Poems. Volume 2

THE LARK ASCENDING

 
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,
All intervolved and spreading wide,
Like water-dimples down a tide
Where ripple ripple overcurls
And eddy into eddy whirls;
A press of hurried notes that run
So fleet they scarce are more than one,
Yet changeingly the trills repeat
And linger ringing while they fleet,
Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear
To her beyond the handmaid ear,
Who sits beside our inner springs,
Too often dry for this he brings,
Which seems the very jet of earth
At sight of sun, her music’s mirth,
As up he wings the spiral stair,
A song of light, and pierces air
With fountain ardour, fountain play,
To reach the shining tops of day,
And drink in everything discerned
An ecstasy to music turned,
Impelled by what his happy bill
Disperses; drinking, showering still,
Unthinking save that he may give
His voice the outlet, there to live
Renewed in endless notes of glee,
So thirsty of his voice is he,
For all to hear and all to know
That he is joy, awake, aglow;
The tumult of the heart to hear
Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,
And know the pleasure sprinkled bright
By simple singing of delight;
Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,
Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained
Without a break, without a fall,
Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,
Perennial, quavering up the chord
Like myriad dews of sunny sward
That trembling into fulness shine,
And sparkle dropping argentine;
Such wooing as the ear receives
From zephyr caught in choric leaves
Of aspens when their chattering net
Is flushed to white with shivers wet;
And such the water-spirit’s chime
On mountain heights in morning’s prime,
Too freshly sweet to seem excess,
Too animate to need a stress;
But wider over many heads
The starry voice ascending spreads,
Awakening, as it waxes thin,
The best in us to him akin;
And every face to watch him raised,
Puts on the light of children praised;
So rich our human pleasure ripes
When sweetness on sincereness pipes,
Though nought be promised from the seas,
But only a soft-ruffling breeze
Sweep glittering on a still content,
Serenity in ravishment
For singing till his heaven fills,
’Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes:
The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,
He is, the hills, the human line,
The meadows green, the fallows brown,
The dreams of labour in the town;
He sings the sap, the quickened veins;
The wedding song of sun and rains
He is, the dance of children, thanks
Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,
And eye of violets while they breathe;
All these the circling song will wreathe,
And you shall hear the herb and tree,
The better heart of men shall see,
Shall feel celestially, as long
As you crave nothing save the song.
 
 
Was never voice of ours could say
Our inmost in the sweetest way,
Like yonder voice aloft, and link
All hearers in the song they drink.
Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,
Our passion is too full in flood,
We want the key of his wild note
Of truthful in a tuneful throat;
The song seraphically free
Of taint of personality,
So pure that it salutes the suns
The voice of one for millions,
In whom the millions rejoice
For giving their one spirit voice.
Yet men have we, whom we revere,
Now names, and men still housing here,
Whose lives, by many a battle-dint
Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,
Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet
For song our highest heaven to greet:
Whom heavenly singing gives us new,
Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,
From firmest base to farthest leap,
Because their love of Earth is deep,
And they are warriors in accord
With life to serve, and, pass reward,
So touching purest and so heard
In the brain’s reflex of yon bird:
Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,
Through self-forgetfulness divine,
In them, that song aloft maintains,
To fill the sky and thrill the plains
With showerings drawn from human stores,
As he to silence nearer soars,
Extends the world at wings and dome,
More spacious making more our home,
Till lost on his aërial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.
 

PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS

I

 
When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,
   Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,
Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,
   Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!
Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe
   Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,
How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,
   Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

II

 
Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks:
   Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey:
Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:
   Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.
Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,
   Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:
Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,
   Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s gate.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

III

 
Water, first of singers, o’er rocky mount and mead,
   First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,
Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,
   Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.
Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,
   Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,
Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool
   Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

IV

 
Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields:
   Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:
Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,
   Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!
Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins
   Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice rose:
Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;
   Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

V

 
Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft:
   Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s teeth
Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;
   Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!
Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped
   Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new gold.
Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead
   Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

VI

 
Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above:
   Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air!
Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love
   Ease because the creature was all too fair.
Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good,
   Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast.
He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood
   Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

VII

 
Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known,
   Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.
Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,
   After he had taught how the sweet sounds came
Stretched about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see
   Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.
So began contention to give delight and be
   Excellent in things aimed to make life kind.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

VIII

 
You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats,
   You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!
Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!
   Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!
You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,
   You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:
He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!
   Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.
         God! of whom music
         And song and blood are pure,
         The day is never darkened
         That had thee here obscure.
 

MELAMPUS

I

 
With love exceeding a simple love of the things
   That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;
Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings
   From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;
Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;
   Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;
The good physician Melampus, loving them all,
   Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.
 

II

 
For him the woods were a home and gave him the key
   Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.
The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we
   To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours:
And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined
   Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows
In them, in us, from the source by man unattained
   Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.
 

