Part IV WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART

368Because the starry lightnings and the life

Of all this Universe which is our Home

Weave round each soul a web of mortal strife,

Hard is its speech to hear and slow to come,

As to one waking from a lonely dream

The friendly taper dwindles to a star,

So to each man men’s faces distant seem—

Their dearest words sound faint and very far.

Daily we pass, like shadows in dreamland,

And careless answer in the old curt tone,

Till Death breaks suddenly between us, and

With a great cry we know we have not known.

Ah! surely, to have known and to behold

The beauty that within the soul abides,

For this Earth blossoms and the skies unfold,

For this the Moon makes music in the tides;

For this Man rises from his mould of dust,

Ranges his life and looks upon the Sun,

For this he turns and with adventurous trust

Forsakes this world and seeks a fairer one.

369

Who shall Command the Heart

Who shall command the heart, that wondrous Thing,

That wild love-creature, roaming the wilderness,

That none can tame?

Roaming the world, devouring with eyes of flame, eyes of desire,

All forms of heavenly Beauty?

Say, little heart, that beatest pulsest here beneath the ribs,

Who chained thee in this body?—what Titan ages agone?—

Who muzzled thee to drive this crank machine,

Thou wanderer of the woods, thou crimson leopard,

No better than a turnspit?

Nay, but thy ’prenticeship long enough surely thou hast served;

The time has come, and thy full age and strength;

The cage-bars hold no longer, and the body-machine breaks down;

But thou art young and beautiful as ever.

370Wild pard who lovest thus to hunt with Man,

I bid thee loose.

Say, wilt thou come with me, and shall we ride,

Companions of the Chase, the universe over?

From Caverns Dark

Behold, a hundred and a thousand lives,

And thousands more, in caverns dark within thee.

No secret wish that flits along thy fancy,

But lo! far back in some ancestral form

It dwelt, had eyes and feet, and ranged its life;

No thought, no dream, but long-dead men and women

Live in the quiet murmur of its wings

Far down, far down, and move about thy brain

And look on the Sun again.

Ah, silence! hearest not the whispering

In darkness, of those countless multitudes?—

That maiden fair who languished out her soul,

Long generations back, and spake no word;

That father whose young daughter to the grave

Bore down his heart with hers; that sturdy soldier

Who hacked and hewed in fervent piety

All who opposed him; that untiring mother

Who wore her life out for her children; aye,

And all the throngs that passed thro’ city streets,

Centuries gone, ’neath overhanging gables,

Or toiled on rustic leas—the cleric youth

371Who dreamed romance in manuscript and missal,

Gurth herding pigs and whittling bow and arrows

In beechen forests; haughty baron, and serf,

And vain and timid and night-mare-ridden souls,

And trustful, proud, ambitious—all are there!

Hearest the whispering of multitudes?—

All dead—yet all are there.

And ages farther, born of the time before man walked the earth,

Wild forms behold! and roaming spirits of animals,

Hungering, thirsting, loving—beautiful beings

That saw and wondered worshiping each other,

And found their mates and fought their enemies,

And sang and danced and hoarded, skulked and scolded,

In passion’s every mood; yet never once

Turned eyes of consciousness upon themselves.

Unwieldy beasts that bellowed through the tree-ferns for their young,

And flying dragons and the roaring lion,

And bats and moths just glimmering thro’ the dark

Like faintest memories—aye, all are there!

Hearest the whispering of multitudes?—

All dead—yet all are there.

And in the ages yet to come the same:

A hundred and a thousand lives within thee!

And thousands more—which yet shall walk the Earth.

Dreams, faint desires, scarce conscious of themselves,

372Shall take swift shape and people the lands with forms

Of thy conceiving, strange similitudes

Even of thyself.

And, hungering thirsting loving, beautiful beings

Sprung from thy heart and brain and sexual part,

Half animal, half angel,

Shall see and wonder worshiping each other;

And find their mates and front their enemies

Onward through long processions of the Suns,

By shores of other continents than now,

In unimagined haunts and cities fair,

To where they fade from view and take at last

Their flight from Earth to homes beyond the Earth.

This mighty Life—past present and to come—

Enfolds thee. This thou art. This thou upgatherest;

And this Thou, tiny creature, pourest forth—

Where now thou standest—

Lord of the world, from caverns dark within thee.

The Lake of Beauty

Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the world, and the immense the boundless treasures that it holds in store.

All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your Nature so specially fits you for—that or the counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you. It will surely come to you.

373Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no difference.

Therefore do not begin that game at all.

Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this direction and in that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated in the desert.

But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them still, so still;

And let them become clear, so clear—so limpid, so mirror-like;

At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in peaceful beauty,

And the antelope shall descend to drink, and to gaze at his reflected image, and the lion to quench his thirst,

And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his own likeness in you.

The Wandering Psyche

You, who un-united to yourself roam about the world,

Seeking some person or some thing to which to be united—

Seeking to ease that way the pain at your heart—

Deceive not yourself, deceive not others.

For united to that which you really are you are indeed beautiful, united to Yourself you are strong, united to yourself you are already in the hearts of those you love;

374But disunited you are none of these things

And how shall men desire a mere shell, or how will you offer them a husk saying, There is fruit within, when there is no fruit—but only vacancy?

And these are the Gods that seek ever to come in the forms of men—the ageless immortal Gods—to make of earth that Paradise by their presence;

But while you bar the way and weave your own little plans and purposes like a tangle of cobwebs across the inner door,

How shall they make their entrance and habitation with you?

How shall you indeed know what it is to be Yourself?

I hear thy call, Mysterious Being

I hear thy call, Mysterious Being;

In the dead of night, when the stars float grey overhead, and the Northern lights flicker faintly,

In the blazing noon when the sunlight rims with a luminous ring the wide horizon,

Flooding, enfolding all—

I hear thy call.

In the hollow depths below—I hear thee, Mysterious Being.

[I am swept out, as the tide to the call of the Moon is swept out from the shores it knows—to wonderful other shores;

375I am carried away, away, in a swoon to the ends of Creation.]

Deep, deep is Thy heart. As I sink in it, lo! there is nothing, nothing which is not held by thy love.

On the surface there is rejection and discrimination, but in the depth lo! everything is held by it.

Swift, swift is Thy flight. In an instant now here, now there—it is all the same to Thee.

As the lambent fire of sex within the body, as the Northern lights with luminous fingers over the sky—

So Thou through all creation.

As the great Sun blazing down at noon on the Himálayan forests, and bathing each leaf the same for hundreds, thousands, of miles—

So Thou through all creation.

[Flutter on little leaves—ye that break the light into a million beautiful forms!

Flutter on little worlds, that float in the æther of space!

Flutter on little hearts, whom the great Heart feeds and encloses!]

And thou, O stranger who dwellest perchance in yonder star, or globe that circles dark about yon star,

Or thou, dear lover that on this earth of ours holdest my heart in thine,

Can Death, I say, or Space or Time or Worlds avail in the end against us?

376Take me, great Life—O take me, long-delaying,

Unloose these chains, unbind these clogs and fetters;

I hear thy call—so strange—Mysterious Being,

I hear thy call—I come.

So thin a Veil

So thin a veil divides

Us from such joy, past words.

Walking in daily life—the business of the hour, each detail seen to;

Yet carried, rapt away, on what sweet floods of other Being:

Swift streams of music flowing, light far back through all Creation shining,

Loved faces looking—

Ah! from the true, the mortal self

So thin a veil divides!

The open Secret

Sweet secret of the open air—

That waits so long, and always there, unheeded.

Something uncaught, so free, so calm large confident—

The floating breeze, the far hills and broad sky,

And every little bird and tiny fly or flower

At home in the great whole, nor feeling lost at all or forsaken,

377Save man—slight man!

He, Cain-like from the calm eyes of the Angels,

In houses hiding, in huge gas-lighted offices and dens, in ponderous churches,

Beset with darkness, cowers;

And like some hunted criminal torments his brain

For fresh means of escape, continually;

Builds thicker higher walls, ramparts of stone and gold, piles flesh and skins of slaughtered beasts,

’Twixt him and that he fears;

Fevers himself with plans, works harder and harder,

And wanders far and farther from the goal.

And still the great World waits by the door as ever,

The great World stretching endlessly on every hand, in deep on deep of fathomless content—

Where sing the Morning-stars in joy together,

And all things are at home.

The Songs of the Birds, who Hears

The songs of the birds, who hears? in the high trees calling,

All the long noon high calling?—

In the meadows below them the wind runs over the grass, the shadows lengthen.

Who sees, who hears?—

378In the wonderful height of heaven the clouds are flocked like sails,

Slow moving, floating, rounding from deep to deep.

The light swims slowly, changing over the world,

The distant peaks are touched; and the hills lie silent.

Who sees, who hears?

The fox-gloves tall out of the earth arise;

They stand up out of green shadow;

Out of night, out of seeds dim in the earth arising,

They look forth on the blue and green wilderness, and are changed as it changes—

Changed out of all recognition.

Who sees, who hears?—

For all things melt and run—if you only watch them long enough!

And you cannot emprison anything in one shape—it will surely give you the slip.

Nothing in essence dies, and nothing in mortal form remains. All is in movement, long calculated, long determined on, with regard to another kind of Form.

The diamond that you wear in your hair, the gold piece you hold so solid in your hand—they are no more solid than a swarm of bees is solid, of which the units are in constant motion to and fro, some leaving and some joining the swarm.

They have other business than yours to attend to—they have other spheres beside the market and the drawing-room—and they will surely give you the slip.

379The rocks flow and the mountain shapes flow,

And the forests swim over the lands like cloud-shadows;

The lines of the seeming-everlasting sea are changed,

And its waves beat on unmapped phantom shores:

‘Not here, not here!’

