Beauty and Life

The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,

Giving to some the keys of all the joy

Of the green earth, but holding even that joy

Back from their life;

Bidding them feed on hope,

A plant of bitter growth,

Deep-rooted in the past;

Truth, ’tis a doubtful art

To make Hope sweeten

Time as it flows;

For no man knows

Until the very last,

Whether it be a sovereign herb that he has eaten,

Or his own heart.

O stern, implacable Muse,

Giving to Keats so richly dowered,

Only the thought that he should be

Among the English poets after death;

Letting him fade with that expectancy,

All powerless to unfold the future!

What boots it that our age has snatched him free

From thy too harsh embrace,

Has given his fame the certainty

Of comradeship with Shakespeare’s?

He lies alone

Beneath the frown of the old Roman stone

And the cold Roman violets;

And not our wildest incantation

Of his most sacred lines,

Nor all the praise that sets

Towards his pale grave,

Like oceans towards the moon,

Will move the Shadow with the pensive brow

To break his dream,

And give unto him now

One word!—

When the young master reasoned

That our puissant England

Reared her great poets by neglect,

Trampling them down in the by-paths of Life

And fostering them with glory after death,

Did any flame of triumph from his own fame

Fall swift upon his mind; the glow

Cast back upon the bleak and aching air

Blown round his days—?

Happily so!

But he, whose soul was mighty as the soul

Of Milton, who held the vision of the world

As an irradiant orb self-filled with light,

Who schooled his heart with passionate control

To compass knowledge, to unravel the dense

Web of this tangled life, he would weigh slight

As thistledown blown from his most fairy fancy

That pale self-glory, against the mystery,

The wonder of the various world, the power

Of “seeing great things in loneliness.”

Where bloodroot in the clearing dwells

Along the edge of snow;

Where, trembling all their trailing bells,

The sensitive twin flowers blow;

Where, searching through the ferny breaks,

The moose-fawns find the springs;

Where the loon laughs and diving takes

Her young beneath her wings;

Where flash the fields of arctic moss

With myriad golden light;

Where no dream-shadows ever cross

The lidless eyes of night;

Where, cleaving a mountain storm, the proud

Eagles, the clear sky won,

Mount the thin air between the loud

Slow thunder and the sun;

Where, to the high tarn tranced and still

No eye has ever seen,

Comes the first star its flame to chill

In the cool deeps of green;—

Spirit of Keats, unfurl thy wings,

Far from the toil and press,

Teach us by these pure-hearted things,

Beauty in loneliness.

Where, in the realm of thought, dwell those

Who oft in pain and penury

Work in the void,

Searching the infinite dark between the stars,

The infinite little of the atom,

Gathering the tears and terrors of this life,

Distilling them to a medicine for the soul;

(And hated for their thought

Die for it calmly;

For not their fears,

Nor the cold scorn of men,

Fright them who hold to truth:)

They brood alone in the intense serene

Air of their passion,

Until on some chill dawn

Breaks the immortal form foreshadowed in their dream,

And the distracted world and men

Are no more what they were.

Spirit of Keats, unfurl thy deathless wings,

Far from the wayward toil, the vain excess,

Teach us by such soul-haunting things

Beauty in loneliness.

The minds of men grow numb, their vision narrows,

The clogs of Empire and the dust of ages,

The lust of power that fogs the fairest pages,

Of the romance that eager life would write,

These war on Beauty with their spears and arrows.

But still is Beauty and of constant power;

Even in the whirl of Time’s most sordid hour,

Banished from the great highways,

Affrighted by the tramp of insolent feet,

She hangs her garlands in the by-ways;

Lissome and sweet

Bending her head to hearken and learn

Melody shadowed with melody,

Softer than shadow of sea-fern,

In the green-shadowed sea:

Then, nourished by quietude,

And if the world’s mood

Change, she may return

Even lovelier than before.—

The white reflection in the mountain lake

Falls from the white stream

Silent in the high distance;

The mirrored mountains guard

The profile of the goddess of the height,

Floating in water with a curve of crystal light;

When the air, envious of the loveliness,

Rushes downward to surprise,

Confusion plays in the contact,

The picture is overdrawn

With ardent ripples,

But when the breeze, warned of intrusion,

Draws breathless upward in flight,

The vision reassembles in tranquillity,

Reforming with a gesture of delight,

Reborn with the rebirth of calm.

Spirit of Keats, lend us thy voice,

Breaking like surge in some enchanted cave

On a dream-sea-coast,

To summon Beauty to her desolate world.

For Beauty has taken refuge from our life

That grew too loud and wounding;

Beauty withdraws beyond the bitter strife,

Beauty is gone, (Oh where?)

To dwell within a precinct of pure air

Where moments turn to months of solitude;

To live on roots of fern and tips of fern,

On tender berries flushed with the earth’s blood.

Beauty shall stain her feet with moss

And dye her cheek with deep nut-juices,

Laving her hands in the pure sluices

Where rainbows are dissolved.

Beauty shall view herself in pools of amber sheen

Dappled with peacock-tints from the green screen

That mingles liquid light with liquid shadow.

Beauty shall breathe the fairy hush

With the chill orchids in their cells of shade,

And hear the invocation of the thrush

That calls the stars into their heaven,

And after even

Beauty shall take the night into her soul.

When the thrill voice goes crying through the wood,

(Oh Beauty, Beauty!)

Troubling the solitude

With echoes from the lonely world,

Beauty will tremble like a cloistered thing

That hears temptation in the outlands singing,

Will steel her dedicated heart and breathe

Into her inner ear to firm her vow:—

‘Let me restore the soul that ye have marred.

O mortals, cry no more on Beauty,

Leave me alone, lone mortals,

Until my shaken soul comes to its own,

Lone mortals, leave me alone!’

