The Three Hills, and Other Poems Part 3

The great blue Night so clear and kindly, The little stars so wide-eyed and so still, Open a door for souls that blindly Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill;

They draw the long-untraversed portal, Our souls slip out and tremble and expand, The immortal feels for the immortal, The eternal holds the eternal by the hand.

Impalpably we are led and lifted, Softly we shake into the gulf of blue, The last environing veil is rifted And lost horizons float into our view.

Lost lands, lone seas, lands that afar gleam With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear, Forgotten lands of night and star-gleam, Seas that are somewhere but that are not here.

Borne without effort or endeavour, Swifter and more ethereal than the wind, In level track we stream, whilst ever The fair pale panorama rolls behind.

Now fleets below a tranced moorland, A sweep of glimmering immobility; Now craggy cliff and dented foreland Pa.s.s back and there beyond unfolds the sea.

Now wastes of water heaving, drawing, Great darkling tracts of patterned restlessness, With whitened waves round rough rocks mawing And licking islands in their fierce caress.

Now coasts with capes and ribboned beaches Set silent 'neath the canopy sapphirine, And estuaries and river reaches Phantasmal silver in the night's soft s.h.i.+ne.

Ah, these fair woods the spirit crosses, These quiet lakes, these stretched dreaming fields, These undulate downs with piny bosses Pointing the ridges of their sloping s.h.i.+elds.

These valleys and these heights that screen them, These tawnier sands where gra.s.s and tree are not, Ah, we have known them, we have seen them Long, long ago or ever we forgot;

We know them all, these placid countries, And what the pathway is and what the goal; These are the gates and these the sentries That guard the ancient fortress of the soul.

And onward speed we flying, flying, Over the sundering worlds of hill and plain To where they rear their heads undying The unnamed mountains of old days again.

The snows upon their calm still summits, The chasms, the lines of trees that foot the snow, Curving like inky frozen comets, Into the forest-ocean spread below.

The glisten where the peaks are h.o.a.rest, The soundless darkness of the sunken vales, The folding leagues of shadowy forest, Wave beyond wave till all distinctness fails.

So invulnerable it is, so deathless, So floods the air the loveliness of it, That we stay dazzled, rapt and breathless, Our beings ebbing to the infinite.

There as we pause, there as we hover, Moveless in ecstasy, a sudden light Breaks in our eyes, and we discover We sit at windows gazing to the night.

Wistful and tired, with eyes a-tingle Where still the sting of Beauty faintly smarts, But with our mute regrets there mingle Thanks for the resurrection of our hearts.

O night so great that will not mock us!

O stars so wise that understand the weak!

O vast consoling hands that rock us!

O strong and perfect tongues that speak!

O night enrobed in azure splendour!

O whispering stars whose radiance falls like dew!

O mighty presences and tender, You have given us back the dreams our childhood knew!

Lulled by your visions without number, We seek our beds content and void of pain, And dreaming drowse and dreaming slumber And dreaming wake to see the day again.

A MEMORIAL

(F.T.)

The cord broke, and the tent Slipped, and the silken roof Lay p.r.o.ne beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament.

Yet cared we not; how should we care?

Knowing that labourless now he breathes A golden paradisal air Where with more certain craft he wreathes Bright braids of words more wise and fair Than ever his earthly fabrics were, That his unwavering eyes made fresh, Purged and regarbed in fadeless flesh, What he then darkly guessed behold, And watch with an abiding joy The eternal mysteries unfold Which do his now transfigured songs evermore employ.

Brother, yet great thy power; Thou stood'st as on a tower Small 'neath the stars yet high above the fields; In thy alembic song Imagination strong Distilled what essences the quest to mortals yields.

This thy reward well-won, For every morning's sun Found thy heart's firm allegiance still unshaken; No temporal ache or smart Drave Beauty from thy heart, And by thy mighty mistress never wast forsaken.

Yes; for though stringent was the test, When that thy trial was bitterest, Steadfast thou did'st remain; unshod The harrows of Pain thy feet once trod, Humiliate as thy sad song tells Before the vault's white sentinels.

Friendless and faint thou sojourned'st there, A bowed, brave, timid wanderer, A lonely nomad of the spirit, Who did a triple curse inherit, Hunger, regret and memory.

Yet never did they vanquish thee; When nighest broken, most alone, Thy una.s.suaged thoughts could clamber To beauty on her ageless throne; Thou wert as one in torture chamber Who sees the blue through an open cas.e.m.e.nt And hammers his soul to endure the time Of his corporeal abas.e.m.e.nt; Nor writhed'st at thine or others' fault, But with grim tenderness did salt Thy cicatrices with a rhyme.

Not the most sable flame of gloom Could penetrate thy inmost room; But through the walls thy spirit sucked Into that cloistral hermitage Stray lovely things, moonbeams and snows The far sky shed into thy cage, And, from the very gutter plucked, A lost and mired campestral rose.

Ended that purgatorial period, Filled was thy wallet and thy feet were shod, The leaden weights were moved, the rack withdrawn, Thou didst traverse the dewy fields of dawn, Watch sunsets blazoning over upland turf, Pull poppies from the frontiers of the surf, Dwelled'st with love and human eyes Vigilant, calm and wise.

