In England it is April time

Most moves the poets’ hearts to rime,

They drunken then with orchard foam,

The heady smell of new-ploughed loam,

A cuckoo calling in dim blue

Of distance, thrushes singing too.

  Here, in the west, October is

The month of brimming ecstasies

Because of magic in the land.

Along the mountain-crests now stand

New silver trees, tall pines of snow

Against the blue, while yet below

A bee or butterfly, at noon,

Flecks by, deluded it is June,

The day so warm, so good, so mellow.

The birch-trees now are jets of yellow,

The maples scarlet, in between

The ranked firs in their evergreen.

  Tranquillity and ecstasy:

Strange how these twain can allied be.

But thus it is, while leaves drift down

Yellow and scarlet, gold and brown.

  The squirrels have laid in their store;

Our wood-pile’s stacked at the back door;

And we are deified with all

The supreme glory of the Fall.

Somehow, when I arise at dawn

And see gold threads and silver drawn

Through the stretched silk of eastern sky,

I am both glad and sad thereby.

  My gable window frames a tree,

A jack-pine; and it seems to me

The very jack-pine’s part of this

Blend of old pain and ecstasies.

  To front I spy, and see the lake,

That last I saw in moonlight quake,

Still sliding sidewise, in the grey

And gold beginning of the day.

  And O my heart is all astir

To praise the great Artificer

Who made the dawn, the lake, the tree,

And this that loveth them in me.

Framed by my door-way I can see

A motionless cotton-poplar tree.

In the still day it looks as though

A stencil cut in gold, the show

Of Autumn now begun. It stands

Against one strip of silver sands

And one of lapis-lazuli,

A broader strip I know to be

The stretch of lake; and then one more

Thin silver band—the further shore.

  That takes us half-way up this tree

That of gold stencil seems to be;

And all the spreading top’s inlaid,

Or stamped, upon a background made

Of tones of green and darker yellow—

The mountain opposite, going mellow,

Autumnal, etched too up and down

With thin lines, silver-grey and brown—

The stems of leafless young birch-trees

And of bare tamarack poles are these.

  O lovely tree of gold inlaid

On silver, lapis-lazuli, jade!

Sometimes, in Summer time, I think how sad

That my loved birch-trees, in gold sequins clad,

Winds shall blow bare, and bitter Winter come.

No more the twin-flower scent, no more the hum

Of leisurely, brown, gold-dusted bumble-bees,

And this stream too, of liquid gems, must freeze,

All beauty lie beneath a shroud of snow.

  Then Winter comes. I rise one day, and lo,

Out of my gable, on the jack-pine tree,

The fluffy pom-poms of the snow I see—

And sing for joy! Here is no tragic shroud.

It snowed o’er night. Dawn breaks without a cloud

In all sweet heaven. This world of white and blue

I had forgotten, had forgotten too

How the frost sparkles to the soaring moon

When January is as good as June.

  I had forgot the crisp and peppering sound

Of a dry snow-fall happing up the ground,

And how the hid sun makes a rosy glow

And golden radiance through the whirling snow.

  At morn, the blue jays tapping on the pane,

At night, the stars, the sleigh-bells’ sweet refrain

I had forgotten; and how creeks flow on

Under green ice and white across them drawn,

Opals through crystal. How at night the stove

Hums, as content, while I in books may rove

All times and countries, blissfully aloof

From small affairs, under my snow-capped roof,

I had forgot, else had I never said:

How sad that Summer is so quickly sped.

Now, in mid-Winter, I do surely know

Too quick the Summers and the Winters go.

I went into the yard to-night

  Upon some little final chore

That something in a book I read

  Brought to my mind; and at the door

I stood and stared, I stood and stared.

  The hills with stars were brimming o’er.

O books, what you do hold me from!

  O there I stood, O there I stood

And looked and marvelled in the night,

  And knew why God had called it good,

Enamored of the infinite

  Between the water and the wood.

Up from the water came a pipe

  Of wild ducks resting on their way,

Now Autumn’s come, from Arctic shores

  To some warm, Caribbean bay;

A happy sound, a pleasing sound,

  Though why so pleasing who can say?

Down from the woods there came a roar

  As though a railway train went by.

No railroad there! It passed. Once more

  Again roared high, roared clamant high,

A wind through night, and on that wind

  My spirit soared through starry sky.

Then all was still on either hand,

  No pipe of duck, no windy roar,

And I was all alone with stars,

  Forgot my book, forgot my chore,

With stars and stars, and still more stars,

  Between the forest and the shore.

You ask me why I live here,

  As though the place were banned,

And living here a thing no man

  Of sense can understand,

A thing bizarre. I live here

  Because I love the land.

You say: “It has no history;

  No ghosts go by your door.”

I can but stare. If ghosts you wish,

  Here there are ghosts galore,

From Thompson’s in the Rockies

  To Vancouver’s by the shore.

You say: “It is so far there

  From the Berkeley or the Ritz.”

