THE SONGOF THE SWORDAND OTHER VERSES

BY

W. E. HENLEY

LONDONPublished by DAVID NUTTin the Strand1892

To R. T. Hamilton-Bruce

_Edinburgh_, _Mar. _ 17, 1892

_With three exceptions_, _these numbers have appeared in_ '_The NationalObserver_, ' _by permission of whose proprietors they are here reprinted_. 

THE SONG OF THE SWORD(To Rudyard Kipling)

_The Sword__Singing_--_The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword__Clanging imperious__Forth from Time's battlements__His ancient and triumphing Song_. 

In the beginning, Ere God inspired HimselfInto the clay thingThumbed to His image, The vacant, the naked shellSoon to be Man:Thoughtful He pondered it, Prone there and impotent, Fragile, invitingAttack and discomfiture:Then, with a smile--As He heard in the ThunderThat laughed over EdenThe voice of the Trumpet, The iron Beneficence, Calling His doomsTo the Winds of the world--Stooping, He drewOn the sand with His fingerA shape for a signOf His way to the eyesThat in wonder should waken, For a proof of His willTo the breaking intelligence:That was the birth of me:I am the Sword. 

Hard and bleak, keen and cruel, Short-hilted, long-shafted, I froze into steel:And the blood of my elder, His hand on the hafts of me, Sprang like a waveIn the wind, as the senseOf his strength grew to ecstasy, Glowed like a coalAt the throat of the furnace, As he knew me and named meThe War-Thing, the Comrade, Father of honourAnd giver of kingship, The fame-smith, the song-master, Bringer of womenOn fire at his handsFor the pride of fulfilment, _Priest_ (saith the Lord)_Of his marriage with victory_. Ho! then, the Trumpet, Handmaid of heroes, Calling the peersTo the place of espousal!Ho! then, the splendourAnd sheen of my ministry, Clothing the earthWith a livery of lightnings!Ho! then, the musicOf battles in onsetAnd ruining armours, And God's gift returningIn fury to God!Glittering and keenAs the song of the winter stars, Ho! then, the soundOf my voice, the implacableAngel of Destiny!--I am the Sword. 

Heroes, my children, Follow, O follow me, Follow, exultingIn the great light that breaksFrom the sacred companionship:Thrust through the fatuous, Thrust through the fungous broodSpawned in my shadowAnd gross with my gift!Thrust through, and hearken, O hark, to the Trumpet, The Virgin of Battles, Calling, still calling youInto the Presence, Sons of the Judgment, Pure wafts of the Will!Edged to annihilate, Hilted with government, Follow, O follow meTill the waste placesAll the grey globe overOoze, as the honeycombDrips, with the sweetnessDistilled of my strength:And, teeming in peaceThrough the wrath of my coming, They give back in beautyThe dread and the anguishThey had of me visitant!Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters!Where the tall grain is ripeThrust in your sickles:Stripped and adustIn a stubble of empire, Scything and bindingThe full sheaves of sovranty:Thus, O thus gloriously, Shall you fulfil yourselves:Thus, O thus mightily, Show yourselves sons of mine--Yea, and win grace of me:I am the Sword. 

I am the feast-maker:Hark, through a noiseOf the screaming of eagles, Hark how the Trumpet, The mistress of mistresses, Calls, silver-throatedAnd stern, where the tablesAre spread, and the workOf the Lord is in hand!Driving the darkness, Even as the bannersAnd spears of the Morning;Sifting the nations, The slag from the metal, The waste and the weakFrom the fit and the strong;Fighting the brute, The abysmal Fecundity;Checking the gross, Multitudinous blunders, The groping, the purblindExcesses in service, Of the Womb universal, The absolute Drudge;Changing the charactryCarved on the World, The miraculous gemIn the seal-ring that burnsOn the hand of the Master--Yea! and authorityFlames through the dim, Unappeasable GrislinessProne down the nethermostChasms of the Void;Clear singing, clean slicing;Sweet spoken, soft finishing;Making death beautiful, Life but a coinTo be staked in the pastimeWhose playing is moreThan the transfer of being;Arch-anarch, chief builder, Prince and evangelist, I am the Will of God:I am the Sword. 

_The Sword__Singing_--_The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword__Clanging majestical_, _As from the starry-staired__Courts of the primal Supremacy_, _His high_, _irresistible song_. 