But still as when thy bark did ride Derelict on the city's tide, As then for penury now for pride Thy bodily senses were denied; Though they cried out and would not sleep, Ascetic thou didst armour them Lest acid pleasure should eat thine art's pure gem.

Hourly the tempter's ambuscades But thou didst guard the gates and keep Thy senses' hungry colonnades Accessible but to Beauty's ministers, Unlit by any ruby flame but hers.

Immuring so thy spirit eager Within a body frail and meagre, Far from the meads of earthly milk and honey, Yet franchised of more wondrous territories, Like those poor Bedouin of Arabia the Stony Who roam spare-fed and hollow-eyed but free By day to wander and by night to camp In vast serenity, Compa.s.sed by G.o.d's great silent glories The sun's gold splendour and the moon's white lamp, Folded and safe from harm Beneath the mighty sky's protecting arm.

Ha! but the t.i.tan's ardour Wherewith thou scour'dst the vast, To spoil the starry larder Of fruits of heavenly taste!

Urania's fiercest servant, With thirst as furnace fervent And serene burning brow, Worthy of thy great lineage, thou Drankest without a shudder In proud humility Milk from that vast primaeval udder That swells for such as thee, Milk from the fountains of the Universe That cowards deem infected with a curse, That flushes him who drinks Nor shrinks The exalted anguish of diurnal draughts To a clear vision, more intolerable In its blissful pain, than love's most ardent shafts, Of the seats where she doth dwell, She, whom thou didst confess Enticed Thee hot to her throne to press For the greater glory of Christ To uplift the curtains of her closed eyes.

Not all was for thy learning Nor any mortal's else; Only for thy discerning Sporadic syllables Of those supernal glances Coffer of which her marble countenance is, Yet vain was not the adventure, Reluctant though the prize, Thou gainedst a debenture On the fringe of Beauty's eyes; Such fragmentary trophy As some cross-tunic'd knight From Saladin or Sophy May have won in sword's despite, Not the dear polar shrines Held captive by the Paynim But still as fruit of wars Some stone from Sion's lines, Some relic that might sain him Of life's uncounted scars.

Self-dedicated anchorite, Never disdainful of the dust, But conscious of the overcoming night That must engulph the blooms and berries of l.u.s.t, And unforgetful of the enveloping day beyond; Though a sweet show was spread for thy delight Resolved not to be so fond As, in ephemeral gauds caparisoned, To station feet upon a world of vapour Soft as a dream and fleeting as a taper; Thou thoughtest nevertheless that thou shouldst occupy Thyself, as it seemed to thee, most worthily Until the rapid hour when thou shouldst die; So, in a world of seemings, Of shadows and of dreamings, Busied thyself to fas.h.i.+on and record Unto the greater glory of thy Lord, For thy proud lady Beauty His Most excellent and humble handmaid is.

Says one thy service was too ceremonial, Thy vestments irised overmuch, thy ritual Too elaborate and thy rubric too obscure, Therefore thy gift of chant and orison Beneath the perfect service men have done.

O but thy notes were pure, And in a day like this we now endure No fault it was in thee to set thy camp Remote, aloof, aloof, In a far fastness proof 'Gainst the mephitic odours of the swamp.

Which being so, no gain 'Twere to explain An exquisiteness too meticulous; Let us but say it pleased thee thus, Dowered with imagination heavy-fruited, To raise a column garlanded and fluted For Him thy heavenly abacus.

This was thine offering thou didst make In founded hope that He The craftsman's best would take Well knowing its un.o.bscure sincerity.

The cord broke and the tent Slipped and the silken roof Lay p.r.o.ne beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament.

We still in this terrene abode Forlorn must tread the difficult road, And all meek thanks and all belief Hardly suffice to rampart grief.

For gone is Beauty's votary apostolic And are her temples now delivered over To blindworms and libidinous goats that frolic In places hallowed by that celestial lover.

Save only two or three With undivided minds like thee, None now remains that girds The peregrinal loin, None reverent of Beauty's holy tongue, But counterfeiters of her imaged coin, Iconoclasts, breakers of carven words, Seekers of worthless treasure in the dung, Mock mages and cacophonous charlatans, And pismire artisans Labouring to make Such mirrored replicas of Nature's face As might the surface of a stagnant lake.

Yet we should anger not, Nor let that be forgot, The testament of stateliest worth He left us when he fled the earth.

The mausoleum made of rhyme, Fair in its unfrequented field, Which shall invulnerably s.h.i.+eld His memory to the end of Time; The house with curtain-flaming halls And roof of gold and jewelled walls For which the fisher sank his net Into the deepest pools of speech, Scooping rich conchs and ribbons wet That a less venturous could not reach, The hunter tracked the metaphor On many a foamy silver coast A hundred leagues beyond the most Fabulous Tellurian sh.o.r.e.

Magnificent he was and mild, Glad to be still and glad to speak, Daring yet delicate as a child, Faithful, compa.s.sionate and holy, And, being human, strong and weak, And full of hope and melancholy.

No more than we, able to shed Man's nature he inherited, Neither sin's garrison to kill, Yet at the last with constancy so great As the world's vanities to abnegate, Sternly to will the sacrifice of will Upon the altars of the Uncreate, So that he lived before he died As one who hourly to himself denied All joys save those that cannot pall, Who having nothing yet had all.

FRIENDs.h.i.+P'S GARLAND