I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss
Which is Oblivion, the house of Death.
I thought there blew upon my soul the breath
Of time that was but never more can be.

Ten thousand years within its void I thought
I lay, blind, deaf, and motionless, until —
Though with no eye nor ear – I felt the thrill
Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh.

First one beside me spoke, in tones that told
He once had been a god – "Persephone,
Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we
Are king and queen of Tartarus no more;
And that wan, shrivelled sceptre in thy hand,
Why dost thou clasp it still? Cast it away,
For now it hath no virtue that can sway
Dull shades or drive the Furies to their spoil.

"Cast it away, and give thy palm to mine:
Perchance some unobliterated spark
Of memory shall warm this dismal Dark.
Perchance – Vain! vain! love could not light such gloom."

He sank… Then in great ruin by him moved
Another as in travail of some thought
Near unto birth; and soon from lips distraught
By aged silence, fell, with hollow woe:

"Ah, Pluto, dost thou, one time lord of Styx
And Acheron make moan of night and cold?
Were we upon Olympus as of old
Laughter of thee would rock its festal height.

"But think, think thee of me, to whom or gloom
Or cold were more unknown than impotence!
See the unhurlèd thunderbolt brought hence
To mock me when I dream I still am Jove!"

Too much it was: I withered in the breath;
And lay again ten thousand lifeless years;
And then my soul shook, woke – and saw three biers
Chiselled of solid night majestically.

The forms outlaid upon them were enwound
As with the silence of eternity.
Numbing repose dwelt o'er them like a sea,
That long hath lost tide, wave and roar, in death.

"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris are their names,"
A spirit hieroglyphed unto my soul.
"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris – they who stole
The heart of Egypt from the God of gods:

"Aye, they! and these!" pointing to many wraiths
That stood around – Baal, Ormuzd, Indra, all
Whom frightened ignorance and sin's appall
Had given birth, close-huddled in despair.

Their eyes were fixed upon a cloven slope
Down whose descent still other forms a-fresh
From earth were drawn, by the unceasing mesh
Of Time to their irrevocable end.

"They are the gods," one said – "the gods whom men
Still taunt with wails for help." – Then a deep light
Upbore me from the Gulf, and thro' its might
I heard the worlds cry, "God alone is God!"

CALL TO YOUR MATE, BOB-WHITE

O call to your mate, bob-white, bob-white,
And I will call to mine.
Call to her by the meadow-gate,
And I will call by the pine.

Tell her the sun is hid, bob-white,
The windy wheat sways west.
Whistle again, call clear and run
To lure her out of her nest.

For when to the copse she comes, shy bird,
With Mary down the lane
I'll walk, in the dusk of the locust tops,
And be her lover again.

Ay, we will forget our hearts are old,
And that our hair is gray.
We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset
That summer's halcyon day.

That day, can it fade?.. ah, bob, bob-white,
Still calling – calling still?
We're coming – a-coming, bent and weighed,
But glad with the old love's thrill!

THE DYING POET

Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun,
Drawing my heart with thee over the west!
Done is its day as thy day is done,
Fallen its quest!

Swoon into purple and rose, then die:
Tho' to arise again out of the dawn:
Die as I praise thee, ere thro' the Dark Lie
Of death I am drawn!

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life!
I like a child could cry for it again —
Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife,
Its women, its men!

For, how I drained it with love and delight!
Opened its heart with the magic of grief!
Reaped every season – its day and its night!
Loved every sheaf!

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod,
Never a flower swung sweet to my face,
Never a heart that was touched of God,
But taught me its grace.

Off from my lids then a moment yet,
Fingering Death, for again I must see
Lifted by memory all that I met
Under Time's lee.

There!.. I'm a child again – fair, so fair!
Under the eyes does a marvel not burn?
Speak they not vision – and frenzy to dare,
That still in me yearn?..

Youth! my wild youth! – O, blood of my heart,
Still you can answer with swirling the thought!
Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart,
Joyous, distraught!..

Love, and her face again! there by the wood! —
Come, thou invisible Dark with thy mask!
Shall I not learn if she lives? and could
I more of thee ask?..