(Oh Beauty, Beauty, Beauty!)

All the dim wood is silent as a dream

That dreams of silence.

“It was high spring, and all the way

Primrosed, and hung with shade.”

             Henry Vaughan, 1622-1695.

A Poete telleth in an olde romaunt

Of our foreparents and their first distress.

They were all naked sauf for the kinde plaunt,

Where Eve had gathered leaves them for to dress.

They were adrad at the broode wilderness,

Shivering bothe, altho they knew ne cold,

For the high sonne was shining bright and bold.

When the wing-schuldered aungel there did stonde,

And shake his sword in flame of gold and red,

Adam espied that in her little honde

Eve covered something that it cherished.

What was it Eva from the aungel hid?

Sche without ever askin Goddis pardon

Had a small primrose taken from His garden.

And there sche guarded it all faithfully,

Like as a younge priest sholde guard the Host,

Then looking on its beauty, sodenly

Her timid mind with payne was rudely crost,

Sche thought on all the blossoms sche had lost,

And the first tear of all the teares sche shed,

Fell down upon the litel yalow head.

But when our fader Adam saw her payne,

His hert was all aswownying with her grief,

For he of gentle Eva was full fayne

And tender at the hert beyond belief.

He went away as he had been a thief,

And where he went the Poete did not know,

But all that day Eve never saw him mo.

He sells ballads and snatches

Of glees and of catches,

That go with a wonderful jingle;

He teaches a dance

That is perfect romance,

And sets all your blood in a tingle.

He has treasures untold

Of things made in gold,

Of jewels and carvings and laces;

But the moment you try

A thought for to buy

He makes a few frowns and grimaces.

If you mention a hope

Off he goes in a mope,

He is wrath if you ask an ideal;

He cries with a sneer

“You can’t buy them here!

I only engage in the real.”

“Dreams are a stuff

All well enough

For those who love shadows to cherish,

They’re nothing but bubbles;

I have my own troubles

To gather up things that don’t perish.”

“Come then, my boon lad,

All thinkers are mad,

For your strength I will give you good measure;

Come, don’t be afraid,

My pretty wild maid

“To barter your beauty for pleasure.”

For this is high May-time,

The only merry play-time,

When the primrose has lighted her wan-fire,

Come, stroll down the lane,

You’ll not bargain in vain,

At the end of the path is a bonfire!”

“O man, these symbols are the whole of life,

Here is the round of pleasure dashed with light,

Here is the shade of sorrow and of strife,

Temple and sphere—the sombre and the bright,

Make thou thy choice, thy mighty will is free,

In this election is thy destiny.”

I thought to choose the crystal, ’twas so fair.

Eyes of serene enchantment seemed to peer,

Shadows of filmy beauty floated there,

But as I closed my hand upon the sphere,

I saw a flash of something in the gold

That made my very heart turn grey and cold.

And so I grasped the temple hung with shade,

The angel and the figures vanished away,

I put aside the shadows undismayed,

And felt my heart turn weary and old and grey,

The very thing that I had hoped to shun

Sat on a throne, it was the All Powerful One.

“Make thou thy choice, thy mighty will is free,”

The mocking words were ever in my ears,

Through all my days I strove with destiny,

With teen and sorrow harvested the years.

I lie through aeons as all mortals must,

A little heap of ashes and of dust.

Enter a youth too out of breath for speech—he

Was ancient clad like one of the Medici.

The place was still when music danced about,

Dark when the torches played upon the gloom,

The jest and clamour of a merry rout

Was heard by no one in the upper room;

Then there was breathless running on the stair,

Confusion at the door, and frantic groping there.

For dead fairies go nowhere,

Leaving nothing in the air.

Their clear bodies are all through

Made of shadow, mixed with dew.

When they change their fairy state,

They, like dew, evaporate.

But we fairies that remain,

The dead fairy’s funeral feign.

Place within a shepherd’s purse

Primrose pollen; for a hearse,

Lady-birds we harness up

To an empty acorn cup.

This we bury, deep in moss;—

Then we mourn our grievous loss,

Mourn with music, piercing thin,

Cricket with his mandolin,

Many a hautboy, many a flute,

Played by them you fancy mute.

Then a solemn epigraph

Grave we on the cenotaph:—

“Once a fairy of the best,

Here lies nothing,—Stranger, rest,—

“Ponder,—when you change your state,

You may thus evaporate,

“Follow where the fairy goes,

Into nothing, no one knows.”

My Love is like the shine and shade

    That ripple on the wood,

(The shadow is her dark green plaid,

    The light her silver snood).

They never meet with eager lips,

    And mingle in their mirth,

They only touch their finger-tips,

    And circle round the earth.

My Love’s so pure, so winsome-sweet,

    So dancing with delight,

That I shall love her till they meet,

    And all the world is night.

You will recall, of all those magic nights

One when we floated on the sunset lights,

In all the mirrored crimson from the flare;

Not knowing whether we were led by air

Or by the secret impulse of the lake.

We watched the youthful darkness swiftly take

The burning mountain-chain of fretted colour

And drench it with his dream of dusk;—duller

It grew and duller, to a high coast of ashes.

The impalpable sheet lightning fled in flashes,

Signalling, in a vivid instant code,

The approach of another wonder-episode

Of beauty, ever stealing nigh and nigher,

And then we were aware of the still fire

Of the Great Moon!

We neared a shadowy island where we lay

And watched the faint illusive moonlight play

Along the shore whereon our tents were pitched.

The silver-birches like live things bewitched

By malice jealous of their beauty, stood

Upon the liquid threshold of the wood.

Then quick upon the dark, like knocks of fate,

There fell three axe-strokes, and then clear, elate

Came back the echoes true to tune and time,

Three axe-strokes—rhythmed and matched in rhyme;

Then a leaf-comment died away in murmurs.

