With women's arms and children's voices and
The sacred gods blessing the new-sown land.

"But look, upon your beard the dew is bright,
Chill is the winter fall: let us go in."
Then moved they slowly downward till a light
Shining the door-post and thonged door between
Showed the square Prince's House. Out of the night
They passed the sudden rubied warmth within.
Curled shadowy by the wall a servant slept:
A sleepy hound from the same corner crept.

Soon were they couched. The young man fell asleep;
While the old Prince drowsing uneasily,
Tossing on the crest of agitations deep,
Dreamed waking, waking dreamed. Then memory
The unseen hound, did from her corner creep
Into his bosom and stirred him with her sigh
Soundless. And he arose and answering pressed
Her beloved head yet closer to his breast....

Happy those years returned when first he strode
Beside his father's knees, or climbed and felt
The warm strength of those arms, or singing rode
High on his shoulders; or in winter pelt
Of dread beasts wrapt, set as his father showed
Snares in the frosty grass, and at dawn knelt
Beside the snares, and shouting homeward tore,
Winged with such pride as seldom manhood wore.

--How many, many, many years ago!
There was no older man now walked the earth.
Had all those years sunk to a bitter glow,
Like the fire lingering yet upon the hearth?
Ah, he might warm his hands there still, and so
Must warm his heart now in this wintry dearth,
Till the reluming sunken fire should give
Warmth to his ageing wits and bid him live.

Even this house! It was his father told
How in the days half lost in icy time
Men first forsook their wormy caves and cold
To build where the wind-footed cattle climb;
And noise of labour broke the silence old
By such unbroken since the sparkling prime
Of the world's spring. And so the house arose,
A builded cave, perpetual as the snows

On the remotest summits of the range
Hemming the north. Then house by house appeared
'Neath valley-eaves, and change following on change
Unnoted tamed earth's shaggy front. Men heard
Strange voices syllabling with accents strange,
By travellers breathed who, startled, paused and feared
Seeing the smoke of habitations curled
Above this hollow of an unrumoured world.

Startled, they paused and spoke by doubtful sign,
Answered by hesitating sign, until
Moved one with aspect fearless and benign,
And met one fearless, while all else hung still.
And then was welcome, rest, and meat and wine
And intercourse of uncouth word, as shrill
Voice with deep voice was mingled. So they stayed
And to astonished eyes strange arts betrayed.

By them the oarage of the wind was taught,
And how the quick tail steered the cockled boat.
They netted fruitful streams, and smiling brought
Their breaking wickers home, too full to float.
And opening the earth's rich womb they wrought
Arms from the sullied ore; and labouring smote
The mountain's bosom, till a path was seen
Stony amid the flushed snow and flushed green.

Then first upon earth's wave the silver share
Floated, by the teamed oxen drawn; then first
Were seed-time rites, and harvest rites when bare
The cropped fields lay, and gathered tumult--nurst
Long in the breasts of men that laboured there--
Now in the broad ease of fulfilment burst;
And when the winter tasks failed in days chill,
Weaving of bright-hued yarn, and chattering shrill;

And the loved tones of music sounded sweet
Unwonted, when the new-stopped pipe was heard
Rising and falling, and the falling feet
Of sudden dancers. And old men were stirred
With old men's memories of ancient heat
When youth sang in their bosoms like a bird....
Sweet that divine musician, Memory,
Fingering her many-reeded melody.

Then as he stared into the wasting glow
And watched the fire faint in the whitening wood,
Came starker shadows moving vast and slow,
And echoes of wild strife and smell of blood,
Twitching of slain men, cries of parting woe,
Bruised bodies ghastly in the mountain flood;
Burials and burnings, triumph with terrors blent,
And widowed languors and night-long lament.

Like seeds long buried, these dead memories
Upthrust in their new green and spread to flower:
An eager child against his father's knees
Leaning, he had listened many an evening hour.
Now these remote reworded histories
Entangled with his own renewed their power,
Breathing an antique virtue through his mind,
As through dense yew boughs breathes the undying wind.

