Part 14

O altered joy, all joyed of yore, Plodding in unconned ways! O grief grieved out, and yet once more A dull, new, staled amaze! I dream, and all was dreamed before, Or dream I so? the dreamer says.

GRIEF’S HARMONICS

AT evening, when the lank and rigid trees, To the mere forms of their sweet day-selves drying, On heaven’s blank leaf seem pressed and flattenèd; Or rather, to my sombre thoughts replying, Of plumes funereal the thin effigies; That hour when all old dead things seem most dead, And their death instant most and most undying, That the flesh aches at them; there stirred in me The babe of an unborn calamity, Ere its due time to be deliverèd. Dead sorrow and sorrow unborn so blent their pain, That which more present was were hardly said, But both more now than any Now can be. My soul like sackcloth did her body rend, And thus with Heaven contend:— ‘Let pass the chalice of this coming dread, Or that fore-drained O bid me not re-drain!’ So have I asked, who know my asking vain, Woe against woe in antiphon set over, That grief’s soul transmigrates, and lives again, And in new pang old pang’s incarnated.

MEMORAT MEMORIA

COME you living or dead to me, out of the silt of the Past, With the sweet of the piteous first, and the shame of the shameful last? Come with your dear and dreadful face through the passes of Sleep, The terrible mask, and the face it masked—the face you did not keep? You are neither two nor one—I would you were one or two, For your awful self is embalmed in the fragrant self I knew: And Above may ken, and Beneath may ken, what I mean by these words of whirl, But by my sleep that sleepeth not,—O Shadow of a Girl!— Nought here but I and my dreams shall know the secret of this thing:— For ever the songs I sing are sad with the songs I never sing, Sad are sung songs, but how more sad the songs we dare not sing!

Ah, the ill that we do in tenderness, and the hateful horror of love! It has sent more souls to the unslaked Pit than it ever will draw above. I damned you, girl, with my pity, who had better by far been thwart, And drave you hard on the track to hell, because I was gentle of heart. I shall have no comfort now in scent, no ease in dew, for this; I shall be afraid of daffodils, and rose-buds are amiss; You have made a thing of innocence as shameful as a sin, I shall never feel a girl’s soft arms without horror of the skin. My child! what was it that I sowed, that I so ill should reap? You have done this to me. And I, what I to you?—It lies with Sleep.

JULY FUGITIVE

CAN you tell me where has hid her Pretty Maid July? I would swear one day ago She passed by, I would swear that I do know The blue bliss of her eye: ‘Tarry, maid, maid,’ I bid her; But she hastened by. Do you know where she has hid her, Maid July?

Yet in truth it needs must be The flight of her is old; Yet in truth it needs must be, For her nest, the earth, is cold. No more in the poolèd Even Wade her rosy feet, Dawn-flakes no more plash from them To poppies ’mid the wheat. She has muddied the day’s oozes With her petulant feet; Scared the clouds that floated, As sea-birds they were, Slow on the coerule Lulls of the air, Lulled on the luminous Levels of air: She has chidden in a pet All her stars from her; Now they wander loose and sigh Through the turbid blue, Now they wander, weep, and cry— Yea, and I too— ‘Where are you, sweet July, Where are you?’

Who hath beheld her footprints, Or the pathway she goes? Tell me, wind, tell me, wheat, Which of you knows? Sleeps she swathed in the flushed Arctic Night of the rose? Or lie her limbs like Alp-glow On the lily’s snows? Gales, that are all-visitant, Find the runaway; And for him who findeth her (I do charge you say) I will throw largesse of broom Of this summer’s mintage, I will broach a honey-bag Of the bee’s best vintage. Breezes, wheat, flowers sweet, None of them knows! How then shall we lure her back From the way she goes? For it were a shameful thing, Saw we not this comer Ere Autumn camp upon the fields Red with rout of Summer.

When the bird quits the cage, We set the cage outside, With seed and with water, And the door wide, Haply we may win it so Back to abide. Hang her cage of earth out O’er Heaven’s sunward wall, Its four gates open, winds in watch By reinèd cars at all; Relume in hanging hedgerows The rain-quenched blossom, And roses sob their tears out On the gale’s warm heaving bosom; Shake the lilies till their scent Over-drip their rims; That our runaway may see We do know her whims: Sleek the tumbled waters out For her travelled limbs; Strew and smoothe blue night thereon, There will—O not doubt her!— The lovely sleepy lady lie, With all her stars about her!

TO A SNOW-FLAKE

WHAT heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?— ‘God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour, To lust of His mind:— Thou could’st not have thought me! So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly, Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost.’

NOCTURN

I walk, I only, Not I only wake; Nothing is, this sweet night, But doth couch and wake For its love’s sake; Everything, this sweet night, Couches with its mate. For whom but for the stealthy-visitant sun Is the naked moon Tremulous and elate? The heaven hath the earth Its own and all apart; The hushèd pool holdeth A star to its heart. You may think the rose sleepeth, But though she folded is, The wind doubts her sleeping; Not all the rose sleeps, But smiles in her sweet heart For crafty bliss. The wind lieth with the rose, And when he stirs, she stirs in her repose: The wind hath the rose, And the rose her kiss. Ah, mouth of me! Is it then that this Seemeth much to thee?— I wander only. The rose hath her kiss.

A MAY BURDEN

THROUGH meadow-ways as I did tread, The corn grew in great lustihead, And hey! the beeches burgeonèd. By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! It is the month, the jolly month, It is the jolly month of May.

God ripe the wines and corn, I say And wenches for the marriage-day, And boys to teach love’s comely play. By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! It is the month, the jolly month, It is the jolly month of May.

As I went down by lane and lea, The daisies reddened so, pardie! ‘Blushets!’ I said, ‘I well do see, By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! The thing ye think of in this month, Heigho! this jolly month of May.’

As down I went by rye and oats, The blossoms smelt of kisses; throats Of birds turned kisses into notes; By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! The kiss it is a growing flower, I trow, this jolly month of May!

God send a mouth to every kiss, Seeing the blossom of this bliss By gathering doth grow, certes! By Goddès fay, by Goddès fay! Thy brow-garland pushed all aslant Tells—but I tell not, wanton May!

NOTE. The first two stanzas are from a French original—I have forgotten what.

A DEAD ASTRONOMER

(FATHER PERRY, S.J.)

STARRY amorist, starward gone, Thou art—what thou didst gaze upon! Passed through thy golden garden’s bars, Thou seest the Gardener of the Stars.

She, about whose moonèd brows Seven stars make seven glows, Seven lights for seven woes; She, like thine own Galaxy, All lustres in one purity:— What said’st thou, Astronomer, When thou did’st discover her? When thy hand its tube let fall, Thou found’st the fairest Star of all!

‘CHOSE VUE’

A METRICAL CAPRICE