Part 3 — A YOUTHFUL EXPERIMENT IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS

IMPRESSIONS OF HOMER

Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Over his deep mind muses, as when o'er awe-stricken ocean Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder; Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging, Seeming to wait till, gradually wid'ning from far-off horizons, Piling the deeps up, heaping the glad-hearted surges before it, Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult. Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning; Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it, Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it, Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them, Swaying the listener's fantasy hither and thither like drift-weed.

BIRTHDAY VERSES

WRITTEN IN A CHILD'S ALBUM

'Twas sung of old in hut and hall How once a king in evil hour Hung musing o'er his castle wall, And, lost in idle dreams, let fall Into the sea his ring of power.

Then, let him sorrow as he might, And pledge his daughter and his throne To who restored the jewel bright, The broken spell would ne'er unite; The grim old ocean held its own.

Those awful powers on man that wait, On man, the beggar or the king, To hovel bare or hall of state A magic ring that masters fate With each succeeding birthday bring.

Therein are set four jewels rare: Pearl winter, summer's ruby blaze, Spring's emerald, and, than all more fair, Fall's pensive opal, doomed to bear A heart of fire bedreamed with haze.

To him the simple spell who knows The spirits of the ring to sway, Fresh power with every sunrise flows, And royal pursuivants are those That fly his mandates to obey.

But he that with a slackened will Dreams of things past or things to be, From him the charm is slipping still, And drops, ere he suspect the ill, Into the inexorable sea.

ESTRANGEMENT

The path from me to you that led, Untrodden long, with grass is grown, Mute carpet that his lieges spread Before the Prince Oblivion When he goes visiting the dead.

And who are they but who forget? You, who my coming could surmise Ere any hint of me as yet Warned other ears and other eyes, See the path blurred without regret.

But when I trace its windings sweet With saddened steps, at every spot That feels the memory in my feet, Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not, Where murmuring bees your name repeat.

PHŒBE

Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, A bird, the loneliest of its kind, Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar While all its mates are dumb and blind.

It is a wee sad-colored thing, As shy and secret as a maid, That, ere in choir the robins sing, Pipes its own name like one afraid.

It seems pain-prompted to repeat The story of some ancient ill, But Phoebe! Phoebe! sadly sweet Is all it says, and then is still.

It calls and listens. Earth and sky, Hushed by the pathos of its fate, Listen: no whisper of reply Comes from its doom-dissevered mate.

Phoebe! it calls and calls again, And Ovid, could he but have heard, Had hung a legendary pain About the memory of the bird;

A pain articulate so long, In penance of some mouldered crime Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong Down the waste solitudes of time.

Waif of the young World's wonder-hour, When gods found mortal maidens fair, And will malign was joined with power Love's kindly laws to overbear,

Like Progne, did it feel the stress And coil of the prevailing words Close round its being, and compress Man's ampler nature to a bird's?

One only memory left of all The motley crowd of vanished scenes, Hers, and vain impulse to recall By repetition what it means.

Phoebe! is all it has to say In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, Like children that have lost their way, And know their names, but nothing more.

Is it a type, since Nature's Lyre Vibrates to every note in man, Of that insatiable desire, Meant to be so since life began?

I, in strange lands at gray of dawn, Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint Through Memory's chambers deep withdrawn Renew its iterations faint.

So nigh! yet from remotest years It summons back its magic, rife With longings unappeased, and tears Drawn from the very source of life.

DAS EWIG-WEIBLICHE

How was I worthy so divine a loss, Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns? Why waste such precious wood to make my cross, Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns?

And when she came, how earned I such a gift? Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole, The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward lift, The hourly mercy, of a woman's soul?

Ah, did we know to give her all her right, What wonders even in our poor clay were done! It is not Woman leaves us to our night, But our brute earth that grovels from her sun.

Our nobler cultured fields and gracious domes We whirl too oft from her who still shines on To light in vain our caves and clefts, the homes Of night-bird instincts pained till she be gone.

Still must this body starve our souls with shade; But when Death makes us what we were before, Then shall her sunshine all our depths invade, And not a shadow stain heaven's crystal floor.

THE RECALL

Come back before the birds are flown, Before the leaves desert the tree, And, through the lonely alleys blown, Whisper their vain regrets to me Who drive before a blast more rude, The plaything of my gusty mood, In vain pursuing and pursued!

