Part 4

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 hopeless longing 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 Phæacian 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 Phæacia 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 Françoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macræones.

THE SEEKERS FOR PHÆACIA.