A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass

Before the Altar

Before the Altar, bowed, he stands

With empty hands;

Upon it perfumed offerings burn

Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.

Not one of all these has he given,

No flame of his has leapt to Heaven

Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,

Forked, and darted,

Consuming what a few spare pence

Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence

In idly-asked petition.

His sole condition

Love and poverty.

And while the moon

Swings slow across the sky,

Athwart a waving pine tree,

And soon

Tips all the needles there

With silver sparkles, bitterly

He gazes, while his soul

Grows hard with thinking of the poorness of his dole.

"Shining and distant Goddess, hear my prayer

Where you swim in the high air!

With charity look down on me,

Under this tree,

Tending the gifts I have not brought,

The rare and goodly things

I have not sought.

Instead, take from me all my life!

"Upon the wings

Of shimmering moonbeams

I pack my poet's dreams

For you.

My wearying strife,

My courage, my loss,

Into the night I toss

For you.

Golden Divinity,

Deign to look down on me

Who so unworthily

Offers to you:

All life has known,

Seeds withered unsown,

Hopes turning quick to fears,

Laughter which dies in tears.

The shredded remnant of a man

Is all the span

And compass of my offering to you.

"Empty and silent, I

Kneel before your pure, calm majesty.

On this stone, in this urn

I pour my heart and watch it burn,

Myself the sacrifice; but be

Still unmoved: Divinity."

From the altar, bathed in moonlight,

The smoke rose straight in the quiet night.

Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats's Poems

Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign

To put upon the cover of this book?

Who heard thee singing in the distance dim,

The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood,

When the damp freshness of the morning earth

Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song?

Who followed over moss and twisted roots,

And pushed through the wet leaves of trailing vines

Where slanting sunbeams gleamed uncertainly,

While ever clearer came the dropping notes,

Until, at last, two widening trunks disclosed

Thee singing on a spray of branching beech,

Hidden, then seen; and always that same song

Of joyful sweetness, rapture incarnate,

Filled the hushed, rustling stillness of the wood?

We do not know what bird thou art. Perhaps

That fairy bird, fabled in island tale,

Who never sings but once, and then his song

Is of such fearful beauty that he dies

From sheer exuberance of melody.

For this they took thee, little bird, for this

They captured thee, tilting among the leaves,

And stamped thee for a symbol on this book.

For it contains a song surpassing thine,

Richer, more sweet, more poignant. And the poet

Who felt this burning beauty, and whose heart

Was full of loveliest things, sang all he knew

A little while, and then he died; too frail

To bear this untamed, passionate burst of song.

Apples of Hesperides

Glinting golden through the trees,

 Apples of Hesperides!

Through the moon-pierced warp of night

Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,

Swaying to the kissing breeze

Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,

 Apples of Hesperides!

Far and lofty yet they glimmer,

 Apples of Hesperides!

Blinded by their radiant shimmer,

Pushing forward just for these;

Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,

Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,

Always thinking soon to seize

And possess the golden-glistening

 Apples of Hesperides!

Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,

 Apples of Hesperides!

Not one missing, still transcendent,

Clustering like a swarm of bees.

Yielding to no man's desire,

Glowing with a saffron fire,

Splendid, unassailed, the golden

 Apples of Hesperides!

Azure and Gold

April had covered the hills

 With flickering yellows and reds,

The sparkle and coolness of snow

 Was blown from the mountain beds.

Across a deep-sunken stream

 The pink of blossoming trees,

And from windless appleblooms

 The humming of many bees.

The air was of rose and gold

 Arabesqued with the song of birds

Who, swinging unseen under leaves,

 Made music more eager than words.

Of a sudden, aslant the road,

 A brightness to dazzle and stun,

A glint of the bluest blue,

 A flash from a sapphire sun.

Blue-birds so blue, 't was a dream,

 An impossible, unconceived hue,

The high sky of summer dropped down

 Some rapturous ocean to woo.

Such a colour, such infinite light!

 The heart of a fabulous gem,

Many-faceted, brilliant and rare.

 Centre Stone of the earth's diadem!

     . . . . .