LONDONVOLUNTARIES(To Charles Whibley)

I

_Andante con mote_

Forth from the dust and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, The wrangle and jangle of unrests, Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and win--As from swart August to the green lap of May--To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breastsOf the still, delicious night, not yet awareIn any of her innumerable nestsOf that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of dayIn deep and ever deeper eddies drawnForward and up, in wider and wider wayShall float the sands and brim the shoresOn this our haunch of Earth, as round she roarsAnd spins into the outlook of the Sun(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge)With light, with living light, from marge to marge, Until the course He set and staked be run. 

Through street and square, through square and street, Each with his home-grown quality of darkAnd violated silence, loud and fleet, Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O hark, Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chainRing back a rough refrainUpon the marked and cheerful trampOf her four shoes! Here is the Park, And O the languid midsummer wafts adust, The tired midsummer blooms!O the mysterious distances, the gloomsRomantic, the augustAnd solemn shapes! At night this City of TreesTunis to a tryst of vague and strangeAnd monstrous Majesties, Let loose from some dim underworld to rangeThese terrene vistas till their twilight sets:When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they standBeggared and common, plain to all the landFor stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hourWhose shining, silent sorcery hath such power!Still, still the streets, between their carcanetsOf linking gold, are avenues of sleep:But see how gable ends and parapetsIn gradual beauty and significanceEmerge! And did you hearThat little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clearOn this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?'Tis a first nest at matins! And beholdA rakehell cat--how furtive and acold!A spent witch homing from some infamous dance--Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fadeThrough shadowy railings into a pit of shade!And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space and water, and therebyA lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky. And look, O look! a tangle of silver gleamsAnd dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, His dreams of a dead past that cannot die!

What miracle is happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the grayWith something luminous and rare?The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spireOn the formal little church is not yet greenAcross the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys--look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!And those are barges that were goblin floats, Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!And in the piles the water frolics clear, The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, And we--we can behold that could but hearThe ancient River singing as he goesNew-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and takeHis hobnailed way to work! Let us too pass:Through these long blindfold rowsOf casements staring blind to right and left, Each with his gaze turned inward on some pieceOf life in death's own likeness--Life bereftOf living looks as by the Great Release(Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows), Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows. 

Reach upon reach of burial--so they feel, These colonies of dreams! And as we stealHomeward together, but for the buxom breezeThat frolics at our heel, Greeting the town with news of the summer seas, We might--thus awed, thus lonely that we are--Be wandering some depopulated star, Some world of memories and unbroken graves, So broods the abounding Silence near and far:Till even your footfall cravesForgiveness of the majesty it braves. 

II

_Scherzando_

Down through the ancient StrandThe Spirit of October, mild and boonAnd sauntering, takes his wayThis golden end of afternoon, As though the corn stood yellow in all the landAnd the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon. 

Lo! the round sun, half down the western slope--Seen as along an unglazed telescope--Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:Gifting the long, lean, lanky streetAnd its abounding confluences of beingWith aspects generous and bland:Making a thousand harnesses to shineAs with new ore from some enchanted mine, And every horse's coat so full of sheenHe looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean, And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;And every jeweller within the paleOffers a real Arabian Night for sale;And even the roarOf the strong streams of toil that pause and pourEastward and westward sounds suffused--Seems as it were bemusedAnd blurred, and like the speechOf lazy seas upon a lotus-eating beach--With this enchanted lustrousness, This mellow magic, that (as a man's caressBrings back to some faded face beloved beforeA heavenly shadow of the grace it woreEre the poor eyes were minded to beseech)Old things transfigures, and you hail and blessTheir looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more;Till the sedate and mannered eleganceOf Clement's is all tinctured with romance;The while the fanciful, formal, finicking charmOf Bride's, that madrigal in stone, Glows flushed and warmAnd beauteous with a beauty not its own;And the high majesty of Paul'sUplifts a voice of living light, and calls--Calls to his millions to behold and seeHow goodly this his London Town can be!

