There was a stony beach
Where the heat flickered and the little waves
Whispered each to each.
Dove-coloured was that stony beach,
And white birds hungering hovered over
The shining waves;
And men had kindled there
A great fierce heap of golden flame--
Spoiled grasses with dead buttercups and pale clover.
The agonising flame
Yearned in its vitals towards the quiet air
And died in a little smoke.
And on the coloured beach the black warm ash
Remained.

Then on that warm ash
Another heap of grasses was outpoured,
And instant came
Another knot of struggling yellow smoke
That burst into new agonies of flame,
Dying into a drift of smoke;
And on the coloured beach the black cold ash
Remained.

Or is thy grief too deep,
Passion too dear, the spirit in thee asleep?--

Twelve deep and sombre, still,
Expectant, hushed,
The miles-long crowd stood--and then listening.
The nervous drums,
The unendurable, low reeds:
Silence--and then the nearing drums
Again, again the thrilling reeds,
And then
(The deep crowd hushed)
Following an almightier King
That rode unseen,
Drew near the tributary magnificence....
Hushed, hushed,
The deep crowd stood, devouring, listening;
But a child on his father's shoulder cried,
"Hurrah, hurrah!"--

Only have thou no fear
Pride, but no fear.




MUSIC COMES


Music comes
Sweetly from the trembling string
When wizard fingers sweep
Dreamily, half asleep;
When through remembering reeds
Ancient airs and murmurs creep,
Oboe oboe following,
Flute answering clear high flute,
Voices, voices--falling mute,
And the jarring drums.

At night I heard
First a waking bird
Out of the quiet darkness sing....
Music comes
Strangely to the brain asleep!
And I heard
Soft, wizard fingers sweep
Music from the trembling string,
And through remembering reeds
Ancient airs and murmurs creep;
Oboe oboe following,
Flute calling clear high flute,
Voices faint, falling mute,
And low jarring drums;
Then all those airs
Sweetly jangled--newly strange,
Rich with change....
Was it the wind in the reeds?
Did the wind range
Over the trembling string;
Into flute and oboe pouring
Solemn music; sinking, soaring
Low to high,
Up and down the sky?
Was it the wind jarring
Drowsy far-off drums?

Strangely to the brain asleep
Music comes.




THE IDIOT


He stands on the kerb
Watching the street.
He's always watching there,
Listening to the beat
Of time in the street,
Listening to the thronging feet,
Laughing at the world that goes
Scowling or laughing by.

He sees Time go by,
An old lonely man,
Crooked and furtive and slow.
He laughs as he sees
Time shambling by
While he stands at his ease,
Until Time smiles wanly back
At his laughing eye.

Greed's great paunch,
Lean Envy's ill looks,
Fond forgetful Love,
He reads them like books:
Whatever their tongue
He reads them like children's books,
Stands staring and laughing there
As all they go by.

O, he laughs as he sees
The fat and the thin,
The simple, the solemn and wise
Nod-nodding by.
He stares in their eyes,
Till they're angry and murmur, _Poor fool!_
And he hears and he laughs again
From the depth of his folly.

Even when with heavy
Plume and pall
The sleeky coaches roll by,
Coffin, flowers and all,
He laughs, for he sees
Crouched on the coffin a small
Yellowy shape go by--
Death, uneasy and melancholy.




THE MOUSE


Standing close by you
In the cold light
Of two tall candles
That measure the dark of night,
I hear the mouse,
The only thing that's moving
In the quiet house.

Don't you hear it,
That furious mouse?
How can you sleep so deep
And that noise in the house?
Won't you stir
At the furious scratching
In the cupboard there?

No! a sharper sound
Would wake you not;
Not the sweetest fluting
Tease you back to thought.
Yet the scratching mouse
Makes all my flesh a nervous
Haunted house.