III

 
And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast
   Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,
The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best
   Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape.
For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk,
   As babes they learn where her motherly help is great:
They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,
   And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.
 

IV

 
Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,
   Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain
Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods
   Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane
The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns
   To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life
Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns
   Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.
 

V

 
Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,
   A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret
That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,
   Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set
Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue
   Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears
A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,
   He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!
 

VI

 
A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech
   Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves
To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;
   He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.
No fears have I of a man who goes with his head
   To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand:
I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;
   I pipe him much for his good could he understand.
 

VII

 
Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist
   He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.
Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,
   He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird.
His cushion mosses in shades of various green,
   The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake
Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,
   It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake.
 

VIII

 
Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full,
   As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth,
Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool
   To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth.
The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;
   The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;
Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,
   The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.
 

IX

 
He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed
   Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one
They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed
   For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun,
Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,
   Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned:
He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,
   The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.
 

X

 
Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,
   By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth
With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat,
   Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth,
The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,
   Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,
Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,
   The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.
 

XI

 
So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates
   We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged
With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,
   With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged.
Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,
   He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled,
To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root
   A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.
 

XII

 
Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form
   Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave,
Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,
   And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave,
And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,
   And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere;
And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,
   He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.
 

XIII

 
Sweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze
   In heat, the run of the river on root and stone,
All senses joined, as the sister Pierides
   Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own.
In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,
   From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried
The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,
   Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.
 

XIV

 
And there vitality, there, there solely in song,
   Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,
Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,
   The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,
(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),
   In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.
Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount
   To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.
 

XV

 
Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage,
   He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,
Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage
   Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.
He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings
   Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,
Through love exceeding a simple love of the things
   That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.
 

LOVE IN THE VALLEY

 
Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,
   Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
   Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
   Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:
   Then would she hold me and never let me go?
 

* * *

 
Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,
   Swift as the swallow along the river’s light
Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,
   Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.
Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,
   Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,
She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,
   Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!
 

* * *

 
When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,
   Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
   More love should I have, and much less care.
When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,
   Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,
Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,
   I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.
 

* * *

 
Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows
   Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.
No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:
   Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.
Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure,
   Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:
Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones
   Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.
 

* * *

 
Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping
   Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
   Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:
   So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,
   Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.
 

* * *

 
Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,
   Arm in arm, all against the raying West,
Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,
   Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.
Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking
   Whispered the world was; morning light is she.
Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
   Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.
 

* * *

 
Happy happy time, when the white star hovers
   Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,
Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,
   Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.
Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens
   Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;
   Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.
 

* * *

 
Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting
   Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,
Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter
   Chill as a dull face frowning on a song.
Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom
   Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend
Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset
   Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.
 

* * *

 
When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window
   Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,
Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily
   Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.
When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle
   In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,
Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily
   Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.
 

* * *

 
Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight,
   Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim,
Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,
   Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.
Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,
   Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.
Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever
   Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.
 

* * *

 
All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;
   Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.
My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,
   Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.
Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,
   Coming the rose: and unaware a cry
Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,
   Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.
 

* * *

 
Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips,
   Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain:
Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel
   She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.
Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way:
   She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.
So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder,
   Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.
 

* * *

 
Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,
   Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.
I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.
   O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.
You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,
   Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,
They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,
   You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way.
 

* * *

 
Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,
   Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.
Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine
   Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.
Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest
   Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes,
Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine
   Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.
 

* * *

 
Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;
   Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:
Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;
   Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.
Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;
   Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:
Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,
   Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.
 

* * *

 
This I may know: her dressing and undressing
   Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport
Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder
   Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port
White sails furl; or on the ocean borders
   White sails lean along the waves leaping green.
Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight
   Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.
 

* * *

 
Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse
   Open with the morn, and in a breezy link
Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,
   Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.
Busy in the grass the early sun of summer
   Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes
Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge:
   Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!
 

* * *

 
Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy
   Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,
Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;
   O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!
Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher
   Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.
Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,
   Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laughed and leaned her cheek.
 

* * *

 
Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof
   Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.
Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way
   Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.
Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,
   Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.
Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,
   Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.
 

* * *

 
O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!
   O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!
O the treasure-tresses one another over
   Nodding!  O the girdle slack about the waist!
Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet
   Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist,
Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness!
   O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!
 

* * *

 
Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops,
   Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:
Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise,
   Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.
Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree
   Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.
Here may life on death or death on life be painted.
   Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!
 

* * *

 
Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber
   Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.
‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers,
   Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.
Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled:
   Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.
Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy
   Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.
 

* * *

 
Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,
   Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise
High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;
   Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.
Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,
   Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.—
Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,
   Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.
 

* * *

 
Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.
   Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye,
Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,
   Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.
Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.
   Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!
Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,
   Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.
 

* * *

 
Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April
   Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you
Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,
   Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:
Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:
   Fair as in image my seraph love appears
Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids:
   Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.
 

* * *

 
Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,
   I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.
Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,
   Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.
Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;
   Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;
Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:
   All seem to know what is for heaven alone.