Part 12

MUTE OPINION

I TRAVERSED a dominion Whose spokesmen spake out strong Their purpose and opinion Through pulpit, press, and song. I scarce had means to note there A large-eyed few, and dumb, Who thought not as those thought there That stirred the heat and hum.

When, grown a Shade, beholding That land in lifetime trode, To learn if its unfolding Fulfilled its clamoured code, I saw, in web unbroken, Its history outwrought Not as the loud had spoken, But as the mute had thought.

TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD

BREATHE not, hid Heart: cease silently, And though thy birth-hour beckons thee, Sleep the long sleep: The Doomsters heap Travails and teens around us here, And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh, And laughters fail, and greetings die: Hopes dwindle; yea, Faiths waste away, Affections and enthusiasms numb; Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombèd souls Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls, And thou wert free To cease, or be, Then would I tell thee all I know, And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence To theeward fly: to thy locked sense Explain none can Life’s pending plan: Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not One tear, one qualm, Should break the calm. But I am weak as thou and bare; No man can change the common lot to rare.

Must come and bide. And such are we— Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary— That I can hope Health, love, friends, scope In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER

SUNNED in the South, and here to-day; —If all organic things Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say, What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite From this bleak spot of thorn, And birch, and fir, and frozen white Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought! Your dust will not regain Old sunny haunts of Classic thought When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit With frigid Boreal flame, And not a sign remain in it To tell men whence you came.

ON A FINE MORNING

WHENCE comes Solace?—Not from seeing What is doing, suffering, being, Not from noting Life’s conditions, Nor from heeding Time’s monitions; But in cleaving to the Dream, And in gazing at the gleam Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding Shadows but as lights unfolding, As no specious show this moment With its irisèd embowment; But as nothing other than Part of a benignant plan; Proof that earth was made for man.

February 1899.

TO LIZBIE BROWNE

DEAR Lizbie Browne, Where are you now? In sun, in rain?— Or is your brow Past joy, past pain, Dear Lizbie Browne?

Sweet Lizbie Browne How you could smile, How you could sing!— How archly wile In glance-giving, Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne, Who else had hair Bay-red as yours, Or flesh so fair Bred out of doors, Sweet Lizbie Browne?

When, Lizbie Browne, You had just begun To be endeared By stealth to one, You disappeared My Lizbie Browne!

Ay, Lizbie Browne, So swift your life, And mine so slow, You were a wife Ere I could show Love, Lizbie Browne.

Still, Lizbie Browne, You won, they said, The best of men When you were wed . . . Where went you then, O Lizbie Browne?