Chapter III: Part 3

Hush!... I use words I hardly know the meaning of; And the mute birds Are glancing at Love From out their shade of leaf and flower, Trembling at treacheries Which even in noonday cower. Heed, heed not what I said Of frenzied hosts of men, More fools than I, On envy, hatred fed, Who kill, and die-- Spake I not plainly, then? Yet Pity whispered, "Why?"

Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go. Mine was not news for child to know, And Death--no ears hath. He hath supped where creep Eyeless worms in hush of sleep; Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws Athwart his grinning jaws-- Faintly the thin bones rattle, and--There, there; Hearken how my bells in the air Drive away care!...

Nay, but a dream I had Of a world all mad. Not simply happy mad like me, Who am mad like an empty scene Of water and willow tree, Where the wind hath been; But that foul Satan-mad, Who rots in his own head, And counts the dead, Not honest one--and two-- But for the ghosts they were, Brave, faithful, true, When, head in air, In Earth's clear green and blue Heaven they did share With beauty who bade them there ... There, now! Death goes-- Mayhap I've wearied him. Ay, and the light doth dim, And asleep's the rose, And tired Innocence In dreams is hence ... Come, Love, my lad, Nodding that drowsy head, 'Tis time thy prayers were said!

THE MARIONETTES

Let the foul Scene proceed:
There's laughter in the wings;
'Tis sawdust that they bleed,
But a box Death brings.

How rare a skill is theirs
These extreme pangs to show,
How real a frenzy wears
Each feigner of woe!

Gigantic dins uprise!
Even the gods must feel
A smarting of the eyes
As these fumes upsweal.

Strange, such a Piece is free,
While we Spectators sit,
Aghast at its agony,
Yet absorbed in it!

Dark is the outer air,
Cold the night draughts blow
Mutely we stare, and stare
At the frenzied Show.

Yet heaven hath its quiet shroud
Of deep, immutable blue--
We cry "An end!" We are bowed
By the dread, "'Tis true!"

While the Shape who hoofs applause
Behind our deafened ear,
Hoots--angel-wise--"the Cause!"
And affright even fear.

TO E.T.: 1917

You sleep too well--too far away,
For sorrowing word to soothe or wound;
Your very quiet seems to say
How longed-for a peace you have found.

Else, had not death so lured you on,
You would have grieved--'twixt joy and fear--
To know how my small loving son
Had wept for you, my dear.

APRIL MOON

Roses are sweet to smell and see,
And lilies on the stem;
But rarer, stranger buds there be,
And she was like to them.

The little moon that April brings,
More lovely shade than light,
That, setting, silvers lonely hills
Upon the verge of night--

Close to the world of my poor heart
So stole she, still and clear;
Now that she's gone, O dark, and dark,
The solitude, the fear.

THE FOOL'S SONG

Never, no never, listen too long,
To the chattering wind in the willow, the night bird's song.

'Tis sad in sooth to lie under the grass,
But none too gladsome to wake and grow cold where life's shadows pass.

Dumb the old Toll-Woman squats,
And, for every green copper battered and worn, doles out Nevers and Nots.

I know a Blind Man, too,
Who with a sharp ear listens and listens the whole world through.

Oh, sit we snug to our feast,
With platter and finger and spoon--and good victuals at least.

CLEAR EYES

Clear eyes do dim at last,
And cheeks outlive their rose.
Time, heedless of the past,
No loving-kindness knows;
Chill unto mortal lip
Still Lethe flows.

Griefs, too, but brief while stay,
And sorrow, being o'er,
Its salt tears shed away,
Woundeth the heart no more.
Stealthily lave those waters
That solemn shore.

Ah, then, sweet face burn on,
While yet quick memory lives!
And Sorrow, ere thou art gone,
Know that my heart forgives--
Ere yet, grown cold in peace,
It loves not, nor grieves.

DUST TO DUST

Heavenly Archer, bend thy bow; Now the flame of life burns low, Youth is gone; I, too, would go.

Even Fortune leads to this: Harsh or kind, at last she is Murderess of all ecstasies.

Yet the spirit, dark, alone, Bound in sense, still hearkens on For tidings of a bliss foregone.

