Poems & Ballads Volume III Part 8

Baby-bird, baby-bird, Chirping loud and long, Other birds hush their words, Hearkening toward your song.

Sweet as spring though it ring, Full of love's own lures, Weak and wrong sounds their song, Singing after yours.

Baby-bird, baby-bird, The happy heart that hears Seems to win back within Heaven, and cast out fears.

Earth and sun seem as one Sweet light and one sweet word Known of none here but one, Known of one sweet bird.

OLIVE

I

Who may praise her?

Eyes where midnight shames the sun, Hair of night and suns.h.i.+ne spun, Woven of dawn's or twilight's loom, Radiant darkness, l.u.s.trous gloom, G.o.dlike childhood's flowerlike bloom, None may praise aright, nor sing Half the grace wherewith like spring Love arrays her.

II

Love untold Sings in silence, speaks in light Shed from each fair feature, bright Still from heaven, whence toward us, now Nine years since, she deigned to bow Down the brightness of her brow, Deigned to pa.s.s through mortal birth: Reverence calls her, here on earth, Nine years old.

III

Love's deep duty, Even when love transfigured grows Wors.h.i.+p, all too surely knows How, though love may cast out fear, Yet the debt divine and dear Due to childhood's G.o.dhead here May by love of man be paid Never; never song be made Worth its beauty.

IV

Nought is all Sung or said or dreamed or thought Ever, set beside it; nought All the love that man may give-- Love whose prayer should be, "Forgive!"

Heaven, we see, on earth may live; Earth can thank not heaven, we know, Save with songs that ebb and flow, Rise and fall.

V

No man living, No man dead, save haply one Now gone homeward past the sun, Ever found such grace as might Tune his tongue to praise aright Children, flowers of love and light, Whom our praise dispraises: we Sing, in sooth, but not as he Sang thanksgiving.

VI

Hope that smiled, Seeing her new-born beauty, made Out of heaven's own light and shade, Smiled not half so sweetly: love, Seeing the sun, afar above, Warm the nest that rears the dove, Sees, more bright than moon or sun, All the heaven of heavens in one Little child.

VII

Who may sing her?

Wings of angels when they stir Make no music worthy her: Sweeter sound her shy soft words Here than songs of G.o.d's own birds Whom the fire of rapture girds Round with light from love's face lit; Hands of angels find no fit Gifts to bring her.

VIII

Babes at birth Wear as raiment round them cast, Keep as witness toward their past, Tokens left of heaven; and each, Ere its lips learn mortal speech, Ere sweet heaven pa.s.s on pa.s.s reach, Bears in undiverted eyes Proof of unforgotten skies Here on earth.

IX

Quenched as embers Quenched with flakes of rain or snow Till the last faint flame burns low, All those l.u.s.trous memories lie Dead with babyhood gone by: Yet in her they dare not die: Others, fair as heaven is, yet, Now they share not heaven, forget: She remembers.

A WORD WITH THE WIND

Lord of days and nights that hear thy word of wintry warning, Wind, whose feet are set on ways that none may tread, Change the nest wherein thy wings are fledged for flight by morning, Change the harbour whence at dawn thy sails are spread.

Not the dawn, ere yet the imprisoning night has half released her, More desires the sun's full face of cheer, than we, Well as yet we love the strength of the iron-tongued north-easter, Yearn for wind to meet us as we front the sea.

All thy ways are good, O wind, and all the world should fester, Were thy fourfold G.o.dhead quenched, or stilled thy strife: Yet the waves and we desire too long the deep south-wester, Whence the waters quicken sh.o.r.eward, clothed with life.

Yet the field not made for ploughing save of keels nor harrowing Save of storm-winds lies unbrightened by thy breath: Banded broad with ruddy samphire glow the sea-banks narrowing Westward, while the sea gleams chill and still as death.

Sharp and strange from inland sounds thy bitter note of battle, Blown between grim skies and waters sullen-souled, Till the baffled seas bear back, rocks roar and s.h.i.+ngles rattle, Vexed and angered and anhungered and acold.

Change thy note, and give the waves their will, and all the measure, Full and perfect, of the music of their might, Let it fill the bays with thunderous notes and throbs of pleasure, Shake the sh.o.r.es with pa.s.sion, sound at once and smite.

Sweet are even the mild low notes of wind and sea, but sweeter Sounds the song whose choral wrath of raging rhyme Bids the shelving shoals keep tune with storm's imperious metre, Bids the rocks and reefs respond in rapturous chime.

Sweet the lisp and lulling whisper and luxurious laughter, Soft as love or sleep, of waves whereon the sun Dreams, and dreams not of the darkling hours before nor after, Winged with cloud whose wrath shall bid love's day be done.

Yet shall darkness bring the awakening sea a lordlier lover, Clothed with strength more amorous and more strenuous will, Whence her heart of hearts shall kindle and her soul recover Sense of love too keen to lie for love's sake still.

Let thy strong south-western music sound, and bid the billows Brighten, proud and glad to feel thy scourge and kiss Sting and soothe and sway them, bowed as aspens bend or willows, Yet resurgent still in breathless rage of bliss.

All to-day the slow sleek ripples hardly bear up sh.o.r.eward, Charged with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair, Like a woodland lake's weak wavelets lightly lingering forward, Soft and listless as the slumber-stricken air.

Be the suns.h.i.+ne bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded, Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled, Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled.

Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird: Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred.

Let thy clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token How the glories of thy G.o.dhead sound and s.h.i.+ne: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine.

Half the world abhors thee beating back the sea, and blackening Heaven with fierce and woful change of fluctuant form: All the world acclaims thee s.h.i.+fting sail again, and slackening Cloud by cloud the close-reefed cordage of the storm.

Sweeter fields and brighter woods and lordlier hills than waken Here at sunrise never hailed the sun and thee: Turn thee then, and give them comfort, shed like rain and shaken Far as foam that laughs and leaps along the sea.

NEAP-TIDE

Far off is the sea, and the land is afar: The low banks reach at the sky, Seen hence, and are heavenward high; Though light for the leap of a boy they are, And the far sea late was nigh.

The fair wild fields and the circling downs, The bright sweet marshes and meads All glorious with flowerlike weeds, The great grey churches, the sea-washed towns, Recede as a dream recedes.

The world draws back, and the world's light wanes, As a dream dies down and is dead; And the clouds and the gleams overhead Change, and change; and the sea remains, A shadow of dreamlike dread.

Wild, and woful, and pale, and grey, A shadow of sleepless fear, A corpse with the night for bier, The fairest thing that beholds the day Lies haggard and hopeless here.

And the wind's wings, broken and spent, subside; And the dumb waste world is h.o.a.r, And strange as the sea the sh.o.r.e; And shadows of shapeless dreams abide Where life may abide no more.