Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

BEFORE KNOWLEDGE

 
When I walked roseless tracks and wide,
Ere dawned your date for meeting me,
O why did you not cry Halloo
Across the stretch between, and say:
 
 
“We move, while years as yet divide,
On closing lines which – though it be
You know me not nor I know you —
Will intersect and join some day!”
 
 
   Then well I had borne
   Each scraping thorn;
   But the winters froze,
   And grew no rose;
   No bridge bestrode
   The gap at all;
   No shape you showed,
   And I heard no call!
 

THE BLINDED BIRD

 
So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God’s consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!
 
 
Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot,
Eternal dark thy lot,
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire;
Resenting not such wrong!
 
 
Who hath charity?  This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind,
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred?
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine?  This bird.
 

“THE WIND BLEW WORDS”

 
The wind blew words along the skies,
   And these it blew to me
Through the wide dusk: “Lift up your eyes,
   Behold this troubled tree,
Complaining as it sways and plies;
   It is a limb of thee.
 
 
“Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round —
   Dumb figures, wild and tame,
Yea, too, thy fellows who abound —
   Either of speech the same
Or far and strange – black, dwarfed, and browned,
   They are stuff of thy own frame.”
 
 
I moved on in a surging awe
   Of inarticulateness
At the pathetic Me I saw
   In all his huge distress,
Making self-slaughter of the law
   To kill, break, or suppress.
 

THE FADED FACE

 
How was this I did not see
Such a look as here was shown
Ere its womanhood had blown
Past its first felicity? —
That I did not know you young,
   Faded Face,
      Know you young!
 
 
Why did Time so ill bestead
That I heard no voice of yours
Hail from out the curved contours
Of those lips when rosy red;
Weeted not the songs they sung,
   Faded Face,
      Songs they sung!
 
 
By these blanchings, blooms of old,
And the relics of your voice —
Leavings rare of rich and choice
From your early tone and mould —
Let me mourn, – aye, sorrow-wrung,
   Faded Face,
      Sorrow-wrung!
 

THE RIDDLE

I

 
Stretching eyes west
Over the sea,
Wind foul or fair,
Always stood she
Prospect-impressed;
Solely out there
Did her gaze rest,
Never elsewhere
Seemed charm to be.
 

II

 
Always eyes east
Ponders she now —
As in devotion —
Hills of blank brow
Where no waves plough.
Never the least
Room for emotion
Drawn from the ocean
Does she allow.
 

THE DUEL

 
      “I am here to time, you see;
The glade is well-screened – eh? – against alarm;
   Fit place to vindicate by my arm
   The honour of my spotless wife,
   Who scorns your libel upon her life
      In boasting intimacy!
 
 
      “‘All hush-offerings you’ll spurn,
My husband.  Two must come; one only go,’
   She said.  ‘That he’ll be you I know;
   To faith like ours Heaven will be just,
   And I shall abide in fullest trust
      Your speedy glad return.’”
 
 
   “Good.  Here am also I;
And we’ll proceed without more waste of words
   To warm your cockpit.  Of the swords
   Take you your choice.  I shall thereby
   Feel that on me no blame can lie,
      Whatever Fate accords.”
 
 
   So stripped they there, and fought,
And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;
   Till the husband fell; and his shirt was red
   With streams from his heart’s hot cistern.  Nought
   Could save him now; and the other, wrought
      Maybe to pity, said:
 
 
   “Why did you urge on this?
Your wife assured you; and ’t had better been
   That you had let things pass, serene
   In confidence of long-tried bliss,
   Holding there could be nought amiss
      In what my words might mean.”
 
 
   Then, seeing nor ruth nor rage
Could move his foeman more – now Death’s deaf thrall —
   He wiped his steel, and, with a call
   Like turtledove to dove, swift broke
   Into the copse, where under an oak
      His horse cropt, held by a page.
 
 
   “All’s over, Sweet,” he cried
To the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.
   “’Tis as we hoped and said ’t would be.
   He never guessed.. We mount and ride
   To where our love can reign uneyed.
      He’s clay, and we are free.”
 

AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS

 
How could I be aware,
The opposite window eyeing
As I lay listless there,
That through its blinds was dying
One I had rated rare
Before I had set me sighing
For another more fair?
 
 
Had the house-front been glass,
My vision unobscuring,
Could aught have come to pass
More happiness-insuring
To her, loved as a lass
When spouseless, all-alluring?
I reckon not, alas!
 
 
So, the square window stood,
Steadily night-long shining
In my close neighbourhood,
Who looked forth undivining
That soon would go for good
One there in pain reclining,
Unpardoned, unadieu’d.
 
 
Silently screened from view
Her tragedy was ending
That need not have come due
Had she been less unbending.
How near, near were we two
At that last vital rending, —
And neither of us knew!
 

TO MY FATHER’S VIOLIN

 
   Does he want you down there
   In the Nether Glooms where
The hours may be a dragging load upon him,
   As he hears the axle grind
      Round and round
   Of the great world, in the blind
      Still profound
Of the night-time?  He might liven at the sound
Of your string, revealing you had not forgone him.
 
 
   In the gallery west the nave,
   But a few yards from his grave,
Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing
   Guide the homely harmony
      Of the quire
   Who for long years strenuously —
      Son and sire —
Caught the strains that at his fingering low or higher
From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.
 
 
   And, too, what merry tunes
   He would bow at nights or noons
That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,
   When he made you speak his heart
      As in dream,
   Without book or music-chart,
      On some theme
Elusive as a jack-o’-lanthorn’s gleam,
And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.
 
 
   Well, you can not, alas,
   The barrier overpass
That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder,
   Where no fiddling can be heard
      In the glades
   Of silentness, no bird
      Thrills the shades;
Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,
No bowing wakes a congregation’s wonder.
 
 
   He must do without you now,
   Stir you no more anyhow
To yearning concords taught you in your glory;
   While, your strings a tangled wreck,
      Once smart drawn,
   Ten worm-wounds in your neck,
      Purflings wan
With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con
Your present dumbness, shape your olden story.
 

1916.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

 
   This statue of Liberty, busy man,
      Here erect in the city square,
I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,
         Strangely wistful,
         And half tristful,
      Have turned her from foul to fair;
 
 
   With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
      Bringing her out of the grime
That has smeared her during the smokes of winter
         With such glumness
         In her dumbness,
      And aged her before her time.
 
 
   You have washed her down with motherly care —
      Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,
To the very hem of the robes that drape her —
         All expertly
         And alertly,
      Till a long stream, black with soot,
 
 
   Flows over the pavement to the road,
      And her shape looms pure as snow:
I read you are hired by the City guardians —
         May be yearly,
         Or once merely —
      To treat the statues so?
 
 
   “Oh, I’m not hired by the Councilmen
      To cleanse the statues here.
I do this one as a self-willed duty,
         Not as paid to,
         Or at all made to,
      But because the doing is dear.”
 
 
   Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!
      Liberty’s knight divine.
What you have done would have been my doing,
         Yea, most verily,
         Well, and thoroughly,
      Had but your courage been mine!
 
 
   “Oh I care not for Liberty’s mould,
      Liberty charms not me;
What’s Freedom but an idler’s vision,
         Vain, pernicious,
         Often vicious,
      Of things that cannot be!
 
 
   “Memory it is that brings me to this —
      Of a daughter – my one sweet own.
She grew a famous carver’s model,
         One of the fairest
         And of the rarest: —
      She sat for the figure as shown.
 
 
   “But alas, she died in this distant place
      Before I was warned to betake
Myself to her side!.. And in love of my darling,
         In love of the fame of her,
         And the good name of her,
      I do this for her sake.”
 
 
   Answer I gave not.  Of that form
      The carver was I at his side;
His child, my model, held so saintly,
         Grand in feature,
         Gross in nature,
      In the dens of vice had died.
 

THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE
(Lover’s Ditty)

 
I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,
   Of the periwinks’ rockwork lair,
Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red —
   And the something else seen there.
 
 
Between the blooms where the sod basked bright,
   By the bobbing fuchsia trees,
Was another and yet more eyesome sight —
   The sight that richened these.
 