The smoke of our camp-fire amid the firs

Like a tall ghost rose up below the moon.

The enchanted water joined an antiphonal rune

In labials and liquids with the rocky shoal

Where we were moored by pressure of the breeze,

That barely chafed our bark canoe, and stole

Like a wing-flutter through the hazel-trees.

Hidden above there, half asleep, a thrush

Spoke a few silver words upon the hush,—

Then paused self-charmed to silence.

’Tis winged impromptu and the occasion strange

That gives to beauty its full power and range.

The bird was nature; and his casual giving,

Us to ourselves— for what we gain from living,

When we possess our souls or seem to own,

Is not the peak of knowledge, but the tone

Of feeling; is not the problem solved, but just

The hope of solving opened out and thrust

A little further into the spirit air;

But whether there be demonstration there

We know not; no more than the growing vines

When they commission their young eager bines

To find amid the void a clinging-spot

Know whether it be really there or not.

The bird is silent in the groves that grow

Around the past; still the reflections are

That fluttered from his song, and long ago

The tranquil evening ended with a star.

Nothing of all remains but pure romance,

A magic space wherein the mind can dwell,

Above the touch of tedium or of chance

Where fragile thoughts are irrefrangible.

Still the young Time is guardian of that space,

Trembling with unstained beauty through and through,

Where shoots of memory radiate and enlace

Bright as the sun-point in a globe of dew;

Until old Time sables the crystal door,

We may re-enter there,—once more, once more.

The great elms hold

Aloft their clouds of early autumn gold,

Compressed of summer-sunshine and so treasured,

Till now like alms doled out and slowly measured

To the starved earth. The oak-leaves are tenacious

And cling close to the oak-trees, contumacious

Of all the laws of winter and his rights.

You’ll find them there on moonlit winter nights,

Above their sparkling shadows on the snow.

Of finer parchment are beech-leaves; they glow

In spectral wraiths, and rustle, rustle, rustle

In the frost wind, even above the bustle

Of the blown snow that streams across the crust

Of brighter silver like a silver dust.

The sulphur-coloured poplars burn and quiver,

Each leaf contributes its ancestral shiver

To the illusion of a flaming cone,

At the black core the stems show cool as stone,

That soon will brave it frigid and unstoled,

Each standing in his round of fallen gold.

The sumachs vanished early, in a passion,

Squandering their colour in a prodigal fashion,

They’ve left us cones of faded purple fire,

Sharp as mementoes of destroyed desire.

The ash trees have a little leaf and so

They pass quiescently and make no show

In exodus, as mourning for past laches,

They lie about in heaps of dust and ashes.

Not so the mountain ashes, the leaves perish

Unthought of, the tough twigs still hold and cherish

The berries in dense clusters of dark coral,

Which the pine grosbeaks share without a quarrel

In the clear, blustery days of early March.

The leaves of bass-woods seem to curl and parch;

The trees are rounded like a bee-hive dome,

The leaves dry up as pale as honeycomb,

As if those robbers, the inveterate bees,

Murmured their colour-secret to the trees;

So when they die the cunning leaves contrive

To simulate the hoard within the hive.

But when the maple-leaves are touched with frost,

All our similitudes are dwarfed or lost;

We do not think of single leaf or tree,

No more than of water when we think of the sea;

We only know the hills are hung with garlands,

And in a happy trance we dream there are lands

As calm with beauty as this painted scene,

Calm with perpetual beauty; this demesne

We wander in awhile and deeply muse

On past deeds and on future shadows, and choose

Out of the lives we lived only those things

That left no thirst, no ardours and no stings,

Out of the life to come the dreams that chime

Consistent with imaginary time.

But, while we muse, there falls a fairy jar

That subtly tells us where we really are;

There is a stir within the loveliness,

A lessening in the colour, a faint stress

Of grey, a silver thinning of the air,

And ere our painted vision is nowhere,

Fearing a coming change we cannot brook,

We raise our wistful eyes for one last look.

A birch before the northern window stood

          Silvery white,

Shrouded in greens of liquid tender hue,

          All laved in light.

It seemed a naiad in a fountain caught

          Had charmed the spray

To blow about her naked loveliness,

          Never away.

And all the rustle of the inner shadow

          Was full of dancing,

Now the swift sun and now the lustrous rain

          Flashing and glancing.

Two robins searching for an empty tree

          Saw it was fair,

Liked the seclusion of an ambushed crotch

          And settled there.

And there a child beside the window sat

          Watching them brood

Over their eggs, with all the fluttering care

          Of parenthood.

She clasped her hands below her vivid face,

          Her lips apart,

As if she mothered there a little bird

          Close to her heart.

But then ere long, she turned and vanished

          Through the closed door,

No more to laugh, to love—perhaps ’twere best

          To say no more.

Then the tree died, it could not answer once

          To Spring’s desire,

It was cut down and split and corded up

          And burned with fire.

The birds were certain of their slender tree

          Early that Spring,

But when they strove to perch upon the limbs

          There was nothing.

They flew away and built in other branches

          Another nest,

Disquieted with foreign winds and shadows

          Banished and dispossessed.

But even now the tree, the birds, the child

          Come back again,

And live for moments in the crystal clear

          Orb of the brain;

The birds are quick, the leaves are light and laughing

          In profusion,

The child is radiant with a lovely motion—

          ’Tis an illusion!

But ah! the love that conjures up the vision,

          Intense and breathless,

Own to me as it trembles and disperses,

          The love is deathless.

By the grey shores of Rideau,

          The bells are calling clear,

Over the dying ripple,

          The swallows dip and veer,

The spring is coming slow,

          As it came last year!

But a slow spring is sure

          With freshets of cold rain;

As it came last year

          And ever may come again,

With flowers frail and pure,

          Where the pure snow had lain.