For earth and sky and airAre golden everywhere, And golden with a gold so suave and fineThe looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square(The fountains volleying golden glaze)Gleams like an angel-market. High aloftOver his couchant Lions in a hazeShimmering and bland and soft, A dust of chrysoprase, Our Sailor takes the golden gazeOf the saluting sun, and flames superbAs once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, Turned very nearly bright, Takes on a certain dismal grace, And shows not all a scandal to the ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathersAnd the rude voices touched with all the weathersOf all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires--'Tis El Dorado--El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear!Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, The day not dies but seemsDispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shedUpon a past of golden song and storyAnd memories of gold and golden dreams. 

III

_Largo e mesto_

Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence releasedFrom the most squalid cellarage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable--The hangman wind that tortures temper and light--Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night:And in a cloud uncleanOf excremental humours, roused to strifeBy the operation of some ruinous changeWherever his evil mandate run and rangeInto a dire intensity of life, A craftsman at his bench, he settles downTo the grim job of throttling London Town. 

And, by a jealous lightlessness besetThat might have oppressed the dragons of old timeCrunching and groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to markIn shameful occultation, seemsA nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shiftingRent in the stuff of a material darkWherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale:Uncoiling monstrous into street on streetPaven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feetSomewhither in the hideousness ahead;Working through wicked airs and deadly dewsThat make the laden robber grin askanceAt the good places in his black romance, And the poor, loitering harlot rather chooseGo pinched and pined to bedThan lurk and shiver and curse her wretched wayFrom arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey. 

Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, The old Father-River flows, His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rotIn the squalor of the universal shore:His voices sounding through the gruesome airAs from the ferry where the Boat of DoomWith her blaspheming cargo reels and rides:The while his children, the brave ships, No more adventurous and fairNor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, But infamously enchanted, Huddle together in the foul eclipse, Or feel their course by inches desperately, As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, From sinister reach to reach--out--out--to sea. 

And Death the while--Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, Death in his threadbare working trim--Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, And with expert, inevitable handFeels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:Thus signifying unto old and young, However hard of mouth or wild of whim, 'Tis time--'tis time by his ancient watch--to partWith books and women and talk and drink and art:And you go humbly after himTo a mean suburban lodging: on the wayTo what or whereNot Death, who is old and very wise, can say:And you--how should you careSo long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient sits him downTo the black job of burking London Town?

IV

_Allegro maestoso_

Spring winds that blowAs over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may;Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglowWith the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely streamOf appetence, this freshet of desire(Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleamIn genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre?Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churnThe wealth of her enchanted urnTill, over-billowing all betweenHer cheerful margents grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being?Why should the buxom leafage of the ParkTouch to an ecstasy the act of seeing?--As if my paramour, my bride of brides, Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abidesIn some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, In the divine conviction robed and crownedThe globe fulfils his immemorial roundBut as the marrying-place of all things made!

There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood. The sacred impulse of the MayBrightening like sex made sunshine through her veins, There is no woman but disdainsTo vail the ensigns of her womanhood. None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest:These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised. For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring airWashes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of lengthA tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

Praise God for givingThrough this His messenger among the daysHis word the life He gave is thrice-worth living!For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan--Not dead, not dead, as dreamers feigned, But the lush genius of a million MaysRenewing his beneficent endeavour!--Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reignedSince in the dim blue dawn of timeThe universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevailsBy the persuasion of his mighty rhymeHere in this radiant and immortal streetLavishly and omnipotently as everIn the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endearedAs once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirthIn one great act of faith, while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beatTo the measures of his rough, majestic song:The lewd, perennial, overmastering spellThat keeps the rolling universe enspheredAnd life and all for which life lives to longWanton and wondrous and for ever well. 

RHYMESAND RHYTHMS

I

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fadeOn desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shadeWhat is the voice of strange commandCalling you still, as friend calls friendWith love that cannot brook delay, To rise and follow the ways that wendOver the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on streetA roaring reach of death and life, Of vortices that clash and fleetAnd ruin in appointed strife, Hark to it calling, calling clear, Calling until you cannot stayFrom dearer things than your own most dearOver the hills and far away. 

Out of the sound of ebb and flow, Out of the sight of lamp and star, It calls you where the good winds blow, And the unchanging meadows are:From faded hopes and hopes agleam, It calls you, calls you night and dayBeyond the dark into the dreamOver the hills and far away. 

II

A desolate shore, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea. 