Sighing, he rose up softly. On the wall
A dark shape shambled aimless to and fro;
Head bent, eyes inward-seeing, rugged, tall,
Himself a shadow moved with musings slow
Amid his cumbered past, and heard sweet call
Of mother voice, and mother folk, and flow
Of gentle and proud speech and tender laughter,
Story and song, fault and forgiveness after;

And a voice graver, gentler than a man
Might hear from any but a woman beloved,
Stilling and awakening the blood that ran
Like ocean tide, as neared she or removed ...
Faded that music. Then a voice began
Paining within his heart, yet unreproved;
For dear the anguish is that steals upon
A father's spirit lamenting his lost son.

--The latest born and latest lost of those
Of his strong and her gentle being born.
By earthquake, pestilence, by human foes
Long were they dead; and yet not all forlorn
He grieved, for at his side the youngest rose
Bright as a willow gilded by dewy morn....
Felled now the tree, silent that music, still
The motion that did all the vale-air fill.

Once more they bore the body from the hunt
Where he alone had died. Once more he heard
The wail and sigh, and saw once more their front
Of drooping grief; once more the wailing stirred
Old hounds to baying wilder than was wont;
Fell once more like slow, sullen rain each word
Reluctant, telling to his senses strayed,
How while the gods drowsed and men hung afraid.

Slain was the Prince unwary by the paw
Of a springing beast that died in giving death.
Again the featureless torn face he saw,
The ribboned bosom emptied of warm breath;
Again the circle sudden hush'd with awe,
And smothered moaning heard the hush beneath.
Again, again, and every night again,
Vision renewed and voice recalled in vain.

Again those dear and lamentable rites
Within the winter stems of forest shade,
The pile, the smokeless flame, the thousand lights,
The one light that in all the thousand played;
Deep burthened voices while, around the heights
Lifting, young trebles their wild echo made;
Then the returning torches at the pyre
Lit, when the eye glowed faint within the fire.

*       *       *       *       *

Even as a man that by slow steps may climb
An unknown mountain path with tired tread
By ice-fringed brook and close herb white with rime,
Sees sudden far below a strange land spread
Immense; so from his lonely crag of Time
The Prince, his eye bewildered and adread,
Gazed at the vast, with mist and storm confused,
Cloud-racked, and changing even while he mused.

Ending were the old wise and stable ways.
Adventurers into distant lands had fared,
From distant lands adventurers with gaze
Proud and unenvying on his kingdom stared,
And sojourning had shaken quiet days
With restless knowledge, and strange worship reared
Of foreign altars, idols, prayers and songs
And sacrifice as to such gods belongs.

And all unsatisfied his people grown
Would move from this rejected mountain range
By yearlong valley journeys slowly down,
Sun-following, till surfeited with change,
Mid idle pastures pitched or fabled town,
Subdued to climes and kings and customs strange,
At length their very name should die away
And all their remnant be a vague "Men say."

"Men say!" he sighed, and from that lofty verge
Of inward seeing drooped his doubtful sight.
Sweet was it from such reverie to emerge
And breathe once more the thoughtless air of night,
And watch the fire-slave through fresh billets urge
The sleeping flame, until the vivid light
And toothed shadows wearied.... And then crept
The hounds a little nearer, and all slept.

*       *       *       *       *

But the young man still lay in quiet sleep,
Or half-sleep, and a dream-born cloud enwreathed
With memories, hopes and longings hidden deep
In his flown mind. Another air he breathed,
Saw from an unsubstantial mountain sweep
In purest light, soon in low shadow sheathed,
Semblance of faint-known faces, or beloved
Daily-acquainted still, or long removed.

Even as sacred fire in fennel stalks
Through windy ways is borne and densest night,
Till where the outpost shivering sentry walks
Beating the minutes into hours, the light
Touches the guarded pile and, flaring, balks
Beasts padding near and each unvisioned sprite
By old dread apprehended; and new gladness
Shakes in the village prone in winter sadness:--

So through the young man's dream the kingly flame
In his own breast was undiminished borne.
And other peoples catching from his fame
A noble heat, in neighbouring lands forlorn,
Would glow with new power and the ancient name
Bless, that had brightened through their narrow morn.
And purer yet and steadier would pass on
The sacred flame to son and son and son.

Or with contracting mind he saw the host
Of mountain warriors banded, moving down
Untrodden ways, as on young buds a frost
Falls, and the spring lies stiff. The air was sown
With strife, the fields with blood, the night with ghost
Wandering by ghost, and wounded men were strown
Surprised, unweaponed; and chill air congealed
Each hurt, and with the blood their breath was sealed.

