A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass

Leisure

Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,

 When hours were long and days sufficed to hold

 Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled

By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage

Of undone duties, modern heritage,

 Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold

 Thy presence from this over-busy world,

And bearing silence with thee disengage

 Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods

 Alone can cherish thee, alone possess

Thy quiet, teeming vigor. This our crime:

 Not to have worshipped, marred by alien moods

 That sole condition of all loveliness,

The dreaming lapse of slow, unmeasured time.

On Carpaccio's Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula

Swept, clean, and still, across the polished floor

 From some unshuttered casement, hid from sight,

 The level sunshine slants, its greater light

Quenching the little lamp which pallid, poor,

Flickering, unreplenished, at the door

 Has striven against darkness the long night.

 Dawn fills the room, and penetrating, bright,

The silent sunbeams through the window pour.

 And she lies sleeping, ignorant of Fate,

 Enmeshed in listless dreams, her soul not yet

Ripened to bear the purport of this day.

 The morning breeze scarce stirs the coverlet,

 A shadow falls across the sunlight; wait!

A lark is singing as he flies away.

The Matrix

Goaded and harassed in the factory

 That tears our life up into bits of days

 Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,

Shredding our portion of Eternity,

We break away at last, and steal the key

 Which hides a world empty of hours; ways

 Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays

The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy.

 Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun,

 Scorching against the blue flame of the sky.

Brown lily-pads lie heavy and supine

 Within a granite basin, under one

 The bronze-gold glimmer of a carp; and I

Reach out my hand and pluck a nectarine.

Monadnock in Early Spring

Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all

 The little lesser hills which compass thee,

 Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,

Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall

Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call

 Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy

 And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,

Above thy snowy crevices where fall

 Pale shrivelled oak leaves, while the snow beneath

 Melts at their phantom touch. Another year

Is quick with import. Such each year has been.

 Unmoved thou watchest all, and all bequeath

 Some jewel to thy diadem of power,

Thou pledge of greater majesty unseen.

The Little Garden

A little garden on a bleak hillside

 Where deep the heavy, dazzling mountain snow

 Lies far into the spring. The sun's pale glow

Is scarcely able to melt patches wide

About the single rose bush. All denied

 Of nature's tender ministries. But no, --

 For wonder-working faith has made it blow

With flowers many hued and starry-eyed.

 Here sleeps the sun long, idle summer hours;

Here butterflies and bees fare far to rove

 Amid the crumpled leaves of poppy flowers;

Here four o'clocks, to the passionate night above

 Fling whiffs of perfume, like pale incense showers.

A little garden, loved with a great love!

To an Early Daffodil

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!

 Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!

 The climbing sun with new recovered powers

Does warm thee into being, through the ring

Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling

 Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers

 Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,

Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing

 To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;

To fill the lonely with a joy untold;

 Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,

To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold

 To stand erect, full in the dazzling play

Of April's sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

Listening

'T is you that are the music, not your song.

 The song is but a door which, opening wide,

 Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,

Your spirit's harmony, which clear and strong

Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long

 Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide

 This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,

Or single notes amid a glorious throng.

 The song of earth has many different chords;

Ocean has many moods and many tones

 Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods

The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones

 Autumn alone can ripen. So is this

 One music with a thousand cadences.

The Lamp of Life

Always we are following a light,

 Always the light recedes; with groping hands

 We stretch toward this glory, while the lands

We journey through are hidden from our sight

Dim and mysterious, folded deep in night,

 We care not, all our utmost need demands

 Is but the light, the light! So still it stands

Surely our own if we exert our might.

Fool! Never can'st thou grasp this fleeting gleam,

 Its glowing flame would die if it were caught,

Its value is that it doth always seem

 But just a little farther on. Distraught,

 But lighted ever onward, we are brought

Upon our way unknowing, in a dream.

Hero-Worship

A face seen passing in a crowded street,

 A voice heard singing music, large and free;

 And from that moment life is changed, and we

Become of more heroic temper, meet

To freely ask and give, a man complete

 Radiant because of faith, we dare to be

 What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry

Which can conceive a hero! No deceit,

 No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,

 Can quench this fierce, untamable desire.

We know that what we long for once achieved

 Will cease to satisfy. Be still our fears;

 If what we worship fail us, still the fire

Burns on, and it is much to have believed.

In Darkness

Must all of worth be travailled for, and those

 Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea

 Must years go by in sad uncertainty

Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows,

Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows

 All inner meanings will reveal, but we

 Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be

Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes,

 The agonies of splendid dreams, which day

 Dims from our vision, but each night brings back;

We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay

 To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack

The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray,

 And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack.

