Euterpe
Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like! wilt thou float and float to me,
Facing winds and sleets and waters, flying glimpses of the sea?
Down amongst the hills of tempest where the elves of tumult roam —
Blown wet shadows of the summits, dim sonorous sprites of foam?
Here and here my days are wasted, shorn of leaf, and stript of fruit:
Vexed because of speech half-spoken, maiden with the marvellous lute!
Vexed because of songs half-shapen, smit with fire and mixed with pain:
Part of thee, and part of Sorrow, like a sunset pale with rain.
Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like! wilt thou float and float to me
Facing winds, and sleets, and waters, flying glimpses of the sea?
All night long, in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, but fine,
Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear that voice of thine —
All night long, amidst the burden of the lordly storm, that sings
High above the tumbled forelands, fleet and fierce with thunderings!
Then and then, my love, Euterpe, lips of life replete with dreams
Murmur for thy sweet sharp fragments dying down Lethean streams:
Murmur for thy mouth’s marred music, splendid hints that burn and break,
Heavy with excess of beauty: murmur for thy music’s sake.
All night long in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, but fine,
Faultless friend of flowers and fountains, do I hear that voice of thine.
In the yellow flame of evening, sound of thee doth come and go
Through the noises of the river and the drifting of the snow:
In the yellow flame of evening — at the setting of the day —
Sound that lightens, falls, and lightens, flickers, faints, and fades away.
I am famished of thy silence — broken for the tender note
Caught with its surpassing passion — caught and strangled in thy throat!
We have nought to help thy trouble — nought for that which lieth mute
On the harpstring and the lutestring and the spirit of the lute.
In the yellow flame of evening sound of thee doth come and go
Through the noises of the river and the drifting of the snow.
Daughter of the dead red summers! men that laugh and men that weep,
Call thee Music — shall I follow, choose their name, and turn and sleep?
What thou art, behold, I know not; but thy honey slakes and slays
Half the want which whitens manhood in the stress of alien days!
Even as a wondrous woman struck with love and great desire,
Hast thou been to me, Euterpe! half of tears and half of fire.
But thy joy is swift and fitful; and a subtle sense of pain
Sighs through thy melodious breathing, takes the rapture from thy strain.
Daughter of the dead red summers! Men that laugh and men that weep,
Call thee Music — shall I follow, choose their name, and turn and sleep?
Ellen Ray
A quiet song for Ellen —
The patient Ellen Ray,
A dreamer in the nightfall,
A watcher in the day.
The wedded of the sailor
Who keeps so far away:
A shadow on his forehead
For patient Ellen Ray.
When autumn winds were driving
Across the chafing bay,
He said the words of anger
That wasted Ellen Ray:
He said the words of anger
And went his bitter way:
Her dower was the darkness —
The patient Ellen Ray.
Your comfort is a phantom,
My patient Ellen Ray;
You house it in the night-time
It fronts you in the day;
And when the moon is very low
And when the lights are grey,
You sit and hug a sorry hope,
My patient Ellen Ray!
You sit and hug a sorry hope —
Yet who will dare to say,
The sweetness of October
Is not for Ellen Ray?
The bearer of a burden
Must rest at fall of day;
And you have borne a heavy one,
My patient Ellen Ray.
At Dusk
At dusk, like flowers that shun the day,
Shy thoughts from dim recesses break,
And plead for words I dare not say
For your sweet sake.
My early love! my first, my last!
Mistakes have been that both must rue,
But all the passion of the past
Survives for you.
The tender message Hope might send
Sinks fainting at the lips of speech,
For, are you lover — are you friend,
That I would reach?
How much to-night I’d give to win
A banished peace — an old repose!
But here I sit, and sigh, and sin
When no one knows.
The stern, the steadfast reticence,
Which made the dearest phrases halt,
And checked a first and finest sense,
Was not my fault.
I held my words because there grew
About my life persistent pride;
And you were loved, who never knew
What love could hide!
This purpose filled my soul like flame
To win you wealth and take the place
Where care is not, nor any shame
To vex your face.
I said “till then my heart must keep
Its secrets safe and unconfest;”
And days and nights unknown to sleep
The vow attest.