And the loved tones of music sounded fierce
When the returning files with aspect proud
Approached, and brandished their rich trophied spears.
Sweet the pipes' spearlike music, sweet and loud,
And music of smitten arms was sweet to tears;
Sweet the dance unto smiling gods new vowed,
Sweet the recounting song and choral cries,
And age's quaverings and girls' envious sighs.

--So of himself, a father-king, he dreamed,
Holding an equal nation in his eye.
O with what golden points the future gleamed!
Rustled the years like laden mule-trains by,
Each with its burthen of old time redeemed....
Splendour on splendour poured, and so would lie
Unnoted and unmeasured:--metals, herds,
Distant-sought wonders, strange growths, beasts and birds.

Within the summer of that splendid shade
Might men live happy and nought left to fear,
Or if an antique restless spirit played
Fretful within their bones, and change drew near
Drumming wild airs, and another music made,
A father-king, speaking assured and clear,
Bidding them follow he would lead them forth
Through the yet undiscovered frowning north.

And the last fire on the warm stones would burn,
And the smoke linger on the mountain skies.
And seeing, they would muse yet of return
And then forget their sadness in the cries
Confused of the great caravan; and so turn
Towards the next sun-setting and the next sunrise
Many and many a day and wind and wind
Through foreign earth, as a dream through the mind.

Flowing on with the changes of its thought.
And doubtful kings entreating them to stay
Would sleep the easier when they lingered not;
And sullen tribes menacing would make way,
And broad slow rivers in their tide be caught,
And the long caravan o'er the ford all day
And all day and all day pass; while the tide slept
In sluggish shallows, or through marsh-reeds crept.

So would they on and on, with death and birth
For wayfellows and nightly stars for guide,
While seasons bloomed and faded on the earth,
And jealous gods their wandering gods would chide.
Until, weary of endless going forth
Dark-locust-like, the old fret would subside,
And young men with aged men and women cry,
"In this full-rivered pasture let us lie!

"Here let us lie, and wanderings be at rest!"
Midmost a cedar grove high sacrifice
Needs then be made, that gods be manifest;
And while the smoke spread in long twilit skies,
"Here let us lie, and wanderings be at rest,"
Would old men breathe repeated between sighs.
"In this green world and cool," would mothers say,
"Rest we, nor with thin babes yet longer stray."

--So stealing from the mind of the old King
Exhausted, into the sleeping young man's brain
Crept the same dream and lifted on new wing
And took from his swift passions a new stain,
Sanguine and azure, and first fluttering
Rose then on easy vans that bore again
The sleeper past his common thought's confine:--
So borne, so soaring, in that air divine,

He saw his people stayed, their journeys ended....
There should they, no more fretful, dwell for ever
In the full-nourished pasture where untended
Herds multiplied, and famine threatened never,
And where high border-hills glittered with splendid
Sparse-covered veins washed by the hill-born river.
So stead by stead arose, and men there moved
Satisfied, and no more vain longings roved.

Again the silver plough gleamed in the sod,
And seed from old fields slept in furrows new.
Then when Spring's rain and sun together trod
And interweaved swift steps the meadow through,
Old rites revived; they bore the shapen god
With green stalks and first-budded boughs, and drew
Together youth and age. And sowers leapt
High o'er the seed in earth's cold bosom wrapt:--

So in the golden-hued and burning hours
Of harvest, leapt on high the full-eared corn.
Friendly to pious hands those imaged Powers
Of rain and sun. And when the grain was borne
By oxen trailing tangled straws and flowers,
With leaves and dying blossoms on each horn,
Friendly the gods commingling in the shades
Of moon and torch and smoke-delaying glades.

Fell slowly sunset; the starred evening cool
Drooped round as mid his people the king rode,
Blessing and blessed, and in the faithful pool
Of their old loves his clear reflection glowed
Like summer's golden moon:--in wise and fool,
Noble and mean, accustomed reverence showed
Clear-shining; so he reached the unbarred hall
Where lamps, lords, servitors flashed festival,

Remembering old journeys and their end.
Bright-throned he sat there, with those lords around
Snow-polled, co-eval, as with friends their friend
Feasting. Arose at length the awaited sound
Of bardic chanting, bidding their thoughts descend
Into the chamber where the Past lay bound,
Wanting but music's finger; so upspringing,
The Past stormed all their minds in that loud singing.