The bells have ceased their calling

          But silence calls as clear,

Within the earth’s shadow

          A few stars appear,

The chill night is falling

          As it fell last year.

Then Death who was watching

Raised him more tenderly

Than the forms of other men,

And wrapped him in her hair,

Her mouth drooped to his mouth,

And they became one

Forever—

Then arose around them

A confusion of light and sound,

The complaint of the wind

In the plane-trees,

The far away pulse of a horn,

Ripples of fairy colour,

Rhythms of Spain,

The overtones of cymbals,

The sobs of tormented souls,

Crys of delight and their echoes,

The crystal stroke of goat-bells,

The tremor of temple gongs,

The robes of Melisande,

Trailing vague glories;

Fauns’ eyes in the vapour,

Flutes of Dionysus,

Haunting his ruined fane,

Veils of rain, quenching the tulip gardens,

Sea-light at the roots of islands,

The Spirit of Puck

With the ghost of a humming-bird,

The chords of boys’ voices,

The open organ tones;

And under all the pedal-point

Of the deep-based ocean,

Hidden under the mists,

Chanting, infinitely remote,

At the foot of enchanted cliffs.

Then with a turn of illumination,

An enharmonic change of vision,

Death and Debussy

Become France and her heroes,

As if all her sacred heroes

Were in that one form,

Clasped in the bosom of France,

Enfolded with her ideals and inspirations.

Then the group loses outline,

Firmness dissolves,

And surrounded by light and sound,

Shadows, they drift away

Into the shadow.

Slow bells at dawn—

What mean ye by your tolling?

Bells in the growing light,

Knolling afar,

Loitering in leisured sequence,

Where the ringing seraphim

Shake you out of heaven,

From the morning star.

Echoes are in my soul,—

Consonances and broken melodies,—

Survivals frayed and remembrances

Vanished and irretrievable.

What know ye of life,

Or of perished hours or years?

Ye tones that are born in air,

And throb in air and die,

Leaving no traces anywhere,

Save tremors in the quickened pool of tears

Within the windless deeps of memory?

Then something moves in the unquiet mind,

Something impalpable and hard to bind,

The double of the thought or the thought’s essence;

The annunciation of its subtle presence

Is a slight perfume, or a fragile shading,

Hardly perceived ere it is frayed and fading:

Is it the core of all the secret longing

That keeps the memory populous, a thronging

Of ghosts of all the passions, proving deathless

The dead passions? Is it the shadows faithless

Of joys that were to live but once and die

Without a hope of immortality,

That now come treading the old jocund measure,

Mere apparitions, pulseless of all pleasure?

Is it aroma faint from Nature’s chalice,

The odour of the aurora borealis

That shifts before the stars a silver fume,

Or peacock-tints on pools of amber gloom

In some fir-forest, all of light denuded,

The aroma faint that keeps the mind deluded

With the vain thought that here it lived before

In many incarnations o’er and o’er,

Till all this life seems but a spectral show

Of something real that perished long ago?

Thus the unquiet mind is charmed and caught

When comes to Beauty Beauty’s afterthought,

The shadow rainbow, that the rainbow flings

On the torn storm-breast underneath his wings.

Now the only debt that can be paid to her

          Is the thought that life was grievous;

No amends can now be ever made to her;

          Kiss her hands before they leave us.

Gently raise her; she was moulded slenderly,

          Not for days so wild and deep;

Leave her where the poplars murmur tenderly,

          “This night she shall sleep!”

 

                          I

 

A house stands clear on a mellow rise,

          With meadows in a ring,

An orchard blossoms white with surprise

          At the urgency of spring.

The meadows fall to the winnowed sand

          Where a cove breaks free,

Like the curve of a fragile ivory hand

          Trembling full of the sea.

 

                          II

The robins round the lilac tree

          Were fluttering in the rain,—

Before we knew—the cloud had fled,

          The sky was fair again.

Before we knew—the young, sweet moon

          With rose was drifted o’er,

The dusk had drowsed the stream and lit

          The lights along the shore.

The stars were faint—before we knew

          The night was on the lawn:—

Before we knew—a shadow stirred

          It must have been the dawn.

Ripples that run so gladly

          To the sands of the broken shore,

I wish that I knew your meaning

          And I would ask no more.

My heart is bitter with sorrow

          For the years that are long gone,

And there is no consolation

          That I may dwell upon.

’Tis idle to sway and glitter

          And make a sound of mirth,

The human heart is hungry

          For comfort on the earth.

Is all that you can tell me,

          As you waver and sparkle and glance,

That after the scourge of tempest

          You still can laugh and dance?

If this is the depth of your meaning,

          Rave on, or murmur or cease,

My heart is riven with sorrow

          And cannot be at peace.

I read once in an ancient and proud book

          How beauty fadeth,

How stale will Helen or Leucippe grow

          When custom jadeth,

“When the black ox has trodden on her toe,”

          Beauty will alter,

And love that lives on beauty, so it said,

          Will fade and falter.

Then, while your mistress wrinkles and grows sour,

          O sage sardonic,

What charm preserves your virile strength and show,

          What potent tonic?

An elephant has trodden on your toe,

          Your look grows bleary,

Leucippe has quick eyes, her love of you

          Is dull and weary.

I laid his book beside a Chinese rose-jar,

          (Old Robert Burton),

Lifted the dragon-guarded lid and—lo!

          Faint and uncertain,

Frail rose-ghosts of rose-gardens all in blow

          Haunted the room,

The spangled dew, the shell-tints and the moonlight

          Lived in the fume,

And still shall linger in the leaves until

          The jar shall perish.

So the true lovers in their memories stow

          The things they cherish,

And loose them in the tender afterglow

          Of life’s long day,

Till memory dies, and the world with all its passion

          Passes away.

