p. vCONTENTS

PAGE

I.

The Dark Ages

1

II.

The Bells of Venice

4

III.

An Ancient Church

5

IV.

To the English Gipsies

6

V.

Autumn Dying

9

VI.

The Departure for Cythera

10

VII.

The Village Church

13

VIII.

Lady Day near Bignor

14

IX.

A Cottage Inscription

16

X.

A Memory of Ireland

18

XI.

“Tír Nan Óg”

19

XII.

A Highland Day

21

XIII.

To the Firs

23

XIV.

Good-bye

24

XV.

The Fairy Glen Revisited

26

XVI.

Waiting

28

XVII.

Near Haarlem

30

XVIII.

The Tomb of Saint Augustine at Pavia

31

XIX.

Modern Florence

32

XX.

To Dante

33

XXI.

To Petrarch

34

p. viXXII.

To a Lady of the Eighteenth Century

35

XXIII.

The “Liberal” Divine

37

XXIV.

The Quarrel

38

XXV.

The Old Fountain

40

XXVI.

Love and Death

41

XXVII.

Violets

43

XXVIII.

The Gardens of the Soul

44

XXIX.

A Man to Childish Things

46

XXX.

The Knight

47

XXXI.

Hopes

48

XXXII.

The Path

50

XXXIII.

The Call to Bethlehem

52

XXXIV.

A Christmas Lullaby

53

XXXV.

To the Holy Child

55

XXXVI.

Mater Amabilis

56

XXXVII.

Saint Stephen

57

XXXVIII.

Saint John at Ephesus

59

XXXIX.

The Little Children

61

XL.

The Circumcision

63

XLI.

The Return of the Magi

64

XLII.

Atonement

66

XLIII.

Calvary

67

XLIV.

“The Desert shall Blossom”

68

XLV.

Resurrection

69

XLVI.

The Ascension

71

XLVII.

A Hymn to the Holy Spirit

73

XLVIII.

“Adora et Tace”

76

p. viiXLIX.

The Refuge of the Wandering

77

L.

The Legend of St. Christopher

79

LI.

The Light Invisible

81

LII.

Onward

83

LIII.

The Faithful Departed

84

LIV.

Lethe

86

LV.

Ave Atque Vale

88

p. 1I THE DARK AGES

Men call you “dark.” What factory then blurred the light Of golden suns, when nothing blacker than the shades Of coming rain climbed up the heather-mantled height? While the air Breathed all the scents of all untrodden flowers, And brooks poured silver through the glimmering glades, Then sweetly wound through virgin ground. Must all that beauty pass? And must our pleasure trains Like foul eruptions belch upon the mountain head? Must we perforce build vulgar villa lanes, And on sweet fields of grass The canting scutcheons of a cheating commerce spread?

Men call you “dark.” Did that faith see with cobwebbed eyes, That built the airy octagon on Ely’s hill, And Gloucester’s Eastern wall that woos the topaz skies, p. 2Where the hymn Angelic “Glory be to God on high, And peace on earth to men who feel good will,” Might softly sound God’s throne around? Is that a perfect faith Which pew-filled chapels rears, Where Gothic fronts of stone mask backs of ill-baked bricks, And where the frothy fighting preacher fears, As peasants fear a wraith, His deacon’s frown or some just change in politics?

Men call you “dark.” Was Chaucer’s speech a muddy stream, The language born of Norman sun and Saxon snow? Was Langland’s verse or Wyclif’s prose mere glow-worm’s gleam? And the tales Of Arthur’s sword and of the holy Grail, And Avalon, the isle where no storms blow: From such romance did no light glance? Have we not heard a tongue, Whose words the Saxon thralls Would scorn to speak above their muck-rake and their fork, The speech of barrack-rooms and music-halls, Where every fool has flung The rotten refuse of Calcutta and New York?

p. 3Men call you “dark.” But chivalry and honour stand As words that you, not we, did fashion, when the need Of food beyond the price of gold awoke our land. For you taught Inconstancy is like a standard lost; And we who prove untrue in love or deed Will doubly shame an ancient name. Your robes were not all white, Your soul was not a sea Where all the crystal rivulets of God found room: But we must often to your lessons flee, Our truth with yours unite, Before we meet the holy dayspring of the doom.

p. 4II THE BELLS OF VENICE

Ring out again that faltering strain, Cease not so soon, Sweet peal that brought to me the thought Of some deep shadowed English lane Across the blue lagoon.