And strangers, furred and tawny, seated there,
Far travellers from the sunrise, looking on
The feasting and the splendour, and with ear
Uncertain listening to the solemn tone
Of most dear Memory, envied all and sware
A sudden fealty. But the bard sang on
While silver beakers brimmed untouched; and darkened
The proud remembering eyes of men that hearkened.

Then came once more those strangers leading long
Migration of their subject folk. They stayed
And medley'd and were mingled, and their throng
Melted in his like snows, and so were made
One with them, and forgot their useless tongue,
Nor now their ancient bloody worship paid
To painted gods:--name, language, story died
When their last faithless exile parting sighed.

So year on year, century on century
In his imagination of delight
Followed, in a new world all innocency
And simpleness, and made for beings bright,
Where man to man was friend, unfearful, free,
And natural griefs alone darkened their night,
And natural joys as the wide air were common,
And kindness was the bond of all kin human.

*       *       *       *       *

--When the loved reeds of music sounded clear
From birds' breasts quivering in tall woodland trees
That rustled leafless in the winter air,
And with morn's new voice shrilled the western breeze:
Folding her wings the dream crept from his ear
To hang where bats drowse until daylight dies.
Then he from sleep's dear vanity awaking
Watched a sole sunbeam the roof-shadows raking.




PART II




THE WAKERS


The joyous morning ran and kissed the grass
And drew his fingers through her sleeping hair,
And cried, "Before thy flowers are well awake
Rise, and the lingering darkness from thee shake.

"Before the daisy and the sorrel buy
Their brightness back from that close-folding night,
Come, and the shadows from thy bosom shake,
Awake from thy thick sleep, awake, awake!"

Then the grass of that mounded meadow stirred
Above the Roman bones that may not stir
Though joyous morning whispered, shouted, sang:
The grass stirred as that happy music rang.

O, what a wondrous rustling everywhere!
The steady shadows shook and thinned and died,
The shining grass flashed brightness back for brightness,
And sleep was gone, and there was heavenly lightness.

As if she had found wings, light as the wind,
The grass flew, bent with the wind, from east to west,
Chased by one wild grey cloud, and flashing all
Her dews for happiness to hear morning call....

But even as I stepped out the brightness dimmed,
I saw the fading edge of all delight.
The sober morning waked the drowsy herds,
And there was the old scolding of the birds.




MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

TO
MARJORY



I

CHILDHOOD CALLS


Come over, come over the deepening river,
Come over again the dark torrent of years,
Come over, come back where the green leaves quiver,
And the lilac still blooms and the grey sky clears.

Come, come back to the everlasting garden,
To that green heaven, and the blue heaven above.
Come back to the time when time brought no burden
And love was unconscious, knowing not love.



II

THE ANSWER


O, my feet have worn a track
Deep and old in going back.
Thought released turns to its home
As bees through tangling thickets come.
One way of thought leads to the vast
Desert of the mind, and there is lost,
But backward leads to a dancing light
And myself there, stiff with delight.
O, well my thought has trodden a way
From this brief day to that long day.



III

THE FIRST HOUSE


That is the earliest thing that I remember--
The narrow house in the long narrow street,
Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors
Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,
Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet.
The sunlight through one narrow passage pours,
As through the keyhole into a dusty room,
Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom.
The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind,
Letting the sun fling his rod clear between,
Lest there should be no gold upon the green,
And no light then for a child to dream upon,
And day be of day's brightness all forlorn.
I saw those timber piles first dark and tall,
And then men clambered up, and stumbled down,
Each with a heavy and long timber borne
Upon broad shoulders, leather-covered, bent.
Hour after hour, day after day they went,
Until the piles were gone and a new sky
Stretched high and white above the garden wall.
And then fresh piles crept slowly up and up,
The strong men staggering, more cruelly bowed,
Till at last they lay idle on the top
Looking down from their height on things so small,
While I looked wondering and fearful up
At the strong men at rest on the new-built cloud.
But there was other gold than the sun's sparse gold--
Florence's hair, its brightness lying still
Upon my mind as then upon the grass.
Now the grass covers it and I am old,
Remembering but her hair and that long grass,
And the great wood-stacks threatening to fall--
When all dark things will.



