The Wild Knight and Other Poems

ETERNITIES

 
I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
  Well hath He spoken: 'Swear not by thy head,
  Thou knowest not the hairs,' though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in his own strange book.
 
 
I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
  Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
  Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees.
 
 
In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
  Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
  Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass.
 

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

 
The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
  His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
  But here is all aright.)
 
 
The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast,
  His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
  But here the true hearts are.)
 
 
The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
  His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
  But here the world's desire.)
 
 
The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee,
  His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at him.
  And all the stars looked down.
 

ALONE

 
Blessings there are of cradle and of clan,
  Blessings that fall of priests' and princes' hands;
  But never blessing full of lives and lands,
Broad as the blessing of a lonely man.
 
 
Though that old king fell from his primal throne,
  And ate among the cattle, yet this pride
  Had found him in the deepest grass, and cried
An 'Ecce Homo' with the trumpets blown.
 
 
And no mad tyrant, with almighty ban,
  Who in strong madness dreams himself divine,
  But hears through fumes of flattery and of wine
The thunder of this blessing name him man.
 
 
Let all earth rot past saints' and seraphs' plea,
  Yet shall a Voice cry through its last lost war,
  'This is the world, this red wreck of a star,
That a man blessed beneath an alder-tree.'
 

KING'S CROSS STATION

 
This circled cosmos whereof man is god
  Has suns and stars of green and gold and red,
And cloudlands of great smoke, that range o'er range
  Far floating, hide its iron heavens o'erhead.
 
 
God! shall we ever honour what we are,
   And see one moment ere the age expire,
The vision of man shouting and erect,
   Whirled by the shrieking steeds of flood and fire?
 
 
Or must Fate act the same grey farce again,
  And wait, till one, amid Time's wrecks and scars,
Speaks to a ruin here, 'What poet-race
  Shot such cyclopean arches at the stars?'
 

THE HUMAN TREE

 
Many have Earth's lovers been,
Tried in seas and wars, I ween;
Yet the mightiest have I seen:
  Yea, the best saw I.
One that in a field alone
Stood up stiller than a stone
Lest a moth should fly.
 
 
Birds had nested in his hair,
On his shoon were mosses rare.
Insect empires flourished there,
  Worms in ancient wars;
But his eyes burn like a glass,
Hearing a great sea of grass
  Roar towards the stars.
 
 
From, them to the human tree
Rose a cry continually,
'Thou art still, our Father, we
  Fain would have thee nod.
Make the skies as blood below thee,
Though thou slay us, we shall know thee.
  Answer us, O God!
 
 
'Show thine ancient flame and thunder,
Split the stillness once asunder,
Lest we whisper, lest we wonder
  Art thou there at all?'
But I saw him there alone,
Standing stiller than a stone
  Lest a moth should fall.
 

TO THEM THAT MOURN

(W.E.G., May 1898)

 
Lift up your heads: in life, in death,
  God knoweth his head was high.
Quit we the coward's broken breath
  Who watched a strong man die.
 
 
If we must say, 'No more his peer
  Cometh; the flag is furled.'
Stand not too near him, lest he hear
  That slander on the world.
 
 
The good green earth he loved and trod
  Is still, with many a scar,
Writ in the chronicles of God,
  A giant-bearing star.
 
 
He fell: but Britain's banner swings
  Above his sunken crown.
Black death shall have his toll of kings
  Before that cross goes down.
 
 
Once more shall move with mighty things
  His house of ancient tale,
Where kings whose hands were kissed of kings
  Went in: and came out pale.
 
 
O young ones of a darker day,
  In art's wan colours clad,
Whose very love and hate are grey —
  Whose very sin is sad.
 
 
Pass on: one agony long-drawn
  Was merrier than your mirth,
When hand-in-hand came death and dawn,
  And spring was on the earth.
 

THE OUTLAW

 
Priest, is any song-bird stricken?
  Is one leaf less on the tree?
Is this wine less red and royal
  That the hangman waits for me?
 
 
He upon your cross that hangeth,
  It is writ of priestly pen,
On the night they built his gibbet,
  Drank red wine among his men.
 
 
Quaff, like a brave man, as he did,
  Wine and death as heaven pours —
This is my fate: O ye rulers,
  O ye pontiffs, what is yours?
 
 
To wait trembling, lest yon loathly
  Gallows-shape whereon I die,
In strange temples yet unbuilded,
  Blaze upon an altar high.
 