All creatures fade from the embraces of their names,

[And you and I, slow, slowly disentangling,]

The delicate hairbells quivering in the light,

The gorse, the heather, and the fox-gloves tall,

The meadows, and the river, rolling, fade:

Fade from their likenesses: fade crying ‘Follow! Follow, for ever follow!’

Who hears, who sees?

Who hears the word of Nature?

The word of her eternal breathing, whispered wherever one shall listen,

The word of the birds in the high trees calling,

Of the wind running over the grass,

The word of the glad prisoners, the tender footless creatures, the plants of the earth,

Rising too, bright-eyed, out of their momentary masks?

‘Not here! not here!’

But over all the world, shadowing, shadowing:

The dream! the vast and ever present miracle of all time!

The long-forgotten never-forgotten goal!

Over your own heart, out of its secretest depths:

380In crystalline beauty!

Out of all creatures, cloud and mountain and river:

Exhaling, ascending!

From plant and bird and man and planet up-pouring:

Thousand-formed, One,

The ever-present only present reality, source of all illusion,

The Self, the disclosure, the transfiguration of each creature,

And goal of its agelong pilgrimage.

A Child at a Window

I sat in the dark, at night, outside a little cottage door,

And the light from within streamed through the casement and broke in spray upon the climbing ivy-leaves.

And presently, overhead, a chamber-window opened, and a child peeped silently forth,

And looked up into the vast night and at the all-trembling stars.

And at the same moment, in a far far globe wheeling unseen round a certain star, a child-face peeped forth from its habitation, and looked out into the night, even in the direction of the first child;

And in other globes other faces looked forth;

But they all shrank back and trembled, seeing nothing but vacancy, and saying, How dark, how vast, how awful is the Night!

381Yet all the while it was the great Day of the universe into which they looked,

Lit by a million suns.

Night

Darkness o’erhead, around,

A curtain closing down upon the earth,

Drowning the woodland tree-tops.

Stretching of hands, straining of eyes—to feel, to see,

To catch the faint faint glamor here and there amid the branches,

The wavering dubious forms and presences.

No floor, no sky, no sound. Only a soft warm moisture in the nostrils,

Folding and brooding all the land in silence.

April

O April, month of Nymphs and Fauns and Cupids,

Month of the Sungod’s kisses, Earth’s sweet passion,

Of fanciful winds and showers;

Apollo, glorious over hill and dale

Ethereally striding; grasses springing

Rapt to his feet, buds bursting, flowers out-breathing

Their liberated hearts in love to him.

[The little black-cap garrulous on the willow

382Perching so prim, the crested chaffinch warbling,

And primrose and celandine, anemone and daisy,

Starring the tender herb which lambs already nibble.]

Month of all-gathering warmth,

Of breathless moments, hotter and hotter growing—

Smiles turned to fire, kisses to fierce earnest—

Of sultry swoons, pauses, and strange suspense

(Clouds and dæmonic thunder through the blue vault threateningly rolling);

Then the delirious up-break—the great fountains of the deep, in Sex,

Loosened to pouring falling rushing waters;

Shafts of wild light; and Sky and Earth in one another’s arms

Melted, and all of Heaven spent in streams of love

Towards the Loved one.

Lucifer

Seest thou me pass—swift with my angels out of heaven propelled—

All stars and lightning in a fluid train?

Seest thou me pass, I say?

His brows, the Lord’s, in heaven are glorious;

His eyes give light there, fashioning and beholding rapt all forms divine;

His mighty loins are plunged in night and shadow.

383And I—

I am the lightning of the generations through them,

Seed of the worlds to be.

He is the Lord, in moment of creation, fixed everlasting,

The Universe entire—or little flower starred in ecstasy;

And I, orgasmic, fierce, His swift deliverance.

[Seest thou me pass—all stars and lightning in a fluid train?

From heaven down into chaos seest thou me pass, I say?]

The Ocean of Sex

To hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean of Sex, within one,

With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, the beloved genitals,

Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the eyes of all human beings,

Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures,

How wonderful!

Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor travels across it.

As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond someone moves, then in the bowels of the water also there is a mirrored movement,

So on the edge of this Ocean.

384The glory of the human form, even faintly outlined under the trees or by the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences;

(Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly to be overpassed;)

Till may-be to the touch, to the approach, to the incantation of the eyes of one,

It burst forth, uncontrollable.

O wonderful Ocean of Sex,

Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human forms contained (if they be truly contained) within each person,

Mirror of the very universe,

Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body,

Ocean-river flowing ever on through the great trunk and branches of Humanity,

From which after all the individual only springs like a leaf-bud!

Ocean which we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we do contain thee), and yet who containest us!

Sometimes when I feel and know thee within, and identify myself with thee,

Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of Heaven and Eternity.

385

As the Greeks Dreamed

On the loose hot sands at foot of the cliffs—

The cloudless blue burning above in furious mid day heats—

As I bask,

Bathing my brown-tanned body in the warm dry clean grit, or cooling it in the sea;

And the sea creeps up, spacious, in curves along the shore,

With fringes of tawny lacework, and green and blue, deepening into the loveliest violet,

And Aphrodite herself out of this marvellously beautiful robe, this liquid cincture, swiftly gliding, for a moment stands,

(Her feet on the watery plain, her head in the great height against the Sun,)

Vast, glorious, white-armed, visible and invisible;

As the sea stretches miles and miles, and the grey chalk cliffs and capes, fainter and fainter, run forward into it, looking on,

And the fisherman slumbers in the shade of his boat, impervious,

And fainter still and more slumbrous on the horizon, in haze and silence the far ships go by;

Through it all, meseems, I see

How the human body bathed in the sheen and wet, steeped in sun and air,

Moving near and nude among the elements,

386Matches somehow and interprets the whole of Nature;

How from shoulder to foot of mountain and man alike the lines of grace run on;

How, as the Greeks dreamed, in rock and rill divinest human forms lie shrined, or in the wild woods lurk embosomed;

And how at length and only in the loving union and uncoveredness of Man with Nature may either know or understand the other.

In a Scotch-Fir Wood

In a Scotch-fir wood—

Where the great rays of the low sun glanced through the trees, in open beauty under the shaggy green,

Lighting stem behind stem in lofty strength interminable;

And the wild sweet air ran lightly by, with warm scent of pine-needles—

I heard a voice saying:

O Man, when wilt thou come fit comrade of such trees, fair mate and crown of such a scene?

Poor pigmy, botched in clothes, feet coffined in boots, braced, stitched and starched,

Too feeble, alas! too mean, undignified, to be endured—

Go hence, and in the centuries come again!

387

The Dream goes by

The dream goes by, touches men’s hearts, and floats and fades again—

Far on the hills away from this nightmare of modern cheap-jack life:

The finished free Society.

Finished and done with so much that clogs to-day the weary spirit, weary body;

Finished and done with all the old cumbersome apparatus of Law and Authority, with the endless meanness of ‘business’ and money-making, with the silly paraphernalia of distinction and respectability, with the terrible struggle of each against all, and the trampling of the weak underfoot by the strong;

Done with the endless joyless labors for the bread that perisheth, for clothing which keeps not the heart warm, for possessions which only weigh their owners to the ground;

With envies, greeds, jealousies—loads and burdens of life too great to be borne—Sisyphus toils that bring no nearer to the goal.

The grown man hand in hand with his little girl, walking the woodland path,

With brown uncovered bodies, both of them, so glad, content, unconscious;

And all the wealth and beauty of the world is theirs;

The Sun shining on their limbs; and in their minds the long results of human culture.

388The simple dresses of the public thoroughfare, used or not used with quiet sense of fitness;

The simple diet so easily won, so gladly shared;

The stores of human science, human knowledge, accessible to all—for all to use.

And Death no longer terrible, but full

Of poignant strange Expansion; Labor too

(Which is our daily death

And resurrection in the thing created)

An ever-abiding joy.—

A life so near to Nature, all at one with bird and plant and beast and swimming thing,

So near to all its fellows in sweet love—

In joy unbounded and undying love.

The dream goes by, touches and stirs men’s hearts, And floats, and waits, again.

Surely the Time will come

Surely the time will come when humanity will refuse to be diseased any longer.

This list of filthy and hideous complaints,—too filthy to be calmly spoken of: these small-poxes, typhoids, choleras, cancers, tumors, tubercles,—dropsy, diabetes, uræmia—all preventible, and easy enough to prevent;

And yet—incredible though it seems—men and women still tolerating and condoning them;

Men and women who pride themselves on their culture, 389refinement, punctiliousness of nose, and so forth—and who would turn up the latter at the sight of a pig and a few fowls in an Irishman’s cabin—actually tolerating in their own persons the perpetual presence of the most disgusting organisms;

And other men and women, through sheer ignorance, believing such a state of affairs to be necessary.

Surely the time will come when to be diseased, to spread disease around one, or transmit it to descendants,

To live willingly in the conditions that produce disease, or not strenuously to fight against such conditions,

Will be looked on as a crime—both of the individual and of society.

For since a little self-control, since a clean and elementary diet, pure water, openness of the body to sun and air, a share of honest work, and some degree of mental peace and largesse, are the perfectly simple conditions of health, and are, or ought to be, accessible to everybody—

To neglect these is sheer treason;

While to surrender them out of fear (should one stick to them) of being robbed of other things far less precious, is to be a fool, as well as a coward.

Surely the time will come when people, seeing how obvious and simple is the problem of human life,

Will refuse (even at the bidding of the Parson, the Policeman, Mrs. Grundy, and the commercial Slave-drivers and Tax-collectors) to live the lives of idiots;

Will refuse to do other work than that which they like, and which they feel to be really needed;

Will cease to believe that their own well-being can only 390be maintained at the cost of the Fear, Torment, and Slaughter of the animals, and the Hanging and Imprisonment of men;

And will waste the hours no more in elaborately preparing food which, when prepared, does but rot the vitals of those who consume it, and in schemes of money-making and ‘business’ which but destroy their souls.