Nay, come although the boughs be bare, Though snowflakes fledge the summer's nest, And in some far Ausonian air The thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast. Come, sunshine's treasurer, and bring To doubting flowers their faith in spring, To birds and me the need to sing!

ABSENCE

Sleep is Death's image,—poets tell us so; But Absence is the bitter self of Death, And, you away, Life's lips their red forego, Parched in an air unfreshened by your breath.

Light of those eyes that made the light of mine, Where shine you? On what happier fields and flowers? Heaven's lamps renew their lustre less divine, But only serve to count my darkened hours.

If with your presence went your image too, That brain-born ghost my path would never cross Which meets me now where'er I once met you, Then vanishes, to multiply my loss.

MONNA LISA

She gave me all that woman can, Nor her soul's nunnery forego, A confidence that man to man Without remorse can never show.

Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers!

THE OPTIMIST

Turbid from London's noise and smoke, Here I find air and quiet too; Air filtered through the beech and oak, Quiet by nothing harsher broke Than wood-dove's meditative coo.

The Truce of God is here; the breeze Sighs as men sigh relieved from care, Or tilts as lightly in the trees As might a robin: all is ease, With pledge of ampler ease to spare.

Time, leaning on his scythe, forgets To turn the hour-glass in his hand, And all life's petty cares and frets, Its teasing hopes and weak regrets, Are still as that oblivious sand.

Repose fills all the generous space Of undulant plain; the rook and crow Hush; 'tis as if a silent grace, By Nature murmured, calmed the face Of Heaven above and Earth below.

From past and future toils I rest, One Sabbath pacifies my year; I am the halcyon, this my nest; And all is safely for the best While the World's there and I am here.

So I turn tory for the nonce, And think the radical a bore, Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce, That what was good for people once Must be as good forevermore.

Sun, sink no deeper down the sky; Earth, never change this summer mood; Breeze, loiter thus forever by, Stir the dead leaf or let it lie; Since I am happy, all is good.

ON BURNING SOME OLD LETTERS

With what odorous woods and spices Spared for royal sacrifices, With what costly gums seld-seen, Hoarded to embalm a queen, With what frankincense and myrrh, Burn these precious parts of her, Full of life and light and sweetness As a summer day's completeness, Joy of sun and song of bird Running wild in every word, Full of all the superhuman Grace and winsomeness of woman?

O'er these leaves her wrist has slid, Thrilled with veins where fire is hid 'Neath the skin's pellucid veil, Like the opal's passion pale; This her breath has sweetened; this Still seems trembling with the kiss She half-ventured on my name, Brow and cheek and throat aflame; Over all caressing lies Sunshine left there by her eyes; From them all an effluence rare With her nearness fills the air, Till the murmur I half-hear Of her light feet drawing near.

Rarest woods were coarse and rough, Sweetest spice not sweet enough, Too impure all earthly fire For this sacred funeral-pyre; These rich relics must suffice For their own dear sacrifice.

Seek we first an altar fit For such victims laid on it: It shall be this slab brought home In old happy days from Rome,— Lazuli, once blest to line Dian's inmost cell and shrine. Gently now I lay them there. Pure as Dian's forehead bare, Yet suffused with warmer hue, Such as only Latmos knew.

Fire I gather from the sun In a virgin lens; 'tis done! Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue, As her moods were shining through, Of the moment's impulse born,— Moods of sweetness, playful scorn, Half defiance, half surrender, More than cruel, more than tender, Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade, Gracious doublings of a maid Infinite in guileless art, Playing hide-seek with her heart.

On the altar now, alas, There they lie a crinkling mass, Writhing still, as if with grief Went the life from every leaf; Then (heart-breaking palimpsest!) Vanishing ere wholly guessed, Suddenly some lines flash back, Traced in lightning on the black, And confess, till now denied, All the fire they strove to hide. What they told me, sacred trust, Stays to glorify my dust, There to burn through dust and damp Like a mage's deathless lamp, While an atom of this frame Lasts to feed the dainty flame.

All is ashes now, but they In my soul are laid away, And their radiance round me hovers Soft as moonlight over lovers, Shutting her and me alone In dream-Edens of our own; First of lovers to invent Love, and teach men what it meant.

THE PROTEST

I could not bear to see those eyes On all with wasteful largess shine, And that delight of welcome rise Like sunshine strained through amber wine, But that a glow from deeper skies, From conscious fountains more divine, Is (is it?) mine.