In the granite-margined pool,

Hot to its shallow deeps,

The water-lily sleeps

And wakes in light,

While all the garden blossoms shine

Rich in the sun,

The throbbing circles tangled round the shrine

Of the Peerless one.

Ripples outrun her

As she slides with the air;

Like moonstones frail, the waterdrops

Invade her red-rimmed pads,—

Tremble mercurial there;

Ivory rose petals,

Fugitive, wind-blown

Shallops of kindred beauty

Attend the starry-pointed wonder,

Lolling so languidly by the lotus leaves.

An odour vibrates upward from the flower,

An incense faint

Gathers and floats

Above the chalice of the breathing lily,

Firm as the halo of a saint,

Immaculate and chilly;

Or the distilled and secret odour weaves

A silver snood,

Binding the temples of the virgin lily

Listlessly leaning by the lotus leaves.

Light flock-bells, born of the rains flailing,

Are based on fragile foam and domed with paling

Rainbow flicker;

Thicker the water-beetles ply their oars

Freighting between the phantom shores

The little evil thoughts that trouble beauty;

But heedless the haughty lily

Buoyed in the lymph-clear shallows

Languorously,—

The intense heaven of her cold white

Is troubled with colour;

The shadow cast by light

On its own substance lies;

The clear etherealities

Are tremoured with fire;

Conscious and still unconscious of the sun,

The petals swoon amorously;

The gold-tipped sceptres of desire

Shine in the warm cradle-cup

Of the luxurious pure lily

Trembling in ecstasy by the lotus leaves.

Listen, listen, there should be a voice

Dulcet as odour and flush;

The flying yellow of the gold finch

Sparkles with notes

Blown on a gold-black flute,

There is no reason why a lily should be mute,

Moored languorously by the lotus leaves.

A shadow dreams upon the rounded mere,

A gold dust swims upon the crystal,

Maturity broods in water and air;

The starry-pointed wonder

From the root tangled lair

Feels ripeness lure her under;

She sinks reluctant from sunlight,

From the chaplet of stars

Spangling the water delicately,

Down the dark pool of silence;

The world lost,—

All lost but memory

And the germ of beauty.

O banishment to cloistral water,

The pause in the limpid hush,

There to recreate

The form, the odour, the flush.

Then the lyrical impulse,

The stem goes rocketing

To kiss spring light,

The pointed bud parts,

The garden lies in ecstasy

Conscious of the starry wonder

That opens—opens—opens—

The odour overflows—

Comes the under-flush—

The stately lily lolls again,

Pale water-lily,

Languorously floating by the lotus leaves.

Ste. Petronille,

July 27th, 1919.

Up heart, away heart,

Never heed the weather.

Leave the lowland reaches

Where the grain’s in seed.

Take the powerful wind in face,

All in highest feather,

Lift your burden with a shout,

Fit for every need.

Front the mountains, cross the passes,

Pioneer the sheer crevasses,

Where the glaciers breed,

Where the imminent avalanches,

Tremble with their air-held motions,

Where below the balsam branches

Start the rills in the erosions,

Follow where they lead;

Where the sunlight ebbs in oceans,

Cast away your load!

Life is not the goal,

It is the road.

After a night of storm,

They found her lovely form

Cast high upon the beach at Spaniards Bay,

The only driftage from the stately barque,

That went to pieces in the flashing dark;

Even at that day

None knew the vessel’s name,

Or whence it came,

Or whither it was bound,

And now no man can know

For that was long and long ago.

They said she was a wondrous thing to see,

All dazzling in her bridal dress,

A miracle of foam and ivory.

Her satin gown was smoothened by the wave,

Her rippled ribbons, all her wandering laces

Set in their places.

Her hands were loosely clasped without a gem,

But clad with mitts of silken net.

Diamonds in the buckles of her shoon

All fairly set,

And one great brooch the colour of the moon

Held her lace shawl.

A snood had slipped back from her hair,

Her face was piteous, so fair, so fair,

And gleaming small

Upon her breast there seemed to float

A wedding ring,

Threaded upon a crimson and green string

Around her throat.

Idle to grieve when the stars are clear above me,

When the bright waters bubble in the spring,

Idle to grieve when there are storms to prove me

And birds that seek me out to come and sing.

Idle to grieve, the light is on the highway,

There are the mountain meadows to achieve,

Beyond in the pass the airy heights are my way,

Idle to grieve, glad heart, idle to grieve.

The tenebrous sky

Was founded on lightning,

And there came marching

To a funeral,

A multitude so millioned

That number was unthinkable;

There were massed together

Kings pierced with their sceptres,

Tyrants shod with the points of swords,

And priests each with a live coal

In the palm of his hand,

Learned men

With book-yokes on their necks,

Merchants with gold eyelids;

Each one tortured with his symbol,

And an innumerable host

Without sign or distinction;

Each bore a tuft of grass

In his fingers;

The grass was in seed,

And as they walked,

The seed fell where it listed.

There was no sound

As the host marched

To the funeral;

But what was buried

Was far in the Past,

And the host poured up

From the Future.

That is the rain

Sobbing, sobbing

Against the window pane.

And the wind comes robbing

The rain of its voice

And leaves me no choice,

In the dead room,

But to hear the noise

Of my heart throbbing, throbbing.

But before the storm

The evening was warm

I remember, and calm,

And by the mill dam

The martins were flashing,

If she had not said—!

But then say it she did—

I should be rid

Of the throbbing, throbbing,

At the heart of the shadow

That stands by the window

Sobbing, sobbing,

And breathes the dark

And sucks at the noise

Like a vampire—hark!

Robbing, robbing

The storm of its voice.

The miller’s children at play,

I remember, called to each other,

And I tried to smother

The sound of her words,

But then—what she showed me!