The water street where oarsmen meet And shout ahead, The glowing quay, all noise and glee, Seemed hallowed as when angels’ feet Touched Jacob’s stony bed.

On pearly dome and princely home Day’s glory dies: Once more the bells’ low murmur tells That faith is not a line of foam Nor life a bridge of sighs.

p. 5III AN ANCIENT CHURCH

So little dost thou seem of common earth, So much of spirit doth thy fabric show, That we, who watch thee through the azure glow, Might deem that with the stars thou cam’st to birth.

So sweet and true the voices from thy spire, Which bless the day’s betrothal unto night, That when they falter with the fading light, We well might think an angel touched his lyre.

If chiselled stone and molten bronze instil Hopes deeper than the fountains of my tears, And love that hungers for eternity,

God, I believe Thou hast some use for me; Leave me no life of dumb and sluggard years, But cut or melt me till I speak Thy will.

p. 6IV TO THE ENGLISH GIPSIES [6]

Rough swarthy Gipsy folk, Would that my voice could once forget to falter, And sing a song as free as swallows’ wings Of ancient Gipsies, and their “dukes” and “kings,” The men who braved the branding-rod and halter, Because like birds they nimbly came and went, And loved the stars and road, and crouching tent Beneath a grove of oak.

In ages long ago The Brahman priests pursued you with their curses, Because you found life sweeter at the core Without the mumbling of their magic lore. And you have lived to see their Sanskrit verses Fall dead; and Brahmans, like mere Romany, Now tempt their gods by trusting to the sea, Though trembling while they go.

p. 7Then hardened against fear You looted caravans of gold-shot dresses And gems upon their way to bright Baghdad, And drove the Moslem Khalif rampant mad, When pearls culled from the ocean for the tresses Of his Circassian, in your pouches fell, As trifles to adorn the dusky shell Of some black virgin’s ear.

Next Greece and Thessaly Became the home of many a jocund roamer, Who gaily danced, or begged with mien forlorn, And patched his Indian speech where it was torn With remnants from Demosthenes and Homer, Until you struck your blackened tents again And tattered pageants crossed the endless plain Of fertile Hungary.

’Tis even said you planned To trick the Pope with penitential moaning, And gained his leave to wander seven years Towards the melancholy North, with tears The sin of feigned apostasy atoning: Thus fortified against enquiring foes, You, with the budding of the Tudor rose, Alighted on our land.

p. 8Who says it was not good To see your handkerchiefs of red and yellow, And silver rings and basket-laden carts, And hear the honey-lipped prophetic arts Of wheedling witches, or a clean-limbed fellow Who fiddled by the hedgerow in the smoke, And roused the antique Gipsy song that woke The silence of the wood?

Now that your blood must fail, What artist soul revengefully remembers You raided the domain of chanticleer, Or deftly poisoned pigs to swell your cheer Of hedgehogs cooked in clay amid the embers? Who says you sometimes wedded art to force, Or made the worse appear the better horse Before a coming sale?

You soon will pass away; Laid one by one below the village steeple You face the East from which your fathers sprang, Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people Whom no true Romany will call by name, The folk departed like the camp-fire flame Of withered yesterday.

p. 9V AUTUMN DYING

Autumn shakes in golden raiment, Gashed with red; None can ransom him by payment From the dead.

They have shorn his strength with reaping, Left him cold; Now he wakes each morning weeping, Weak and old.

And last night he sought my casement, Came and fled; Wailed for aid from roof to basement, Touched my bed.