Yet, O my Sweet, it seems so long
Since you were near, and fates retard
The sequel of a struggle strong,
And Life is hard!
Too hard, when one is left alone
To wrestle Passion, never free
To turn and say to you, “My own,
Come home to me!”
Safi
Strong pinions bore Safi, the Dreamer,
Through the dazzle and whirl of a race;
And the Earth, raying up in confusion,
Like a sea thundered under his face!
And the Earth, raying up in confusion
Passed flying and flying afar,
Till it dropped like a moon into silence,
And waned from a moon to a star.
Was it light, was it shadow he followed
That he swept through those desperate tracts
With his hair beating back on his shoulders
Like the tops of the wind-hackled flax?
“I come,” murmured Safi, the Dreamer,
“I come, but thou fliest before!
But thy way hath the breath of the honey,
And the scent of the myrrh evermore!”
His eyes were the eyes of a watcher
Held on by luxurious faith,
And his lips were the lips of a longer
Amazed with the beauty of Death.
“For ever and ever,” he murmured,
“My love, for the sweetness with thee,
Do I follow thy footsteps,” said Safi,
“Like the wind on a measureless sea.”
And, fronting the furthermost spaces,
He kept through the distances dim,
Till the days, and the years, and the cycles
Were lost and forgotten by him.
When he came to the silver star-portals,
The Queen of that wonderful place
Looked forth from her towers resplendent,
And started, and dreamed in his face.
And one said, “This is Safi the Only,
Who lived in a planet below,
And housed him apart from his fellows,
A million of ages ago.
“He erred, if he suffers, to clutch at
High lights from the wood and the street;
Not caring to see how his brothers
Were content with the things at their feet.”
But she whispered, “Ah, turn to the Stranger!
He looks like a lord of the land;
For his eyes are the eyes of an angel,
And the thought on his forehead is grand!
“Is there never a peace for the sinner
Whose sin is in this, that he mars
The light of his worship of Beauty,
Forgetting the flower for the stars?”
“Behold him, my Sister immortal,
And doubt that he knoweth his shame,
Who raves in the shadow for sweetness,
And gloats on the ghost of a flame!
“His sin is his sin, if he suffers,
Who wilfully straitened the Truth;
And his doom is his doom, if he follows
A lie without sorrow or ruth.”
And another from uttermost verges
Ran out with a terrible voice —
“Let him go — it is well that he goeth,
Though he break with the lot of his choice!”
“I come,” murmured Safi, the Dreamer,
“I come, but thou fliest before!
But thy way hath the breath of the honey,
And the scent of the myrrh evermore.”
“My Queen,” said the first of the Voices,
“He hunteth a perilous wraith,
Arrayed with voluptuous fancies
And ringed with tyrannical faith.
“Wound up in the heart of his error
He must sweep through the silences dire,
Like one in the dark of a desert
Allured by fallacious fire.”
And she faltered, and asked, like a doubter,
“When he hangs on those Spaces sublime
With the Terror that knoweth no limit,
And holdeth no record of Time,—
“Forgotten of God and the demons —
Will he keep to his fancy amain?
Can he live for that horrible Chaos
Of flame and perpetual rain?”
But an answer as soft as a prayer
Fell down from a high hidden Land,
And the words were the words of a language
Which none but the gods understand.
In Memoriam Daniel Henry Deniehy
Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old
Through the hours we would not hear of — nights we would not fain behold!
Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year by year,
Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit and marvel here:
Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,
Gold about her forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;
Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,
Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.
Yet, my harp, and O, my fathers, never look for Sorrow’s lay,
Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;
Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these fleeting seas,
Blowing clouds, and restless regions paved with old perplexities,
In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,
Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:
Home of far-forgotten phantoms — genii of our peaceful prime,
Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:
Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,
Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forgetfulness of things.
His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,
With the lone creek falling past it — falling ever to the sea.
His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,
Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet-shining moon.
There the elves of many forests — wandering winds and flying lights —
Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,
Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt, and then might go,
Finding fathers of the people to their children speaking low —
Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet’s pain,
Dying with the dead leaves round him — hopes which never grow again.