The time will come surely when we shall cease to burden our limbs and becloud our skins with garments, the major part of which are useless, unless as a breeding ground of ill-health, deformity, and indecency;

Shall cease to build walls and fortifications of property and possession each round ourselves as against the others—deliberately confining so and crucifying the great god of love within us—

And shall at last liberate our minds and bodies from that funny old lazar-house of the centuries, of which none but ourselves, after all, are the warders and gaolers.

The One Foundation

Only that people can thrive that loves its land and swears to make it beautiful;

For the land (the Demos) is the foundation-element of human life, and if the public relation to that is false, all else is of need false and inverted.

How can a flower deny its own roots, or a tree the soil from which it springs?

And how can a people stand firmly planted under the sun, except as mediators between Earth and Heaven—

391To dedicate the gracious fruits of the ground to all divine uses?

Think of it—

To grow rich and beautiful crops for human food, and flowers and fruits to rejoice the eye and heart,

What a privilege!

Yet this to-day is a burden and a degradation, thrust upon the poor and despised.

The Scotch farm-lad strides across the ploughed leas, scattering with princely hand the bread of thousands;

The Italian peasant ties his vines to the trellised canes with twigs of broom, and the spring sunlight glances and twinkles on him from the cistern just below;

The Danish boy drives the herds home from the low-lying pasture-lands in the sweet clear air of evening;

And the world which is built upon the labor of these disowns them, and they themselves sink earthward worn out with unheeded toil;

While the Politician and the Merchant who flourish on lies and fill the people’s ears and mouths with chaff are publicly seated in the highest places.

And the Earth rolls on, with all her burden of love unheeded,

And sadness falls on the peoples divorced from the breasts that fain would suckle them.

Think of it—

392To place a nation squarely on its own base, spreading out its people far and wide in honored usefulness upon the soil,

Building up all uses and capacities of the land into the life of the masses,

So that the riches of the Earth may go first and foremost to those who produce them, and so onward into the whole structure of society;

To render the life of the people clean and gracious, vital from base to summit, and self-determining,

Dependent simply on itself and not on cliques and coteries of speculators anywhere; and springing thus inevitably up into wild free forms of love and fellowship;

To make the wild places of the lands sacred, keeping the streams pure, and planting fresh blooms along their edges; to preserve the air crystalline and without taint—tempting the sun to shine where before was gloom;

To adorn the woodlands and the high tops with new trees and shrubs and winged and footed things,

Sparing all living creatures as far as possible rather than destroying them;

What a pleasure!

To do all this in singleness of heart were indeed to open up riches for mankind of which few dream—

So much, so infinitely more than what is now called Wealth.

But to-day the lands are slimed and fenced over with denials; and those who would cannot get to them, and those who own have no joy in them—except such joy as a dog may have in a fodderam.

393And so, even to-day, while riches untold are wrung from the Earth, it is rather as a robbery that they are produced—without gladness or gratitude, but in grief and sadness and lying and greed and despair and unbelief.

Say, say, what would those riches be, if the Earth and her love were free?

But all waits. And the thunderclouds brood in silence over the lands, meditating the unlipped words of destiny; and the sky rains light upon the myriad leaves and grass, searching inevitably into every minutest thing;

And Ignorance breeds Fear, and Fear breeds Greed, and Greed that Wealth whose converse is Poverty—and these again breed Strife and Fear in endless circles;

But Experience (which in time to all must come) breeds Sympathy, and Sympathy Understanding, and Understanding Love;

And Love leads Helpfulness by the hand, to open the gates of Power unlimited—even for that new race which now appears.

And the blue sea waits below the girdle of the sun-fringed shores, and lips and laps through the millenniums, syllabling the unformed words which man alone can pronounce entire;

And the sunlight wraps the globe of the Earth, and dances and twinkles in the æther of the human heart,

Which is indeed a great and boundless ocean, in which all things float suspended.

394

A Mightier than Mammon

At last, after centuries, when the tension and strain of the old society can go no further, and ruin on every side seems impending,

Behold! behind and beneath it all, in dim prefigurement, yet clear and not to be mistaken—the Outline and Draft of a new order.

When Machinery has made affluence possible for everybody, and yet the scramble for Wealth is keener than ever, the line between rich and poor as sharp;

When locomotion and intercommunication practically make the whole World one, and yet the Nations stand round armed tooth and claw, and glaring at each other;

When it is recognised that culture and manual labor are not only compatible but necessary in combination with each other, and yet society remains divided into brutalised workers and cultivated nincompoops;

When men and women everywhere are hungering for community of life, to pass freely, to love and be loved; and yet they remain frozen up, starched, starved, coffined, each in their own little cells of propriety, respectability, dirty property, and dismal poverty;

When the cells are alive and in pain, because the body is lifeless;

When thousands of pulpits preach religion, and there is not a word of religion in it;

395When the great web and framework of the old order, Law, is collapsing with its own weight—myriads and myriads of statutes, overlapping, overlying, precedents, principles, instances, tumbled buried one behind another in inextricable confusion—and yet never before in the history of the world was there such a rigid brute-pharisaical apparatus of police, military and prisons to enforce the ‘heads or tails’ of the Courts, and the cant of the ‘superior’ classes;

When the Millionaire appears on the scene—a new type of human being—as the Dinosaur may have appeared ages ago upon the Earth, gigantic, lumbering, fateful and dangerous; yet destined perhaps finally to break down the ancient jungle of ‘Government,’ and the barriers of the old Nationalities; and to be a link in the evolution of the future;

When Art is divorced from Life, Science from human feeling, Marriage from Love, Education from Affection;

When to work freely at one’s own chosen trade and to interchange freely the products with others is what almost everybody really desires—and is obviously the indicated social form of the future; and yet when nearly everyone is a wage-slave or works at work which he detests!

When the longing for the life of Nature, for the Air and the Sun, for the freedom of the Earth and the waters, for liberation, wildness, spontaneity, is upon folk as perhaps it never was before; and yet they are mewed up more than ever in houses clothes, ‘business,’ and general asphyxia and futility;

When similarly the longing for freedom of Sex is upon 396people, for purity of love, unashamed, unshackled, creating its own law—and yet love is everywhere shamed and shackled and impure;

When the Electric Tension in every direction, owing to this separation of polarities, is becoming so great that the luminous spark, the lightning, the vital flash, has become inevitable;

Then at last, not to be mistaken, the outline and draft of the new creature appears—

The soul that soon shall knit the growing limbs glides in.

A new conception of Life—yet ancient as creation (since indeed, properly speaking, there is no other)—

The life of the Heart, the life of friendship and attachment:

Society forming freely everywhere round this—knit together by this, rather than by the old Cash-nexus:

The love and pride of race, of clan, of family, the free sacrifice of life for these, the commemoration of these in grand works and deeds;

The dedication of Humanity, the wider embrace that passes all barriers of class and race;

And the innumerable personal affection in all its forms—

These, and a proud beautiful sane utterance and enduring expression of them, first; and the other things to follow.

The love of men for each other—so tender, heroic, constant;

That has come all down the ages, in every clime, in every nation,

397Always so true, so well assured of itself, overleaping barriers of age, of rank, of distance,

Flag of the camp of Freedom;

The love of women for each other—so rapt, intense, so confiding-close, so burning-passionate,

To unheard deeds of sacrifice, of daring and devotion, prompting;

And (not less) the love of men for women, and of women for men—on a newer greater scale than it has hitherto been conceived;

Grand, free and equal—gracious yet ever incommensurable—

The soul of Comradeship glides in.

The young heir goes to inspect the works of one of his tenants;

[Once more the king’s son loves the shepherd lad;]

In the shed the fireman is shovelling coal into the boiler furnace. He is neither specially handsome nor specially intelligent, yet when he turns, from under his dark lids rimmed with coal-dust shoots something so human, so loving near, it makes the other tremble.

They only speak a few words, and lo! underneath all the differences of class and speech, of muscle and manhood, their souls are knit together.

The Cinghalese cooly comes on board a merchant vessel at Colombo, every day for a week or more, to do some bits of cleaning.

398He is a sweet-natured bright intelligent fellow of 21 or so. One of the engineers is decently kind and friendly with him—gives him a knife and one or two little presents;

But the Cinghalese gives his very soul to the engineer; and worships his white jacket and overalls as though they were the shining garment of a god.

He cannot rest; but implores to be taken on the voyage; and weeps bitterly when he learns that the ship must sail without him.

[Ah! weep not, brown-bodied youth wandering lonely by the surf-ridden shore—as you watch your white friend’s vessel gliding into the offing, under the sun and the sun-fringed clouds;

Out, far out to sea, with your friend whom you will never see again;

Weep not so heart-brokenly, for even your tears, gentle boy, poured now upon the barren sand are the prophecy of amity that shall be one day between all the races of the earth.]

And here are two women, both doctors and mature in their profession, whose souls are knit in a curiously deep affection.

They share a practice in a large town, and live in the same house together, exchanging all that they command, of life and affection and experience;

And this continues for twenty years—till the death of the elder one—after which the other ceases not to visit her grave, twice every week, till the time of her own last illness.

399And this is of a poor lad born in the slums, who with aching lonely heart once walked the streets of London.

Many spoke to him because he was fair—asked him to come and have a drink, and so forth; but still it was no satisfaction to him; for they did not give him that which he needed.

Then one day he saw a face in which love dwelt. It was a man twice his own age, captain of a sailing vessel—a large free man, well acquainted with the world, capable and kindly.

And the moment the lad saw him his heart was given to him, and he could not rest but must needs follow the man up and down—yet daring not to speak to him, and the other knowing nothing of it all.

And this continued—till the time came for the man to go another voyage. Then he disappeared; and the youth, still not knowing who or whence he was, fell into worse misery and loneliness than ever, for a whole year.