Before Dawn

Life! Austere arbiter of each man's fate,

 By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws

 Are as decrees immutable; O pause

Your even forward march! Not yet too late

Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait

 Inactive as a ship when no wind draws

 To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores

Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate

 Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years

    Have lengthened into decades; now distressed

He knows no rule by which to move or stay,

 And teased with restlessness and desperate fears

He dares not watch in silence thy wise way

    Bringing about results none could have guessed.

The Poet

What instinct forces man to journey on,

 Urged by a longing blind but dominant!

 Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt

His never failing eagerness. The sun

Setting in splendour every night has won

 His vassalage; those towers flamboyant

 Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt

His daylight wanderings. Forever done

With simple joys and quiet happiness

 He guards the vision of the sunset sky;

Though faint with weariness he must possess

 Some fragment of the sunset's majesty;

He spurns life's human friendships to profess

 Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstasy.

At Night

The wind is singing through the trees to-night,

 A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences

 And crashing intervals. No summer breeze

Is this, though hot July is at its height,

Gone is her gentler music; with delight

 She listens to this booming like the seas,

 These elemental, loud necessities

Which call to her to answer their swift might.

 Above the tossing trees shines down a star,

 Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy

Quickens nor dims its splendour. And my mind,

 O Star! is filled with your white light, from far,

 So suffer me this one night to enjoy

The freedom of the onward sweeping wind.

The Fruit Garden Path

The path runs straight between the flowering rows,

 A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom,

 Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room

With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.

'T is reckless prodigality which throws

 Into the night these wafts of rich perfume

 Which sweep across the garden like a plume.

Over the trees a single bright star glows.

 Dear garden of my childhood, here my years

Have run away like little grains of sand;

 The moments of my life, its hopes and fears

Have all found utterance here, where now I stand;

 My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears,

You are my home, do you not understand?

Mirage

How is it that, being gone, you fill my days,

 And all the long nights are made glad by thee?

 No loneliness is this, nor misery,

But great content that these should be the ways

Whereby the Fancy, dreaming as she strays,

 Makes bright and present what she would would be.

 And who shall say if the reality

Is not with dreams so pregnant. For delays

 And hindrances may bar the wished-for end;

A thousand misconceptions may prevent

 Our souls from coming near enough to blend;

Let me but think we have the same intent,

 That each one needs to call the other, "friend!"

It may be vain illusion. I'm content.

To a Friend

I ask but one thing of you, only one,

 That always you will be my dream of you;

 That never shall I wake to find untrue

All this I have believed and rested on,

Forever vanished, like a vision gone

 Out into the night. Alas, how few

 There are who strike in us a chord we knew

Existed, but so seldom heard its tone

 We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.

The world is full of rude awakenings

 And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,

Yet still our human longing vainly clings

 To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.

 O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought

The old delight is with us but to find

That all recurring joy is pain refined,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.

You lie upon my heart as on a nest,

Folded in peace, for you can never know

How crushed I am with having you at rest

Heavy upon my life. I love you so

You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.

In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

Dreams

I do not care to talk to you although

 Your speech evokes a thousand sympathies,

 And all my being's silent harmonies

Wake trembling into music. When you go

It is as if some sudden, dreadful blow

 Had severed all the strings with savage ease.

 No, do not talk; but let us rather seize

This intimate gift of silence which we know.

 Others may guess your thoughts from what you say,

As storms are guessed from clouds where darkness broods.

 To me the very essence of the day

Reveals its inner purpose and its moods;

 As poplars feel the rain and then straightway

Reverse their leaves and shimmer through the woods.

Frankincense and Myrrh

My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings

 Vibrate most readily to minor chords,

 Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words

Which voice the passion and the ache of things:

Illusions beating with their baffled wings

 Against the walls of circumstance, and hoards

 Of torn desires, broken joys; records

Of all a bruised life's maimed imaginings.

 Now you are come! You tremble like a star

Poised where, behind earth's rim, the sun has set.

   Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb

 And mute, I have no tones to answer. Far

Within I kneel before you, speechless yet,

   And life ablaze with beauty, I am dumb.

From One Who Stays

How empty seems the town now you are gone!

 A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls

 Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls

Eery, distorted, as it long had shone

On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone.

 The whir of motors, stricken through with calls

 Of playing boys, floats up at intervals;

But all these noises blur to one long moan.

 What quest is worth pursuing? And how strange

That other men still go accustomed ways!

   I hate their interest in the things they do.

 A spectre-horde repeating without change

An old routine. Alone I know the days

   Are still-born, and the world stopped, lacking you.

Crepuscule du Matin

All night I wrestled with a memory

 Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought.

 The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought

Its disillusion; now I only cry

For peace, for power to forget the lie

 Which hope too long has whispered. So I sought

 The sleep which would not come, and night was fraught

With old emotions weeping silently.

