Part 3 — LAST POEMS

HOW I CONSULTED THE ORACLE OF THE GOLDFISHES

What know we of the world immense Beyond the narrow ring of sense? What should we know, who lounge about The house we dwell in, nor find out, Masked by a wall, the secret cell Where the soul's priests in hiding dwell? The winding stair that steals aloof To chapel-mysteries 'neath the roof?

It lies about us, yet as far From sense sequestered as a star 10 New launched its wake of fire to trace In secrecies of unprobed space, Whose beacon's lightning-pinioned spears Might earthward haste a thousand years Nor reach it. So remote seems this World undiscovered, yet it is A neighbor near and dumb as death, So near, we seem to feel the breath Of its hushed habitants as they Pass us unchallenged, night and day. 20

Never could mortal ear nor eye By sound or sign suspect them nigh, Yet why may not some subtler sense Than those poor two give evidence? Transfuse the ferment of their being Into our own, past hearing, seeing, As men, if once attempered so, Far off each other's thought can know? As horses with an instant thrill Measure their rider's strength of will? 30 Comes not to all some glimpse that brings Strange sense of sense-escaping things? Wraiths some transfigured nerve divines? Approaches, premonitions, signs, Voices of Ariel that die out In the dim No Man's Land of Doubt?

Are these Night's dusky birds? Are these Phantasmas of the silences Outer or inner?—rude heirlooms From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40 Who in unhuman Nature saw Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, And with those night-fears brute and blind Peopled the chaos of their mind, Which, in ungovernable hours, Still make their bestial lair in ours?

Were they, or were they not? Yes; no; Uncalled they come, unbid they go, And leave us fumbling in a doubt Whether within us or without 50 The spell of this illusion be That witches us to hear and see As in a twi-life what it will, And hath such wonder-working skill That what we deemed most solid-wrought Turns a mere figment of our thought, Which when we grasp at in despair Our fingers find vain semblance there, For Psyche seeks a corner-stone Firmer than aught to matter known. 60

Is it illusion? Dream-stuff? Show Made of the wish to have it so? 'Twere something, even though this were all: So the poor prisoner, on his wall Long gazing, from the chance designs Of crack, mould, weather-stain, refines New and new pictures without cease, Landscape, or saint, or altar-piece: But these are Fancy's common brood Hatched in the nest of solitude; 70 This is Dame Wish's hourly trade, By our rude sires a goddess made. Could longing, though its heart broke, give Trances in which we chiefly live? Moments that darken all beside, Tearfully radiant as a bride? Beckonings of bright escape, of wings Purchased with loss of baser things? Blithe truancies from all control Of Hylë, outings of the soul? 80

The worm, by trustful instinct led, Draws from its womb a slender thread, And drops, confiding that the breeze Will waft it to unpastured trees: So the brain spins itself, and so Swings boldly off in hope to blow Across some tree of knowledge, fair With fruitage new, none else shall share: Sated with wavering in the Void, It backward climbs, so best employed, 90 And, where no proof is nor can be, Seeks refuge with Analogy; Truth's soft half-sister, she may tell Where lurks, seld-sought, the other's well, With metaphysic midges sore, My Thought seeks comfort at her door, And, at her feet a suppliant cast, Evokes a spectre of the past. Not such as shook the knees of Saul, But winsome, golden-gay withal,— 100 Two fishes in a globe of glass, That pass, and waver, and re-pass, And lighten that way, and then this, Silent as meditation is. With a half-humorous smile I see In this their aimless industry, These errands nowhere and returns Grave as a pair of funeral urns, This ever-seek and never-find, A mocking image of my mind. 110 But not for this I bade you climb Up from the darkening deeps of time: Help me to tame these wild day-mares That sudden on me unawares. Fish, do your duty, as did they Of the Black Island far away In life's safe places,—far as you From all that now I see or do. You come, embodied flames, as when I knew you first, nor yet knew men; 120 Your gold renews my golden days, Your splendor all my loss repays. 'Tis more than sixty years ago Since first I watched your to-and-fro; Two generations come and gone From silence to oblivion, With all their noisy strife and stress Lulled in the grave's forgivingness, While you unquenchably survive Immortal, almost more alive. 130 I watched you then a curious boy, Who in your beauty found full joy, And, by no problem-debts distrest, Sate at life's board a welcome guest. You were my sister's pets, not mine; But Property's dividing line No hint of dispossession drew On any map my simplesse knew; O golden age, not yet dethroned! What made me happy, that I owned; 140 You were my wonders, you my Lars, In darkling days my sun and stars, And over you entranced I hung, Too young to know that I was young. Gazing with still unsated bliss, My fancies took some shape like this: 'I have my world, and so have you, A tiny universe for two, A bubble by the artist blown, Scarcely more fragile than our own, 150 Where you have all a whale could wish, Happy as Eden's primal fish. Manna is dropt you thrice a day From some kind heaven not far away, And still you snatch its softening crumbs, Nor, more than we, think whence it comes. No toil seems yours but to explore Your cloistered realm from shore to shore; Sometimes you trace its limits round, Sometimes its limpid depths you sound, 160 Or hover motionless midway, Like gold-red clouds at set of day; Erelong you whirl with sudden whim Off to your globe's most distant rim, Where, greatened by the watery lens, Methinks no dragon of the fens Flashed huger scales against the sky, Roused by Sir Bevis or Sir Guy, And the one eye that meets my view, Lidless and strangely largening, too, 170 Like that of conscience in the dark, Seems to make me its single mark. What a benignant lot is yours That have an own All-out-of-doors, No words to spell, no sums to do, No Nepos and no parlyvoo! How happy you without a thought Of such cross things as Must and Ought,— I too the happiest of boys To see and share your golden joys!' 180