O, the dream, the dream
Must be sweet and deep
If life's scratching's heard not
On your cold sleep.
Yet if you should hear it,
So furious and fretful--
How could you bear it?




HAPPINESS


I have found happiness who looked not for it.
There was a green fresh hedge,
And willows by the river side,
And whistling sedge.

The heaviness I felt was all around.
No joy sang in the wind.
Only dull slow life everywhere,
And in my mind.

Then from the sedge a bird cried; and all changed.
Heaviness turned to mirth:
The willows the stream's cheek caressed,
The sun the earth.

What was it in the bird's song worked such change?
The grass was wonderful.
I did not dream such beauty was
In things so dull.

What was it in the bird's song gave the water
That living, sentient look?
Lent the rare brightness to the hedge?
That sweetness shook

Down on the green path by the running water?
Or the small daisies lit
With light of the white northern stars
In dark skies set?

What was it made the whole world marvellous?
Mere common things were joys.
The cloud running upon the grass,
Children's faint noise,

The trees that grow straight up and stretch wide arms,
The snow heaped in the skies,
The light falling so simply on all;
My lifted eyes

That all this startling aching beauty saw?
I felt the sharp excess
Of joy like the strong sun at noon--
Insupportable bliss!




COMFORTABLE LIGHT


Most comfortable Light,
Light of the small lamp burning up the night,
With dawn enleagued against the beaten dark;
Pure golden perfect spark;

Or sudden wind-bright flame,
That but the strong-handed wind can urge or tame;
Chill loveliest light the kneeling clouds between,
Silverly serene;

Comfort of happy light,
That mouse-like leaps amid brown leaves, cheating sight;
Clear naked stars, burning with swift intense
Earthward intelligence;--

Sensitive, single
Points in the dark inane that purely tingle
With eager fire, pouring night's circles through
Their living blue;

Dark light still waters hold;
Broad silver moonpath trodden into gold:
Candle-flame glittering through the traveller's night--
Most comfortable light....

And lovelier, the eye
Where light from darkness shines unfathomably,
Light secret, clear, shallow, profound, known, strange,
Constant alone in change:--

Not that wild light that turns
Hunted from dying eyes when the last fire burns;
O, not that bitter light of wounded things,
When bony anguish springs

Sudden, intolerable;
Nor light of mad eyes gleaming up from hell....
Come not again, wild light! Shine not again,
Hill-flare of pain!

But thou, most holy light....
Not the noon blaze that stings, too fiercely bright,
Not that unwinking stare of shameless day;
But thou, the gray,

Nun-like and silent, still,
Fine-breathed on many an eastern bare green hill;
Keen light of gray eyes, cool rain, and stern spears;
Sad light, but not to tears:--

--O, comfort thou of eyes
Watching expectant from chill northern skies,
Excellent joy for lids heavy with night--
Strange with delight!




HALLO!


"Hallo, hallo!" impatiently he cried,
And I replied,
Sleepily, "Hallo--hallo!"
No sound then; and I stretched
My hand for the receiver, all my nerves
Tingling and listening.
My hand clutched nothing, and I lit
The candle--strange!
I could have sworn it was the shouting wire....
But no!
Besides, a bare and unfamiliar room
And he, why, long-forgotten, maybe dead.
Yet all around,
Filling the silence up with tiny sound,
A million tremulous thin echoings,
"Hallo--hallo--
Hallo!"




FEAR


There was a child that screamed,
And if it was the gathering tingling dark,
Or if it was the tingling silences
Between few words,
Or if the water's drip and quivering drip--
Who knows?
Or if the child half sleeping suddenly dreamed--

Who knows? for she knew not, but was afraid,
And then angry with fear,
And then it seemed afraid of all the voices
Echoing hers.
And then afraid again of that drip, drip
Of water somewhere near.

Yet a man dying would not with such fear
Scream out at hell.
Easier it were to die than to endure,
Unless death brought the instant consciousness
Of all the wrongs of all lost years
Falling like water, drip after trembling drip
Upon the naked anguish of the soul.