But the Berkeley and the Ritz are far

  From roasting ducks on spits

Of new green wood where the camp-fire light

  Through the sleeping forest flits.

You say: “In England Robin Hood,

  In Scotland old Rob Roy

Have left romance you lack out there.”

  But surely every boy

Must know that our Bill Miner

  Could teach these their employ.

Bill Miner was an outlaw

  Beloved of every one!

No man could better ride a horse

  Or quicker flick a gun.

Robin and Roy, compared with him,

  Were novices outdone.

You say: “But are you not cut off

  From Culture, living there?”

And with the sage I would reply,

  Smiling (you now may stare):

Earth’s centre is where I am;

  My mind goes everywhere.

I live here with the weather,

  And the seasons’ pageantry;

I live with ruffling leaves and streams,

  These being more to me

Than all your cities. Here in Time

  I touch Eternity.

I have a shingled house here

  That stands among tall trees;

A colored river flows before;

  Mountains guard over these.

This “lodge in some vast wilderness”

  My soul does greatly please.

The birds and squirrels round me

  Make lightsome every chore

Outside, and oft at chores I pause

  Just on the scene to pore.

Within I have my books to read.

  What could man ask for more?

From humming-birds to sleigh-bells

  I love the way life goes

In this lost land, from one view,

  But Paradise for those

Who love the world God gave men,

  Its Summers and its Snows.

Willow Point,

Kootenay Lake, 1924.

A polished floor with sun thereon,

Albeit all the shades were drawn;

To front and rear doors opened wide;

The patio bricks red-gold outside;

Peace, and my mother sitting there,

Sewing in a great cane chair.

Lombardy poplars, straight and tall,

Tapered beyond the patio wall;

And I, a child of three or four,

Stood looking at them from the door.

My mother then began to sing;

I turned to her, all wondering,

For she was there and yet not there,

Her body sewing in the chair,

Her spirit, in her singing, gone,

Strangely remote, afar, withdrawn.

I ran to her and clasped her knees,

Peered in her eyes for my heart’s ease,

These netted eyes that did not see

Her sewing, or the room, or me.

Her singing ceased; she heaved a sigh;

Once more my mother had come nigh.

The day is fixed. Her gown of blue

I see, with flower-sprigs patterned through.

Pinning a fall of lace she wore

A cameo brooch; and to restore

My comfort after childish grief

I fingered on its bas-relief.

And then she smiled on me, aware;

And still I see her sewing there.

I took the purple of the heather

And the white of a rose

And the blue hill air, and the wild, wet weather,

With the thought of a woman my glad soul knows:

  And I made me a wonderful magic world

  Like the globe of rain in a rose-leaf furled,

  A world complete and far more real

  Than this that we seem to see and feel.

Connel Ferry,

Argyllshire.

We have been wounded oft so sore

By Godly folk who set no store

On any God except their own,

Grim worshippers, with hearts like stone,

That seldom do we say the name

Of God at all. Yet when the flame

Of health waned low upon thy cheek,

Lately agone, I strove to speak

A prayer unto some Deity

For the recovery of thee,

Although methought: “What will be must,”

And tended thee with heart like dust,

In a great agony. But when

I saw the light return again

In eyes and cheek, there broke from me

Thanks to Almighty God for thee.

Epping Forest, 1913.

Now goes our lady to the woods:

Not that she needeth to take flight:

Her soul has its own solitudes—

Its stars, on the most starless night,

Its light, on the most sunless day.

She takes not flight—she goes away

As quiet, queenly, rare, as here,

In Babylon, when days are drear,

She moves about. She does not fly;

She does not haste; she merely goes—

To where the dreaming poplar rows

Look upward to the Milky Way;

Where men have bliss of stars by night,

And in the pools their broken light;

Behold the gorgeous sun by day;

The colored seasons drifting by:

  She takes not flight—but none the less

  Does she rejoice again to catch

  The spaces to her soul and match

  Her quiet soul with quietness.

Biggin Hill,

Kent, 1908.

She dwelleth there in calm and storm

Weaving upon her loom.

She is so child-like in her face,

Although she hath a god-like grace,

One wonders who hath taught her all

Her mastery of line and form.

Her peaceful singing in the room

Blends with the sound like soft foot-fall

Of faeries, as the shuttles weave. What weaveth she?

A king’s proud mantle or a pall?

What symbols, and what tapestry?

The sun shines in, the light of storm;

She weaves upon her loom.

Hush! Look; she hath a wondrous face,

Our queen; behold her radiant grace.

She weaveth gladly, for us all,

As she hath woven her sacred form,

Out of her soul. Hush! Her foot-fall!

She riseth up to cross the room. What weaveth she?

The soul’s fair cloths, the body’s pall.

Hush; hence; let drop the tapestry.

