I that saw where ye trod The dim paths of the night In your skies to give light ; the shadowless soul is in sight. The tree many-rooted That swells to the sky The life-tree am I ; leaves : ye shall live and not die. That take and that give, That scourge and forgive, bark : Stars caught in my branches Make day of the dark, And are worshipp'd as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark. All forms of all faces, All works of all hands Of time-stricken lands, ruins, drop through me as sands. And more than ye know, But only to grow, above me or deathworms below. As I too in these ; Such sap is this tree's, of infinite lands and of seas. Where dead ages hide under The live roots of the tree, Makes utterance of me; ye hear the waves sound of the sea. As his feathers are spread Through the boughs overhead, And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread. In the spring-color'd hours When my mind was as May's, By centuries of days, hood, shot out from my spirit as And smell of their shoots And strength to my roots ; with freedom of soul were my fruits. The storm-winds of ages Blow through me and cease, The spring-wind of peace, ere one of my blossoms increase. All shadows and lights And stream-riven heights, guage of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights ; I bid you but be ; I have need not of prayer ; As your mouths of mine air ; That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair. Of faith ye espouse ; That blooms in your boughs; Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows. In the darkening and whitening Abysses ador'd, For lamp and for sword, red with the wrath of the Lord. No rosebuds yet by dawn impearld Match, even in loveliest lands, The sweetest flowers in all the world A baby's hands. III Thought made him and breaks him, Truth slays and forgives ; This new thing it gives, upon freedom and lives. Truth only is whole, Man's polestar and pole ; body, and seed of my soul. One beam of mine eye ; That scales the sky; made of me, man that is I. A baby's eyes, ere speech begin, Ere lips learn words or sighs, A baby's eyes. And sleep flows out and in, Lies perfect in them Paradise. Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad godhead felt within A baby's eyes. THE ROUNDEL ÉTUDE RÉALISTE I A BABY's feet, like sea-shells pink, Might tempt, should Heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss, we think, A baby's feet. A ROUNDEL is wrought as a ring or a star bright sphere, With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought, That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear A roundel is wrought. Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught Love, laughter or mourning, remembrance of rapture or fear That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought. Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat They stretch and spread and wink Their ten soft buds that part and meet. Years ago. make way, The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, Heart handfast in heart as they stood, To the low last edge of the long lone “ Look thither," land. Did he whisper? “ Look forth from the If a step should sound or a word be flowers to the sea ; spoken, For the foam-flowers endure when the roseWould a ghost not rise at the strange blossoms wither, guest's hand ? And men that love lightly may die So long have the gray, bare walks lain but we?” guestless, And the same wind sang and the same Through branches and briers if a man waves whiten'd, And or ever the garden's last petals He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, were shed, restless In the lips that had whisper'd, the eyes Night and day. that had lighten'd, Love was dead. The dense, hard passage is blind and stified That crawls by a track none turn to Or they lov'd their life through, and then climb went whither ? To the strait waste place that the years And were one to the end – but what end have rifled who knows ? Of all but the thorns that are touch'd Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, not of Time. As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ; Shall the dead take thought for the dead The rocks are left when he wastes the to love them ? plain. What love was ever as deep as a grave ? The wind that wanders, the weeds wind- They are loveless now as the grass above shaken, them These remain. Or the wave. rose. All are at one now, roses and lovers, Thou kpowest that here the likeness of the Not known of the cliffs and the fields best and the sea. Before thee stands : Not a breath of the time that has been The head most high, the heart found faithhovers fulest, In the air now soft with a summer to The purest hands. be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons Above the fume and foam of time that hereafter flits, Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh The soul, we know, now or weep, Now sits on high where Alighieri sits With Angelo. Nor his own heavenly tongue hath hea venly speech Here death may deal not again forever; Enough to say Here change may come not till all change What this man was, whose praise no end. thought may reach, From the graves they have made they shall No words can weigh. rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage Since man's first mother brought to mortal and rend. birth Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild Her first-born son, ground growing, Such grace befell not ever man on earth While the sun and the rain live, these As crowns this One. shall be ; Till a last wind's breath upon all these Of God nor man was ever this thing said : blowing That he could give Life back to her who gave him, that his dead Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff Mother might live. crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs But this man found his mother dead and drink, slain, Till the strength of the waves of the high With fast-seal'd eyes, tides humble And bade the dead rise up and live again, The fields that lessen, the rocks that And she did rise : shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things And all the world was bright with her falter, through him : Stretch'd out on the spoils that his own But dark with strife, hand spread, Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds As a god self-slain on his own strange bedim, Was all his life. Life and the clouds are vanish'd ; hate and fear ON THE MONUMENT ERECTED Have had their span Of time to hurt and are not : He is here The sunlike man. City superb, that hadst Columbus first Of all that serv'd thee best with sword or For sovereign son, pen, Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst All sons of thine, This mightier One. Glory be his forever, while this land Lives and is free, hand Earth shows to heaven the names by thou sands told That crown her fame : behold John Papne We shall see the roses blowing in the green, I The pink-lipp'd roses kissing in the golden (MINOR) summer sheen ; We shall see the fields flower thick with The ancient memories buried lie, stars and bells of summer gold, And the olden fancies pass ; And the poppies burn out red and sweet The old sweet flower-thoughts wither and across the corn-crown'd wold. fly, And die as the April cowslips die, The time shall be for pleasure, not for That scatter the bloomy grass. pain; There shall come no ghost of grieving for All dead, my dear! And the flowers are the past betwixt us twain ; dead, But in the time of roses our lives shall grow And the happy blossoming spring; together, The winter comes with its iron tread, And our love be as the love of gods in the The fields with the dying sun are red, blue Olympic weather. And the birds have ceas'd to sing. I trace the steps on the wasted strand SIBYL Of the vanish'd springtime's feet: Wither'd and dead is our Fairyland, This is the glamour of the world antique : For Love and Death go hand in hand The thyme-scents of Hymettus fill the air, Go hand in hand, my sweet ! And in the grass narcissus-cups are fair. The full brook wanders through the ferns II to seek The amber haunts of bees; and on the (MAJOR) peak Oh, what shall be the burden of our Of the soft hill, against the gold-marged rhyme, sky, And what shall be our ditty when the blos- She stands, a dream from out the days gone som 's on the lime ? by. Our lips have fed on winter and on weari- Entreat her not. Indeed, she will not ness too long : speak! We will hail the royal summer with a Her eyes are full of dreams ; and in her golden-footed song! There is the rustle of immortal wings; O lady of my summer and my spring, And ever and anon the slow breeze bears We shall hear the blackbird whistle and The mystic murmur of the songs she the brown sweet tbrostle sing, sings. And the low clear noise of waters running Entreat her not : she sees thee not, nor softly by our feet, hears When the sights and sounds of summer in Aught but the sights and sounds of bygone the green clear fields are sweet. springs. ears |