Collected Poems Volume I Part 11

Oh then, as children use To make themselves a little hiding-place, We would rejoice in narrowness of s.p.a.ce, And G.o.d should give us nothing more to lose.

How good it all would seem To souls that from the aeonian ebb and flow Came down to hear once more the to and fro Swing o' the clock dictate its hourly theme.

How dear the strange recall From vast antiphonies of joy and pain Beyond the grave, to these old books again, That cosy lamp, those pictures on the wall.

Home! Home! The old desire!

We would shut out the innumerable skies, Draw close the curtains, then with patient eyes Bend o'er the hearth; laugh at our memories, Or watch them crumbling in the crimson fire.

ART, THE HERALD

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness"

I

Beyond; beyond; and yet again beyond!

What went ye out to seek, oh foolish-fond?

Is not the heart of all things here and now?

Is not the circle infinite, and the centre Everywhere, if ye would but hear and enter?

Come; the porch bends and the great pillars bow.

II

Come; come and see the secret of the sun; The sorrow that holds the warring worlds in one; The pain that holds Eternity in an hour; One G.o.d in every seed self-sacrificed, One star-eyed, star-crowned universal Christ, Re-crucified in every wayside flower.

THE OPTIMIST

Teach me to live and to forgive The death that all must die Who pa.s.s in slumber through this heaven Of earth and sea and sky; Who live by grace of Time and s.p.a.ce At which their peace is priced; And cast their lots upon the robe That wraps the cosmic Christ;

Who cannot see the world-wide Tree Where Love lies bleeding still; This universal cross of G.o.d Our star-crowned Igdrasil.

Teach me to live; I do not ask For length of earthly days, Or that my heaven-appointed task Should fall in pleasant ways;

If in this hour of warmth and light The last great knell were knolled; If Death should close mine eyes to-night And all the tale be told;

While I have lips to speak or sing And power to draw this breath, Shall I not praise my Lord and King Above all else, for death?

When on a golden eve he drove His keenest sorrow deep Deep in my heart, and called it love; I did not wince or weep.

A wild Hosanna shook the world And wakened all the sky, As through a white and burning light Her pa.s.sionate face went by.

When on a golden dawn he called My best beloved away, I did not shrink or stand appalled Before the hopeless day.

The joy of that triumphant dearth And anguish cannot die; The joy that casts aside this earth For immortality.

I would not change one word of doom Upon the dreadful scroll, That gave her body to the tomb And freed her fettered soul.

For now each idle breeze can bring The kiss I never seek; The nightingale has heard her sing, The rose caressed her cheek.

And every pang of every grief That ruled my soul an hour, Has given new splendours to the leaf, New glories to the flower;

And melting earth into the heaven Whose inmost heart is pain, Has drawn the veils apart and given Her soul to mine again.

A POST-IMPRESSION

I

He sat with his foolish mouth agape at the golden glare of the sea, And his wizened and wintry flaxen locks fluttered around his ears, And his foolish infinite eyes were full of the sky's own glitter and glee, As he dandled an old Dutch Doll on his knee and sang the song of the spheres.

II

_Blue and red and yellow and green they are melting away in the white; Hey! but the wise old world was wrong and my idiot heart was right; Yes; and the merry-go-round of the stars rolls to my cracked old tune, Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon._

III

Then he cradled his doll on his crooning heart and cried as a sea-bird cries; And the hot sun reeled like a drunken G.o.d through the violent violet vault: And the hillside cottage that danced to the deep debauch of the perfumed skies Grew palsied and white in the purple heath as a pillar of Dead Sea salt.

IV

There were three gaunt sun-flowers nigh his chair: they were yellow as death and tall; And they threw their sharp blue shadowy stars on the blind white wizard wall; And they nodded their heads to the weird old hymn that daunted the light of the noon, _Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon._

V

The little dog laughed and leered with the white of his eye as he sidled away To stare at the dwarfish hunchback waves that crawled to the foot of the hill, For his master's infinite mind was wide to the wealth of the night and the day; The walls were down: it was one with the Deep that only a G.o.d can fill.

VI

Then a tiny maiden of ten sweet summers arrived with a song and a smile, And she swung on the elfin garden-gate and sung to the sea for a while, And a phantom face went weeping by and a ghost began to croon _Hey! diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon._

VII