’Tis between her vest,

The one I gave on her birthday,

Crimson, with silver pomegranates,

And her breast:

They will find it there,

But what can they say?

They cannot find

What it did to my mind,

Or what she said

When she threw back her head

And smiled,

So maddening, so wild.

To the left of the trail

Through the beaver meadow,

An arm of the swale

Is bordered with iris,

And the ferns grow rank,

But nothing is dank,

Crisp, pungent, dry:

The wind lingers by,

And stops.

There may have been a few drops.

 

Throbbing, throbbing,

And there is the rain

Robbing, robbing

The wind of its voice,

And it beats again

On the window pane,

Sobbing, sobbing.

                (Senza fine)

A sculptured head beside a stony road

Across a moor, low stars and shattered light

Played on the face of beauty like a god

But pitiless; it seemed to hold the might

Of Aeons; even destiny seemed dead

        In that cold fateful head.

Then one by one across the stony moor

Came figures clad like masquers for a fete,

Symbols of life they seemed, both gay and dour,

All quick with life and all importunate,

To follow where the flinty pathway led

        And speak with that cold head.

First two fair women, clad in sombre guise,

Communed together who should speak their word,

Then ventured up the younger with pure eyes

But faltered, as if she feared her memory erred,

And glanced behind to flee, but turned instead,

        “There is no hope,” she said.

And now came one whose lips were grey as stone,

Whose open eyes with agony were packed,

His flesh seemed loosened to the very bone,

Shaken like vapour from a cataract,

He drifted against the absolute stern head,

        “There is no hope!” he said.

In motley garb came one as if a-maying,

Playing a melody on a silver flute

And dancing; first he ceased his liquid playing,

Then his dancing, and stood bedazzled and mute,

And when he spoke his face was filled with dread,

        “There is no hope,” he said.

A youth clad in a sable cloak came next,

A book he held whereon his eyes were cast,

His brow was fearless but his eyes perplexed,

He hardly saw the statue, as he passed

He glanced up from the book wherein he read,

        “There is no hope!” he said.

Then stood a figure clad in yellow flames,

Loaded with brutal spoils of fortunate strife,

Shrouded in veils that covered deeper shames,

And clothes unwound from the loathsome things of life,

She stood within the odour that she shed,

        “There is no hope,” she said.

Then rushed one running far beyond her breath

Hasty as flame, a hunted, witless thing,

And furtive as a wild hare on the heath,

She darted up distrait and whispering,

Four hurried words she muttered, ere she fled,

        “There is no hope!” she said.

All hot from life they came with this worn tale,

Did they believe its pathos would atone,

Or did they hope their spirits would prevail

To draw a comment from the sphinx in stone?

Not one could charm the inexorable head,

        Moveless and cold as lead.

Last rustled up a winged lad with wells

Of bubbling laughter in his irised eyes,

His face was quick with mountain-lights and dells

Of honeyed dimples rapid with surprise;

He threw his rosy arms around the head,

        “Is there no hope?” he said.

Then the grim statue smiled, and all the wild

Sky broke and light rushed through in sudden floods

Glorious!—and where the head was pedestalled

Were osier-wands and fringes of frail woods,

With shallow water painted with the cool

Reflected flag-flowers, musing by the pool.

Nay, not so near the edge, for far below

The cloud are rocks, and there an icy stream

Would whirl your little bodies like dead leaves

And dash them. Stretch your wings; your wings

Are power and the air’s your element;

When they are mighty, close under the sun

We’ll fly, and you shall look up at him

And he shall feel impotent in the heavens

When he hears us scream and taunt him.

When they are strong you may fall,—sudden

As the snow rushes from the pass and roars,

And all the stems of trees in the green valley

Snap in the windage of his roar,—and fall—

Fall so unerring and swift and check so fierce

And yet not even disturb a feather on the ledge;

As you saw me now hurled like a bolt

From the slant sun and fall like a furled shadow.

To mount, that is our destiny, to mount—and even

In rest to feel that power that calls us up

To hang above the earth and all the tribes

Of men that creep and scurry upon it,

With their tamed horses and their buffaloes;

They fight together on horseback—I have seen—

Naked and puny and wearing on their heads

Our tail feathers to frighten one another:

They lie in wait to rob us of our plumes,

Hiding in snares about the hollow hills,

Baiting their traps with the dainty antelope,

And if they find a feather on the plain

Dropped in high flight as a cold cloud, careless

Might drop a snow-flake,—boasting about their camp-fires

How they had braved the dread war eagle

And torn his plumage. Stretch thy wings,

For they are safety from such pillage, and swiftness

In pursuit, and fiery freedom, dealing

Cold death, as I have dealt it, to the spoiler.

In the slant light toward twilight I had caught

In my slow circlings the scent of plunder,

And stooped down to where a kid had fallen

On the yellow bank of a dry water-course.

I had dropped slow with wings up-spread

Over it and let down my talons to clutch,—

When I was seized,—astonished I rushed up with power

And dragged this thing out from his snare,

Scattering his little shelter under the kid;

He held me strong and struck at me with a knife,

Whirling him about as I strove in the air,

I tore his scalp and blinded him with his blood,

And as he dragged me down, half-fallen,

I beat him with the shoulders of my wings

On his hard brain-pan, a fury of blows

As wild as hail on a stone mountain top.

Dizzied so, his knife fell and I tore his scalp

Down over his eyes, and with his puny hands

He strove to catch my whirling wings and failed,—

Then smote him to the earth and I was free;

Naked and huddled on his side he lay,

Daubed all with yellow paint streaked with vermilion

Vowed to this adventure, but all lifeless

As the kid and the dead water-course.

I swirled low over earth like flame flattened

By wind, then with a long loop of swiftness

Rose sheer up into the bubble of the air

And left him, carrion with his carrion,

For the dull coyotes to scent and overhaul

With snarls and bickerings lower than the dogs.