IV

THE OTHER HOUSE


That other house, in the same crowded street,
One red-tiled floor had, answering to my feet,
And a bewildering garden all of light and heat.

Only that red floor and garden now remain,
One glowing firelike in my glowing brain,
One with smell, colour, sun and cloud revived again.

Yet in the garden the sky was very small,
Closed by some darkness beyond the low brown wall;
But from the west the gold could long unhindered fall.

Of human faces I remember none
Amid the garden; but myself alone
With creeping-jenny, sunflower, marigold, snapdragon--

These all my love, these now all my light,
Bringing their kindness to any painful night.
The sun brushed all their brightness with his skirt more bright.

And I was happy when I knew it not,
Dreaming of nothing more than that small plot,
And the high sky and sun that floated bright and hot.

But what night was, save dark, I did not know.
The blind shut out the stars: the moon would go
Staring, unstared at, moon and stars unnoted flow.

Until one night, into the strange street led,
To stare at a strange light from the Factory shed,
Wheeling and darting, withdrawn, and sudden again outsped--

No one knew why--but I knew darkness then,
And saw the stars that hung so still; but when
I lay abed the old starless dark came back again.

Night is not night without the stars and moon.
I knew them not, or I forgot too soon,
And now remember only the glowing sun of noon,

The red floor, and yellow flowers, and a lonely child,
And a whistle morn and noon and evening shrilled,
And darkness when the household murmurs even were stilled.



V

THE FIRE


Near the house flowed, or paused, the black Canal,
Edged by the timber piles so black and tall.
From the rotten fence I watched the horses pull
Along the footpath, slow and beautiful,
Moving with strength and ease, in their great size
And untired movement wonderful to my eyes;
Their dull brass clanking as each shaggy foot
Stamped the soft cinder track as fine as soot.
The driver lurched old and forbidding by,
Not seeing the child that feared to meet his eye.
I watched the rope dip, tighten, and the water flash
In falling, and then heard the hiss and splash;
I watched the barge drag slowly on and on,
Not dreaming how lovely a ship could ride the water upon,
Not dreaming how lovely flowing water was,
Sung to by trees and fingered by long grass,
Or running from the bosom of a hill
Down, where it flows so deep that it seems still.
But it was by that rotten fence one night
I saw the timber piles break into light,
Suddenly leaping into a heavenly flame
That played with the wind and one with the wind became.
Pile to pile gave its fire, till they were like
Bright angels with flashing swords before they strike,
Terrible and lovely. But men those angels fought,
Small and humble and patient all night wrought,
And all day wrought and night and day again,
And night and day, pouring their hissing rain,
Until the angels tired and one by one died.
Then their black spectres haunted the waterside,
Charred ruins, broken-limbed, no more erect,
Or heaped black dust, with cold white ashes flecked.
But I had seen the angel-quelling men,
With blackened and bruised face, the horses thin,
The glittering harness, the leaky, bubbling mains,
The broad smoke, and the steam from the leaping rains:--
O I had seen what I should not forget,
Men that defeated ruinous angels and shall still defeat.



VI

THE KITE


It was a day
All blue and lifting white,
When I went into the fields with Frank
To fly his kite.

The fields were aged, bare,
Shut between houses everywhere.
All the way there
The wind tugged at the kite to take it
Untethered, toss and break it;
But Frank held fast, and I
Walked with him admiringly;
In his light brave and fine
How bright was mine!

We tailed the kite
While the wind flapped its purple face
And yellow head.
Frank's yellow head
Was scarcely higher, and not so bright.
"Let go!" he cried, and I let go
And watched the kite
Swaying and rising so
That I was rooted to the place,
Watching the kite
Rise into the blue,
Lifting its head against the white
Against the sun,
Against the height
That far-off, farther drew;
Shivering there
In that fine air
As we below shivered with delight
And fear.

There it floated
Among the birds and clouds at ease
Of others all unnoted,
Swimming above the ranked stiff trees.
And I lay down, looking up at the sky,
The clouds and birds that floated
By others still unnoted,
And that swaying kite
Specking the light:
Looking up at the sky,
The birds and clouds that drew
Nearer, leaving the blue,
Stooping, and then brushing me,
With such tenderness touching me
That I had still lain there
In those fields bare,
Forgetting the kite;
For every cloud was now a kite
Streaming with light.



VII