Till then thou art alone!
AVE.
'Our Faith and Troth
All time and space controules
Above the highest
sphere we meet
Unseen, unknowne, and greet as Angels greet'
Col, Richard Lovelace. 1649
CLEVEDON CHURCH.
[In memoriam H. B.]
Westward I watch the low green hills of Wales,
The low sky silver grey,
The turbid Channel with the wandering sails
Moans through the winter day.
There is no colour but one ashen light
On tower and
lonely tree,
The little church upon the windy height
Is grey as sky or sea.
But there hath he that woke the
sleepless Love
Slept through these fifty years,
There is the grave that has been wept above
With more than
mortal tears.
And far below I hear the Channel sweep
And all his waves complain,
As Hallam's dirge through all the years must keep
Its monotone of pain.
* * * * *
Grey sky, brown waters, as a bird that flies,
My heart flits forth from these
Back to the winter rose of northern skies,
Back to the northern seas.
And lo, the long waves of the ocean beat
Below the minster grey,
Caverns and chapels worn of saintly feet,
And knees of them that pray.
And I remember me how twain were one
Beside that ocean dim,
I count the years passed over since the sun
That lights me looked on him,
And dreaming of the voice that, save in sleep,
Shall greet me not again,
Far, far below I hear the Channel sweep
And all his waves complain.
TWILIGHT ON TWEED.
Three crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the
purple plain,
The kind remembered melody
Of Tweed once more again.
Wan water from the border hills,
Dear voice from the old years,
Thy distant music lulls and stills,
And moves to quiet tears.
Like a loved ghost thy fabled flood
Fleets through the dusky land;
Where Scott, come home to die, has stood,
My feet returning stand.
A mist of memory broods and floats,
The Border waters flow;
The air is full of
ballad notes,
Borne out of long ago.
Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy's day dream,
While trout below the blossom'd tree
Plashed in the golden steam.
* * * * *
Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill,
Fair and too fair you be;
You tell me that the voice is still
That should have
welcomed me.
1870.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
I shall not see thee, nay, but I shall know
Perchance, the grey eyes in another's eyes,
Shall guess thy curls in
gracious locks that flow
On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise
Shall follow and track, and find thee in disguise
Of all sad things, and fair, where
sunsets glow,
When through the scent of
heather, faint and low,
The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.
From all sweet art, and out of all old rhyme,
Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;
The shadows of the beauty of all time,
In song or story are but shapes of thee;
Alas, the
shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear,
Shall life or death bring all thy being near?
LOST IN HADES.
I dreamed that somewhere in the
shadowy place,
Grief of
farewell unspoken was forgot
In
welcome, and regret remembered not;
And
hopeless prayer
accomplished turned to praise
On lips that had been songless many days;
Hope had no more to hope for, and desire
And dread were overpast, in white attire
New born we walked among the new world's ways.
Then from the press of shades a spirit threw
Towards me such apples as these gardens bear;
And turning, I was 'ware of her, and knew
And followed her fleet voice and flying hair, -
Followed, and found her not, and seeking you
I found you never, dearest, anywhere.
A STAR IN THE NIGHT.
The perfect piteous beauty of thy face
Is like a star the dawning drives away;
Mine eyes may never see in the bright day
Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace;
But in the night from forth the silent place
Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray
Star of the
starry flock that in the grey
Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment's space.
And as the earth at night turns to a star,
Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun,
So in the
spiritual place afar,
At night our souls are
mingled and made one,
And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise,
That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.
A SUNSET ON YARROW.
The wind and the day had lived together,
They died together, and far away
Spoke
farewell in the
sultry weather,
Out of the
sunset, over the
heather,
The dying wind and the dying day.
Far in the south, the summer levin
Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:
We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;
You saw within, but to me 'twas given
To see your face, as an angel's, there.
Never again, ah surely never
Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood,
The low good-night of the hill and the river,
The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver,
Twain grown one in the solitude.
ANOTHER WAY.
Come to me in my dreams, and then,
One saith, I shall be well again,
For then the night will more than pay
The
hopelesslonging of the day.
Nay, come not THOU in dreams, my sweet,
With
shadowy robes, and silent feet,
And with the voice, and with the eyes
That greet me in a soft surprise.
Last night, last night, in dreams we met,
And how, to-day, shall I forget,
Or how, remembering, restrain
Mine incommunicable pain?
Nay, where thy land and people are,
Dwell thou
remote, apart, afar,
Nor
mingle with the shapes that sweep
The
melancholy ways of Sleep.
But if,
perchance, the shadows break,
If dreams depart, and men awake,
If face to face at length we see,
Be thine the voice to
welcome me.
HESPEROTHEN
By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely
returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands
and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide
in the fair Phaeacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens,
at length end
miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set
forth the VANITY OF MELANCHOLY. And by the land of Phaeacia is to
be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by
Circe's Isle, the place of
bodily delights,
whereof men, falling
aweary,
attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which
thing Master Francoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the
Isle of the Macraeones.
THE SEEKERS FOR PHAEACIA.
There is a land in the
remotest day,
Where the soft night is born, and
sunset dies;
The eastern shore sees faint tides fade away,
That wash the lands where
laughter, tears, and sighs
Make life, - the lands below the blue of common skies.
But in the west is a
mysterious sea,
(What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)
With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be,
With islands where a Goddess walks alone,
And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moan.
Eastward the human cares of house and home,
Cities, and ships, and unknown gods, and loves;
Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam,
And
lawless lives of men, and
haunted groves,
Wherein a god may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.
The gods are
careless of the days and death
Of toilsome men, beyond the
western seas;
The gods are
heedless of their
painful breath,
And love them not, for they are not as these;
But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.
Yet the Phaeacians well they love, who live
At the light's limit, passing
careless hours,
Most like the gods; and they have gifts to give,
Even wine, and fountains
musical, and flowers,
And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers.
It is a quiet midland; in the cool
Of the
twilight comes the god, though no man prayed,
To watch the maids and young men beautiful
Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid,
For they are neat of kin to gods, and undismayed.
Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh
The
dreamy isles that the Im
mortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously,
And far the path and dim to where they sleep, -
The loved, the
shadowy lands, along the
shadowy deep.
A SONG OF PHAEACIA.
The
languidsunset, mother of roses,