Rose to the unattempted heights, spurning

The used channels of the air, to the thin reach

Where vapours are unborn and caught the last

Glint of falling light beyond the peak

Of the last mountain, and hung alone serene

Till night, welling up into the void, darkened me,—

Poised with the first cold stars.

               Wings,—thy wings,

Strengthen thy wings, for they are more than swiftness,

More than freedom, proud withdrawal are they

Into the region where, after vivid action,

Thought rises the immortal ghost of action,

Above the orb where space assembles silence,

Where all the ache and effort of this petty life

Are quieted with silence.

Lace-like in the moonlight,

The white lilac tree was quiet,

A little form of dream delight

Within a dreaming scene,

Like a little bride of shadow

In a dim secluded eyot,

With perfume for an element

Around the white and green.

The secret of this dream delight,

The core of this bride-quiet,

Hid even from the moonlight

By the heart-leaved screen,

Was the dew encrusted jewel

Of a ruby-throat, and nigh it

A nest of sleeping humming-birds

Amid the white and green.

I watched thee with devotion

        Through all those silent years,

Thy least regarded motion,

        Thy laughter and thy tears.

But thou, when fate would sever

        The visionary tie,

Unconscious and for ever

        Left me without a sigh.

Yet though I needs must borrow

        My comfort from distress,

I would not give my sorrow

        For thy unconsciousness.

I said, before the dawning came,

    The day shall be so fair,

Wonder shall thrill me and the flame

    Of spirit touch my hair.

Although the day was perfect light,

    Wonder withheld his lyre;

Expectance was a-wing till night,

    Then died with my desire.

But on a casual day of rain,

    Wonder came chanting by;

I threw my heart wide to the strain,—

    It passed—’twas but a sigh.

Aloft in far Grenada,

          Where snow in silver pales

The tops of the Sierras,

          I heard the nightingales

              In the dark vales.

In all the Moorish gardens

          The olive trees were still,

Yet something faintly trembled

          Below the moonlit hill,

              A falling rill

Made a clear ostinato

          For the ecstatic sound;

The birds were lost in singing

          And wandered round and round

              In a deep swound.

But, when the full enchantment

          Had wildly worked its will,

They found themselves in silence:

          The clear, falling rill

              Vibrated still.

Bring your cherished beauty,

    Bring your vaunted might,

Bring your tear-stained duty,

    Bring your heart’s delight.

Do not lag or falter,

    Heap them on the fire:

Ashes on the altar,

    All of life’s desire!

The snow with never a flickering

          Burns in a dead white,

Above like flame a-bickering

          There plays a flutter light.

What is there flashing, blowing,

          Above the frosted glow?

The unseen wind is throwing

          The Snow-birds in the Snow.

Lay thy cheek to mine, love,

          Once before I go;

Memories throng and quiver, love,

          In the afterglow.

All the rippling springtimes

          Full of crocus lights;

When the dawns came too soon

          And tardy were the nights.

All the dusky summers

          By the fruitful hill;

Thinking both the one thought

          When the heart was still.

Deep, untroubled autumns,

          Fallen leaves and rime;

Musing on the treasure

          Of the old time.

Where my journey leads, love,

          There is cold and snow;

Lay thy cheek to mine, love,

          Once before I go.

The old gray shade of the Mountain

          Stands in the open sky,

Counting, as if at his leisure,

          The days of Eternity.

The Stream comes down from its Sources,

          Afar in the glacial height,

Rushing along through the valley

          In loops of silver light.

“What is my duty, O Mountain,

          Is it to stand like thee?

Is it, O flashing torrent,

          Like thee—to be free?”

The Man utters the questions,

          He breathes—he is gone!

The Mountain stands in the heavens,

          The Stream rushes on.

 

Glacier, B. C.

          August 27th. 1920.

Warring Soul, beset with foes,

          Struggling with the spears of wrath;

Where thy easiest journey goes,

          Fighting lions in the path;

Ah the blows and counter blows!

          Frantic with the noise and din!

Warring Soul, would’st thou be free?

          Love the love that shuts thee in.

Sorrowing Soul, dissolved with tears,

          Whom the tides of anguish toss,

Wounded with a thousand fears

          Sprung from loneliness and loss,

Fearing all the coming years

          Are to grief and pain akin.

Sorrowing Soul, would’st thou be free?

          Love the love that shuts thee in.

Laughing Soul, with delicate lutes,

          Paying all thy dearest debt,

Dancing to the purling flutes,

          Rhythmed by the castinet;

Nothing seen but flowers and fruits,

          Where the sword of frost has been,

Laughing Soul, would’st thou be free?

          Love the love that shuts thee in.

Brooding Soul, that looks on fate,

          On past times, on times to be;

Thinking how importunate

          Is the rule of destiny;

Careless to be early or late;

          Irresolute to lose or win;

Brooding Soul, would’st thou be free?

          Love the love that shuts thee in.

Honour for them that watched the waves,

          That stormed the ridge, that dared the air,

That claimed of right unsullied graves

          And slumber with contentment there.

Honour for them that bravely fought,

          O Pride, O Faith, without alloy—

No tears, no doubt, no shadow—nought

          But silence on the heights of Joy.

When the first larks began to soar,

          They left him wounded there;

Pity unlatched the sun-lit door,

          And smoothed his clotted hair.

But when the larks were still, before

          The mist began to rise,

’Twas Love that latched the star-lit door,

          And closed his dreamless eyes.

Those we have loved the dearest,

          The bravest and the best,

Are summoned from the battle

          To their eternal rest;

There they endure the silence,

          Here we endure the pain—

He that bestows the Valour

          Valour resumes again.

