SONNETS.

Last night we heard the elements in pain Rage o’er the sanctuary where we lay enshrined, The creeping murmur of the insidious rain And unavailing anger of the wind. Yet what to us the thunder on the roof, Or the lashed windows wailing in our ears, For in prophetic peace we stand aloof And look through tempest to the sunlit years. Time and his wrathful ministers of storm Take arms against us vainly, for we know That in the soul the things to be take form, And love stands firm though all the world turn foe. Let us love on, and dream, nor be afraid, For out of dreams and love the world is made.

O terrible world, that hast such store of pain, Such dangers ambushed in thy waste of years, Such sorrows showering like the winter rain, And for men’s thirst such bitter wells of tears! Love’s chronicles of sorrow have we read, And conned his weary precedents of pain, How many longing lovers died unwed And how young passion did with beauty wane; Yet not the less we front the dangerous days Unbending and unawed as those of yore, And confidently tread the ancient ways With all of doubt behind, all hope before. One wins the quest where all the many fail, And many died that one might see the Grail.

Those morning lovers of the times of old, That first laid hands upon the wings of joy, That found earth brazen and that left it gold, Wrought at the building that no years destroy. ’Twas love that laid the bases, fixed the scope, And measured justly with his rule and line, And they, his labourers, builded with their hope, Their dreams, their wonder and their tears divine. So age by age the fabric scaled the skies With walls of silver and with towers of rose, And chambers hung with woven tapestries Figured with all his raptures, all his woes; And we within this fortress live, whereof The builder and the architect is Love.

Not the great morning with his flight of fire Or the king-eagle gazing in the sun Outflies the upward wing of my desire Or clearlier lists Love’s earliest orison. Up from the region of forgetting night Love lifts me on, and ever as I climb I watch within my widening scope of sight The long perspectives stretch of space and time. There all the lovers of to-day’s sweet earth, There all the hoarded joys of yesterday, There the young heralds of to-morrow’s mirth Raise one triumphing and accordant lay; And the song’s secret my purged ears discover, Love’s one same substance lives in every lover.

The stars are throbbing in the lucid sky With silver pulses restlessly astir, And thin-drawn wafts of vapour wander by And fade and leave no witness that they were. Of old the starry aspect gave presage Of motions stirring in the womb of time; Men read the lettering of the heavenly page And reading, shunned to fall or dared to climb. But the one planet ruling our intents Is Love that burns, a steady orb of light, Set far above the sphere of accidents And changing orbit of the hosts of night. Shall not our joy be from their joys as far As this our planet from their faithless star?

O many a morning shall we see unfold, And many a night that takes the sun away, Day’s gradual growing of the gray to gold, Night’s slow subsidence of the gold to gray! Each day that comes is as a ship in flight From the far circle of the unknown sea, That touches at our island of delight In the vast ocean of Eternity. And now their merchandise is sweet as Spring, Now salt as bitter leavings of the wave, But we will take the traffic that they bring And bless the hands that good or evil gave; For one munificent day has given us more Than all the evil merchants have in store.

Look from the cliff, look out upon the sea That, coiling round innumerable isles, Foams on the borders of infinity, Fretted with travelling storms and treacherous smiles. Our ship swings at the anchor far below, With folded sails and silence round the keel, Unwitting what strange surge her bows shall know, What shores her peering crows-nest shall reveal. Far off the islands in their locked lagoons, All surf-surrounded and inviolate, Dream under larger suns and mightier moons Than light this idle country where we wait; Let us with morning from the harbour sweep, Our pilot knows the ways of all the deep.

They say the gods are to the woodlands fled, Or deep withdrawn into the heedless sky; In solitudes and silence of the dead Lies disenthroned each slumbering deity. But I have seen in many a radiant street, Through mists of morning or of evening gold, A soundless vision borne on glancing feet, Love delicately going as of old. For he was made alone of man’s delight And follows still the crowded ways of men; Altars of others crumble in the night, His with a kiss are builded up again; And on those altars hearts instead of spice Are made an offering and a sacrifice.

Say not that beauty is an idle thing And gathered lightly as a wayside flower That on the trembling verges of the spring Knows but the sweet survival of an hour. For ’tis not so. Through dedicated days And foiled adventure of deliberate nights We lose and find and stumble in the ways That lead to the far confluence of delights. Not with the earthly eye and fleshly ear, But lifted far above mortality, We see at last the eternal hills, and hear The sighing of the universal sea; And kneeling breathless in the holy place We know immortal Beauty face to face.

Ah! cease to sing. The heavenward flight of song Limed by a mortal weakness, sinks to earth, Into the drear infinitudes of wrong And sad impossibilities of mirth. The veiled and awful night resumes anew Her territories in debate with day, The grass is tingling with the earliest dew, The last flower folded, the last bird away. And we, the trembling children of desire, Let us go too, but never to forget How the sky filled with presences of fire That even after sundown linger yet, And this my mortal music seemed as fair As incense melting in a golden air.