Till at last one day—or one evening rather—to his great joy he saw his friend going into a public house. It was in a little street off Mile-end Road. He slipped in and sat beside him.

And the man spoke to him, and was kind, but nothing more. And presently, as the hour was getting late, got up and said Goodnight, and went out at the door.

And the lad, suddenly seized with a panic fear that he might never see his friend again, hurried after him, and when they came to a quiet spot, ran up and seized him by the 400hand, and hardly knowing what he was doing fell on his knees on the pavement, and held him.

And the man at first thought this was a ruse or a mere conspiracy, but when he lifted the lad and looked in his face he understood, for he saw love written there. And he straightway loved and received him.

And this is of a boy who sat in school.

The masters talked about Greek accidence and quadratic equations, and the boys talked about lobs and byes and bases and goals; but of that which was nearest to his heart no one said a word.

It was laughed at—or left unspoken.

Yet when the boy stood near some of his comrades in the cricket-field or sat next them in school, he stocked and stammered, because of some winged glorious thing which stood or sat between him and them.

And again the laughter came, because he had forgotten what he was doing; and he shrank into himself, and the walls round him grew, so that he was pent and lonely like a prisoner.

Till one day to him weeping, Love full-grown, all-glorious, pure, unashamed, unshackled, came like a god into his little cell, and swore to break the barriers.

And when the boy through his tears asked him how he would do that, Love answered not, but turning drew with his finger on the walls of the cell.

And as he drew, lo! beneath his finger sprang all forms of beauty, an endless host—outlines and colors of all that is, transfigured;

401And, as he drew, the cell-walls widened—a new world rose—and folk came trooping in to gaze,

And the barriers had vanished.

Wonderful, beautiful, the Soul that knits the Body’s life passed in,

And the barriers had vanished.

Everywhere under the surface the streamers shoot, auroral,

Strands and tissues of a new life forming.

Already the monstrous accumulations of private wealth seem useless and a burden—

At best to be absorbed in new formations.

The young woman from an upper class of society builds up her girls’ club; the young man organises his boys from the slums. Untiring is their care; but something more, more personal and close, than philanthropy inspires them.

The little guilds of workers are animated by a new spirit; to have pleasure in good work seems something worth living for; the home-colonists turn their backs on civilisation if only they may realise a friendly life with Nature and each other; the girls in the dress-making shop stand in a new relation to their mistress, and work so gladly for her and with her; the employer of labor begins to doubt whether he gets any satisfaction by grinding the faces of his men—a new idea is germinating in his mind; even to the landlord it occurs that to create a glad and free village life upon his estate would be more pleasure than to shoot over it.

402As to the millionaire, having spent his life in scheming for Wealth, he cannot but continue in the web which himself has woven; yet is heartily sick of it, and longs in a kind of vague way for something simple and unembarrassed. He is pestered to death by sharks, parasites, poor relations, politicians, adventurers, lawyers, company-promoters, begging letters and business correspondence, society functions, charitable and philanthropic schemes, town and country houses, stewards, bailiffs, flunkeys, and the care of endless possessions; and sees that to cast all these aside and devote his wealth if possible to the realisation of a grand life for the mass-peoples of the Earth were indeed his best hope and happiness.

The graduate from Cambridge is a warm-hearted impulsive little woman, genuine and human to the core. Having escaped from high and dry home-circles, she found curiously the answer of her heart in a wage-worker of an East London workshop—a calm broad-browed woman, strong, clearheaded, somewhat sad in expression, and a bit of a leader among her trade-mates.

Having got into touch with each other, the two came at last to live together; and immediately on doing so found themselves a focus and centre of activities—like opposite poles of a battery through which when in contact the electricity streams.

So the news and interests of the two classes of society streamed through them. Through them too, folk from either side, especially women, came into touch with each other, and discovered a common cause and sympathy amid many surface differences.

403Thus by a thousand needs beside their own compelled, was their love assured, their little home made sacred.

Everywhere a new motive of life dawns.

With the liberation of Love, and with it of Sex, with the sense that these are things—and the joy of them—not to be dreaded or barred, but to be made use of, wisely and freely, as a man makes use of his most honored possession,

Comes a new gladness:

The liberation of a Motive greater than Money,

And the only motive perhaps that can finally take precedence of Money.

Men and women mate freely again;

The sacredness of sex in freedom is taught in schools and churches; the ulcer of prostitution slowly disappears; the wasted love that flows in a morbid stream through the streets, or desiccates in grand mansions, runs once more into the channels of free devotion and life.

One by one, here and there, in silence perhaps, unremarked, or perhaps the centre of a little cyclone of excited abuse, a couple, offstanding, exempt, determined, assert their right to the highest and best that life can give.

[Fear not, gentle girl, the sneers of the womenkind, nor thou, young man, the pointed fingers of who can credit not the truth of love.]

To lead their own lives, irrespective of all criticism and custom, and graft into the great Heart of the world and each other.

404Wild as a raven, and a free lover of Nature, is the Irish squire’s daughter. She hates all the conventions and proprieties with an instinctive hatred—she hardly knows why. She is loved by a man whom the family consider beneath them. He is not without his faults certainly. But when her parents turn fiercely on her and him, she determines at all costs to stick to him. Her sister, the dove, approved and admired by everybody, marries a young Earl just come into the title; and she on the same day goes off with her friend, and is forbidden to cross, and in fact never crosses, the threshold of her home again.

The newly-made wife, wedded to an army officer, finds almost immediately after marriage that their temperaments are wholly incompatible. Instead of sacrificing herself to ‘duty’ or propriety, she has the good sense to insist on leaving him: on leaving him his freedom, and herself the same, as far as may be, for the future.

And this is of a young man, a man about town and the clubs, and well up in the finesse of society, but of real affectionate nature—who was truly bored with his own pursuits and surroundings, and so for him too the barriers vanished.

He fell in with a girl of quite rustic birth and life, but bright-looking, and of sturdy almost stubborn common-sense and wit; and was charmed—partly by her contrast to all that he was accustomed to.

Ultimately—and after some obstinate and exasperating refusals on her part—he made her his wife; much to the 405disgust of his relatives—whose only consolation was to find he did not intend to bring her among them!

She in fact felt (and he knew) that she could not cope with ‘society’ ways and customs, and her true instinct was to spare herself the vulgarity.

They took a little house near London, and lived quietly and happily, allowing any of their friends, who had good sense enough, to come and see them—she meanwhile learning much about the great world, and he learning much which he had never known before about practical work and the needs of the people.

Then, later on, when he came into his estate, and they went down into the country, instead of living in the ancestral wigwam they agreed it better to build a decent-sized cottage in the grounds for their own use;

And the Hall and outbuildings they fitted up as Workshops; and gradually getting the village lads and girls together found them employment at various small trades and crafts;

Till with the output of good and artistic work, their market became assured, and the affair grew rapidly in extent and solidity.

And the larger rooms they adorned in every way for library and reading purposes, and music and entertainments of all kinds; and the grounds were partly for recreation and partly for the cultivation of produce;

So that before long the place became much known and sought after, and the employees (who all had a share in the concern) were mighty proud of it.

406Certainly the old county society felt somewhat shocked and uncomfortable, and even the tenant-farmers thought things were being carried too far;

But the young couple stuck to their programme, and as years went on, and after various obstacles and opposition lived down, their lives became the centre of the love and affection of the whole neighborhood, great and small, but especially the small;

And they achieved a real distinction, and the finest kind of aristocracy.

407

O little sister Heart, without thy big brother the rude Brain what wouldst thou do?

So I see thee sitting in thy solitary chamber, poring over a figure in a cameo—

So yearning lost desirous, faint forgetful,

Failing almost thy daily service of the body.

Then comes thy brother and snatches thee by the hand, saying, “Come out here into the world:

See all these wonderful things, and all there is to do;”

And talks so eloquent, so persuasively,

Soon thou art busy with him and his affairs, and the great world outside there in the sun;

Till presently he rests or sleeps awhile—and thou returning

Gazest again on the cameo in thy chamber.

408

Forms Eternal as the Mountains

So, when for an instant my friends (and I myself) appeared like insubstantial forms whirled to and fro in the world, now jostled against each other, now carried apart—the sport of the winds and the waves, and puppets moved by the tangled threads of chance:

All at once the heavens opened, and I beheld, magnificent, serene—

Like mountains in the morning towering over the earth, changeless, or changing only as the mountains change,

[And Time and all the years were but a mist which rolled against them,

Hiding, revealing, here an outline, there an outline,

Here a ledge of blooming flowers, there a black and lowering crag]—

That other world where the Sun shines for ever,

Those other Forms that move not from their place.

Spending the Night Alone

To lie all night beside the loved one—how lovely!

To hold in one’s arms something so precious, so beautiful,

Dear head and hair and lips and limbs that shrine eternity,

Through scent and sense and breath and touch and love—

Forgetting all but this one—all but this one.

409And then again to spend the night alone, to resume oneself—

To sail out in the silent watches over the sleeping world, and drink of the intoxication of space,

Calm, self-centred, to the great first One united;

Over-looking the wide sleeping-grounds of Time—forms of the past, the future—comrades innumerable,

Lovers possible, all safely eternally embosomed;

Kissing them lightly on the lips, the forehead,

Leaving them sleeping,

Spending the night alone.

O Joy Divine of Friends

O joy divine of friends!

To hold within the circle of one’s arms

More than the universe holds:

So sweet, so rare, so precious beyond words,

The god so tenderly mortal!

Not kisses only or embraces,

Nor the sweet pain and passion of the flesh alone;

But more, far more,

To feel (ah joy!) the creature deep within

Touch on its mate, unite, and lie entranced

There, ages down, and ages long, in light,

Suffused, divine—where all these other pleasures

Fade but to symbols of that perfect union!