So thought the child, in simpler words, Of you his finny flocks and herds; Now, an old man, I bid you rise To the fine sight behind the eyes, And, lo, you float and flash again In the dark cistern of my brain. But o'er your visioned flames I brood With other mien, in other mood; You are no longer there to please, But to stir argument, and tease 190 My thought with all the ghostly shapes From which no moody man escapes. Diminished creature, I no more Find Fairyland beside my door, But for each moment's pleasure pay With the quart d'heure of Rabelais!

I watch you in your crystal sphere, And wonder if you see and hear Those shapes and sounds that stir the wide Conjecture of the world outside; 200 In your pent lives, as we in ours, Have you surmises dim of powers, Of presences obscurely shown, Of lives a riddle to your own, Just on the senses' outer verge, Where sense-nerves into soul-nerves merge, Where we conspire our own deceit Confederate in deft Fancy's feat, And the fooled brain befools the eyes With pageants woven of its own lies? 210 But are they lies? Why more than those Phantoms that startle your repose, Half seen, half heard, then flit away, And leave you your prose-bounded day?

The things ye see as shadows I Know to be substance; tell me why My visions, like those haunting you, May not be as substantial too. Alas, who ever answer heard From fish, and dream-fish too? Absurd! 220 Your consciousness I half divine, But you are wholly deaf to mine. Go, I dismiss you; ye have done All that ye could; our silk is spun: Dive back into the deep of dreams, Where what is real is what, seems! Yet I shall fancy till my grave Your lives to mine a lesson gave; If lesson none, an image, then, Impeaching self-conceit in men 230 Who put their confidence alone In what they call the Seen and Known. How seen? How known? As through your glass Our wavering apparitions pass Perplexingly, then subtly wrought To some quite other thing by thought. Here shall my resolution be: The shadow of the mystery Is haply wholesomer for eyes That cheat us to be overwise, 240 And I am happy in my right To love God's darkness as His light.

TURNER'S OLD TÉMÉRAIRE

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE CHURCH

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things; The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy wings, And, patient in their triple rank, The thunders crouched about thy flank, Their black lips silent with the doom of kings.

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy pines, And swell thy vans with breath of great designs; Long-wildered pilgrims of the main By thee relaid their course again, Whose prow was guided by celestial signs.

How didst thou trample on tumultuous seas, Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched at ease, Let the bull-fronted surges glide Caressingly along thy side, Like glad hounds leaping by the huntsman's knees!

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod, In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod, While from their touch a fulgor ran Through plank and spar, from man to man, Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God.

Now a black demon, belching fire and steam, Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled dream, And all thy desecrated bulk Must landlocked lie, a helpless hulk, To gather weeds in the regardless stream.

Woe's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air To this! Better, the flame-cross still aflare, Shot-shattered to have met thy doom Where thy last lightnings cheered the gloom, Than here be safe in dangerless despair.