Flaunting, tawdry and grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warmingHis villainous old bones with villainous talk--The secrets of their grisly housekeepingSince they went out upon the padIn the first twilight of self-conscious Time:Growling, obscene and hoarse, Tales of unnumbered Ships, Goodly and strong, Companions of the AdvanceIn some vile alley of the nightWaylaid and bludgeoned--Dead. 

Deep cellared in primeval ooze, Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, They lie where the lean water-wormCrawls free of their secrets, and their broken sidesBulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, Thus fouled and desecrate, The summons of the Trumpet, and the whileThese Twain, their murderers, Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, Hang at the heels of their children--She aloftAs in the shining streets, He as in ambush at some fetid stair. 

The stalwart Ships, The beautiful and bold adventurers!Stationed out yonder in the isle, The tall Policeman, Flashing his bull's-eye, as he peersAbout him in the ancient vacancy, Tells them this way is safety--this way home. 

III(To R. F. B. )

We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the wordThat called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law. 

East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do. 

Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease--(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)--

Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire. 

Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;

We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones;The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;

Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of the northern night;

And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound, Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;

And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze, Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;

And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers, And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!

Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die, While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?

For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father's debt, And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set:

And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave, Is but less strong than Time and the all-devouring Grave. 

IV

It came with the threat of a waning moon And the wail of an ebbing tide, But many a woman has lived for less, And many a man has died;For life upon life took hold and passed, Strong in a fate set free, Out of the deep, into the dark, On for the years to be. 

Between the gleam of a waning moon And the song of an ebbing tide, Chance upon chance of love and death Took wing for the world so wide. Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land, Wave out of wave of the sea;And who shall reckon what lives may live In the life that we bade to be?

V

Why, my heart, do we love her so? (Geraldine, Geraldine!)--Why does the great sea ebb and flow? Why does the round world spin?Geraldine, Geraldine, Bid me my life renew, What is it worth unless I win, Love--love and you?

Why, my heart, when we speak her name (Geraldine, Geraldine!), Throbs the word like a flinging flame?-- Why does the spring begin?Geraldine, Geraldine, Bid me indeed to be, Open your heart and take us in, Love--love and me. 

VI

Space and dread and the dark--Over a livid stretch of skyCloud-monsters crawling like a funeral trainOf huge primeval presencesStooping beneath the weightOf some enormous, rudimentary grief;While in the haunting lonelinessThe far sea waits and wanders, with a soundAs of the trailing skirts of DestinyPassing unseenTo some immitigable endWith her grey henchman, Death. 

What larve, what spectre is thisThrilling the wilderness to lifeAs with the bodily shape of Fear?What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim, Interminable continents, forlornAnd many-silenced in a duskInviolable utterly, and deadAs the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styesIn hugger-mugger through eternity?

Life--life--let there be life!Better a thousand times the roaring hoursWhen wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flightFrom the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnessesAnd wild waste places of the world!

Life--give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest hell of the fightI may be snatched and flungInto the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream. 

VII

There's a regretSo grinding, so immitigably sad, Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. . . . Do you not know it yet?

For deeds undoneRankle, and snarl, and hunger for their dueTill there seems naught so despicable as youIn all the grin o' the sun. 

Like an old shoeThe sea spurns and the land abhors, you lieAbout the beach of Time, till by-and-byDeath, that derides you too--

Death, as he goesHis ragman's round, espies you, where you stray, With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way;And then--and then, who knows

But the kind GraveTurns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, In that black bridewell working out his term, Hanker and grope and crave?

'Poor fool that might--That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, Think of it, here and thus made over to meIn the implacable night!'

And writhing, fainAnd like a lover, he his fill shall takeWhere no triumphant memory lives to makeHis obscene victory vain. 

VIII(To J. A. C. )

Fresh from his fastnessesWholesome and spacious, The north wind, the mad huntsman, Halloos on his white houndsOver the grey, roaringReaches and ridges, The forest of ocean, The chace of the world. Hark to the pealOf the pack in full cry, As he thongs them before himSwarming voluminous, Weltering, wide-wallowing, Till in a ruiningChaos of energy, Hurled on their quarry, They crash into foam!

Old Indefatigable, Time's right-hand man, the seaLaughs as in joyFrom his millions of wrinkles:Laughs that his destiny, Great with the greatnessOf triumphing order, Shows as a dwarfBy the strength of his heartAnd the might of his hands. 