When I see her sleeping there, in the grey of morning,

  Peace upon her face and her eyelids down,

The first of day arriving for her cheeks’ adorning,

  Glinting in her tresses on the tints of brown—

Sacred is she to me, in the new day breaking;

  There’s a trill of birds in the light outside;

On this half the world all things are a-waking,

  Life flowing wondrously, like a flowing tide—

Sacred is she to me as she lies there sleeping,

  Sacred and mysterious—and O so dear to me:

The treasure of all treasures that God gave to me for keeping,

  To journey with and cherish, midst the mystery.

Finchley, 1911.

I fill my heart, I fill my mind

With all the beauty I may find;

I gather many memories

Of such eternal things as these:

The spreading of the light of dawn

Across the sky, along my lawn;

The sigh of wind in high and fine

Needles of tamarack and pine;

The haunting call of laughing loons

Through the warm glow of August noons.

  I cull the hazy Pleiades

Netted among my orchard trees

On misty eves; I store away

Venus, beheld just after day

Has gone, and when the early night

Is fragile blue, astounding bright,

Venus, above a hill, alone.

  I gather up the blossom strown

From cherry trees in May; I keep

Full moons in mind that, waked from sleep

In lonely camps, I’ve gazed upon,

Full moons so big, and hushed, and wan,

Over some spectral forest glade,

They almost make the heart dismayed;

And slender slivers of new moon

Dropping behind a mountain soon.

  The happing hush of winter snows,

Great glaciers, and a rain-splashed rose,

And always scent of balsam trees

That brings my soul unto its knees

Within its room within my breast,

Seeming, in scent, God manifest:

These and such things as these I keep

To love, before I turn to sleep.

I thank my God that I can see

The blossom on the maple tree;

I thank my God when I behold,

Some morning after rain, new gold

Sifted upon the tamaracks,

Whose very name of grandeur smacks,

As of romance does lodge-pole pine;

I thank God for the silver shine,

Through dusk woods, of a birch-tree stem;

I do thank God for all of them,

From tall and stately Douglas fir

To little twisted juniper:

I could go down upon my knees

And sing God thanks for all His trees.

In among the rustle of leaves

  (Out on the trail alone),

Heard and lost in the roar of a creek,

How can we tell what voices speak

  Implication in undertone?

Up in the feathery tops of pines

  More than the wind alone

Sighs to me when a wind sighs by;

And something within me makes reply

  In a wordless undertone.

Ah, but I fear the tongue we speak

  Can never make rightly known

What the voice of a creek, or the wind in thegrass

Talks to travellers as they pass,

  Riding the trail alone.

Whence comes this restlessness imploring me

When in Montmartre to seek out Italy?

And when at last I see the falling leaf

In Vallombrosa, why this almost grief

That I can hear not the incoming seas

Roll in toward Appin, past the Hebrides?

Where is my home? I have not any home

Save all the world. To rest I can but roam.

Strange names are friendly to me and I tell

Them o’er as beads. They move me like a spell.

Thus it has been since in my boyish years,

Blurring my school-books, there rose up Algiers;

The very names of caftan and of haik

Called me to Africa for their names’ sake.

And now how many an island, mountain, bay

(From the blue crescent curved toward Monterey,

Outlined in silver against yellow sand,

To where I first saw light illumine land

In Chili) are as dear as any friend,

And how far severed! ’Tis some way to wend

From Aconcagua unto Cruachan!

Only in dreams can I wing up and scan,

As ’twere an orange in my clutch, the whole

God’s bauble, magical from pole to pole.

My school-books sloughed, I did not once abate

My travel-speed when Illecillewaet

Then caught my ear. I lived with discontent

Till I had seen the Rocky Mountains rent

By the great waters there, the cañon walls.

I saw and passed; and now again it calls.

  When I come home from each outlandish place

  Each lures me back, as his beloved’s face

  Called back Odysseus. Home is not my home;

  I have no other rest except to roam.

How shall I rest? There is no rest for me

On any continent, or isle, or sea.

Down the deep gulch of Fleet Street I descry

Mount Shasta, not Saint Paul’s, against the sky;

My eyes are filmed, I am lost utterly;

I must go forth again across the sea.

In Okanagan I shall buy a horse

And to the mountains ride. Perchance the gorse

Of Keston Common, breaking then, shall send

A message to me, but I shall not lend

An ear to that; shrewdly I shall recall

The mists of England, their distressful pall;

Or so I purpose as I walk the deck

And Rathlin fades into a foam-flecked speck.

There shall I camp on fir-boughs featly laid

By some tall fir, in balsam-scented shade.

But shall I rest there? Waking in the night

Among meshed planets and the half-moon’s light,

Will not the old-time wonder come again,

Gazing on Mars, if bobolink or wren

Flit thereupon; the longing to inquire

Out of the ether on these sparks of fire

Again torment; once more the Milky Way

Rain restlessness to haunt my joyous day?

  There is no home, there is no rest for me

  Till, disembodied, all the worlds I see.

Hayes, Kent,

1920.

Where am I going to, passing here,

Listening, looking, lending an ear

To the red-breast’s trill or the loon’s lone call,

To the deep tom-tom of a waterfall,

To the sigh of wind in fir-tree tops,

And hushed in the silence when that stops?