Be beautiful to all mankind, As Nature fashioned thee to be; 'Twould anger me did all not find The sweet perfection that's in thee: Yet keep one charm of charms behind,— Nay, thou'rt so rich, keep two or three For (is it?) me!

THE PETITION

Oh, tell me less or tell me more, Soft eyes with mystery at the core, That always seem to melt my own Frankly as pansies fully grown, Yet waver still 'tween no and yes!

So swift to cavil and deny, Then parley with concessions shy, Dear eyes, that make their youth be mine And through my inmost shadows shine, Oh, tell me more or tell me less!

FACT OR FANCY?

In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, My neighbor's clock behind the wall Record the day's increasing debt, And Cuckoo! Cuckoo! faintly call.

Our senses run in deepening grooves, Thrown out of which they lose their tact, And consciousness with effort moves From habit past to present fact.

So, in the country waked to-day, I hear, unwitting of the change, A cuckoo's throb from far away Begin to strike, nor think it strange.

The sound creates its wonted frame: My bed at home, the songster hid Behind the wainscoting,—all came As long association bid.

Then, half aroused, ere yet Sleep's mist From the mind's uplands furl away, To the familiar sound I list, Disputed for by Night and Day.

I count to learn how late it is, Until, arrived at thirty-four, I question, 'What strange world is this Whose lavish hours would make me poor?'

Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Still on it went, With hints of mockery in its tone; How could such hoards of time be spent By one poor mortal's wit alone?

I have it! Grant, ye kindly Powers, I from this spot may never stir, If only these uncounted hours May pass, and seem too short, with Her!

But who She is, her form and face, These to the world of dream belong; She moves through fancy's visioned space, Unbodied, like the cuckoo's song.

AGRO-DOLCE

One kiss from all others prevents me, And sets all my pulses astir, And burns on my lips and torments me: 'Tis the kiss that I fain would give her.

One kiss for all others requites me, Although it is never to be, And sweetens my dreams and invites me: 'Tis the kiss that she dare not give me.

Ah, could it he mine, it were sweeter Than honey bees garner in dream, Though its bliss on my lips were fleeter Than a swallow's dip to the stream.

And yet, thus denied, it can never In the prose of life vanish away; O'er my lips it must hover forever, The sunshine and shade of my day.

THE BROKEN TRYST

Walking alone where we walked together, When June was breezy and blue, I watch in the gray autumnal weather The leaves fall inconstant as you.

If a dead leaf startle behind me, I think 'tis your garment's hem, And, oh, where no memory could find me, Might I whirl away with them!

CASA SIN ALMA

RECUERDO DE MADRID

Silencioso por la puerta Voy de su casa desierta Do siempre feliz entré, Y la encuentro en vano abierta Cual la boca de una muerta Despues que el alma se fué.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

FOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES

'What means this glory round our feet,' The Magi mused, 'more bright than morn?' And voices chanted clear and sweet, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'

'What means that star,' the Shepherds said, 'That brightens through the rocky glen?' And angels, answering overhead, Sang, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'

'Tis eighteen hundred years and more Since those sweet oracles were dumb; We wait for Him, like them of yore; Alas, He seems so slow to come!

But it was said, in words of gold No time or sorrow e'er shall dim, That little children might be bold In perfect trust to come to Him.

All round about our feet shall shine A light like that the wise men saw, If we our loving wills incline To that sweet Life which is the Law.

So shall we learn to understand The simple faith of shepherds then, And, clasping kindly hand in hand, Sing, 'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'

And they who do their souls no wrong, But keep at eve the faith of morn, Shall daily hear the angel-song, 'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'

MY PORTRAIT GALLERY

Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy, From stainless quarries of deep-buried days. There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, Your faces glow in more than mortal youth, Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly, The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden, Now for the first time seen in flawless truth. Ah, never master that drew mortal breath Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death, Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden! Thou paintest that which struggled here below Half understood, or understood for woe, And with a sweet forewarning Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning.

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA

I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss. Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell, Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fell The dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss, For nothing now can rob my life of this,— That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well. Us, undivided when man's vengeance came, God's half-forgives that doth not here divide; And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame, To me 'twere summer, we being side by side: This granted, I God's mercy will not blame, For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.