Master of masters, O maker of heroes, Thunder the brave, Irresistible message:--'Life is worth livingThrough every grain of itFrom the foundationsTo the last edgeOf the cornerstone, death. '

IX

'As like the Woman as you can'-- (_Thus the New Adam was beguiled_)--'So shall you touch the Perfect Man'-- (_God in the Garden heard and smiled_). 'Your father perished with his day: 'A clot of passions fierce and blind'He fought, he slew, he hacked his way: 'Your muscles, Child, must be of mind. 

'The Brute that lurks and irks within, 'How, till you have him gagged and bound, 'Escape the foullest form of Sin?' (_God in the Garden laughed and frowned_). 'So vile, so rank, the bestial mood 'In which the race is bid to be, 'It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: 'Live, therefore, you, for Purity!

'Take for your mate no buxom croup, 'No girl all grace and natural will:'To make her happy were to stoop 'From light to dark, from Good to Ill. 'Choose one of whom your grosser make'-- (_God in the Garden laughed outright_)--'The true refining touch may take 'Till both attain Life's highest height. 

'There, equal, purged of soul and sense, 'Beneficent, high-thinking, just, 'Beyond the appeal of Violence, 'Incapable of common Lust, 'In mental Marriage still prevail'-- (_God in the Garden hid His face_)--'Till you achieve that Female-Male, 'In Which shall culminate the race. 

X

Midsummer midnight skies, Midsummer midnight influences and airs, The shining sensitive silver of the seaTouched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn:And all so solemnly still I seem to hearThe breathing of Life and Death, The secular Accomplices, Renewing the visible miracle of the world. 

The wistful starsShine like good memories. The young morning windBlows full of unforgotten hoursAs over a region of roses. Life and DeathSound on--sound on. . . . And the night magical, Troubled yet comforting, thrillsAs if the Enchanted Castle at the heartOf the wood's dark wondermentSwung wide his valves and filled the dim sea-banksWith exquisite visitants:Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desiresWith living looks intolerable, regretsWhose voice comes as the voice of an only childHeard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been--Beautiful, miserable, distraught--The Law no man may baffle denied and slew. 

The spell-bound ships stand as at gazeTo let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . Glimmers . . . Goes out . . . And there, O there where it fades, What grace, what glamour, what wild will, Transfigure the shadows? Whose, Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?

Ghosts--ghosts--the sapphirine airTeems with them even to the gleaming endsOf the wild day-spring! Ghosts, Everywhere--everywhere--till I and youAt last--dear love, at last!--Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will. 

XI

Gulls in an aery morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . The full sea, sleepily basking, Dreams under skies of dream. 

Gulls in an aery morrice Circle and swoop and close . . . Fuller and ever fuller The rose of the morning blows. 

Gulls in an aery morrice Frolicking float and fade . . . O the way of a bird in the sunshine, The way of a man with a maid!

XII

Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeersFor ungirt loin and lamp unlit;In front the unmanageable years, The trap upon the pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lieAnd with me quicken and controlA memory that shall magnify The universal Soul. 

XIII(To James McNeill Whistler)

Under a stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily--wretchedly--on;Yet in and out among the ribsOf the old skeleton bridge, as in the pilesOf some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune(Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!)So melancholy a soliloquyIt sounds as it might tellThe secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, transitory world. 

What of the incantationThat forced the huddled shapes on yonder shortTo take and wear the nightLike a material majesty?That touched the shafts of wavering fireAbout this miserable welter and wash--(River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!--)Into long, shining signals from the panesOf an enchanted pleasure-houseWhere life and life might live life lost in lifeFor ever and evermore?

O Death! O Change! O Time!Without you, O the insufferable eyesOf these poor Might-Have-Beens, These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!

XIV

Time and the Earth--The old Father and Mother--Their teeming accomplished, Their purpose fulfilled, Close with a smileFor a moment of kindnessEre for the winterThey settle to sleep. 

Failing yet gracious, Slow pacing, soon homing, A patriarch that strollsThrough the tents of his children, The Sun, as he journeysHis round on the lowerAscents of the blue, Washes the roofsAnd the hillsides with clarity;Charms the dark poolsTill they break into pictures;Scatters magnificentAlms to the beggar trees;Touches the mist-folkThat crowd to his escortInto translucenciesRadiant and ravishing, As with the visibleSpirit of SummerGloriously vaporised, Visioned in gold. 