Where am I going to, gazing round

On the rain of flowers that jewel the ground?

Once having seen the dawn, I rise

Often, betimes, for that surprise

Of its beginning, the ancient way,

A pallor, a presence, and in the grey

Something, it seems, that once I knew,

Lost again in the drying dew.

  I know not where I go, nor why

  The sight of Orion in the sky,

  The swerve of a bird, the curve of a hill

  With a joy beyond telling my whole heart fill.

  Looking, listening, I am glad,

  With a wealth not wealthy Crœsus had,

  Listening, looking, passing by,

  Although I know not where go I.

Was ever man so drawn before

By diverse loves? One clings to shore;

The other takes the foam-flecked sea

In quest of far adversity.

  The one desireth opal rings,

And silks as frail as are the wings

Of humming-birds; carved ivories;

Quaint bronzes made by Japanese;

Old jars, unearthed in Babylon,

The Pharaohs must have looked upon;

Tear-bottles hid two thousand years,

Once moist with Cleopatra’s tears,

But now so old they seem to be

Brimful of calm eternity;

Venetian mirrors; scimitars

With jewelled hilts, once used in wars,

But gem-wrought with so much of love

They now like healing unctions prove.

  The other calls to sun-scorched toil

By lava-bed and sandy soil,

To travelling the tremendous trail

Where it is splendid even to fail.

It calls unto the sound and sight

Of seas that swirl through purple night,

Whose stars are magical as when

Jason beheld them and his men.

  Ah me! Whichever life I choose

I can but sip of it, must lose

Far more than ever I shall quaff—

Life is so brief, the hours thereof

Too speedy for a man to do

The things of one. I ask for two!

These be the things that move my heart,

  I know not why:

A pool; a stream where sunbeams dart;

  The song the stream makes flowing by;

The gleam of pebbles in the stream;

  The wavering light:

I dipped, and found a stone; the gleam

  Passed, as the sun-glow does at night.

A voice beloved: it sang a strain

  Of old dead years.

My heart was full of joy—and pain:

  The silence after touched to tears.

Roses; my heart is as a home

  Where every rose,

Being so loved, might fluttering come

  When wind-cast from its garden-close.

They were too beautiful to pass—

  The voice, the air;

Ah! How the rose-leaves strew the grass,

  And how the transient things are fair!

If thou possess thy soul in peace,

  It matters not what may befall

From seed time, till the Summer’s lease

  Of flowers is o’er, and on the wall

  No roses flutter or birds call.

For whether thou dost smile, or sigh;

  Or make thy soul to feel, or make

Thy soul to feel not; all goes by—

  The smiles that cheer; the griefs that break;

  Thee let not such things captive take.

Even she who sets thy heart aglow

  With Love’s strange lure, half-sad, half-gay,

Must very soon arise and go

  Into the dark the wonted way:

  What love speech, there, can a man say?

Soon thou, too, softly hence shalt pass,

  In silence, to the silent land,

And over thee the heedless grass

  Shall wave and the tall jonquils stand;

  Possess thy soul; withhold thy hand.

A courtly poet called Li Po,

  Silken of hair, with almond eyes,

Over a thousand years ago

  One twilight, when the fire-flies

Danced in the garden of his king,

  Sang a sweet lyric of regret

For birds that trail a broken wing

  Or in the cruel cages fret.

On silver saddle, on white steed,

  So sang he, goes the frontiersman;

A sword and lance supply his need

  His palace is the mighty span

Of changeful sky, and for his books

  He has the winds and wavering streams;

He goes not grey in scholars’ nooks;

  No heavy curtains stale his dreams

And still we sing so; still we sigh

  In cities to be frontiersmen;

On frontiers, for new lands to try;

  For ever questing, now, as then—

Thus does that lyric of Li Po,

  That sweet far lyric of regret,

Woven a thousand years ago

  In China, live and murmur yet.

London, 1908.

One mocked me, and I turned and saw the skies

Awash with evening, far beyond the hill

Where hill-birds wavered, with their lonely cries,

On the long wavering crest; yea, crying still,

Though hollows were blue-dark, and skyward fields

Were scarcely lit with light that seemed to be

A memory; such calm the calm sky yields . . .

How far they seem, mockers and mockery;

How wondrous nigh that sunset they gave me.

They sought to maim me, pelting me with stones;

They robbed me, filching from my garden-close

My fair, love-tended blooms—they, the world’s drones

And the world’s mighty, life being as it is;

And then they mocked me . . . nay, they mocked not me!

Theirs the loud laughter; mine the silences;

For every rose they filched, a fairer rose

Bloomed in that other garden no man knows

Save him who makes it, hedged about with tears

And all abloom with sorrows that the years

Have turned to flowers, sung softly to by trees

High as high poplars, that are reveries.