SONNET

SCOTTISH BORDER

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills Whose heather-purple slopes, in glory rolled, Flush all my thought with momentary gold, What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills? Here 'tis enchanted ground the peasant tills, Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold, And memory's glamour makes new sights seem old, As when our life some vanished dream fulfils. Yet not to thee belong these painless tears, Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes, From far beyond the waters and the years, Horizons mute that wait their poet rise; The stream before me fades and disappears, And in the Charles the western splendor dies.

SONNET

ON BEING ASKED FOR AN AUTOGRAPH IN VENICE

Amid these fragments of heroic days When thought met deed with mutual passion's leap, There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise. They had far other estimate of praise Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep In art and action, and whose memories keep Their height like stars above our misty ways: In this grave presence to record my name Something within me hangs the head and shrinks. Dull were the soul without some joy in fame; Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks, Like him who, in the desert's awful frame, Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx.

THE DANCING BEAR

Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, And win their dearest crowns beyond the goal Of their own conscious purpose; they control With gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy's play, And so our action. On my walk to-day, A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll, When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll, And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away. 'Merci, Mossieu!' the astonished bear-ward cried, Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slave Of partial memory, seeing at his side A bear immortal. The glad dole I gave Was none of mine; poor Heine o'er the wide Atlantic welter stretched it from his grave.

THE MAPLE

The Maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing, Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray; But when the Autumn southward turns away, Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring. And every leaf, intensely blossoming, Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day. O Youth unprescient, were it only so With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate's coldest snow, You carve dear names upon the faithful rind, Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!

NIGHTWATCHES

While the slow clock, as they were miser's gold, Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time, The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime By Death committed, daily grown more bold. Once more the list of all my wrongs is told, And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; For each new loss redoubles all the old. This morn 'twas May; the blossoms were astir With southern wind; but now the boughs are bent With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze. How much of all my past is dumb with her, And of my future, too, for with her went Half of that world I ever cared to please!

DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES

Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow,— Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years, Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, A life remote from every sordid woe, And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow. What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears, When, the day's swan, she swam along the cheers Of the Alcalá, five happy months ago? The guns were shouting Io Hymen then That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom; The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind, Knowing what life is, what our human-kind?

PRISON OF CERVANTES

Seat of all woes? Though Nature's firm decree The narrowing soul with narrowing dungeon bind, Yet was his free of motion as the wind, And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, in fee. In charmed communion with his dual mind He wandered Spain, himself both knight and hind, Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be. His humor wise could see life's long deceit, Man's baffled aims, nor therefore both despise; His knightly nature could ill fortune greet Like an old friend. Whose ever such kind eyes That pierced so deep, such scope, save his whose feet By Avon ceased 'neath the same April's skies?

TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN

So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away They seem to fall, the horns of Oberon Blow their faint Hunt's-up from the good-time gone; Or, on a morning of long-withered May, Larks tinkle unseen o'er Claudian arches gray, That Romeward crawl from Dreamland; and anon My fancy flings her cloak of Darkness on, To vanish from the dungeon of To-day. In happier times and scenes I seem to be, And, as her fingers flutter o'er the strings, The days return when I was young as she, And my fledged thoughts began to feel their wings With all Heaven's blue before them: Memory Or Music is it such enchantment sings?

THE EYE'S TREASURY

Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown In largess on my tall paternal trees, Thou with false hope or fear didst never tease His heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flown From him whose life no fairer boon hath known Than that what pleased him earliest still should please: And who hath incomes safe from chance as these, Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws; This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws, Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright!

PESSIMOPTIMISM

Ye little think what toil it was to build A world of men imperfect even as this, Where we conceive of Good by what we miss, Of ill by that wherewith best days are filled; A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss, Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled. Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone, Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves, To see wit's want eterned in paint or stone, And wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print.

THE BRAKES

What countless years and wealth of brain were spent To bring us hither from our caves and huts, And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn ruts Of faith and habit, by whose deep indent Prudence may guide if genius be not lent, Genius, not always happy when it shuts Its ears against the plodder's ifs and buts, Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the event. The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flame Consume morn's misty threshold, are exact As bankers' clerks, and all this star-poised frame, One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt; This world were doomed, should Dulness fail, to tame Wit's feathered heels in the stern stocks of fact.

A FOREBODING

What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day, And make the hours that danced with Time away Drag their funereal steps with muffled head? Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red, From thee the violet steals its breath in May, From thee draw life all things that grow not gray, And by thy force the happy stars are sped. Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring, Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know, And grasses brighten round her feet to cling; Nay, and this hope delights all nature so That the dumb turf I tread on seems to sing.