Turn me away from the ashen west,
Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk.
Something is stealing like light from my breast —
Soul from its husk …

Soft!.. Where the dead feel the buried dead,
Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls,
Bury me, near to the haunting tread
Of life that o'errolls.

THE OUTCAST

I did not fear,
But crept close up to Christ and said,
"Is he not here?"

They drew me back —
The seraphs who had never bled
Of weary lack —

But still I cried,
With torn robe, clutching at His feet,
"Dear Christ! He died

"So long ago!
Is he not here? Three days, unfleet
As mortal flow

"Of time I've sought —
Till Heaven's amaranthine ways
Seem as sere nought!"

A grieving stole
Up from His heart and waned the gaze
Of His clear soul

Into my eyes.
"He is not here," troubled He sighed.
"For none who dies

"Beliefless may
Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide,
And live alway."

Then darkness rose
Within me, and drear bitterness.
Out of its throes

I moaned, at last,
"Let me go hence! Take off the dress,
The charms Thou hast

"Around me strown!
Beliefless too am I without
His love – and lone!"

Unto the Gate
They led me, tho' with pitying doubt.
I did not wait

But stepped across
Its portal, turned not once to heed
Or know my loss.

Then my dream broke,
And with it every loveless creed —
Beneath love's stroke.

APRIL

A laughter of wind and a leaping of cloud,
And April, oh, out under the blue!
The brook is awake and the blackbird loud
In the dew!

But how does the robin high in the beech,
Beside the wood with its shake and toss,
Know it – the frenzy of bluets to reach
Thro' the moss!

And where did the lark ever learn his speech?
Up, wildly sweet, he's over the mead!
Is more than the rapture of earth can teach
In its creed?

I never shall know – I never shall care!
'Tis, oh, enough to live and to love!
To laugh and warble and dream and dare
Are to prove!

AUGUST GUESTS

The wind slipt over the hill
And down the valley.
He dimpled the cheek of the rill
With a cooling kiss.
Then hid on the bank a-glee
And began to rally
The rushes – Oh,
I love the wind for this!

A cloud blew out of the west
And spilt his shower
Upon the lily-bud crest
And the clematis.
Then over the virgin corn
Besprinkled a dower
Of dew-gems – And,
I love the cloud for this!

TO A DOVE

1

Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves,
That tremble dimly in the summer dusk,
Falls sad along the oatland's sallow sheaves
And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk
With plashy willow and bold-wading reed.
The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not,
But softer mourns unto me from the mead
Than airs that in the wood intoning start,
Or breath of silences in dells begot
To soothe some grief-wan soul with sin a-smart.

2

A votaress art thou of Simplicity,
Who hath one fane – the heaven above thy nest;
One incense – love; one stealing litany
Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest.
Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze,
Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils,
Faith of the darkening distance, charities
Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb
Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils
That would earth of its heavenliness rob.

3

But few, how few her worshippers! For we
Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise
Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free,
To sacrificing a vain sacrifice!
Let thy lone innocence then quickly null
Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire —
Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull
Of feverous mystery the days we drain!
Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre
To lead us to life's Arcady again!

AT TINTERN ABBEY

(June, 1903)

O Tintern, Tintern! evermore my dreams
Troubled by thy grave beauty shall be born;
Thy crumbling loveliness and ivy streams
Shall speak to me for ever, from this morn;
The wind-wild daws about thy arches drifting,
Clouds sweeping o'er thy ruin to the sea,
Gray Tintern, all the hills about thee, lifting
Their misty waving woodland verdancy!

The centuries that draw thee to the earth
In envy of thy desolated charm,
The summers and the winters, the sky's girth
Of sunny blue or bleakness, seek thy harm.
But would that I were Time, then only tender
Touch upon thee should fall as on I sped;
Of every pillar would I be defender,
Of every mossy window – of thy dead!

Thy dead beneath obliterated stones
Upon the sod that is at last thy floor,
Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans
Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er.
O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never
Are wanting mysteries that move the breast,
I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever —
Till sinks within me the last voice to rest!