They forged me fetters and came forth to hale

Me, as a slave, to labor at their oar;

I know not now whether I toiled or not;

I do but mind the music of the gale,

The smooth fronts of the marbled, mounting, waves,

Mirroring gulls’ wings as the gulls flew o’er.

I mind the winds and waves with friendship fraught.

Mayhap they scourged; mayhap they scourged me not;

What matter? Even so they are forgot,

Their voices drowned in singing of the slaves.

The wind that talks in the trees

Is more to me than love;

Talking over the time-worn graves

Where my forefathers lie at ease:

And I heed what the wind says, as it waves

The branches, and soft o’er the worn stones move

Sunlight, and shade of the three yew-trees.

I lie awake and with delight

Hear the rain along the rones,

And smile to think it beats all night

On the grey and time-worn stones;

And the thought of the beds where my fathers lie

Somehow subdues my soul, that says:

“What are the light of a woman’s eye

And the feet of the children along the ways?”

I hear the ring of the stone

On the scythes at reaping time,

And take my place with them there;

But somehow I seem alone

’Midst the scythe-men red and the reapers fair

As they bend and bind, where the green hills climb

From the valley, where are the three yew-trees

And all my people lying at ease.

The men look puzzled on me at times,

As I swing the scythe, and the women smile,

White-teethed women with full red lips,

And arms that shall some man beguile;

But if at the meal-time I should pass

The scones, or the jar from the long, cool grass,

And happen to touch their finger tips,

I look to the vale whence the calm hill climbs,

Where my forefathers lie at ease

’Neath the worn stones and the three yew-trees.

Over there the churchyard is;

  The old square steeple

    Stands above the old grey stones

      With their old-time names—

        Sellicks, Acklands, Babbacombes.

That green slope is Silence’s;

  There he dwells with the dead people,

    Having hushed their laughs and moans,

      Ended all their prides and shames,

        In their six-foot homes.

It is quiet there: when rain comes

  The green grass shines through:

When the rain goes the bee hums

  And the blackbird pipes too.

    But the quiet is not ever broken

      Even on Sabbaths by the worship, or the bell:

    There hath Silence set his unseen token,

      Set his spell.

And here too, here beyond these sleeping

  Ringed and guarded by the rusted, mossy wall,

Here comes Silence also softly creeping

  With his unheard foot-fall.

    By the nettled and black-berried byways,

    By the lanes, and on the climbing highways,

      Even to this highway’s end where it goes down

      Over cliffs where gulls and foam are blown,

        He wanders, from his walled green Sanctuary,

        To the immemorial sea.

This ash-tree, waving all the day

  With divagating branches, weaves

A witching pattern I could stay

  For ever watching, while the leaves

    Come down in showers and strew the lane

    To be made mould and dust again.

Like turning a kaleidoscope

  Is its enchantment for the eye:

The branches surge, and toss, and grope,

  Poise, flurry, rake the pallid sky;

    And leaves upon the leaves again

    Come down and flutter in the lane.

A sound, as if some distant shore

  Sent hence the surge of hidden seas,

Mounts up into a sullen roar,

  Then droops to plaintive litanies

    Of Autumn and the Autumn rain

    And dreams that shall be dreamt again.

Ah me, but I have dreamt them well

  Upon my curious pilgrimage,

And loved the leaves that for a spell

  Dance in the sun, till cometh age

    And Autumn and the Autumn rain

    And all the ancient tale again.

Of Gods and men I do not know;

  Both are mysterious unto me;

But like a wistful fool I go—

  Or should I say a sage maybe?

    And love the sun and love the rain,

    And even these dead leaves in the rain.

Ca’er Onnen, Bangor,

North Wales, 1915.

As I cam’ doon the water-side

  I heard the water on the stanes

  (I saw the brichtly-coloured stanes)

  But nought heard I o’ kelpies’ manes,

  Nor saw them play wi’ drooned men’s banes,

As I cam’ doon the water-side.

As I cam’ doon the side o’ Tweed,

  Frae Stobo back tae Peebles Toon

  (I saw the roofs o’ Peebles Toon),

  I heard in pools the suckin’ soun’

  O’ eddies swirlin’ slowly roun’

As I cam’ doon the side o’ Tweed.

As I cam’ doon the water-side

  The lauchter that I heard was no’

  (Och aye, I’m very sure ’twas no’)

  Lauchter o’ fairy folk that go

  Wi’ “milk white limbs” alang the flow:

Sic havers mock the water-side.

Nae need for tae invent a thing—

  And kelpies nane have ever seen.

  Does’t no’ suffice that in atween

  Sic banks o’ trees, and grasses green,

  Sic singing waters intervene

Miraculous as onything?

Aye, always doon the water-side

  The things I see suffice for me

  (It’s a’ miraculous tae me);

  Ilk tree and flourish on the tree,

  And this auld water tae the sea

Whimplin’ and lauchin’ by my side.

I do give thanks that in these deadly days

  Some poets still, in harder circumstance

  Than their fore-runners, cast no longing glance

To the arena of the tinsel bays.