Though I cannot find his ransom, Ere he dies; I will pay all that I can—some Hopes and sighs.

p. 10VI THE DEPARTURE FOR CYTHERA

Ere they parted for Cythera When the spring had reached its bloom, Phyllis, Doris and Neaera Peeped into their pictured room, Wished to go, yet wished to linger, Lifted each a taper finger, Threw a kiss towards their portraits set in walls of rose brocade.

Where the beeches lift a curtain Over shifting sunlit scenes, They with footsteps light and certain Used to dance like fairy queens; Now they speed beneath the beeches Till the path the water reaches And the bay just softly ripples by a marble balustrade.

p. 11Purple were the sails that beckoned And the deck was ivory, Love stood smiling there and reckoned His embarking company; Every mast wore silver sheathing, Music in the air was breathing, In the rigging little laughing cupids upwards climbed and strayed.

On they sailed through fields of azure, White was all their furrowed way, Melting in a blue erasure, Melting fast like yesterday; Radiant Hope still steered them hoping, Steered them past the woodlands sloping, Where the doves descend and flutter on an ancient colonnade.

On they passed through golden hazes, Watching distant peaks of snow, On through shadowed island mazes, Where the dreamy spices blow; Till the moon herself was setting, And the dew fell fast and wetting, And the silver masts no image on the blackening waves displayed.

p. 12Frayed are now the rose-red panels Filled with squares of rare brocade, In the ceiling Time carves channels Where the frescoes slowly fade; Chipped are now the scrolls of plaster, Which a skilled Italian master Moulded all along the cornice, and with tips of gold o’erlaid.

But the shallow oval spaces Underneath the white festoons, Hold the tender pastel faces Waiting endless afternoons; For they never touched Cythera, Phyllis, Doris, and Neaera, And again they never landed by the marble balustrade.

p. 13VII THE VILLAGE CHERUB

Up at the church at the edge of the moor, Flat on the pathway that leads to the door, Worn by the tread of the mourning and poor, There is a face that is fit for God’s floor.

How could a mason create in his brain Just such a cherub to sob in the rain? How could the pride of the dying but vain Want such a cherub to blow a refrain?

This one had ankles with which he could run— Is it a fact that a cherub has none? This one had love-locks that flashed in the sun, Yes, and his lips often pouted in fun.

Who was the angel that played on the street; Whose was the face I can’t soil with my feet? Nobody knows; but I hope I shall meet One such a cherub in front of God’s seat.

p. 14VIII LADY DAY NEAR BIGNOR

South-Eastward where the waving line of hills Bears up the clouds that speed like passing boats, On one sweet spot which distant sunlight fills A sudden silver haze descends and floats.

The trees below like lace veil glistening streams, The gorse puts on its tiny gloves of gold, The cattle move as though they fed in dreams, And timid lambs are bleating in the fold.

Though tangled bracken like an old man’s beard Blends autumn’s ruddy brown with winter’s grey, Soft blows the breeze that through the pines is heard, Green moss and yellow primrose deck the way.

The Roman villa level on the grass, With wrestling cupids on the floor within; The church where first a Norman priest said mass, The ivied chimneys of the Georgian inn:

p. 15These have their message. All things tell the change Of seasons, races, and of man’s estate: All bid us mark within how small a range There moves a story tragically great.

The hills abide, and that mysterious Breath Which brooded on the slowly shaping earth, And came to-day like dew to Nazareth To fashion our Redeemer’s Virgin-birth.

p. 16IX A COTTAGE INSCRIPTION

“Time trieth troth.” Who carved the text Above the narrow cottage door? Two hundred years of storm have vexed The words which front the western moor.

Was it a hind who loved the king That held his court beyond the sea, A hind who taught his child to sing Of Stuart rose and Stuart tree?

Was it a swain whose soul adored A maid who went to London town? And did she choose some spangled lord And coldly flout her country clown?

p. 17“Time trieth troth.” And was he true Whose chisel carved that rugged line? And was he loyal till the yew O’erarched his heart’s now silent shrine?

Then, though bereft of king or love, He found the poet’s secret gain, The sympathy of suns above, The friendship of the falling rain.