But death's stupidity
Is gentle to the lunatic last wits.
Little of terror, little of consciousness,
But stupor, a great ease,
Narrowing silences,
And silence;
And then no more the drip, drip of the years,
No more the strangeness, agonies and fears;
No more the noise, but one imponderable unhaunted
Hush....

I heard the child that cried
Chattering a moment after in the light,
And singing out of such contentment as
Lamps and familiar voices bring.
She needs must sing
Now that sharp, spiny agony thrust no more,
Nor water fell, drip, drip by quivering drip;
Her face was bright,
Unapprehensive as a day in spring.




WAKING


Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep
With all those heavy waves flowing over me,
And I unconscious of the rolling night
Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep
Risen, I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me
But only air and light....

It was a sleep
So dark and so bewilderingly deep
That only death's were deeper or completer,
And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter.
Awake, the strangeness still hung over me
As I with far-strayed senses stared at the light.

I--and who was I?
Saw--oh, with what unaccustomed eye!
The room was strange and everything was strange
Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight;
And yet familiar as the light swept over me
And I rose from the night.

Strange--yet stranger I.
And as one climbs from water up to land
Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand,
So I for yesterdays whereon to climb
To this remote and new-struck isle of time.
But I found not myself nor yesterday--

Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep
Risen, I felt the seas no longer over me
But only air and light.
Yes, like one clutching at a ring I heard
The household noises as they stirred,
And holding fast I wondered. What were they?

I felt a strange hand lying at my side,
Limp and cool. I touched it and knew it mine.
A murmur, and I remembered how the wind died
In the near aspens. Then
Strange things were no more strange.
I travelled among common thoughts again;

And felt the new forged links of that strong chain
That binds me to myself, and this to-day
To yesterday. I heard it rattling near
With a no more astonished ear.
And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep,
No more the long night rolled its great seas over me.

--O, too anxious I!
For in this press of things familiar
I have lost all that clung
Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness
Nothing now is strange
Except the man that woke and then was I.




THE FALL


From that warm height and pure,
The peak undreamed of out of heavy air
Rising to heaven more strange and rare;
From that amazed brief sojourn, exquisite, insecure;

Fallen from thence to this,
From all immortal sunk to mortal sweet,
To slow gross joys from joy so fleet,
Fallen to mere remembrance of unsustainable bliss....

O harsh, O heavy air,
Difficult endurance, pain of common things!
The slow sun east to westward swings,
The flat-faced moon climbs labouring with a senseless stare.

From that inconceivable height----
O inward eyes that saw and ears that heard,
Spiritual swift wings that stirred
In that warm-flushing air and unendurable light;

When I was as mere down
On a swift-running youthful wind uptaken
Over tall trees, white mountains, shaken,
Into the uttermost azure lifted, lifted alone.

From that peak can it be
That I am fallen, fallen that was so high?
Or was that truly, surely I?
Who is it crawls here now, sad, uncontentedly?

Fallen from that high content,
--Fool, thou that wast content merely with bliss!
Happy those lovers that will not kiss;
Never to be fulfilled was the heart's endless passion meant.

Never on joys attainable
To linger, never on easy near delight--
O bitter, unreached infinite,
Merciful defeat, availless anguish, hunger unendurable!

O who shall be in longing wise,
Skilled in refusal, in embracing free,
Glad with earth's innocent ecstasy,
Yet all the uncomprehended heaven in his eyes!