They will not heed the sophist phrase that says:

  “In their own fair-ground pipe—that men may dance,”

  Nor turn rare music to rude dissonance,

As he must do who such behest obeys.

Down in the fair-ground, for an evening’s hire,

  Before their booths so many jesters scream,

And (not content with naphtha-fame) conspire

  To cast despite on their discarded dream,

That, doubly, I give thanks ye do not tire.

  Pipe on, pipe featly, following the Gleam!

1913.

Whatever the dream I dream may be,

Whatever the hope I hope,

I know, by the flash of the vasty sea,

By the glow on the grassy slope,

By the light that lies along the sky

At night, when the last birds homeward fly,

By the gleam of the wet rose-hedge in June,

By the way that in Winter the grey night falls

When the lonely bird on the moorland calls,

By the fiery sun, and the high, calm moon,

I know, I know in my inmost heart,

I know in my quiet, singing soul

That the Hope lives on and the Fears depart,

And the god in man shall have more control

And more, and more; and the voiceless hope

And the dream too strange to be wholly told,

That some old dead dreamer dreamt on his slope,

Straying along through the wind-blown grass,

Soul in the vastness, feet in the mould,

  Shall come to pass;

And out of Time—Eternity:

  And a man shall walk where now he gropes,

  Whatever the whole high Dream may be,

  Whatever the hope of hopes.

I am in love with words . . .

  With which skilled men have fashioned

Lyrics that sing like birds,

  Tales too; with heart impassioned

I am in love with words.

With words am I in love . . .

  Men have reared fanes of these

As masons do with rough

  Hewn stone, shaped as they please—

With words am I in love.

I am in love with words . . .

  With these skilled minds have made

Aye, songs more sweet than birds’,

  Aye, towers more strongly stayed

Than towers of stone—with words!

I am in love with words.

I heard them talking politics,

All the different shades:

And as they talked I sat and dreamt

Of deer in forest glades.

I dreamt so deep that I could see

The sunshafts in between

The lightly swaying cedar-boughs,

And the deer dappled green.

The quality of anger came,

The voices louder grew.

Near where I sat there was a door,

And the wind blew through.

I am not better than these men,

Nor nobler, nor more great;

But on their talk of politics

I cannot concentrate.

Somehow I always hear the wind

Moaning below the door;

And the real me strays through a hushed old wood

Or walks on a lonely shore.

Sing us, O dear musicians, a song of lulling,

  A song Lethean,

All drowsiness and rest and grief-annulling.

  For strenuous pæan,

Urging to war and anxious rivalry,

  He hath no need

Whose doom is war. Ah, nay! What need hath he

  At resting-time

For aught but lulling rime

  Or soothing reed—

A sweet voice singing that all things are well;

  A soft flute fluting its calm minstrelsies;

Earth’s murmur vague as that within a shell;

  And rest and ease?

We would forget the desolate deadly places

  Of foiled endeavor;

Our victories too forget; our foes’ dead faces

  Forget for ever.

Our doom is war; we would forget our doom,

  Would rest our ears,

Weary of hearkening through the night’s long gloom

  For sudden foes:

War-weary eyes would close

  In dreams, not fears;

From searching the dim slopes for foemen cease.

  From warfare would we cease, content and calm,

The flute-notes entering our hearts with peace,

  The voice with balm.

Our doom is war; wherefore, O dear musicians,

  Our hearts had rather

The flute than trumpet. As those wise physicians

  Who daily gather

Poppy and eglantine and heart-of-ease

  For their distilling,

Whate’er in song’s high realms are kin to these

  Go gather then

And bring again to men,

  Physicians willing,

The healing of soft music, ere we go

  To-morrow, trumpet-driven, the fighting way:

To-day the sweet voice singing we would know,

  The flute to-day.

Oft-times in dreams intense, she doth appear,

  This unknown one I love, who loveth me;

  Subtly she changes, yet unchanged is she

Each time she cometh to me, ah how near!

My heart for her transparent is (but clear

  For her alone, alas! its mystery).

  She smooths my forehead, all my agony

She weeps away, she only, loved and dear.

How looketh she, what color eyes and hair?

  I cannot tell! Her name? ’Tis sonorous

And sweet as those that ransomed spirits bear;

No sculptured goddess hath more calm a mien;

  And for her voice—not sweeter were to us

Loved voices that now are not—that have been.

I came, and opening my eyes

Beheld the beauty of the skies;

I saw the soaring of the trees,

And in them heard a talking breeze

That moved me to the heart although

Just what it said I did not know,

Nor what the creeks for ever spoke,

Nor what the waves cried as they broke;

Scarce could I more than but infer,

In lack of an interpreter.

I saw the stars at night, at dawn

Hints of revealment quick withdrawn,

The heels of God among the grey;

And wondering still I went away.

In Flanders on the Christmas morn

  The trenchèd foeman lay,

The German and the Briton born—

  And it was Christmas Day.