Centre Stone of the Crown of the World,

 "Sincerity" graved on your youth!

And your eyes hold the blue-bird flash,

 The sapphire shaft, which is truth.

Petals

Life is a stream

On which we strew

Petal by petal the flower of our heart;

The end lost in dream,

They float past our view,

We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,

Crimsoned with joy,

We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;

Their widening scope,

Their distant employ,

We never shall know. And the stream as it flows

Sweeps them away,

Each one is gone

Ever beyond into infinite ways.

We alone stay

While years hurry on,

The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Venetian Glass

As one who sails upon a wide, blue sea

Far out of sight of land, his mind intent

Upon the sailing of his little boat,

On tightening ropes and shaping fair his course,

Hears suddenly, across the restless sea,

The rhythmic striking of some towered clock,

And wakes from thoughtless idleness to time:

Time, the slow pulse which beats eternity!

So through the vacancy of busy life

At intervals you cross my path and bring

The deep solemnity of passing years.

For you I have shed bitter tears, for you

I have relinquished that for which my heart

Cried out in selfish longing. And to-night

Having just left you, I can say: "'T is well.

Thank God that I have known a soul so true,

So nobly just, so worthy to be loved!"

Fatigue

Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,

 Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,

Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,

 Bow down my head lest I behold a star.

Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities

 Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,

Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences

 Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.

Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,

 Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,

Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,

 Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.

Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,

 Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;

Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --

 The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.

A Japanese Wood-Carving

High up above the open, welcoming door

It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.

Once, long ago, it was a waving tree

And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves

Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.

The winter snows had bent its branches down,

The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,

Summer had run like fire through its veins,

While autumn pelted it with chestnut burrs,

And strewed the leafy ground with acorn cups.

Dark midnight storms had roared and crashed among

Its branches, breaking here and there a limb;

But every now and then broad sunlit days

Lovingly lingered, caught among the leaves.

Yes, it had known all this, and yet to us

It does not speak of mossy forest ways,

Of whispering pine trees or the shimmering birch;

But of quick winds, and the salt, stinging sea!

An artist once, with patient, careful knife,

Had fashioned it like to the untamed sea.

Here waves uprear themselves, their tops blown back

By the gay, sunny wind, which whips the blue

And breaks it into gleams and sparks of light.

Among the flashing waves are two white birds

Which swoop, and soar, and scream for very joy

At the wild sport. Now diving quickly in,

Questing some glistening fish. Now flying up,

Their dripping feathers shining in the sun,

While the wet drops like little glints of light,

Fall pattering backward to the parent sea.

Gliding along the green and foam-flecked hollows,

Or skimming some white crest about to break,

The spirits of the sky deigning to stoop

And play with ocean in a summer mood.

Hanging above the high, wide open door,

It brings to us in quiet, firelit room,

The freedom of the earth's vast solitudes,

Where heaping, sunny waves tumble and roll,

And seabirds scream in wanton happiness.

A Little Song

When you, my Dear, are away, away,

How wearily goes the creeping day.

A year drags after morning, and night

Starts another year of candle light.

O Pausing Sun and Lingering Moon!

Grant me, I beg of you, this boon.

Whirl round the earth as never sun

Has his diurnal journey run.

And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air

In a single flash, while your streaming hair

Catches the stars and pulls them down

To shine on some slumbering Chinese town.

O Kindly Sun! Understanding Moon!

Bring evening to crowd the footsteps of noon.

But when that long awaited day

Hangs ripe in the heavens, your voyaging stay.

Be morning, O Sun! with the lark in song,

Be afternoon for ages long.

And, Moon, let you and your lesser lights

Watch over a century of nights.

Behind a Wall

I own a solace shut within my heart,

 A garden full of many a quaint delight

 And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,

Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart

    Shining things

    With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close

 The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind

 Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,

Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,

    With content

    Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o'erhung with gems

 Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies

 Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.

In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems

    Of hollyhocks

    Against the rocks.

So far and still it is that, listening,

 I hear the flowers talking in the dawn;

 And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn,

Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening,

    The sudden swish

    Of a waking fish.

B A C K