I heard your voice again, and knew the things

 Which you had promised proved an empty vaunt.

I felt your clinging hands while night's broad wings

Cherished our love in darkness. From the lawn

 A sudden, quivering birdnote, like a taunt.

My arms held nothing but the empty dawn.

Aftermath

I learnt to write to you in happier days,

 And every letter was a piece I chipped

 From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped

From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays,

Its throbbing reds, I gave to earn your praise.

 To make a pavement for your feet I stripped

 My soul for you to walk upon, and slipped

Beneath your steps to soften all your ways.

 But now my letters are like blossoms pale

We strew upon a grave with hopeless tears.

 I ask no recompense, I shall not fail

Although you do not heed; the long, sad years

 Still pass, and still I scatter flowers frail,

And whisper words of love which no one hears.

The End

Throughout the echoing chambers of my brain

 I hear your words in mournful cadence toll

 Like some slow passing-bell which warns the soul

Of sundering darkness. Unrelenting, fain

To batter down resistance, fall again

 Stroke after stroke, insistent diastole,

 The bitter blows of truth, until the whole

Is hammered into fact made strangely plain.

 Where shall I look for comfort? Not to you.

  Our worlds are drawn apart, our spirit's suns

Divided, and the light of mine burnt dim.

 Now in the haunted twilight I must do

  Your will. I grasp the cup which over-runs,

And with my trembling lips I touch the rim.

The Starling

   Sterne's `Sentimental Journey'

Forever the impenetrable wall

 Of self confines my poor rebellious soul,

 I never see the towering white clouds roll

Before a sturdy wind, save through the small

Barred window of my jail. I live a thrall

 With all my outer life a clipped, square hole,

 Rectangular; a fraction of a scroll

Unwound and winding like a worsted ball.

 My thoughts are grown uneager and depressed

  Through being always mine, my fancy's wings

Are moulted and the feathers blown away.

 I weary for desires never guessed,

  For alien passions, strange imaginings,

To be some other person for a day.

Market Day

White, glittering sunlight fills the market square,

 Spotted and sprigged with shadows. Double rows

 Of bartering booths spread out their tempting shows

Of globed and golden fruit, the morning air

Smells sweet with ripeness, on the pavement there

 A wicker basket gapes and overflows

 Spilling out cool, blue plums. The market glows,

And flaunts, and clatters in its busy care.

 A stately minster at the northern side

Lifts its twin spires to the distant sky,

 Pinnacled, carved and buttressed; through the wide

Arched doorway peals an organ, suddenly --

 Crashing, triumphant in its pregnant tide,

Quenching the square in vibrant harmony.

Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina

       GEORGE  AUGUSTUS  CLOUGH

        A NATIVE OF LIVERPOOL,

  DIED SUDDENLY OF "STRANGER'S FEVER"

            NOV'R 5th 1843

                AGED 22

He died of "Stranger's Fever" when his youth

 Had scarcely melted into manhood, so

 The chiselled legend runs; a brother's woe

Laid bare for epitaph. The savage ruth

Of a sunny, bright, but alien land, uncouth

 With cruel caressing dealt a mortal blow,

 And by this summer sea where flowers grow

In tropic splendor, witness to the truth

Of ineradicable race he lies.

 The law of duty urged that he should roam,

Should sail from fog and chilly airs to skies

 Clear with deceitful welcome. He had come

With proud resolve, but still his lonely eyes

 Ached with fatigue at never seeing home.

Francis II, King of Naples

Poor foolish monarch, vacillating, vain,

 Decaying victim of a race of kings,

 Swift Destiny shook out her purple wings

And caught him in their shadow; not again

Could furtive plotting smear another stain

 Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings

 Of sacrificial fires burst their rings

And blotted out in smoke his lost domain.

Bereft of courtiers, only with his queen,

 From empty palace down to empty quay.

No challenge screamed from hostile carabine.

 A single vessel waited, shadowy;

 All night she ploughed her solitary way

Beneath the stars, and through a tranquil sea.

To John Keats

Great master! Boyish, sympathetic man!

 Whose orbed and ripened genius lightly hung

 From life's slim, twisted tendril and there swung

In crimson-sphered completeness; guardian

Of crystal portals through whose openings fan

 The spiced winds which blew when earth was young,

 Scattering wreaths of stars, as Jove once flung

A golden shower from heights cerulean.

 Crumbled before thy majesty we bow.

  Forget thy empurpled state, thy panoply

Of greatness, and be merciful and near;

 A youth who trudged the highroad we tread now

  Singing the miles behind him; so may we

Faint throbbings of thy music overhear.

B A C K