The red sun rose on fields accurst,

  The grey fog fled away;

But neither cared to fire the first,

  For it was Christmas Day.

They called from each to each across

  The hideous disarray

(For terrible had been their loss):

  “O this is Christmas Day!”

Their rifles all they set aside,

  One impulse to obey;

’Twas just the men on either side,

  Just men—and Christmas Day.

They dug the graves for all their dead

  And over them did pray;

And Englishman and German said:

  “How strange a Christmas Day!”

Between the trenches then they met,

  Shook hands, and e’en did play

At games on which their hearts are set

  On happy Christmas Day.

Not all the Emperors and Kings,

  Financiers, and they

Who rule us could prevent these things—

  For it was Christmas Day.

O ye who read this truthful rime

  From Flanders, kneel and say:

God speed the time when every day

  Shall be as Christmas Day.

Christmas, 1914.

Lover of England, in the sun and rain,

  Of the Welsh marches all the seasons through,

No more by Taf-side will you walk again

  And pause to hearken till the dim cuckoo

Calls nearer, wondering why his rich refrain

  Does move men so, heard through the Maytime’s blue,

Over the gorse-lands; so our hearts have pain,

  Knowing not here shall we encounter you.

Lover of England and her songs and tales,

  The westland meadows and the westland hills,

Borrow in pocket, wandering through Wild Wales,

  You knew the heath-wind flaunts our little ills.

Of old inn-corners that from sudden gales

  Shelter the traveller, while the roads turn rills,

You knew the glamour; how, when daylight fails,

  Dear candle-light the mellow chamber fills.

Lover of England and the English speech,

  Of those who used it featly to recite

The old oak’s story, or the marvel teach

  Of thrush at morning, or of owl at night;

You knew the charm of gold-encrusted beech;

  You knew where Cobbett eyed the squire aright;

You gaily trudged the long white road, to reach

  Old Selborne, for the sake of Gilbert White.

Lover of England and the English tongue,

  How must they mourn you who did know you well,

Who’ve heard you quote old runes our fathers sung,

  Or some new poet’s song you had to tell,

As ’twere a noose of words by genius flung

  Around Eternity. You, too, the spell

Of words were skilled in, and your phrases rung

  Full oft with beauty, like a sacred bell.

And this to Britain, for such Britons dead

  For all they stood for in the time of woes:

Britain, forget not why such blood was shed

  As his veins ran, who need not from wild rose

In hedges of his isle, or daisies spread

  For simple hearts, or any wind that blows

Now ask for solace, vastly comforted,

  Beyond where Lethe through the twilight flows.

Thus was the coming home of old Theocritus

From Alexandria, where he had been too long:

  ’Twas on the night that Ptolemy Philadelphus

  Was crowned within the innermost pavilion;

  Circle on circle round him, feasting and song,

  Spreading from him, the centre of it,

  Through all the city, night long, even till dawn,

  So that the poorest slave, long wont to sit,

  Scourged, by the laboring oar, let free that night

  To wander wide-eyed through the murmurous town,

  Felt in his barbarous heart a strange delight

  Not from his one night’s liberty alone—

  But as the ripples when a stone is thrown

  In water—so it happened when the crown

  Was placed on Ptolemy’s brows, even then

  Spread the strange revelry unto meanest men.

  But at the inmost banquet old Theocritus

  Sat with the noblest, ’neath the white-fringed awning

  Upheld, in tribute to God Dionysus,

  By pillars thyrsi-shaped. But with no fawning

  Sat old Theocritus. Though some men fawn

  On Kings, not he who once hath known for King

  The Dawn;

  For Bride the dewy Evening;

  For orchestra the wind’s voice and the rills

  On the Sicilian hills.

  Yet he was skilled in all civilities

  And they whose couches by his side were spread

  Knew him a King (in other territories

  Than Egypt) by his calm, instead

  Of by a crown, or by King’s raiment:

  For who hath known the Summer firmament

  With all its stars, above the three-caped isle

  Is then a King, and after, for long while.

  But when without insult a man might leave

  The Banquet, when the Bassarids’ procession

  Had passed, and the brown women, garlanded

  With vines, brought lustful glances to some eyes

  About the board, much wine having by then

  Been quaffed, Theocritus half turned as to arise,

  Then slowly settled to his couch again—

  Because a maiden with a lotus blossom

  In her dark hair, and one rose, damask red,

  Blooming midways the gold band round her bosom,

  Passed, playing a Sicilian air.

O simple maid! O simple air!

How touching in the tumult were

These twain unto that wearied one

Who had seen maidens playing thus

When the bright, laboring day was done,

After the milking, as the sun set

On his island home and the high peaks shone

And lamps in the valleys, one by one,

Through the darkening meads of asphodel

Gleamed forth from the farms that he loved well—

Maids simple as this sweet maid, but yet

With rosier cheeks as the hillmaids’ be,

  How touching to Theocritus,

  Theocritus of Sicily!

