMS OF T. STURGE MOORE. Collected Edition. Volume III. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net. _Previously published._ Volumes I. and II. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net each. MOURNFUL NUMBERS: Verses and Epigrams. By COLIN ELLIS. Crown 8vo. COLLECTED POEMS OF EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON. With a Portrait. Extra crown 8vo. 21s. net. THE PRELUDE. By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited, with Introduction and Commentary, by E. E. REYNOLDS. Pott 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. _Golden Treasury Series._ SCARLET, BLUE AND GREEN: A Book of Sporting Verse. By DUNCAN FIFE. With Illustrations in Colour and Monochrome by CECIL ALDIN. Crown 4to. 10s. 6d. net. COLLECTED VERSE OF LEWIS CARROLL. Fully illustrated by SIR JOHN TENNIEL, HENRY HOLIDAY, etc. Extra crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net. PROSE AND POETRY FROM PUNCH. Selected and Edited by GUY BOAS. Fcap. 8vo. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON [End of Islands, by Wilfrid Gibson]