Thy drooping symbol to the flag-staff clings, Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings, Thy thunders now but birthdays greet, Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet, Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind brings.

Thou a mere hospital, where human wrecks, Like winter-flies, crawl, those renowned decks, Ne'er trodden save by captive foes, And wonted sternly to impose God's will and thine on bowed imperial necks!

Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame, A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name. And with commissioned talons wrench From thy supplanter's grimy clench His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke and flame?

This shall the pleased eyes of our children see; For this the stars of God long even as we; Earth listens for his wings; the Fates Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits, And the tired waves of Thought's insurgent sea.

ST. MICHAEL THE WEIGHER

Stood the tall Archangel weighing All man's dreaming, doing, saying, All the failure and the pain, All the triumph and the gain, In the unimagined years, Full of hopes, more full of tears, Since old Adam's hopeless eyes Backward searched for Paradise, And, instead, the flame-blade saw Of inexorable Law.

Waking, I beheld him there, With his fire-gold, flickering hair, In his blinding armor stand, And the scales were in his hand: Mighty were they, and full well They could poise both heaven and hell. 'Angel,' asked I humbly then, 'Weighest thou the souls of men? That thine office is, I know.' 'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so; But I weigh the hope of Man Since the power of choice began, In the world, of good or ill.' Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place All the glories of our race, Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast, Gems, the lightning of the East, Kublai's sceptre, Cæsar's sword, Many a poet's golden word, Many a skill of science, vain To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw Things regardless, outcast, few, Martyr-ash, arena sand, Of St Francis' cord a strand, Beechen cups of men whose need Fasted that the poor might feed, Disillusions and despairs Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs, Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran Seeing then the beam divine Swiftly on this hand decline, While Earth's splendor and renown Mounted light as thistle-down.

A VALENTINE

Let others wonder what fair face Upon their path shall shine, And, fancying half, half hoping, trace Some maiden shape of tenderest grace To be their Valentine.

Let other hearts with tremor sweet One secret wish enshrine That Fate may lead their happy feet Fair Julia in the lane to meet To be their Valentine.

But I, far happier, am secure; I know the eyes benign, The face more beautiful and pure Than fancy's fairest portraiture That mark my Valentine.

More than when first I singled, thee, This only prayer is mine,— That, in the years I yet shall see. As, darling, in the past, thou'll be My happy Valentine.

AN APRIL BIRTHDAY—AT SEA

On this wild waste, where never blossom came, Save the white wind-flower to the billow's cap, Or those pale disks of momentary flame, Loose petals dropped from Dian's careless lap, What far fetched influence all my fancy fills, With singing birds and dancing daffodils?

Why, 'tis her day whom jocund April brought, And who brings April with her in her eyes; It is her vision lights my lonely thought, Even as a rose that opes its hushed surprise In sick men's chambers, with its glowing breath Plants Summer at the glacier edge of Death.

Gray sky, sea gray as mossy stones on graves;— Anon comes April in her jollity; And dancing down the bleak vales 'tween the waves, Makes them green glades for all her flowers and me. The gulls turn thrushes, charmed are sea and sky By magic of my thought, and know not why.

Ah, but I know, for never April's shine, Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her flowers Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden fine As she in various mood, on whom the powers Of happiest stars in fair conjunction smiled To bless the birth, of April's darling child.

LOVE AND THOUGHT

What hath Love with Thought to do? Still at variance are the two. Love is sudden, Love is rash, Love is like the levin flash, Comes as swift, as swiftly goes, And his mark as surely knows.

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow, Weighing long 'tween yes and no; When dear Love is dead and gone, Thought comes creeping in anon, And, in his deserted nest, Sits to hold the crowner's quest.

Since we love, what need to think? Happiness stands on a brink Whence too easy 'tis to fall Whither's no return at all; Have a care, half-hearted lover, Thought would only push her over!

THE NOBLER LOVER

If he be a nobler lover, take him! You in you I seek, and not myself; Love with men's what women choose to make him, Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf: All I am or can, your beauty gave it, Lifting me a moment nigh to you, And my bit of heaven, I fain would save it— Mine I thought it was, I never knew.

What you take of me is yours to serve you, All I give, you gave to me before; Let him win you! If I but deserve you, I keep all you grant to him and more: You shall make me dare what others dare not, You shall keep my nature pure as snow, And a light from you that others share not Shall transfigure me where'er I go.