Love, though the fallen leafMark, and the fleeting lightAnd the loud, loiteringFootfall of darknessSign, to the heartOf the passage of destiny, Here is the ghostOf a summer that lived for us, Here is a promiseOf summers to be. 

XV

You played and sang a snatch of song, A song that all-too well we knew;But whither had flown the ancient wrong; And was it really I and you?O since the end of life's to live And pay in pence the common debt, What should it cost us to forgive Whose daily task is to forget?

You babbled in the well-known voice-- Not new, not new, the words you said. You touched me off that famous poise, That old effect, of neck and head. Dear, was it really you and I? In truth the riddle's ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed. 

XVI

One with the ruined sunset, The strange forsaken sands, What is it waits and wanders And signs with desperate hands?

What is it calls in the twilight-- Calls as its chance were vain?The cry of a gull sent seaward Or the voice of an ancient pain?

The red ghost of the sunset, It walks them as its own, These dreary and desolate reaches . . . But O that it walked alone!

XVII_CARMEN PATIBULARE_(To H. S. )

Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook And the rope of the Black Election, 'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule Can never achieve perfection:And 'It's O for the time of the New Sublime And the better than human wayWhen the Wolf (poor beast) shall come to his own And the Rat shall have his day!'

For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam And the power of provocation, You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit Till your thought is mere stupration:And 'It's how should we rise to be pure and wise, And how can we choose but fall, So long as the Hangman makes us dread And the Noose floats free for all?'

So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign And the trick there's no recalling, They will haggle and hew till they hack you through And at last they lay you sprawling:When 'Hey! for the hour of the race in flower And the long good-bye to sin!'And 'Ho! for the fires of Hell gone out For the want of keeping in!'

But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, Your growth began with the life of Man And only his death can end you:They may tug in line at your hempen twine, They may flourish with axe and saw, But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs In the living rock of Law. 

And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, When the spent sun reels and blundersDown a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit As it seethes in spate and thunders, Stern on the glare of the tortured air Your lines august shall gloom, And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed In the ruining roar of Doom. 

XVIII(To M. E. H. )

When you wake in your crib, You, an inch of experience--Vaulted aboutWith the wonder of darkness;Wailing and strivingTo reach from your feeblenessSomething you feelWill be good to and cherish you, Something you knowAnd can rest upon blindly:O then a hand(Your mother's, your mother's!)By the fall of its fingersAll knowledge, all power to you, Out of the dreary, Discouraging strangenessesComes to and masters you, Takes you, and lovinglyWoos you and soothes youBack, as you cling to it, Back to some comfortingCorner of sleep. 

So you wake in your bed, Having lived, having loved:But the shadows are there, And the world and its kingdomsIncredibly faded;And you grope in the TerrorAbove you and underFor the light, for the warmth, The assurance of life;But the blasts are ice-born, And your heart is nigh burstWith the weight of the gloomAnd the stress of your strangledAnd desperate endeavour:Sudden a hand--Mother, O Mother!--God at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the infinitePeace of the Grave. 

XIX

O Time and Change, they range and range From sunshine round to thunder!--They glance and go as the great winds blow, And the best of our dreams drive under:For Time and Change estrange, estrange-- And, now they have looked and seen us, O we that were dear we are all-too near With the thick of the world between us. 

O Death and Time, they chime and chime Like bells at sunset falling!--They end the song, they right the wrong, They set the old echoes calling:For Death and Time bring on the prime Of God's own chosen weather, And we lie in the peace of the Great Release As once in the grass together. 

XX

The shadow of Dawn;Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreamsOf Life and Death and Sleep;Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging soundOf the old unchanging Sea. 

My soul and yours--O hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, Into the ghostliness, The infinite and abounding solitudes, Beyond--O beyond!--beyond . . . 

Here in the porchUpon the multitudinous silencesOf the kingdoms of the grave, We twain are you and I--two ghosts OmnipotenceCan touch no more--no more!

XXI

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-cavesExult in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of lifeIs the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife--Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves. 

But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song--O you envy the blessed dead that can live no more!