410

O Child of Uranus

O child of Uranus, wanderer down all times,

Darkling, from farthest ages of the Earth the same

Strange tender figure, full of grace and pity,

Yet outcast and misunderstood of men—

Thy Woman-soul within a Man’s form dwelling,

[Was Adam perchance like this, ere Eve from his side was drawn?]

So gentle, gracious, dignified, complete,

With man’s strength to perform, and pride to suffer without sign,

And feminine sensitiveness to the last fibre of being;

Strange twice-born, having entrance to both worlds—

Loved, loved by either sex,

And free of all their lore!

I see thee where down all of Time thou comest;

And women break their alabaster caskets, kiss and anoint thy feet, and bless the womb that bare thee,

While in thy bosom with thee, lip to lip,

Thy younger comrade lies.

Lord of the love which rules this changing world,

Passing all partial loves, this one complete—the Mother love and sex-emotion blended—

I see thee where for centuries thou hast walked,

Lonely, the world of men,

411Saving, redeeming, drawing all to thee,

Yet outcast, slandered, pointed of the mob,

Misjudged and crucified.

Dear Son of heaven—long suffering wanderer through the wildernesses of civilisation—

The day draws nigh when from these mists of ages

Thy form in glory clad shall reappear.

One at a Time

A million faces, loves, bodies, lives—a million souls,

Pouring down Time—

As in a dream I see, and know my own.

All nations, classes, trades, ranks, temperaments,

[The soldier’s cap, the felon’s crop, the bishop’s mitre,

Under the eyelids of the peasant woman, beneath the burnous of the Arab chieftain,]

A million souls, yet from the rest at once distinguished—by the first glance revealed—

I see, and know my own.

[Nay through the ages, loved ones, true to you,

Inseparable at heart I still remain,

Nor doubt you for an instant, nor myself.]

But here, to-day, may-be of all One only

The hour, the strict Eternity of Time,

Presents—and I accept.

412May-be the least, unworthiest as the world would say,

Yet even so sufficient—for blest the hour

Which brings what, else, Eternity would miss!

Another day the worthiest may claim me;

To-day we two alone will be the world:

And Love, the Lord of all, shall dwell between us.

The Dead Comrade

There among the woods, after the battle returning,

In a little open spot—how well I remember it—

Where the ground was red with the blood of my lover, my dead comrade,

[Him whom to save I would have died so gladly, O so gladly,

Whom I could not at any time bear to see suffer even a little hurt,

So tenderly we loved, so tenderly,]

There on the stained red ground, in the midst of the clotted precious blood, not even yet dry, stood a small yellow flower—

The little Cow-wheat they call it, with its slender yellow blossoms in pairs, and its faint-tinged lips.

And now in the woods each year—in the silent beautiful woods, so calm, so sweet—though the same flowers spring by hundreds—

Not a word do they utter of that awful scene, not a word of all that carnage,

413Of the splintered trees, the blood-smeared corpses, the devilish noises and the sights and smells,

Or of the livid face and faint-blue lips of him I loved as never another I could love.

O how can you grow so careless, little flowers, and yet continue ages to grow under the trees the same—

And all the light gone out of the world for me?

Each year when summer comes and July suns,

To the woods I must go like one drawn by a fatal dread and fascination,

To see the sight I most abhor to see—

The patch of blood, and the unharmed flower in the midst,

And faint in death the lips I love so well.

Philoläus to Diocles

How often at dusk, dear friend, when thou art absent,

Sitting alone I wonder of what thou doest,

And dream, and wait of thee.

All the sweet noons and moons we have spent together;

All the glad interchange of laughter and love,

And thoughts, so grave, or fanciful:

What can compare with these, or what surpass them?

All the unbroken faith and steadfast reliance—nigh twenty years twining the roots of life far down;

And not a mistrustful hour between us—or moment of anger:

414What can surpass all this, or what compare?

Could riches or fame?

Or if the Thebans honor me for their law-giver,

Or thou, Diocles, in Olympic fields art victor beloved and crowned,

What are these things to that?

And still thou growest upon me, as a mountain,

Seen from another mountain-summit, rises

Clearer, more grand, more beautiful than ever;

And still within thine eyes, and ever plainer,

I see my own soul sleeping.

Say, did not Love, the Olympian blacksmith, find us,

Æons ago, in heaven,

And weld our souls together before all worlds?

II.

When thou art far, and the days go by without thee,

Strangely I suffer.

Perhaps even so in winter suffer the plants and the trees, when the Sun withdraws his life-ray;

Thin runs the blood in my limbs, sucked out of the arteries;

The heart shrinks closed and painful—I lose command and vigor;

At times like these, methinks, I too have strayed from my body,

Afar, in pursuit of thee, my sun and my savior.

415

III.

Thou art so beautiful to me, sweet friend,

Years bring no shadow between us;

Always I praise the very ground beneath thy feet,

That leads thee toward me,

And give my unbelieving hands free leave to hold thee,

For still to assure myself that thou art there

Is my first need.

Love, that entwined our souls before all worlds,

Binds the great orbs of heaven too in their courses,

But by no bond more lasting.

IV.

And sweeter far to suffer is it, dear one, being sometimes absent,

Than (if indeed ’twere possible) to feel the opposite pain

Of too much nearness, and love dying so

Down to mere slackness.

Now, as it is, the harp is firmly strung;

A tender tension animates the strings;

And every thought of Thee, and all the winds which blow along the world,

Wake a sweet áccord underneath the din,

And harmonize life’s wilderness for me.

416

V.

Therefore I say, stay, comrade, lover mine,

Nor wander far from me while life remains,

But let us rather, and if it may be, hand in hand,

Pass to that last strange change, therein perhaps to know each other

Nearer even than now.

VI.

Indeed, thou art so deep within my heart,

I fear not Death. And though I die, and fail,

Falling through stupors, senselessness, oblivion,

Down to the roots of being; still, thou art there.

I shall but sleep as I have slept before,

So oft, in dreamless peace, close-linked with thee.

Hafiz to the Cup-bearer

Dear Son, that out of the crowded footways of Shiráz,

With hesitant step emerging,

Camest and laid thy life down at my feet,

Faint and ashamed, like one by some divine wine vanquished:

I take thy gift, so gracious and sparkling clear,

Thy naïve offering, as of a simple Nature-child,

Wondering, like one who sees a rose in winter blooming, or cypress ’mid a wilderness of rocks;

417Or finds among the marl and clay beneath his feet

A ruby fair embedded—and stops and takes it.

[The Earth, so dead and gross, and yet to points of finest light

Still working in the silence of her unseen chambers!

And thou, great common People, slavish still and brute and ignorant, in alley and tavern,

Yet in thy rugged mass fair hearts of finest glow

Infallibly condensing!]

Come, son (since thou hast said it), out of all Shiráz

Háfiz salutes thee comrade. Let us go

A spell of life along the road together.

In the Stone-floored Workshop

There in the stone-floored workshop in the middle of a great dirty city—the windows half made up with dust—

Three men, astraddle on their horsings, and over their grinding wheels bending.

The drum that brings the power from the engine-room pounds and thumps, the belting slaps and crackles, whizz go the wheels so steady in their sockets, and the streams of sparks fly rustling.

All is so old-fashioned, perhaps much as it was four or five centuries ago;

418The old stone trows half full of water, in which the wheels run; the puddles, the mud, the wheelswarf spattered and crusting the walls and even the clothes of the grinders with yellow dirt;

The rude wooden bearings for the axles, soused with water when they get too hot; the drawing-up stones, emery wheels, polishers, glazers;

The little wheels, made out of fragments of larger ones, for hollow grinding, and (more modern) the fan for drawing and expelling the dust.

There astraddle, in their rough clothes, with clogs on their feet, and faces yellow-splashed, hour by hour bending over, the men sit—

With careful grasp of one hand and pressure of the other, holding the blades to the stone—the pads of their finger-tips worn through to the very quick where they now and then and unavoidably touch it in its swift career.

Very careful and responsible is the work—the least slip may cause an accident.

A man comes in from the hardening shop, puts down a bundle of rough-shaped blades, and goes out again.

And still the heads sway rhythmically from side to side as eye and hand follow their work across the wheel.

Very careful is the testing and examining of a new stone and the fitting it on its axle: a single flaw and in the great speed it will fly, bringing danger to all around it.

Now and then one pauses and takes a swipe out of a can; 419or throws his band off, to change his wheel for another; or goes to the fire to examine some blades which are heating in a tray over it.

Curt is the talk (of fancy-backs, rattlers, sours and wasters, tangs and heels and shoulders), for the noise is too great, and the strain, for much beyond monosyllables.

Dingy the den and dense the grit that settles thick upon everything.

Yet at last out of it all, out of this primitive scene, emerges something so finished, so subtly perfect—

A razor, keen and brilliant, a very focus of light in the whole shop, with swift invisible edge running true from heel to point, and ringing so clear to the twang of the thumb-nail on it—

Emerges (his work done) a figure with dusty cap and light curls escaping from under it, large dove-grey eyes and Dutch-featured face of tears and laughter,

(So subtle, so rare, so finished a product,)

A man who understands and accepts all human life and character,

Keen and swift of brain, heart tender and true, and low voice ringing so clear,

And my dear comrade.

The Trysting

Far over the hills, ten miles, in the cloudless summer morning,

420By grassy slopes and flowering wheatfields, and over the brooks, he strides—

A young man, slender, wistful-eyed—with a great bouquet of flowers in his hand.

Great roses, red and white (in the cottage-home garden gathered),

And sweet-scented ladslove and rich marigolds and mignonette and lilies,

All trembling in the glimmer of brimming eyes, and steeped in fragrant memories,

With full full heart he carries;

And calls in spirit, the while he goes, to her so loved—

More than all other women on earth beloved—

His mother who bore him.

Till at length by the town arriving,

On her grave in the cemetery ground he faithfully lays them.

And this the trysting.