 
I shall seek those beauties in the spring,
   When the days are fit and fair,
But only as foils to the one more thing
   That also will flower there!
 

THE CHANGE

 
   Out of the past there rises a week —
      Who shall read the years O! —
   Out of the past there rises a week
      Enringed with a purple zone.
   Out of the past there rises a week
   When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,
And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.
 
 
   In that week there was heard a singing —
      Who shall spell the years, the years! —
   In that week there was heard a singing,
      And the white owl wondered why.
   In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,
   And forth from the casement were candles flinging
Radiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.
 
 
   Could that song have a mocking note? —
      Who shall unroll the years O! —
   Could that song have a mocking note
      To the white owl’s sense as it fell?
   Could that song have a mocking note
   As it trilled out warm from the singer’s throat,
And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?
 
 
   In a tedious trampling crowd yet later —
      Who shall bare the years, the years! —
   In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,
      When silvery singings were dumb;
   In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,
   Mid murks of night I stood to await her,
And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come.
 
 
   She said with a travel-tired smile —
      Who shall lift the years O! —
   She said with a travel-tired smile,
      Half scared by scene so strange;
   She said, outworn by mile on mile,
   The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,
“O Love, I am here; I am with you!”.. Ah, that there should have come a change!
 
 
   O the doom by someone spoken —
      Who shall unseal the years, the years! —
   O the doom that gave no token,
      When nothing of bale saw we:
   O the doom by someone spoken,
   O the heart by someone broken,
The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.
 

Jan. – Feb. 1913.

SITTING ON THE BRIDGE
(Echo of an old song)

 
   Sitting on the bridge
   Past the barracks, town and ridge,
At once the spirit seized us
To sing a song that pleased us —
As “The Fifth” were much in rumour;
It was “Whilst I’m in the humour,
   Take me, Paddy, will you now?”
   And a lancer soon drew nigh,
   And his Royal Irish eye
   Said, “Willing, faith, am I,
O, to take you anyhow, dears,
   To take you anyhow.”
 
 
   But, lo! – dad walking by,
   Cried, “What, you lightheels!  Fie!
   Is this the way you roam
   And mock the sunset gleam?”
   And he marched us straightway home,
Though we said, “We are only, daddy,
Singing, ‘Will you take me, Paddy?’”
   – Well, we never saw from then
   If we sang there anywhen,
   The soldier dear again,
Except at night in dream-time,
   Except at night in dream.
 
 
Perhaps that soldier’s fighting
   In a land that’s far away,
Or he may be idly plighting
   Some foreign hussy gay;
Or perhaps his bones are whiting
   In the wind to their decay!.
   Ah! – does he mind him how
   The girls he saw that day
On the bridge, were sitting singing
At the time of curfew-ringing,
“Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?
   Paddy, will you now?”
 

Grey’s Bridge.

THE YOUNG CHURCHWARDEN

 
When he lit the candles there,
And the light fell on his hand,
And it trembled as he scanned
Her and me, his vanquished air
Hinted that his dream was done,
And I saw he had begun
   To understand.
 
 
When Love’s viol was unstrung,
Sore I wished the hand that shook
Had been mine that shared her book
While that evening hymn was sung,
His the victor’s, as he lit
Candles where he had bidden us sit
   With vanquished look.
 
 
Now her dust lies listless there,
His afar from tending hand,
What avails the victory scanned?
Does he smile from upper air:
“Ah, my friend, your dream is done;
And ’tis you who have begun
   To understand!
 

“I TRAVEL AS A PHANTOM NOW”

 
I travel as a phantom now,
For people do not wish to see
In flesh and blood so bare a bough
   As Nature makes of me.
 
 
And thus I visit bodiless
Strange gloomy households often at odds,
And wonder if Man’s consciousness
   Was a mistake of God’s.
 
 
And next I meet you, and I pause,
And think that if mistake it were,
As some have said, O then it was
   One that I well can bear!
 

1915.

LINES
TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART’S E-FLAT SYMPHONY

 
      Show me again the time
      When in the Junetide’s prime
   We flew by meads and mountains northerly! —
Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness,
      Love lures life on.
 