O, Master of all Being,

          Donor of Day and Night,

Of Passion and of Beauty,

          Of Sorrow and Delight.

Thou gav’st them the full treasure

          Of that heroic blend—

The Pride, the Faith, the Courage,

          That holdeth to the end.

Thou gavest us the Knowledge

          Wherein their memories stir—

Master of Life, we thank Thee

          That they were what they were.

The storm was done

And fragments of the sun

Fell on the great Cathedral front

Of saints and heroes,

And fell on a woman’s form

That vanished through the porch,

She pushed the leathern door

And saw the great rose-window like a torch

Colour the million ghosts of the dead incense.

She paused at the bénitier

And trembled down the aisle,

She thought to make a prayer,

She knelt but could not pray;

A month on yesterday

Her lover had been killed at Verdun.

Deep grief dawns slowly

And the light was on her soul.

She thought on God and called on Christ,

And fainted in her woe.

And lo!

As she leant against the pillar,

Pale like a saint—stiller

Than death—from out the stone

Thrilled a warm tone,

As if an Angel spoke:

“Thou art not here alone,

Thy sorrow woke

One who once loved as thou,

Long, long ago.

Noble he was—and he stooped low,

His princely people said,

To crown me.

Him they banished oversea

To kill his love,

They could not—this have I for proof,

They killed me here instead,

They walled me up at night within the stone

When this church was abuilding,

A narrow niche, and I was all alone.

It did not take me long to die,

And now my little dust has enough room.

But love can never die,

And when I felt my heart cry out in thine

I rose after three hundred years

To kiss your tears,

And tell you that our little wells of love

Have springs in the great deeps thereof.

And this I know in mine own soul,

And by the blessed rood,

There is a solitude

Beyond his death and thine

Where time shall have no hours,

Where you shall be together,

Till then above mischance

Thy soul is guarded in the soul of France.”

And then the lovely shape within the stone

Fell into silence, and a little dust

Fell in the silence.

But she who was so strangely comforted,

Left the dim shrine,

And pushed the leathern door,

And stood upon the threshold in the shine

Struck from a thousand banners in the sky,

Where a great tempest-sunset marching by

Deployed before the portal

As all the flags of France were beating there

In the flushed air

Triumphant and immortal.

Tossed like a falcon from the hunter’s wrist,

A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,

And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,

The elastic stairway to the rising sun.

Peril below thee and above, peril

Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt

Thy peerless heart: gathering wing and poise,

Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant

Subdued to a whisper—then a silence,—

And thou art but a disembodied venture

In the void.

But Death, who has learned to fly,

Still matchless when his work is to be done,

Met thee between the armies and the sun;

Thy speck of shadow faltered in the sky;

Then thy dead engine and thy broken wings

Drooped through the arc and passed in fire,

A wreath of smoke—a breathless exhalation.

But ere that came a vision sealed thine eyes,

Lulling thy senses with oblivion;

And from its sliding station in the skies

Thy dauntless soul upward in circles soared

To the sublime and purest radiance whence it sprang.

In all their eyries, eagles shall mourn thy fate,

And leaving on the lonely crags and scaurs

Their unprotected young, shall congregate

High in the tenuous heaven and anger the sun

With screams, and with a wild audacity

Dare all the battle danger of thy flight;

Till weary with combat one shall desert the light,

Fall like a bolt of thunder and check his fall

On the high ledge, smoky with mist and cloud,

Where his neglected eaglets shriek aloud,

And drawing the film across his sovereign sight

Shall dream of thy swift soul immortal

Mounting in circles, faithful beyond death.

Why mourn thy dead, that are the world’s possession?

These, our Immortals—Shall we give them up

To the complaint of private loss and dole?

Nay—mourn for them, if mourn thou must,—

Grief is thy private treasure;

Thy soul alone can count its weight or measure.

But we who know they saved the world

Think of them joined to that unwithering throng,

Who in the long dread strife

Have thought and fought for Liberty:

When she was but a faint pulsation in the mind,

The faintest rootlet of a growing thought,

They nourished her with tears

And gave their dreams to add depth to her foliage;

And when the enemy ravaged her bright blossoms,

Drenched her with their rich blood

To prove she lived and was the ever-living.

These are the true Immortals,

The deathless ones that saved the world.

Nay, weep, if weep thou must

And think upon thy lad, onetime in trust

To fortune; of his gallant golden head

And all the wayward sanctities of childhood;

Of how he crowned thy life with confidences;

Of the odour of his body, lulled with sleep,

Confusing thy dim prayers for some best future

With the sheer love that is the deepest:

False fortune has destroyed her hostages!

Old joys are bitter, bitter as very death!

Let break thy heart and so be comforted.

Be comforted, for we have claimed the child

And taken him to be with light and glory;

Not as we knew him in his earthly days

The lovely one, the virtuous, the dauntless,—

Or one who was a boaster, thick with faults

Perchance,—but as the index of the time,

The stay and nurture of the world’s best hope,

The peerless seed of valour and victory.

Here in a realm beyond the fading world,

We garner them and hold them in abeyance

Ere we deliver them to light and silence—

The vestiges of battle fallen away—

Fragments of storm parting about the moon,—

Here in the dim rock-chambers, garlanded

With frail sea-roses perfumed by the sea

That murmurs of renown, and murmuring,

Scatters the cool light won by the ripple

From the stormless moon, cloistered with memory,

Whose dim caves front the immortal vistas

Plangent with renown, here they await

The light, the glory and the ultimate rest.

Be comforted,—nay sob, if sob thou must,

Cover thy face and dim thy hair with dust,

And we who know they live

Gather thy dead in triumph—

Exalted from the caves of memory,

Purified from the least assoil of time,—

And lay them with all that is most living,

In light transcendent,

In the ageless aisles of silence,

With the Immortals that have saved the world.