This the trysting for which in the little garden, with tears, he gathered the flowers,

For which o’er the hills he hastened.—

And this, what means, what boots it?

There truly, below, with head fallen on one side, a shapeless indistinguishable mass, her body lies—

Three years already from this life departed—

Nor hears nor sees, nor understands at all,

421Senseless as any clod.

Above, the flowers he has brought lie wilting in the sun;

Around, the common-place dingy scene extends—the dreary cemetery,

The stones, the walls, the houses.—

What boots it all?

These senseless things that neither see nor hear,

To senseless things what message can they bear?

Yet he, he hears and sees.

A natural child, untaught, reckless of custom and what they call religion,

He hears and sees things hidden from the learnéd;

He glimpses forms beyond the walls of Time.

Of bibles, creeds and churches he knows nothing,

And all that science has said about life and death and atom-dances and the immutable laws of matter,

And all the impassable lines and barriers that the professors and specialists have built up out of their own imaginations—

These simply exist not, for him.

He only knows she comes, the loved and worshiped—

Comes, takes the flowers,

Stands like a thin mist in the sun beside him,

Looks in his eyes, and touches him again.

And to its depth his heart shakes, breaking backward,

Tears rise once more, earth reels, the sun is splintered,

Stones, houses, and the solid sky dissolve,

422And that far marvelous vibration of the soul,

Swifter than light, more powerful than sound,

Flies through the world, pierces the rocks and tombs,

And gains her Presence at the feet of God.

The Lover far on the Hills

Here on this high top far above the world—

This mute and glorious scene, earth’s panorama:

[The swelling mountains, all in green and gold,

Round-topped, or broken into savage crags;

The valleys scarcely shown, like narrow rifts;

The slate-dark shadows, and the tarns and lakes,

And vistas over them to sunny lands

Of tiny patchwork, with quaint fields and farms,

White sails on waters, and the sun-splashed sea:]

Here on this high top dreaming, to it all

I find but one fit likeness—

Namely the gracious form of her I love.

The limbs and hair, the lips, the eyes, I love—

Twin heavenlit lakes—

And undulant lines that run from hips to shoulder;

Fair world of hollow and rondure, hill and plain,—

So solid-fair like this, so dewy-fragrant,

And all inwrought with that dear life that holds me.

How calm this air! this silence here in heaven

Calm blue, and tender hanging clouds delaying

To kiss their shadows on the hills’ deep breasts;

423And far around this dream of human presence—

Nature, and my sweet Helpmate whom I worship,

With the dear god that dwells behind them both.

The Babe

The trio perfect: the man, the woman, and the babe:

And herein all Creation.

The two, with wonder in their eyes, from opposite worlds

Of sex, of ancestry, pursuits, traditions,

Each other suddenly, amazed, confronting—

A nameless glory each in each surmising.

A frenzy as of Gods—

Imperial rage, flinging the goods of the world aside as dross, to reach to a priceless treasure:

[He madly invasive,

She deeply wise, and drawing farther back

Even to the gates of Paradise as he approaches:]

Strange ecstasy of warfare!

Seisin and ravishment of souls and bodies,

Veils rent asunder,

Heaven opening measureless, overhead, in splendor,

And all life changed, transfigured!

And then a calm.

Weeks of humdrum and mortal commonplace,

And months perchance in monotone of toil,

424But still behind it all some deep remembrance,

Some sure reliance,

And sweet and secret knowledge in each other.

And then the Babe:

A tiny perfect sea-shell on the shore

By the waves gently laid (the awful waves!)—

By trembling hands received—a folded message—

A babe yet slumbering, with a ripple on its face

Remindful of the ocean.

And two twined forms that overbend it, smiling,

And wonder to what land Love must have journeyed,

Who brought this back—this word of sweetest meaning:

Two lives made one, and visible as one.

And herein all Creation.

425O gracious Mother, in thy vast eternal sunlight

Heal us, thy foolish children, from our sins;

Who heed thee not, but careless of thy Presence

Turn our bent backs on thee, and scratch and scrabble

In ash-heaps for salvation.

426

I Saw a Fair House

I saw a fair house standing in a garden, but no one moved about it;

And I said to some who stood by, Who is the owner or dweller here?

And they said, We know not. Sometimes we see a form at a window, but it is for a moment only, and then it is gone.

Then I went up to the door of the house, and turned the handle very softly, and went in.

And the house was like a place deserted, yet was there a kind of order as if it might be used; and the tables were laid with victuals, and there was no lack of necessaries or of comforts;

And servants passed along the corridors; so I asked one of them, Where is the mistress of your house?

And he said, I know not.

Then I went on again, and passed softly through many rooms, and peeped into others;

And at last in a far chamber I came upon the figure of a woman, alone, and seated on a chair, with her head on her knees, and buried in her hands;

427And I said, Are you the mistress of this house?

And when she lifted her face I saw it was very beautiful, and her eyes were glorious as the eyes of Love himself, but they were stained with weeping.

And she said, This is not my house, it is my prison.

And I said, Are not these servants here to minister to you?

She answered, Yes——but what is that if they are only here to minister to me?

But these rooms, I said, and well-set tables?

Yes—but what is that if they are only swept and garnished for me?

And this garden, and the fair outlook from it?

Yes—but since I may not even go my own errands beyond the gate?

And I said, How is that?

And she answered, Indeed I long to go down into the world, but I may not; no sooner do I show the face of Love than I am execrated as one forbidden and an outcast. For in this city so long as one remains within one’s house one may do there what meanness and selfishness one will, provided one keeps fair the front of the house; but to go forth openly and share one’s life and the gladness of life with others, that is not permitted.

And I said, It is a strange city.

And I went out and walked through the streets; but gloom and sadness reigned, and only in some houses the noise of feasting and debauchery, and in others a sound of weeping.

428

A Dream of Human Life

I dreamed that I saw a wild and lonely promontory on which the sea beat; and the waves dashed against rocky cliffs and bastions, and flew in spray over the edges of them, and clouds drifted on overhead, mingling with the seamist below in one veil which wrapped and shadowed all, save where now and then a watery beam from the sun glanced through.

And in the midst among the rocks and crags was (it seemed to me) an ancient ancient fane, like some far forgotten Abbey Church built in an elder world—nor was it easy to say whether it was indeed built up of ordinary masonry, or whether by some rude art it had been shapen from the very crags themselves. But round about it and over the promontory on all sides the rocks and cliffs were carven in strange forms—sea-monsters half submerged beneath the waves, and serpents stretching along the bases of the cliffs, and evil shapes thrown up on land and grasping at the rocks with iron claws; and beside them forms heroic of men and women on ledges here and there and pinnacles, through the mist half-shown—as it might have been S. George against the dragon, or Andromeda to the rock-face chained, or Perseus with the Gorgon’s head in hand.

But who they really were I could not well see. Only ever as the spray and wind wreathed by, the figures as in mortal combat seemed to move and menace each other, and serpents writhed and sea-beasts plunged through waves. And from the ancient fane came the sound of music continually—now 429low and distant, now rising with the storm and mingling with the ocean-roar and wild cry of the wind: while overhead amid the breaking lights was a fluttering as of Wings.

And presently a change came over my dream; and looking again I saw that the storm had ceased, and the promontory was lying there in the sunshine, calm and peaceful; and the rocks were black no more, but full of color and glory; and the hero figures were in their places, at rest and beautiful to look on; and even the monsters that had seemed so terrible had a grace of their own, transformed in the peaceful light to harmless grotesque things. And the whole land seemed to thrill with a subterranean music, and on a high crag brooding over all was a figure with arms outstretched.

And once more my dream changed; and I looked, and the rocks had become like ordinary rocks and sea-cliffs, and grasses and wild flowers grew, and little habitations nestled, in the hollows of them; and the sea crawled about the boulders lying below them; and the promontory ran out into the ocean, and ships went past it to all parts of the world.

The Coast of Liguria

A thousand years are nothing.

Once the Ligurian, sturdy and thickset, scaled these rocks,

And built his beehive huts of unhewn stone on the limestone terraces,

430And gathered snails for food, and fought his tribal battles.

Now the Greek wanders along the shore, and oleander and rosemary

Shine in the moon for him, or Daphne hides

Among the laurel groves, or Heracles

Drives his red cattle home along the coast-line.

Later, the Roman makes great roads, and marches columns of soldiers through the dust,

Where overhead some temple of Castor and Pollux on the height

Gives omen of good fortune. The Christian follows,

Peacefully toiling in his olive-garden,

Hymning the gentle god,

And turns the Temple to a shrine of Michael—rechristens Mars, St. Martin.

But presently the Moor with fire and rapine sweeps the coast,

Or in his mountain-fastness, for a moment resting, watches the shining scimitar of the sea

Sheathed in the bay, its scabbard. Then, in their turn,

Bishops and Barons rule the land, and rage against each other. In the end the Modern

Buries it all in a big Hotel’s foundations

Or the embankment of a Railroad.

Yet still beneath the surface all is alive.

Still the old peasant-woman—grin-faced, big-mouthed, with big-palmed hands, short fingers, and bandy climbing legs—among the rocks

431Goes foraging for snails. The people still

Dimly athwart the mists of time remember,

Of Heracles the Savior,

How on this Plain, that Promontory, he rested

From his great labors in the West returning.

Still the little Church of St. Michael on the rock

Stands dearer to the folk for being pagan;

And still provençal songs and dances gladden the vintage;

And Moorish faces, and Greek, and old Phœnician,

Stir in the villages a stones-throw from the rail.

And still old names and festivals and customs

Linger along the coast and country side;

And still the hills stand, still the herbs diffuse

From the warm ground the old intoxication

Of aromatic sweetness. The waters still

Lap blue against the rocks. The snowy Alps

Look o’er the foot-hills and far out to sea,

To where and when perchance a worthier race

Than all that yet has been at length shall come

And gaze with grateful eyes upon their beauty,

And crown their slopes with gladness.