 
      Show me again the day
      When from the sandy bay
   We looked together upon the pestered sea! —
Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking,
      Love lures life on.
 
 
      Show me again the hour
      When by the pinnacled tower
   We eyed each other and feared futurity! —
Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings,
      Love lures life on.
 
 
      Show me again just this:
      The moment of that kiss
   Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! —
Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,
      Love lures life on.
 

Begun November 1898.

“IN THE SEVENTIES”

“Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego.” – Job

 
In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,
         Penned tight,
Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light
On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest
In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast
         Penned tight.
 
 
In the seventies when my neighbours – even my friend —
         Saw me pass,
Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, “Alas,
For his onward years and name unless he mend!”
In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend
      Saw me pass.
 
 
In the seventies those who met me did not know
      Of the vision
That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision
And the damps that choked my goings to and fro
In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know
      Of the vision.
 
 
In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,
      Locked in me,
Though as delicate as lamp-worm’s lucency;
Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it
In the seventies! – could not darken or destroy it,
      Locked in me.
 

THE PEDIGREE

I

 
         I bent in the deep of night
      Over a pedigree the chronicler gave
      As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed,
The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light
         Of the moon in its old age:
And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed
   Like a drifting dolphin’s eye seen through a lapping wave.
 

II

 
         So, scanning my sire-sown tree,
      And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that,
         With offspring mapped below in lineage,
         Till the tangles troubled me,
The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face
   Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage
      Enchanting me to gaze again thereat.
 

III

 
         It was a mirror now,
      And in it a long perspective I could trace
   Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each
         All with the kindred look,
      Whose names had since been inked down in their place
         On the recorder’s book,
Generation and generation of my mien, and build, and brow.
 

IV

 
         And then did I divine
      That every heave and coil and move I made
      Within my brain, and in my mood and speech,
         Was in the glass portrayed
      As long forestalled by their so making it;
   The first of them, the primest fuglemen of my line,
Being fogged in far antiqueness past surmise and reason’s reach.
 

V

 
         Said I then, sunk in tone,
   “I am merest mimicker and counterfeit! —
         Though thinking, I am I,
   And what I do I do myself alone.”
   – The cynic twist of the page thereat unknit
Back to its normal figure, having wrought its purport wry,
   The Mage’s mirror left the window-square,
And the stained moon and drift retook their places there.
 

1916.

THIS HEART
A WOMAN’S DREAM

 
   At midnight, in the room where he lay dead
   Whom in his life I had never clearly read,
I thought if I could peer into that citadel
   His heart, I should at last know full and well
 
 
   What hereto had been known to him alone,
   Despite our long sit-out of years foreflown,
“And if,” I said, “I do this for his memory’s sake,
   It would not wound him, even if he could wake.”
 
 
   So I bent over him.  He seemed to smile
   With a calm confidence the whole long while
That I, withdrawing his heart, held it and, bit by bit,
   Perused the unguessed things found written on it.
 
 
   It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere
   With quaint vermiculations close and clear —
His graving.  Had I known, would I have risked the stroke
   Its reading brought, and my own heart nigh broke!
 
 
   Yes, there at last, eyes opened, did I see
   His whole sincere symmetric history;
There were his truth, his simple singlemindedness,
   Strained, maybe, by time’s storms, but there no less.
 
 
   There were the daily deeds from sun to sun
   In blindness, but good faith, that he had done;
There were regrets, at instances wherein he swerved
   (As he conceived) from cherishings I had deserved.
 
 
   There were old hours all figured down as bliss —
   Those spent with me – (how little had I thought this!)
There those when, at my absence, whether he slept or waked,
   (Though I knew not ’twas so!) his spirit ached.
 
 
   There that when we were severed, how day dulled
   Till time joined us anew, was chronicled:
And arguments and battlings in defence of me
   That heart recorded clearly and ruddily.
 
 
   I put it back, and left him as he lay
   While pierced the morning pink and then the gray
Into each dreary room and corridor around,
   Where I shall wait, but his step will not sound.