Let me be your thrall! However lowly Be the bondsman's service I can do, Loyalty shall make it high and holy; Naught can be unworthy, done for you. Men shall say, 'A lover of this fashion Such an icy mistress well beseems.' Women say, 'Could we deserve such passion, We might be the marvel that he dreams.'

ON HEARING A SONATA OF BEETHOVEN'S PLAYED IN THE NEXT ROOM

Unseen Musician, thou art sure to please, For those same notes in happier days I heard Poured by dear hands that long have never stirred Yet now again for me delight the keys: Ah me, to strong illusions such as these What are Life's solid things? The walls that gird Our senses, lo, a casual scent or word Levels, and it is the soul that hears and sees! Play on, dear girl, and many be the years Ere some grayhaired survivor sit like me And, for thy largess pay a meed of tears Unto another who, beyond the sea Of Time and Change, perhaps not sadly hears A music in this verse undreamed by thee!

VERSES

INTENDED TO GO WITH A POSSET DISH TO MY DEAR LITTLE GODDAUGHTER, 1882

In good old times, which means, you know, The time men wasted long ago, And we must blame our brains or mood If that we squander seems less good, In those blest days when wish was act And fancy dreamed itself to fact, Godfathers used to fill with guineas The cups they gave their pickaninnies, Performing functions at the chrism Not mentioned in the Catechism. No millioner, poor I fill up With wishes my more modest cup, Though had I Amalthea's horn It should be hers the newly born. Nay, shudder not! I should bestow it So brimming full she couldn't blow it. Wishes aren't horses: true, but still There are worse roadsters than goodwill. And so I wish my darling health, And just to round my couplet, wealth, With faith enough to bridge the chasm 'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm, And bear her o'er life's current vext From this world to a better next, Where the full glow of God puts out Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt. I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise, What more can godfather devise? But since there's room for countless wishes In these old-fashioned posset dishes, I'll wish her from my plenteous store Of those commodities two more, Her father's wit, veined through and through With tenderness that Watts (but whew! Celia's aflame, I mean no stricture On his Sir Josh-surpassing picture)— I wish her next, and 'tis the soul Of all I've dropt into the bowl, Her mother's beauty—nay, but two So fair at once would never do. Then let her but the half possess, Troy was besieged ten years for less. Now if there's any truth in Darwin, And we from what was, all we are win, I simply wish the child to be A sample of Heredity, Enjoying to the full extent Life's best, the Unearned Increment Which Fate her Godfather to flout Gave him in legacies of gout. Thus, then, the cup is duly filled; Walk steady, dear, lest all be spilled.

ON A BUST OF GENERAL GRANT

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws That sway this universe, of none withstood, Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, Or what man deems his evil or his good; And when the Fates ally them with a cause That wallows in the sea-trough and seems lost, Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, tost, Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three strands They twist the cable shall the world hold fast To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock of the Past.

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was he Who helped us in our need; the eternal law That who can saddle Opportunity Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw May minish him in eyes that closely see, Was verified in him: what need we say Of one who made success where others failed, Who, with no light save that of common day, Struck hard, and still struck on till Fortune quailed, But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate van Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly man.

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair With the beguiling light of vanished days; This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, Roughhewn, and scornful of æsthetic phrase; Nothing is here for fancy, naught for dreams, The Present's hard uncompromising light Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and seams, Yet vindicates some pristine natural right O'ertopping that hereditary grace Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race.

So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so, Not in the purple born, to those they led Nearer for that and costlier to the foe, New moulders of old forms, by nature bred The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to show, Let but the ploughshare of portentous times Strike deep enough to reach them where they lie; Despair and danger are their fostering climes, And their best sun bursts from a stormy sky: He was our man of men, nor would abate The utmost due manhood could claim of fate.

Nothing Ideal, a plain-people's man At the first glance, a more deliberate ken Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ran Such blood as quelled the dragon In his den, Made harmless fields, and better worlds began: He came grim-silent, saw and did the deed That was to do; in his master-grip Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed Such sure conviction as that close-clamped lip; He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew He had done more than any simplest man might do. Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steel Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil sway; The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to feel The world's base coin, and glozing knaves made prey Of him and of the entrusted Commonweal; So Truth insists and will not be denied. We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame, As if in his last battle he had died Victor for us and spotless of all blame, Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk, One of those still plain men that do the world's rough work.