Easter Day on Mt. Mounier

(In the Alpes Maritimes)

Silence.—

Here on a rock in blue mid-air nine thousand feet,

The whole encircling sky flooded with light—the sun an unfaceable point in the dazzling zenith,

432Warm, windless, basking—the snow at our feet a million bright points glittering;

And far around a multitudinous sea of peaks,

Frozen, of rock and ice, and fields of rounded whiteness,

And jutting shoulders, and slopes of shale, and walls,

Behind each other rising:

All drenched, dissolved, in light,

And waiting, silent, rapt, as if to break into song.

But not a sound.

Buried in invisible valleys—’mid pine and larch and torrent-beds below—

Villages ply their daily round of labor;

The peasant hacks deep the soil around his vine-roots, or with his long pole beats the boughs of olive;

Far by the sea, mid garden-terraces, hotels and villas, the great town keeps its carnival of Easter—

Unseen, unthought-of, here.

Here only rests the stillness of the Earth, waiting upon the glory of the Sun; or here and there in some calm lakelet imaged.

Ages fly by, and almost without change; dim lines of floating cloud just fringe the horizon; vistas of far lands, distant times, unfold;

And the silence of centuries holds the secret of history

Lost in the light of heaven.

433

At Mentone

Why speak ye not, ye beautiful lands and seas,

Hung like a magic curtain in the light?

What dumbness holds you, O divine vast Earth?

Ye stretches of smooth bare rock, dotted with cactus and aloe,

Rising so bold in the sun, from your deep dark gorges below;

Ye pine woods on the mountain flanks;

And ye, ye terraces of endless labor, planted with vine and lemon and the abounding olive,

With peasant cots and cabins here and there, and cisterns where the frogs croak night and day;

Why speak ye not, why speak ye not?

Why with that strange prophetic glance of yours

Hang ye in heaven there, magic lands and seas,

Nor say the word we wait for?

The Campanile and red roof of the village church show out seaward against the sky-line; and the cypresses stand sentinel in the cemetery on the hill above;

The borage-flowers beneath the lemon branches catch the hues of sea and sky; runnels of water sparkle through the grass by the pathside; the scent of orange-bloom is in the air;

Far back into the valleys stretch the gray shade and gloom of the olive-yards; and the narrow tumbled alleys of the mountain-villages are like huge rock-burrows of human beings;

434The grizzled wrinkled old man on his little plot of ground, and the young man beside him, work doggedly on with their mattocks through the heat of the day;

The broad-bosomed placid-eyed girl tends her flock of goats on the higher ledges.

Ye leafing fig-trees, like silver candelabra of green flame!

And ye, pale-blossoming peaches, dainty bright!

And ye, ye immemorial aromatic herbs and bushes— arbutus, myrtle, lavender, rosemary, thyme—trampled to perfume by the feet of long-forgotten races;

And thou, blue bay, with myriad points of light, and sky above with subtle answering quiver,

And high far crests of gleaming purple crag, and snows beyond,

Flaming, all flaming in the light!

Why speak ye not?

Cave men and women and children, on your sides by the sea-shore,

Your long skulls resting still in the palms of your bony hands,

A score millenniums lying in the same position—

Why wake and speak ye not?

Why utter not the thoughts that were, for you, the world?

Ye dead that build the rocks, and are the Earth, and fill, without a void, the crystal air!

And Thou one dead (for each and all of us)—one dead for whom our life we’ld gladly give—

435[Thou whose remembrance passes through all sights and sounds, transforming and transforming them]—

Why through the veil of this material texture showest thou not, dear soul of things, thy face?

What dumbness holds you?

O divine vast Earth,

Why utterest not the voice we long to hear?

Monte Carlo

All the long afternoon in a cloudless sky, slowly towards its setting the sinking sun

Looks on a scene of wonderful beauty.

Deep below over the rocks, through luscious tangles of geranium and rose and heliotrope in flower, the sea sparkles a rich turquoise blue;

Palms mingle with mimosa and myrtle amid the gardens;

The little cape of Monaco stands out, a stone’s-throw across the harbour—the mountains of Mentone run down to the sea—and overhead in the clear air rise (two thousand feet) the great frowning rocks of Turbia, with their ancient Roman tower.

In front of the Casino, on a gravelled space, dazzling in light, a throng of all nationalities—Germans, Russians, French, Italians, English, Americans—goes to and fro,

Or sits at the Café tables, sipping coffee and cognac and maraschino:

The puffy fussy Germans, the dull-eyed English, the feverish Russians and French.

436The band, beneath its awning, plays; carriages drive up, and automatic cars with dusty occupants arrive; the newcomers alight and ascend the steps of the Casino; fashionable women are in evidence, some carrying long roulette-purses with chains;

Girls walk about singly or in pairs—pale, with carefully set profiles, lips, hair, and with immense hats and choice-colored costumes, orange-red or primrose or lavender or dead-white;

The knots, the groups, form and re-form; the waiters hurry to and fro; while in a corner with easel and palette an artist takes a sketch of the whole scene.

And still the sun nears its setting.

The air floats over, with the delicious scent of orange-blossom and mimosa from the gardens; the shadows form in blue folds on the distant mountains, the rocks overhead stand sturdier, more and more bastion-like, as though an earth-shock might tumble them on the crowd;

In the little harbour the wharf-men, with dusty sashes round their waists, are coaling a great white yacht, already half lost in shadow;

Along the shore in a green high-prowed boat some fishermen row and drop their seine net in the same old fashion of centuries;

The peasant climbs his terraces of olive, the goatherd looks down from his high perch among the rocks, and hears the faint strains of the band and catches the glance of the dresses.

437And still the sun nears its setting.

And still, within, as all day since noon, the feverish crowd sits or stands round the tables;

Nigh twenty tables—well nigh a thousand people, for the most part bent on business—all but a few by the glitter dazed of the eyes of the great god Chance.

Hats doffed, a hush reigns; tiptoe they move about that huge saloon, as in some Temple.

And now the great shaded lamps are lighted, hanging close over the green cloth.

See! how beautiful is the face of this little old lady, with tiny shrunken body and trembling mittened hands—the deep eyes, and dark shades in the eye sockets, and pitiful tender mouth!

Each round she carefully places a gold piece on some compartment, and watches for the result—nor seems to doubt her occupation for a moment.

Next her a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, aristocratic-featured, sits intent, and hides her hot eyes and straight somewhat pinched mouth under the brim of a broad white hat.

Close by again, see, a woman in black, of clear frank simple-minded type, almost a rustic, standing behind a chair and trying one or two throws;

And here a man, faultlessly attired and with absurdly unconcerned manner, sitting close by a croupier, and every now and then changing a thousand-franc note for gold—which he dots about the board in the most casual way, and apparently with complete want of success;

And there, an old man with bald hot-veined forehead and 438grey hair, deeply thinking, pencilling, computing, doubles his stakes with determination as he steadily loses.

Two demi-mondaines in waved and fretted hair, with long kid gloves covered with bracelets, push somewhat petulantly a little pile of gold across the board—then rake together their winnings and walk away.

There again, in the shade of many standing behind her, sits a strange Sibyll-like woman, with bat-wing trimmings in her hat. A half-formed smile dwells on her impassive face. She always wins, they say; and not a few furtively follow her lead in the chances.

Here is a young German student with old scars across his face; there, a Dundreary-whiskered yellow-haired Englishman of a type almost extinct at home; there, a business-like woman in mourning, with sharp nose and decided manner, evidently retrieving the fortunes of her family;

And there behind her an elderly respectable English matron, most anxious to speculate, but looking carefully round first to see if anyone recognises her;

And here again a big-chinned, flabby French youth with a suppressed boil on his neck.

Curious, the suppressed feverish sentiment of the whole scene, the quiet, the politeness; the occasional sharp glances, or hurried retirement from the table, the swift self-satisfactions, and the inward gnashings of teeth;

The many faces seamed with wrinkles spreading fanshaped upwards from the bridge of the nose, or with twirled goat’s-horn mustachios;

439The little bald director on his high chair, white-skinned and white-haired, with big head, and quick beady eyes glancing through strong spectacles, watching closely the croupiers and the public;

The detectives among the throng;

The arrival at one of the tables of a roll of notes for a hundred thousand francs, to support the failing bank—the little stir of excitement among the gamblers, and the added stakes in consequence.

And now, outside, the sun has sunk.

Light-blue and white the calm sea lies beyond the palm-fronds, white sails speck the horizon, and the blue shadows on the silent hills are beautiful.

The fishermen have finished their haul, and stand chatting on the beach as they thumb from the meshes of the net and store in baskets the fish, which bring them a few pence for their day’s labor, presently to be served up at fabulous prices in the restaurants.

The goatherds drive their goats homeward, with tinkling bells, and peering over the rocks look downward on the Eden which they may not enter.

The primitive peasant-woman, with great mouth and ears unlearned of aught so modern as French or Italian, returns to the arched streets of her hill-top village—Roccabruna or Eza or Turbia—and ere the glow of sunset dies from the sky is fast asleep.

But the lights of the Casino shine reflected in the water, and the strains of the band, through the scented air, vibrate, 440and from the gaming-tables the crowd drifts to its supper-tables—while late through the night the telegrams flash to Vienna or London or Paris.

India, the Wisdom-land

Here also in India—wonderful, hidden—over thousands of miles,

Through thousands of miles of coco-nut groves, by the winding banks of immense rivers, over interminable areas of rice-fields,

On the great Ghauts and Himálayas, through vast jungles tenanted by wild beasts,

Under the cloudless glorious sky—the sun terrible in strength and beauty—the moon so keen and clear among the tree-tops,

In vast and populous cities, behind colors and creeds and sects and races and families,

Behind the interminable close-fitting layers of caste and custom,

Here also, hidden away, the secret, the divine knowledge.