BEHIND

 
I saw an old man like a child,
His blue eyes bright, his white hair wild,
Who turned for ever, and might not stop,
Round and round like an urchin's top.
 
 
'Fool,' I cried, 'while you spin round,
'Others grow wise, are praised, are crowned.'
Ever the same round road he trod,
'This is better: I seek for God.'
 
 
'We see the whole world, left and right,
Yet at the blind back hides from sight
The unseen Master that drives us forth
To East and West, to South and North.
 
 
'Over my shoulder for eighty years
I have looked for the gleam of the sphere of spheres.'
'In all your turning, what have you found?'
'At least, I know why the world goes round.'
 

THE END OF FEAR

 
Though the whole heaven be one-eyed with the moon,
  Though the dead landscape seem a thing possessed,
  Yet I go singing through that land oppressed
As one that singeth through the flowers of June.
 
 
No more, with forest-fingers crawling free
  O'er dark flint wall that seems a wall of eyes,
  Shall evil break my soul with mysteries
Of some world-poison maddening bush and tree.
 
 
No more shall leering ghosts of pimp and king
  With bloody secrets veiled before me stand.
  Last night I held all evil in my hand
Closed: and behold it was a little thing.
 
 
I broke the infernal gates and looked on him
  Who fronts the strong creation with a curse;
  Even the god of a lost universe,
Smiling above his hideous cherubim.
 
 
And pierced far down in his soul's crypt unriven
  The last black crooked sympathy and shame,
  And hailed him with that ringing rainbow name
Erased upon the oldest book in heaven.
 
 
Like emptied idiot masks, sin's loves and wars
  Stare at me now: for in the night I broke
  The bubble of a great world's jest, and woke
Laughing with laughter such as shakes the stars.
 

THE HOLY OF HOLIES

 
'Elder father, though thine eyes
Shine with hoary mysteries,
Canst thou tell what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies?
 
 
'Smaller than all lives that be,
Secret as the deepest sea,
Stands a little house of seeds,
Like an elfin's granary,
 
 
'Speller of the stones and weeds,
Skilled in Nature's crafts and creeds,
Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds.'
 
 
'God Almighty, and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim,
Filling all eternity —
Adonai Elohim.'
 

THE MIRROR OF MADMEN

 
I dreamed a dream of heaven, white as frost,
The splendid stillness of a living host;
Vast choirs of upturned faces, line o'er line.
Then my blood froze; for every face was mine.
 
 
Spirits with sunset plumage throng and pass,
Glassed darkly in the sea of gold and glass.
But still on every side, in every spot,
I saw a million selves, who saw me not.
 
 
I fled to quiet wastes, where on a stone,
Perchance, I found a saint, who sat alone;
I came behind: he turned with slow, sweet grace,
And faced me with my happy, hateful face.
 
 
I cowered like one that in a tower doth bide,
Shut in by mirrors upon every side;
Then I saw, islanded in skies alone
And silent, one that sat upon a throne.
 
 
His robe was bordered with rich rose and gold,
Green, purple, silver out of sunsets old;
But o'er his face a great cloud edged with fire,
Because it covereth the world's desire.
 
 
But as I gazed, a silent worshipper,
Methought the cloud began to faintly stir;
Then I fell flat, and screamed with grovelling head,
'If thou hast any lightning, strike me dead!
 
 
'But spare a brow where the clean sunlight fell,
The crown of a new sin that sickens hell.
Let me not look aloft and see mine own
Feature and form upon the Judgment-throne.'
 
 
Then my dream snapped: and with a heart that leapt
I saw across the tavern where I slept,
The sight of all my life most full of grace,
A gin-damned drunkard's wan half-witted face.
 

E.C.B

 
Before the grass grew over me,
  I knew one good man through and through,
And knew a soul and body joined
  Are stronger than the heavens are blue.
 
 
A wisdom worthy of thy joy,
  O great heart, read I as I ran;
Now, though men smite me on the face,
  I cannot curse the face of man.
 
 
I loved the man I saw yestreen
  Hanged with his babe's blood on his palms.
I loved the man I saw to-day
  Who knocked not when he came with alms.
 
 
Hush! – for thy sake I even faced
  The knowledge that is worse than hell;
And loved the man I saw but now
  Hanging head downwards in the well.