As in old red-roofed Syracuse

Amidst the streets one morn he met,

With thrilling heart, a fresh wind straying

From the nigh mountains, wet with dews,

A gladsome wind that had been playing

With Spring, and Spring’s flowers, dew-fresh yet

When it came thither lightly blowing:

So this maid’s coming—and her going.

And as one rises quietly to depart,

Seeking no stir from men, a delicate art,

Now rose Theocritus, his face less flushed with wine

Than with a sadness few there might divine,

Or if divining think a trivial thing

To flush his cheek, and ’mongst themselves deride,

Not knowing all the thoughts that move a King

Who hath had stars and sun for his possession,

The calm, untroubled evening for his bride,

For orchestra the music the winds weave,

Rustling of leaves and rills

On the sky-gazing hills.

Rose and escaped and journeyed home

Theocritus, with mind preoccupied

(Now careless as the night’s o’er-arching dome

Of Alexandria’s triumph, Ptolemy’s pride),

Through streets still thronged with men of many nations,

Castes, tribes, and stations:

The swarthy, white-eyed Nubians, gaily clad;

Men of the East (their lean, wise faces sad

With all the vanity of life they knew)

Shouldering fierce Arabs from the desert places;

And Grecians, and they, too, with thoughtful faces,

Albeit strong of muscle and of thew,

And something in their bearing that bespoke

How they were sons of men who had done mightily,

And they not knowing yet their day was done

For conquest of men’s lands (nor how should be

Afterward, in men’s minds, their high dominion):

Strong men, but last of all that glorious race

That lit the world with beauty and with grace;

And the calm Jew who goeth stealthily,

Smiling, as to his soul, o’er some vast secret;

And slant-eyed Asian folk who seemed to be

Half fearful of the throng, though part of it.

Through all these, then, Theocritus passed slow,

Wrapped in his cloak and nursing his sad thought,

From Alexandria and from men withdrawn;

Thus found his chamber and there seated him

Still cloaked, nor in the darkness of the room

Lit he the silvern lamp to break the gloom

Of it, or of his heart, but in the dim

Wan half light twixt the night and dawn

Sat, probing in his soul this thing to know—

The meaning of the grief his heart had got;

He being one of these

Who probe to the Founts and stretch to the Destinies.

The world’s high pomps, the Ptolemy’s renown

(The King he honored truly) seemed that night,

And morning, very tawdry in his sight:

A foolish thing this feasting round a crown.

Grieved he for lilies lying withering

About the board at which he late had sat?

(For though ’twas Winter much profusion there

Of pallid lily and of blushing rose

Made mock of all the glistening silver-ware.)

There lay they dying through the evening

Who should have been asleep, in garden-close.

Came this his sadness through some thought of that?

Or some rough ordering of a willing slave

By pompous master, overheard by chance,

Smote on his ears like some harsh dissonance

And to his sensitive spirit this grief gave?

Such things may grieve a kindly man,

Or a tranquil man offend;

Thoughts born of things more poignant than

These, make the dark his friend.

Might it not be some jesting utterance

Of Apollonius, with a cynical glance

Toward him across the flowers, as he would thus

Send home with eye-thrust what the lips

Half spake, a jest, yet not a jest

(As one in poison a light arrow dips)?

Nay, such things troubled not Theocritus,

Vexed not his meditative rest.

’Twas just yon sun-girl (with the lotus blossom

In her dark hair

And in her high-girt bosom

The red rose) playing on a simple flute,

Simple as she, a simple air;

’Twas at her fluting and not before

(Not at the jest of Apollonius

Not worth a soft breath to refute)

This sadness came. But wherefore thus

So sad? Nay, how else could it be

When that the winsome maid had played

An old sweet air of Sicily?

And, ah! How sweet are simple things

Among the rioting of kings!

Then rose he, sadly, aware again

Of all the city murmuring still;

New dawn had just begun to instil

The east with color. Ah! what pain

For that green isle amidst the sea

Shot through his heart, for Sicily!

And at his stirring, or at the dawn,

The bird that o’er the balcony

Had slept night long, a dark cloth drawn

Loose round its cage by the brown slave,

Lest all the torchlight flashing by

On that great night of revelry

Should scare its simple little heart,

Woke, stirred, and stretched its wings apart

With a thin ruffling sound and gave

To the new day a welcoming cry.

Then, as it stirred, somehow the cloth

Loosened and fell; and nothing loth

The bird broke forth in minstrelsy

That the old singer heard with tears,

With healing tears the music heard,

For this frail bird

Had come with him from Sicily!

And thinking of the three-caped isle,

The uplands green, the browsing sheep,

The nights of soft and tranquil sleep,

The mornings, sweet as a girl-child’s smile,

The piping herdsmen, the lowing herd,

He cried unto the new-waked bird:

“O bird! To-morrow we shall go,

To-morrow o’er the wine-dark sea,

Where Etna’s peak of fire and snow

Beacons us home—to Sicily!”

Dundee, 1905.