Ages back, thousands of years lost in the dim past,

A race of seers over the northern mountains, with flocks and herds,

Into India, the Wisdom-land, descended;

The old men leading—not belated in the rear—

Eagle-eyed, gracious-eyed old men, with calm faces, resolute calm mouths,

441Active, using their bodies with perfect command and power—retaining them to prolonged age, or laying them down in death at will.

These men, retiring rapt—also at will—in the vast open under the sun or stars,

Having circled and laid aside desire, having lifted and removed from themselves the clinging veils of thought and oblivion,

Saw, and became what they saw, the imperishable universe.

Within them, sun and moon and stars, within them past and future,

Interiors of objects and of thoughts revealed—one with all being—

Life past, death past—the calm and boundless sea

Of deep, of changeless incommunicable Joy.

And now to-day, under the close-fitting layers of caste and custom, hidden away,

The same seers, the same knowledge.

All these thousands of years the long tradition kept intact,

Handed down, the sacred lore, from one to another, carefully guarded;

Beneath the outer conventional shows, beneath all the bonds of creed and race, gliding like a stream which nothing can detain,

Dissolving in its own good time all bonds, all creeds,

442The soul’s true being—the cosmic vast emancipated life—Freedom, Equality—

The precious semen of Democracy.

Tanzbödeli

High on a rock that juts above the Lauterbrunnen valley,

Seven thousand feet in air, a little floor of grass,

Even and smooth, with flowers—

The little dancing-ground, they call it (and have called, how many centuries?)—

And then across the gorge, and again some seven thousand feet higher,

In slopes of rock and ice, the Jungfrau towering over, Proud and magnificent; and in her train seven mountains—

(Roth-thalhorn, Gletscherhorn, Ebne Fluh, Mittaghorn, Grosshorn, Breithorn and Tschingelhorn)—

Standing there like a wall and sending their glaciers to the valley.

[And far behind the wall, far miles and miles, but invisible from here,

Great rivers of ice between the glistening black and scarred crags

Flow, tossing and twisted, with sea-green escarpments and fissures, and scaly snaky moraines, and glittering snowfields above them, sharp on the dark blue sky,

All stretching, far as the eye may see, in endless silence,

443Save for the fitful rattle of falling rocks, or muffled roar of an avalanche.]

But at the end of the train, and closing it and the valley,

Rises a huge bare cliff, the frowning G’spaltenhorn,

Diabolic and dark, an inferno of crags and pinnacles.

This on one side; on the other the landscape opens

To lower valleys and pastures—the huts of Gimmelwald and Mürren,

Lying serene in the sunlight, with herds of cows just visible,

And the blue-vista’d gorge of Lauterbrunnen running down to the distant hills of the twin lakes,

And tiny villages and towns, half seen and half imagined,

All folded in light and glory—as the peaks above are folded.

And there below us, in the huts of the upper pastures, the herdsmen gather and milk the cows, and in their great cauldrons warm the milk, and strain and press the cheeses;

Staying a few weeks in one spot till the feed is exhausted, and then leading the tinkling-belled herd by precipitous paths to other huts and pastures,

All summer long, till the autumnal return to the lowlands;

And in the little chalets the daily life goes on, with knitting and spinning and beating of flax, and storage of winter fuel and fodder;

And men with small short scythes mow the slopes of 444grass almost too steep to stand on, or carry their heavy wooden brantes of milk, braced to their shoulders, down the mountain-bases;

And for a brief season the stream of visitors arrives, and the hotels wake from sleep, and distant music is heard;

And guides and climbers sally forth with lanterns in the dark, and are glad if they may remain for a few minutes at early morning in the thin icy wind of some silent summit;

And even tiny invisible trains attempt to ascend the unimaginable mountains.

But here on this little palm of grass, Earth’s hand uplifted,

All is the same as though the centuries moved not;

And the peaks stand round and wreathe themselves in clouds, and take the colors and the lights of morning and evening;

And the moon sails, and an occasional eagle, overhead;

And the valleys plunge below in depths and darks invisible;

And the butterflies and flowers quiver and leap in the light and living air;

And we, in our turn, on the little dancing-ground of centuries,

Forming a circle, dance—till the mountains too wheel round us.

445

A Village Church

A stump of oak—a huge old ruin of a tree, shored up with props;

And close beside it a vast and splendid Yew—still flourishing though fully a thousand years of age—

With congregated stems upstanding, straight as a gothic pillar, and mighty outspread arms on every side—a home for birds for countless generations;

And almost underneath the branches of the yew, sunk somewhat in the ground,

A tiny little Church—squat roof and belfry—with Saxon walling and low dark Norman doorway.

And evening falls, and to us sitting in the lane

From the low door as from some cavern-mouth of the Earth

Come sounds of old old chants and murmur of ancient prayers, and the wailing of responses,

Wafted—and a faint faint odor of incense (for High Church is the service),

And dimly seen, as through the mists of time, the glint of candles on the altar-table.

Voices indeed of Time and the Earth, like some strange incantation,

Issuing from the gloom beneath the Yew-tree,

Coming adown forgotten centuries—

446Voices and echoes of ages of Christianity, borne onward with the sound of Norman and Saxon chisels:

Phrases that Chrysostom wrote, or good St. Basil; or borrowed from primitive liturgies of the earliest Christians;

Scraps of antiphonies sung within the Catacombs; tags, litanies and Kyrie Eleisons, adapted from pagan rituals;

Fragments of Creeds and Glorias from the days of Athanasius and the Councils; or sanctioned by the use of Sarum;

Gregorian chants, and quaint melodic strains from far Greek sources:

These blent together,

And laden with hopes and fears of hearts long buried,

Come issuing from the doorway.

And all the while under the evening sky

The landscape stretches, so fair, so calm, so actual,

And in the air the delicious waft of hawthorn-blossom

Floats, and the red June sunset hangs in the West,

And high in the branches of the Yew, a peacock,

Preening its feathers, sits.

How strange!

To think of the old old life for a thousand years that has gathered round these stones, and since the yew was a seedling planted,

Of the generations of men and women to whom the Church has been the centre of their days—their first and latest home;

447The old clock striking the hours and the quarters through years and decades,

The old bell tolling its way through the centuries, with pendulum-swing of life-times;

The infants and wide-eyed children brought in for baptism; and after eighty years brought in again—mere broken husks of aged folk—for burial;

And their children the same, and theirs again the same, and theirs, and theirs;

Till at length by the font where the monk once muttered his Latin blessing, a smug young curate stands and lisps the service;

The marriages, the festivals, the long tradition of the mass and the holy communion from that last supper in Jerusalem;

The glow of religious adoration, and the pain of broken hearts, age after age; the hopes of Heaven, the nightmare doubts of Hell;

And the trio of Gods aloft, looking on all the time,

The Father, the Son, and the Ghost,

And the dear Mother Mary, a little aside, apart,

And the crowd of Saints in the background—

The council-chamber of heaven.

And the terrestrial councils held in the Church,

The conferences of the local Barons with the clergy, the visitations of Bishops,

The stormy scenes in the vestry, while the congregation is waiting in the pews;

448The Folk-motes called in the Churchyard, the preparations for defence in time of civil war;

The fierce fights on occasions all round the building and amongst the tomb-stones; and up the stone stairs of the Tower—the monks and priests laying about them with heavy candlesticks.

To think of it all:

Of the images that have stood in those niches and been cast down and broken to shards;

And of the tapestries and altar-cloths that have been woven and stitched with pious care, and that have long since faded away—

And the little church still standing!

And still the old vague-toned Gregorian phrases wandering down, and still the golden voice of Chrysostom sounding from afar over the hubbub of the ages,

Floating on the waft of incense, and mingling with the breath of the hawthorn, this June night, 1900.

How wonderful!

The romance, the poetry, the heart-yearnings—

As once perhaps they gathered round some Greek Temple:

[Where the young man, having washed his body and offered a sacrifice before the laurel-crowned priest, poured out his heart in prayer to Apollo, touching the knees of the god with a leafy olive-wand;

Or the expectant mother came to Juno Lucina with a branch of palm in her hands;

449Or the old man at midnight, with a propitiatory offering, to the shrine of Proserpine:]

So, all these centuries and round the village church,

A like romance has gathered.

And presently an alien folk will come, with alien thoughts and customs;

And this little shrine half-buried in the ground, with its candles and incense and stuffy dingy interior,

And its three Gods sitting up aloft, and its doubtful glances at Mary,

Will seem as far back and strange as anything Greek or Egyptian.

Thus as I dreamed, wandering away in thought through the long long past and future,

The service ended, and in the last glow of sunset

Out came a crowd of gaily-colored girls in silks and muslin, and village youths, and a top-hat squire or two—all modern as modern—

And knowing or recking nothing of Chrysostom and Basil:

Into the sweet evening air and dusk they came, with cheerful babble,

Discussing the local fashions or last event in politics,

When sudden a yell rang out in the sky, like the yell of a monstrous cat,

And with a great rush of wings, and to a chorus of exclamations,

450The peacock flew from its tree overhead to the East and into the Night.

Sheffield

Where a spur of the moors runs forward into the great town,

And above the squalid bare steep streets, over a deserted quarry, the naked rock lifts itself into the light,

There, lifted above the smoke, I stood,

And below lay Sheffield.

The great wind blew over the world,

The great soft Southwest, making a clear light along the far horizon;

The sky overhead was serenest blue, and here and there a solitary white cloud scudded swiftly below it.

The great soft wind! How it blew in gusts as it would unroot the very rocks, eddying and whistling round the angles!

The great autumnal wind! bearing from the valley below clouds of paper and rubbish instead of dead leaves.

Yet the smoke still lay over Sheffield.

Sullenly it crawled and spread;

Round the bases of the tall chimneys, over the roofs of the houses, in waves—and the city was like a city of chimneys and spires rising out of a troubled sea—