STAY


Stay, thou desired one, stay!
Brighten the curious darkness of the world.
Cold through the chill dark swings the sleeping world,
Sense-heavy, dreaming dully of clear day.
No moon, no stars, no sound of wind or seas:
Wearily sleeping in immense unease,
Dreams, dreams the world of day.
Stay, thou adored one, stay,
Who on the dark hang'st lamps of gold delight,
Gold flames amid the purple pit of night.
Stay, stay,
Who the cool dawn's most lovely gray
Mak'st lovelier with rose of far away.
Stay, thou, who buildest wonder of things mean
(More truly so they're seen).
Stay--nay, fly not, nay--stay;
Youth gone, remain thou yet and yet.
Though the world spin in darkness and forget
The light,
Stay thou, whose coming's joy and flight despair.
Thou unimaginably more than fair,
Brief unsustainable strange dream, stay yet!
Lamping the world's close unsustainable dark
With golden unimaginable day.




SHADOWS


The shadow of the lantern on the wall,
The lantern hanging from the twisted beam,
The eye that sees the lantern, shadow and all.

The crackle of the sinking fire in the grate,
The far train, the slow echo in the coombe,
The ear that hears fire, train and echo and all.

The loveliness that is the secret shape
Of once-seen, sweet and oft-dreamed loveliness,
The brain that builds shape, memory, dream and all....

A white moon stares Time's thinning fabric through,
And makes substantial insubstantial seem,
And shapes immortal mortal as a dream;
And eye and brain flicker as shadows do
Restlessly dancing on a cloudy wall.




WALKING AT EVE


Walking at eve I met a little child
Running beside a tragic-featured dame,
Who checked his blitheness with a quick "For shame!"
And seemed by sharp caprice froward and mild.
Scarce heeding her the sweet one ran, beguiled
By the lit street, and his eyes too aflame;
Only, at whiles, into his eyes there came
Bewilderment and grief with terror wild.

So, Beauty, dost thou run with tragic life;
So, with the curious world's caress enchanted,
Even of ill things thine ecstasy dost make;
Yet at the touch of fear and vital strife
The splendours thy young innocency forsake,
And with thy foster-mother's woe thou art haunted.




THE PHYSICIAN


She comes when I am grieving and doth say,
"Child, here is that shall drive your grief away."
When I am hopeless, kisses me and stirs
My breast with the strong lively courage of hers.
Proud--she will humble me with but a word,
Or with mild mockery at my folly gird;
Fickle--she holds me with her loyal eyes;
Remorseful--tells of neighbouring Paradise;
Envious--"Be not so mad, so mad," she saith,
"Envied and envier both race with Death"
She my good Angel is: and who is she?--
The soul's divine Physician, Memory.




VISION AND ECHO


I have seen that which sweeter is
Than happy dreams come true.
I have heard that which echo is
Of speech past all I ever knew.
Vision and echo, come again,
Nor let me grieve in easeless pain!

It was a hill I saw, that rose
Like smoke over the street,
Whose greening rampires were upreared
Suddenly almost at my feet;
And tall trees nodded tremblingly
Making the plain day visionary.

But ah, the song, the song I heard
And grieve to hear no more!
It was not angel-voice, nor child's
Singing alone and happy, nor
Note of the wise prophetic thrush
As lonely in the leafless bush.

It was not these, and yet I knew
That song; but now, alas,
My unpurged ears prove all too gross
To keep the nameless air that was
And is not; and my eyes forget
The vision that I follow yet.

Yet though forgetful I did see.
And heard, but cannot tell,
And on my forehead felt an air
Unearthly, on my heart a spell.
I have seen that which deathless is,
And heard--what I for ever miss!




REVISITATION

It is here--the lime-tree in the garden path,
The lilac by the wall, the ivied wall
That was so high, the heavy, close-leaved creeper,
The harsh gate jarring on its hinges still,
The echoing clean flags--all
The same, the same, and never more the same.

That mound was once a hill,
The old lime-tree a forest (now as small
As the poor lilac by the ivied wall),
And this neglected narrow greenery
A wilderness, and I its king and keeper;
Lying upon the grass I saw the sky
And all its clouds: the garden edged the sky.

The harsh gate jars upon its hinges still.




UNPARDONED

Gentle as the air that kisses