Sleep is well for dreamless head, At no breath astonishèd, From the Gardens of the Dead.

I the immortal harps hear ring, By Babylon's river languishing. Heavenly Archer, loose thy string.

THE THREE STRANGERS

Far are those tranquil hills,
Dyed with fair evening's rose;
On urgent, secret errand bent,
A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three,
Barefooted, cowled; their eyes
Scan the lone, hastening solitary
With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech
With them he doth confer:
God-sped, he hasteneth on,
That anxious traveller ...

I was that man--in a dream:
And each world's night in vain
I patient wait on sleep to unveil
Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know
How yet burns on in me
Love--from one lost in Paradise--
For their grave courtesy.

ALEXANDER

It was the Great Alexander,
Capped with a golden helm,
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship,
In a dead calm.

Voices of sea-maids singing
Wandered across the deep:
The sailors labouring on their oars
Rowed, as in sleep.

All the high pomp of Asia,
Charmed by that siren lay,
Out of their weary and dreaming minds,
Faded away.

Like a bold boy sate their Captain,
His glamour withered and gone,
In the souls of his brooding mariners,
While the song pined on.

Time, like a falling dew,
Life, like the scene of a dream,
Laid between slumber and slumber,
Only did seem....

O Alexander, then,
In all us mortals too,
Wax thou not bold--too bold
On the wave dark-blue!

Come the calm, infinite night,
Who then will hear
Aught save the singing
Of the sea-maids clear?

THE REAWAKENING

Green in light are the hills, and a calm wind flowing
Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of Spring;
Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going,
Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.

Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying,
Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove
Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying,
Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.

Oh, now begone sullen care--this light is my seeing;
I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls;
Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being
Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls.

THE VACANT DAY

As I did walk in meadows green
I heard the summer noon resound
With call of myriad things unseen
That leapt and crept upon the ground.

High overhead the windless air
Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry
Of swallows that did everywhere
Wake echo in the sky.

Beside me, too, clear waters coursed
Which willow branches, lapsing low,
Breaking their crystal gliding forced
To sing as they did flow.

I listened; and my heart was dumb
With praise no language could express;
Longing in vain for him to come
Who had breathed such blessedness

On this fair world, wherein we pass
So chequered and so brief a stay;
And yearned in spirit to learn, alas,
What kept him still away.

THE FLIGHT

How do the days press on, and lay
Their fallen locks at evening down,
Whileas the stars in darkness play
And moonbeams weave a crown--

A crown of flower-like light in heaven,
Where in the hollow arch of space
Morn's mistress dreams, and the Pleiads seven
Stand watch about her place.

Stand watch--O days no number keep
Of hours when this dark clay is blind.
When the world's clocks are dumb in sleep
'Tis then I seek my kind.

FOR ALL THE GRIEF

For all the grief I have given with words
May now a few clear flowers blow,
In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds,
Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me
Be a dark, cool water calling--calling
To the footsore, benighted, solitary,
When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness,
A moon in the air where the weary wend,
And dews burdened with loving-kindness
In the dark of the end.

THE SCRIBE

What lovely things
Thy hand hath made:
The smooth-plumed bird
In its emerald shade,
The seed of the grass,
The speck of stone
Which the wayfaring ant
Stirs--and hastes on!

Though I should sit
By some tarn in thy hills,
Using its ink
As the spirit wills
To write of Earth's wonders,
Its live, willed things,
Flit would the ages
On soundless wings.
Ere unto Z
My pen drew nigh;
Leviathan told,
And the honey-fly:
And still would remain
My wit to try
My worn reeds broken,
The dark tarn dry,
All words forgotten--
Thou, Lord, and I.

FARE WELL

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes, Nor the rain make lamentation When the wind sighs; How will fare the world whose wonder Was the very proof of me? Memory fades, must the remembered Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders Hand, foot, lip, to dust again, May these loved and loving faces Please other men! May the rustling harvest hedgerow Still the Traveller's Joy entwine, And as happy children gather Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour. Let no night Seal thy sense in deathly slumber Till to delight Thou have paid thy utmost blessing; Since that all things thou wouldst praise Beauty took from those who loved them In other days.

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