XXII

Trees and the menace of night;Then a long, lonely, leaden mereBacked by a desolate fellAs by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereftOf starlight and the song of racing worldsIt might have bellied down upon the VoidWhere as in terror Light was beginning to be. 

Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)Is it the hurry of the rain?Or the noise of a drive of the DeadStreaming before the irresistible WillThrough the strange dusk of this, the Debateable LandBetween their place and ours?

Like the forgetfulnessOf the work-a-day world made visible, A mist falls from the melancholy sky:A messenger from some lost and loving soul, Hopeless, far wandered, dazedHere in the provinces of life, A great white moth fades miserably past. 

Thro' the trees in the strange dead night, Under the vast dead sky, Forgetting and forgot, a drift of DeadSets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, And the unimagined vastitudes beyond. 

XXIII(To P. A. G. )

Here they trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June:'Death is fleet, Life is sweet, ' Sang the blackbird in the may;And the hour with flying feet While they dreamed was yesterday. 

Many a maid and many a man Found the leafage close and boon;Many a destiny began-- O the morn was merry June. Dead and gone, dead and gone, (Hark the blackbird in the may!), Life and Death went hurrying on, Cheek on cheek--and where were they?

Dust in dust engendering dust In the leafage fresh and boon, Man and maid fulfil their trust-- Still the morn turns merry June. Mother Life, Father Death (O the blackbird in the may!), Each the other's breath for breath, Fleet the times of the world away. 

XXIV(To A. C. )

What should the Trees, Midsummer-manifold, each one, Voluminous, a labyrinth of life--What should such things of bulk and multitudeYield of their huge, unutterable selves, To the random importunity of Day, The blabbing journalist?Alert to snatch and publish hour by hourTheir greenest hints, their leafiest privacies, How can he other than endureThe ruminant irony that foists him offWith broad-blown falsehoods, or the obviousnessOf laughter flickering back from shine to shade, And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaksOf little boughs that frisk with little boughs?

Now, at the wordOf the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect--Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread--Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed:In each, the uncouth individual soulLooms forth and gloomsEssential, and, their bodily presencesTouched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the liveryOf some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood--they menace--they appal:Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wringWild hands of warning in the faceOf some inevitable advance of doom:Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing, As in some monstrous market-place, They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathersLearned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heardThe troubled voice of EveNaming the wondering folk of Paradise. 

Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tellThe tale of their dim life and allIts compost of experience: how the SunSpreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;Of the old Moon's fitful solicitudeAnd those mild messages the StarsDescend in silver silences and dews;Or what the buxom West, Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leafage laughed;And how the wet-winged Angel of the RainCame whispering . . . Whispering; and the gifts of the Year--The sting of the stirring sapUnder the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, Their summer amplitudes of pompAnd rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, Embittered housewiferyOf the lean Winter: all such things, And with them all the goodness of the MasterWhose right hand blesses with increase and life, Whose left hand honours with decay and death. 

So, under the constraint of Night, These gross and simple creatures, Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years, A servant of the Will. And God, the Craftsman, as He walksThe floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheerIn thus accomplishingThe aims of His miraculous artistry. 

XXV

What have I done for you, England, my England?What is there I would not do, England my own?With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear As the Song on your bugles blown, England-- Round the world on your bugles blown!

Where shall the watchful Sun, England, my England, Match the master-work you've done, England my own?When shall he rejoice agenSuch a breed of mighty menAs come forward, one to ten, To the Song on your bugles blown, England-- Down the years on your bugles blown?

Ever the faith endures, England, my England:--'Take and break us: we are yours, 'England, my own!'Life is good, and joy runs high'Between English earth and sky:'Death is death; but we shall die 'To the Song on your bugles blown, 'England-- 'To the stars on your bugles blown!'

They call you proud and hard, England, my England:You with worlds to watch and ward, England, my own!You whose mailed hand keeps the keysOf such teeming destiniesYou could know nor dread nor ease Were the Song on your bugles blown, England, Round the Pit on your bugles blown!

Mother of Ships whose might, England, my England, Is the fierce old Sea's delight, England, my own, Chosen daughter of the Lord, Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword, There's the menace of the Word In the Song on your bugles blown, England-- Out of heaven on your bugles blown!

Edinburgh: T. And A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty