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Wilfrid Scawen Blunt - Quatrains Of Life
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What has my youth been that I love it thus,
 Sad youth, to all but one grown tedious,
 Stale as the news which last week wearied us,
 Or a tired actor`s tale told to an empty house?

 What did it bring me that I loved it, even
 With joy before it and that dream of Heaven,
 Boyhood`s first rapture of requited bliss,
 What did it give? What ever has it given?

 `Let me recount the value of my days,
 Call up each witness, mete out blame and praise,
 Set life itself before me as it was,
 And--for I love it--list to what it says.

 Oh, I will judge it fairly. Each old pleasure
 Shared with dead lips shall stand a separate treasure.
 Each untold grief, which now seems lesser pain,
 Shall here be weighed and argued of at leisure.

 I will not mark mere follies. These would make
 The count too large and in the telling take
 More tears than I can spare from seemlier themes
 To cure its laughter when my heart should ache.

 Only the griefs which are essential things,
 The bitter fruit which all experience brings;
 Nor only of crossed pleasures, but the creed
 Men learn who deal with nations and with kings.

 All shall be counted fairly, griefs and joys,
 Solely distinguishing `twixt mirth and noise,
 The thing which was and that which falsely seemed,
 Pleasure and vanity, man`s bliss and boy`s.

 So I shall learn the reason of my trust
 In this poor life, these particles of dust
 Made sentient for a little while with tears,
 Till the great ``may--be`` ends for me in ``must.``

 My childhood? Ah, my childhood! What of it
 Stripped of all fancy, bare of all conceit?
 Where is the infancy the poets sang?
 Which was the true and which the counterfeit?

 I see it now, alas, with eyes unsealed,
 That age of innocence too well revealed.
 The flowers I gathered--for I gathered flowers--
 Were not more vain than I in that far field.

 Self was my god, the self I most despise,
 Blind in its joys and swine--like gluttonies,
 The rule of the brute beast that in us is,
 Its heaven a kitchen and a gorge its prize.

 No other pleasures knew I but of sense,
 No other loves but lusts without pretence.
 Oh, childhood is but Nature unredeemed,
 Blind in desire, unshamed in ignorance.

 I was all vanity and greed, my hand
 Uncaring, as a panther`s, whom it pained,
 My nurse, my sisters, the young birds my prey.
 I saw them grieve nor stopped to understand.

 My mother loved me. Did I love her? Yes,
 When I had need of her to soothe distress
 Or serve my wants. But when the need was by,
 Others were there more dear in idleness.

 These coaxed and flattered me. Their wit afforded
 Edge to my wit, and I would strut and lord it
 Among them a young god--for god I seemed--
 Or goose--for goose I was--they still encored it.

 Alas, poor mother! What a love was yours!
 How little profit of it all endures!
 What wasted vigils, what ill--omened prayers;
 What thankless thanks for what disastrous cures!

 Why did you bind yourself in such harsh fetter,
 To serve a heart so hard? It had been better
 Surely to take your rest through those long nights,
 Than watching on to leave me thus your debtor.

 I heard but heeded not her warning voice;
 I grudged her face its sadness in my joys,
 And when she looked at me I did not guess
 The secret of her sorrow and my loss.

 They told me she was dying, but my eyes
 Brimmed not with tears. I hardly felt surprise,
 Nay, rather anger at their trouble when
 I asked them ``what it was one does who dies.``

 She threw her weak arms round me, and my face
 Pressed to her own in one supreme embrace;
 I felt her tears upon my cheeks all wet,
 And I was carried frightened from the place.

 I lost her thus who was indeed my all,
 Lost her with scarce a pang whom now I call
 Aloud to in the night a grieving man,
 Hoar in his sins, and only clasp the wall.

 This the beginning. Next my boyhood came,
 Childhood embittered, its brute joys the same,
 Only in place of kindness cruelty,
 For courage fear, and for vain--glory shame.

 Here now was none to flatter or to sue.
 My lords were of the many, I the few;
 These gave command nor heeded my vain prayers.
 It was their will, not mine, my hands must do.

 I was their slave. My body was the prey
 Of their rude sports, more savage still than they,
 My every sense the pastime of their whim,
 My soul a hunted thing by night and day.

 Pain was my portion, hunger, wakefulness,
 And cold more bitter still, and that distress
 Which is unnamed of tears that dare not fall,
 When the weak body grieves and none may guess.

 There was no place where I might lay my head,
 No refuge from the world which was my dread,
 No shrine inviolate for me from my foes,
 No corner quite my own, not even my bed.

 I would have changed then with the meanest thing
 Which has its home in the free fields in Spring,
 And makes its lair in the Earth`s secret dells,
 Or hides in her dark womb by burrowing.

 I used to gaze into the depths of Earth,
 And watch the worms and beetles that have birth
 Under the stones secure from outer ills,
 And envy them their loneliness in mirth.

 One treasure had I, one thing that I loved,
 A snail with shell most delicately grooved,
 And a mute patient face which seemed to see,
 And horns which moved towards me as I moved.

 It was like me a creature full of fear,
 But happier far for its strong household gear,
 The living fortress on its back wherein
 Its griefs could shrink away and disappear.

 I kept it in a nest, the hollow bole
 Of a dead elm, and for its daily dole,
 And my own comfort in its luckier state,
 Brought it a lettuce I in secret stole.

 It waited for my coming each new noon,
 When from my fellows I could steal so soon,
 And there I fed it and arranged its cell,
 All through a single happy month of June.

 And then--ah, then--who even now shall tell,
 The terror of that moment, when with yell
 Of triumph on their prize they broke and me,
 And crushed it `neath their heels, those hounds of Hell!

 Even yet the thought of it makes my blood rush
 Back to my temples with an angry flush;
 And for an instant, if Man`s race could be
 Crushed with it, God forgive me, I would crush.

 Ay, God forgive me! `Tis an evil thought,
 And thus it is that wrong on wrong is wrought,
 Vengeance on vengeance by a single deed
 Of violent ill or idleness untaught.

 Nay, rather let me love. I will not be
 Partner with Man even thus in cruelty
 For one least instant, though the prize should stand,
 Hate slain for ever and the Nations free.

 Thus for four years I lived of slaves the slave,
 Too weak to fight, too beaten to be brave.
 Who mocks at impotence and coward fear
 Knows little of the pangs mute creatures have.

 Yet wherefore grieve? Perhaps of all my days
 This is the thing I mostly need to praise,
 My chiefest treasure to have suffered wrong,
 For God is cunning in His works and ways.

 The sense of justice which He gives to Man
 Is his own suffering, and His pity`s plan
 Man`s own great need of pity which brims o`er
 In alms to Africa and Hindostan.

 And he who has not suffered nothing knows;
 Therefore I chide not at these ancient woes,
 But keep them as a lesson to my pride,
 Lest I should smite the meanest of my foes.

 And it is ended. Kindly Death drew near
 And warned them from me with his face of fear.
 I did not fear him, but the rest stood awed,
 As at the frown of some dread minister.

 I passed out of their sight, one living still,
 But dead to sense who knows not good or ill,
 Their blessings were the last thing that I heard
 In that dark house. I wish them only well.

 What next befell me was as some have found,
 Peace to their wounds upon a battle ground,
 Who sleep through days of pain and nights of fear,
 Conscious of nothing but their dream profound.

 My dream was of a convent with smooth floors,
 And whitewashed walls, a place of corridors,
 Where the wind blew in summer all day long,
 And a shut garden filled with altar flowers.

 Here lived in piety a score of men,
 Who, having found the world a place of pain,
 Or fearing it ere yet they knew it well,
 Sought in God`s service their eternal gain.

 With these it was my privilege to be
 The pensioner of their great pity`s fee,
 Nor favoured less for my dim soul`s dark ways,
 Awhile `twixt boyhood and maturity.

 My sorrow to their zeal was fruitful soil,
 My wounds their pride as needing wine and oil;
 All knowledge had they to redeem and save,
 Mirth, silence, prayer, and that best opiate, toil.

 The garden was my task. I learned to dig,
 To nail the fruit--trees, pear, and peach, and fig;
 To trim the grass plots and the box make good,
 And keep the gravel smooth from leaf or twig.

 Dear blessed garden! In this night of days
 I see it still with its fair formal face,
 Where even the flowers looked prim, as who should ask
 Pardon for beauty in so pure a place.

 This for the summer. But when winter fell,
 A gentler service called me from my cell,
 As suited to the frailty of my needs,
 To serve the mass and ring the chapel bell.

 Mine was the sacristy, the care of copes,
 Albs, censers, pyxes, gifts of kings and popes,
 Of lace and linen and the lamps which hung
 For ever lit with oil of human hopes.

 There on the altar steps, as one at home,
 I hourly knelt the servant of old Rome,
 And learned her ritual, and assuaged my soul
 With the high lessons of her martyrdom.

 Not seldom in those hours the dream was mine
 Of voices speaking and a call divine.
 God in all ages thus has shown to men
 His secret will, and I too sought a sign.

 The voice that called me was a voice of good.
 It spoke of feasts less vain than the world`s food,
 And showed me my place set a guest for aye
 Of heavenly things in that calm brotherhood.

 Why did I shrink? What profit to my soul
 Has the world proved that I must yield it toll?
 What its ambitions that for these my zeal
 Turned backward then from its eternal goal?

 Yet thus it is. Our fallen human blood
 Is ever a mixed stream `twixt bad and good;
 And mine, perhaps, worse mingled than the rest,
 Flowed in a baser, a more prurient flood.

 And so it might not be. There came a day
 When I must grasp my fate and choose my way,
 And when my will was weaker than a child`s,
 And pride stood in rebellion and said nay.

 There in the garden, while the thrushes sang,
 I listened to his prayer with a mute pang.
 That man of God who argued with my soul,
 And still the vesper chorus rang and rang.

 Below us a pool lay with depths profound,
 And in its face I gazed as if to sound
 His reason`s meaning, while the rain of grace
 Was shed on all things but my heart around.

 ``For lo,`` he said, ``thus near us lies the end;
 A step--no more--may mar our lives or mend.
 This side a little, and Hell gapes for us;
 On that side Heaven holds out strong hands, a friend.

 ``And he who fears is wise. Oh look,`` he cried,
 ``Here in this pool lies Death with its arms wide.
 Speak. Shall I buy you life at cost of mine?
 Nay; I would drown, though in my sin I died.``

 Thus Moses argued with his people, these
 Than I less stubborn and less hard to please.
 God on that night spoke loudly to my soul,
 And I refused Him--weeping--on my knees.

 Here my dream ended. From that hidden life
 I went out hungry to a world of strife,
 The world of pleasure, and with heart keen set
 For human joy as having felt the knife.

 What is the root of pleasure in Man`s heart?
 The need to know made practical in part,
 The shaping of the thing the soul has dreamed,
 In gold or clay, with art or little art.

 Youth knows not how to fashion its own pleasure;
 It deals with Fortune without scale or measure.
 And so is cheated of the gold life holds,
 A treasure house of hope without the treasure.

 The need is there, as swallows need to fly,
 The strength of wing which longs for liberty;
 The courage of the soul which upward tends,
 And the eye`s light, a truth which is no lie.

 Behind us the past sinks, too tedious night,
 Whose shadows brighter show the world of light.
 And who shall say that laughter is not good,
 When the blood pulses in the veins aright?

 An April morning with the birds awake;
 The sound of waters lapping by a lake;
 The scent of flowers, the rhyme of dancing feet;
 The breath of midnight with the heart aquake.

 These are the moods of pleasure. And no less
 The soul itself has need of wantonness.
 The thirst of knowledge fired not only Eve,
 And youth grieves still to guess and only guess.

 We ask for wisdom. Knowledge first of all
 Demands our vows from her high pedestal.
 We wish ourselves in act as wise as gods,
 Nor even in age dare quite our oath recall.

 The truth !--to hold the actual thing and be
 Bound by no law but hers and liberty.
 Such was my youth`s ambition, the fruit fair
 And good for food of the forbidden tree.

 Two things I was resolved my soul should know;
 The physical meaning of the Earth below,
 With its dumb forces armed for good and ill,
 And its blind fires which in their cycles go;

 This, and the power of Love. Here doubly set,
 The riddle stood which holds life`s alphabet.
 What of a very truth were God and Man?
 I dared not die till I had answered it.

 And first of God. What Quixote on what steed
 Of foundered folly urged to headlong speed,
 Ere chose his path more madly, or fell down
 Proner on life`s least lenient stones to bleed?

 Striding my horse of reason with loose rein,
 I tilted at all shadows in disdain.
 To each eternal I my question put,
 ``What art thou, for Man`s pleasure or his pain?``

 The Maker I had worshipped, where was He,
 In the Earth`s fields, or the circumfluent sea?
 The footsteps of His presence on the wind,
 How should I trace them through infinity?

 The huge world in its naked shape unclad,
 Mocked me with silence, as a thing gone mad.
 A brainless virgin, passionless and blind,
 Reeling through space, unsentient--yet how sad!

 The stars of heaven! Their voices once went out
 Through all a firmament in psalm and shout.
 What word have they to--night? Nay, Jesse`s son
 Had only mocked in our new world of doubt.

 I searched them, and I numbered, and I came
 To numbers only, flame evolved of flame,
 Orb wheeled on orb, a meaningless machine,
 A handless clock without the maker`s name.

 Where was my God the Father? Not in space,
 Which needs no god for glory or disgrace,
 Being itself eternal. He I sought
 Knew not the stars but smiled with human face.

 Darkly the night looked at me; darker still
 The inner Earth with its tumultuous will,
 Its legion of destroyers and destroyed,
 Its law of hunger and the need to kill.

 In this too was no god, or--monstrous thought--
 A god of endless wrong, of treason wrought
 Through countless ages still against the weak.
 Out on such truth if this be all it taught!

 Out on such reason! From that cave of dread
 Like one despoiled of thieves I naked fled,
 My thirst for knowledge slaked in bitterness,
 And Earth`s blank riddle all too sternly read.

 What has my youth been that I love it thus?
 The love of Woman? Ah, thou virtuous
 Dear face of wisdom which first filled my heaven,
 How art thou fled from life`s deserted house!

 I see thee pure and noble as a vision,
 Rapt in the joy of thy sublime derision
 Of all things base, yet tender to the pain
 Of him that loved thee spite of love`s misprision.

 Joyous thou wert as a Spring morning filled
 With mirth of birds which strive and wive and build,
 A presence of all pleasure on the Earth
 Transformed through thee and with thy laughter thrilled.

 True were thy eyes and pitiful thy voice,
 The colour of thy cheeks how rare a choice,
 The smiling of thy lips how strangely dear
 When thy wit moved and made our souls rejoice!

 Few years thou countedst to thy wisdom`s score,
 But more than mine and than thy pleasure more
 I deemed thee roof and crown of womanhood,
 Framed for all fame to blazon and adore.

 Why wert thou fashioned thus for Earth and Man,
 If only Heaven was to possess thy plan?
 Why wert thou beautiful as God to me,
 If only God should see thee and should scan?

 Oh, thou wert cruel in thy ignorance,
 Thou first beloved of my time`s romance.
 The love within thee was a light of death,
 Set for a snare and luring to mischance.

 What didst thou think of him, the boy untried,
 To whom thou spakest of Heaven as speaks a bride?
 The love of Heaven! Alas, thou couldst not guess
 The fires he nursed or surely thou hadst lied.

 His secret springs of passion had no art,
 Nor loosed his tongue to any counterpart
 Of mastering words. You neither feared nor knew
 The rage of cursing hidden in his heart.

 If thou hadst seen it, wouldst thou not have said
 A soul by Satan tortured and misled?
 Thou didst not guess the truth, that in thy hand
 The scourges lay, the pincers, and the lead.

 Or haply didst thou love me? Not so heaven
 Possessed thee then but sometimes there were given
 Glimpses which, to my later eyes of light,
 Have shown new worlds as if by lightnings riven.

 How had it been if I had ventured quite
 That first enchanted, unforgotten night,
 When I surprised thee weeping and in fear
 Forbore the wrong that should have proved me right?

 How had it been if youth had been less weak,
 And love`s mute hand had found the wit to speak.
 If thou hadst been less valiant in thy tears,
 And I had touched the heaven which was thy cheek?

 Would life have been to me what now it is,
 A thing of dreams half wise and half unwise,
 A web unpatterned where each idler`s hand
 Has woven his thoughts, flowers, scrolls, and butterflies?

 Or rather, had it not, redeemed of bliss,
 Grasped at new worlds less impotent than this,
 And made of love a heaven? for depths of fate
 Lie in the issue of a woman`s kiss.

 Alas, it was not, and it may not be
 Now, though the sun were melted in the sea,
 And though thou livedst, and though I still should live,
 Searching thy soul through all Eternity.

 The ideal love, how fondly it gives place
 To loves all real--alas, and flavourless.
 The heart in hunger needs its meat to live,
 And takes what dole it finds of happiness.

 Then are strange spectacles of treason seen,
 Earthquakes and tempests and the wars of men,
 Shipwrecks of faith, ungodly interludes
 And pagan rites to Moloch on the green.

 Lust travestied as love goes nightly forth,
 Preaching its creed unclean from South to North,
 Using the very gestures of true love,
 Its words, its prayers, its vows--how little worth!

 Where are ye now, ye poor unfortunates,
 Who once my partners were in these mad gaits,
 Sad souls of women half unsexed by shame,
 In what dire clutches of what felon fates?

 Dark--eyed I see her, her who caused my fall,
 Nay, caused it not who knew it not at all.
 I hear her babble her fool`s creed of bliss,
 While I lie mute, a swine--like prodigal.

 Her chamber redolent of unctuous glooms
 Prisons me yet with its profane perfumes,
 A cell of follies used and cast aside,
 Painted in pleasure`s likeness--and a tomb`s.

 Oh, those dead flowers upon her table set,
 How loud they preach to me of wisdom yet,
 Poor slaughtered innocents there parched in Hell,
 Which Heaven had seen at dawn with dewdrops wet!

 Littered they lay, those maidenheads of saints,
 Mid pots of fard and powder--puffs and paints,
 Egregious relics of lost purity
 Tortured on wires with all that mars and taints.

 Beneath, upon the floor her slippers lay
 Who was the queen of all that disarray,
 Left where she dropped them when she fled the room
 To speed her latest gallant on his way.

 The pictures on the wall--by what strange chance--
 Showed sacred scenes of Biblical romance;
 Among them Pilate on his judgment--seat
 Washing before the multitude his hands.

 Smiling he sat while in reproachful mood
 He they led forth to crucifixion stood.
 ``Innocent am I,`` thus the legend ran
 Inscribed beneath it, ``of this just One`s blood.``

 Innocent! Ah, the sad forgotten thought
 Of that mute face my convent dreams had sought.
 And while I sighed, behold the arms of sin
 In my own arms enlatticed and enwrought.

 A life of pleasure is a misnamed thing,
 Soulless at best, an insect on the wing,
 But mostly sad with its unconquered griefs,
 The noise that frets, the vanities that sting.

 The weapons of youth`s armoury are these--
 The chase, the dance, the gambler`s ecstasies.
 Each in its turn I handled with the rest,
And drained my cup of folly to the lees.

 What days I murdered thus without design,
 What nights deflowered in madness and lewd wine!
 The ghosts of those lost hours are with me still,
 Crying, ``Give back my life, and mine, and mine!``

 Yet was it glorious on the scented morn
 To wake the woods with clamouring hound and horn,
 To ride red--coated where the red fox ran,
 And shout with those who laughed to see him torn.

 Glorious to lie `neath the tall reeds in wait
 For the swift fowl at flight returning late,
 And pull them from their path with lightning shot,
 The bolt of Jove less certain in its fate.

 Glorious to battle with the crested wave
 For the full nets engulphed in the sea`s grave,
 And see the fishes flash entangled there,
 With only courage and strong arms to save.

 And glorious more, with sword high--poised and still,
 To meet the bull`s rush with o`ermastering skill,
 And watch the stricken mass in anger die,
 Tamed by the potency of human will.

 All glorious and vain--glorious and most sad,
 Because of the dark death their doing made,
 And of the nothingness that swept the track,
 Leaving no footprint or of good or bad.

 The light--heeled love of laughter and the dance
 Held me, yet held not, in its transient trance.
 The hours were few when, fired with love and wine,
 I trod the Bacchanalian maze of France.

 Yet do I mind me of one afternoon
 In Meudon wood, when night came all too soon;
 And then again the morning, and unstayed
 We pranced our measure out from noon to noon.

 That day of dancing in my memory stands
 A thing apart and almost of romance,
 A day of pleasure physical and strong,
 Unwearied and unwearying, feet, lips, hands.

 The ``Coq de Bruyère`` was the fortunate sign
 Of the lone inn where we had met to dine,
 And found a score companions light as we
 To turn our rustic hostel to a shrine.

 If it still stands, how strangely it must view
 This older world with hopes of paler hue!
 Or was it youth so painted the grass green,
 The apple--blossoms pink, the heavens blue?

 Alas! I know not, nor remember yet
 Her name with whom those foolish hours seemed sweet,
 Only that she laughed on and danced with me,
 And that my fingers just could span her feet.

 How far away! And Meudon, too, how far!
 And all those souls of women lost in care,
 And even fair France herself how merged in pain!
 It was the Spring before the Prussian war.

 One day, one only day, and then the light
 Waned in the place and hid our faces white,
 And, our score paid, we left the empty room
 And met no more on this side of the night.

 Who speaks of play speaks treason to youth`s state.
 Youth is the heir to passion, love and hate,
 The passion of the body in its strength,
 The passion of the soul commensurate.

 Nought needs it in its force of whip or goad,
 Say rather a strong bridle for the road.
 He who would spur it to a fiercer heat
 Is an ill rider whom no fortunes bode.

 Shame is it that the glory of youth`s eyes
 Should be lack--lustred with the grape`s disguise,
 And doubly shame its vast desires should swoon
 In maniac clutchings at a vagrant prize.

 Gold is the last least noble stake of life,
 When all is gone, friends, fashion, fame, love`s strife,
 The thing men still can chase when dotage stings
 And joy is dead and gout is as the knife.

 Youth, seeking gold at Fortune`s hand, goes bare
 Of its best weapons with the humblest there,
 As impotent to win a smile from fate
 As the least valiant, the most cursed with care.

 Watch well the doors of Fortune. Who goes in?
 The prince, the peasant, the gay child of sin,
 The red--cheeked soldier, the mad crook--backed crone,
 Which shall prevail with Fortune? Which shall win?

 Nay, who shall tell? Luck levels all pretence,
 Manhood`s high pride, youth`s first concupiscence.
 The arbiter of fame it stands and wit,
 The judge supreme of sense and lack of sense.

 The gambler`s heaven is Youth`s untimely Hell.
 And I, who dwelt there as lost spirits dwell,
 There touched the bottom of the pit. Even yet
 I dare not nakedly its secrets tell.

 What saved me from the gulf? All ye who preach
 Art the physician and consoling leech
 Of fallen souls, if but a single spark
 Of genius lives, behold the text you teach.

 In Art`s high hall for whoso holds the key
 Honour does service on a suppliant knee,
 Virtue his handmaid is, to work his will,
 And beauty crowns him, be he bond or free.

 His sad soul`s raiment from his shoulders fall,
 Light pure is given, and he is clothed withal,
 His eye grows single and his madness parts
 As once in song the raging mood of Saul.

 What saved me from the gulf? Thrice generous hand,
 A king`s in gifts, a prophet`s in command,
 All potent intellect designed to guide,
 Transforming grief as with a master`s wand!

 This life, if it be worthy grown, is thine;
 These tears made sweet once bitter with such brine,
 This impotence of will to purpose fired,
 This death fenced out with mine and countermine.

 For I insensate had resolved to fly
 From life`s despairs and sick pride`s misery,
 A craven braggart to the arms of death,
 And die dishonoured as the wretched die.

 Thou stoodst, how oft, between me and my fate,
 Bidding me cheer, or, if I dared not, wait,
 From morn to night and then from night to morn
 Pointing to Fame as to an open gate;

 Till Time, the healer, had half closed the wound,
 And Spring in the year`s mercy came back crowned
 With leaves and blossoms, and I could not choose
 To lie unknown forgotten underground.

 If there be aught of pleasure worth the living
 `Tis to be loved when trouble has done grieving,
 And the sick soul, resigned to her mute state,
 Forgets the pain forgiven and forgiving.

 With wan eyes set upon life`s door ajar
 She waits half conscious of the rising star,
 And lo! `tis Happiness on tip--toe comes
 With fruits and flowers and incense from afar.

 Scarcely she heeds him as he stops and smiles.
 She does not doubt his innocent lips` wiles.
 She lies in weakness wondering and half won,
 While beauty cunningly her sense beguiles.

 Then at her feet he sets his stores unrolled
 Of spice and gums and treasure manifold.
 All kingdoms of the Earth have tribute paid
 To heap the myrrh and frankincense and gold.

 These are his gifts, and tenderly he stands
 With eyes of reverence and mute folded hands,
 Pleading her grace, and lo! her heaven is filled
 With music as of archangelic bands.

 What saved me from the gulf? A woman`s prayer
 Sublimely venturing all a soul might dare,
 A saint`s high constancy outwitting Fate
 And dowered with love supreme in its despair.

 I had done naught to merit such high lot,
 Given naught in hostage and adventured naught.
 The gift was free as heaven`s own copious rains,
 And came like these unseeking and unsought.

 O noble heart of woman! On life`s sea
 Thou sailedst bravely, a proud argosy,
 Freighted with wisdom`s wealth and ordered well,
 Defiant of all storms--since storms must be.

 On thy high way thou passedst pursuant only
 Of Virtue`s purpose and Truth`s instinct thronely.
 Strength`s symbol wert thou, self--contained and free,
 Lone in thy path of good but never lonely.

 What glory of the morning lit thy shrouds!
 What pure thought limned thee white on thunder--clouds!
 I from my shattered raft afar in pain
 Kneeled to thy form and prayed across the floods.

 In godlike patience, to my soul`s surprise,
 Thou paused and parleyed wise with me unwise.
 Ah, dearest soul seraphic! Who shall paint
 The heaven revealed of pity in thine eyes?

 She took me to her riches. All the gladness
 Of her great joy she gave to cure my sadness,
 All her soul`s garment of unearthly hopes
 To ease the ache which fructified to madness.

 She took me to her pleasure, wealth long stored
 Of silent thought and fancy in full hoard,
 Treasures of wisdom and discerning wit,
 And dreams of beauty chaste and unexplored.

 She took me to her heart,--and what a heart,
 Vast as all heaven and love itself and art!
 She gave it royally as monarchs give
 Who hold back nothing when they give a part.

 A king I rose who had knelt down a slave,
 A soul new born who only sought a grave,
 A victor from the fight whence I had fled,
 A hero crowned with bays who was not brave.

 Blest transformation! Circe`s ancient curse
 See here interpreted in plain reverse.
 Love, generous love, in me devised a spell
 Ennobling all and subtler far than hers.

 Thus was I saved. Yet, mark how hardly Fate
 Deals with its victors vanquished soon or late.
 The ransomed captive of his chains goes free.
 She pines in durance who has paid the debt.

 Behold this woman of all joy the heir,
 Robed in high virtue and worth`s worthiest wear,
 A saint by saints esteemed, a matron wise
 As Rome`s Cornelia chastely debonnaire.

 Behold her touched with my own soul`s disease,
 Grieving in joy and easeless still in ease,
 The gall of sorrow and the thorn of shame
 Twined ever in the wreaths love framed to please.

 Behold her languishing for honour`s loss,
 Her pride nailed daily to a nameless cross,
 Her vesture sullied with the dust of sin,
 Her gold of purity transfused with dross.

 The echo of her voice has tones that thrill:
 I hear her weeping with a blind wild will.
 A name she speaks to the dim night, his name
 Her virtue spared not yet remembered still.

 ``Say, shall I comfort thee?`` ``O soul of mine,
 Thy comfort slays me with its joys like wine.
 Thy love is dear to me--then let me go.
 Bid me fare forth for aye from thee and thine.``

 ``Is there no pleasure?`` ``Pleasure is not sweet
 When doors are shut and veiled Man`s mercy--seat.
 My heaven thou wert, but heaven itself is pain
 When God is dumb and angels turn their feet.``

 ``Is there no beauty? See, the sun is fair
 And the world laughs because the Spring is there.
 Hast thou no laughter?`` ``Ay, I laugh as Eve
 Laughed with her lord the night of their despair.``

 ``The past is passed.`` ``Nay, `tis a ghost that lives.``
 ``Grief dies.`` ``We slew it truly and it thrives.
 Pain walks behind us like a murdered man
 Asking an alms of joy which vainly gives.

 ``Give me thy tears: their bitterness is true.
 Give me thy patience: it is all my due.
 Give me thy silence, if thou wilt thy scorn,
 But spare thy kisses, for they pierce me through.``

 I saw her perish, not at once by death,
 Which has an edge of mercy in its sheath.
 No bodily pleadings heralded decay;
 No violence of pity stopped her breath.

 Only the eternal part which was her mind
 Had withered there as by a breath unkind.
 Only the reason of her eyes was mute;
 Their meaning vanished, leaving naught behind.

 ``No bells shall ring my burial hour,`` she said.
 ``No prayers be sung, no requiem for the dead.
 Only the wind shall chaunt in its wild way,
 And be thou there to lay flowers on my head.``

 I laid them on her grave. Alas! dear heart,
 What love can follow thee where now thou art?
 Sleep on. My youth sleeps with thee--and the rest
 Would but disturb. We are too far apart.

 What has my life been? What life has the wind
 Wandering for ever on in change of mind
 Winter and summer, chasing hopes as vain
 And seeking still the rest it may not find?

 When she was dead I rose up in my place,
 Like Israel`s king, and smiled and washed my face.
 My grief had died in me with her long tears,
 And I was changed and maimed and passionless.

 I said, ``There are griefs wider than this grief,
 Hopes broader harvested, of ampler sheaf.
 Man may not live the caged bird of his pride,
 And he who wends afar shall win relief.``

 The world of sea and mountain shape high browed
 Lured me to dreams of nobler solitude,
 Fair plains beyond the limits of the dawn,
 And desert places lawless and untrod.

 Beyond youth`s lamp of bitter--sweet desires
 And manhood`s kindling of less lawful fires
 A star I sought should lead me to my dream
 Of a new Bethlehem and angelic choirs.

 This passionate England with its wild unrest,
 How has it straitened us to needs unblest!
 Need is that somewhere in the world there be
 A better wisdom, seek it East or West.

 I sought it first on that great Continent
 Which is the eldest born of man`s intent.
 All that the race of Japhet has devised
 Of wit to live lives there pre--eminent.

 The record of the ages proudly stand
 Revealed in constancy and close at hand,
 Man`s march triumphant against natural foes,
 His conquest of the air and sea and land,

 From that far day when, wielding shafts of stone,
 He drove the bear back from the banks of Rhone,
 And built his dwelling on the fair lake`s shore
 He earliest learned to love and call his own,

 On thro` the generations of wild men,
 The skin--clad hunters of the field and fen,
 At war with life, all life than theirs less strong
 Less fenced with cunning in its lawless den,

 Until the dawn broke of a larger age,
 With milder fortunes and designs more sage,
 And men raised cities on the naked plains
 With wine and corn and oil for heritage.

 Etruscan Italy! Pelasgic Greece!
 How did they labour in the arts of peace!
 If strong men were before the time of Troy,
 What of the wise who planned their palaces?

 The men of cunning who, ere letters came
 To hand their learning down from fame to fame,
 Dealt with Titanic square and basalt slab
 And found the law of parallelogram?

 Unnamed discoverers, or of those who gave
 Its rule to beauty, line and curve and wave,
 Smelters of bronze, artificers in gold,
 Painters of tear--cups for the hero`s grave?

 Or those, the last, who of Man`s social state
 Devised the code his lusts to mitigate,
 Who set a bridle on his jaws of pride,
 And manacled with law his limbs of hate,

 Till each fair town its separate polity
 Enjoyed in its own walls well--fenced and free,
 With king and court and poet and buffoon
 And burgess roll inscribed of chivalry?

 This was the old world`s golden age renowned
 Shown thro` dim glimpses of a past spell--bound.
 Some shadow of it lives in Homer`s story.
 In vain we search. Its like shall not be found.

 It vanished in the impatient march of Man
 When Empires rose, with Cyrus in the van,
 The Assyrian tyranny, the Persian scourge,
 And his the all--conquering boy of Macedon.

 Then were the little freedoms swept aside,
 The household industries for fields more wide.
 With heavy hand Rome weighed upon the world
 A blind Colossus, order classified.

 And what of the new world, the world that is?
 Ah, Europe! What a tragedy there lies!
 Thy faiths forgotten and thy laws made void,
 Hunger and toil thy sole known destinies.

 The sombre livery of thy bastard races
 Proclaims thee slave and their ignoble faces,
 Gaul, Teuton, Serb, all fortunes merged in one,
 All bloods commingled in thy frail embraces.

 No type, no image of the God in thee,
 No form survives of nobler ancestry,
 No mark is on thy brow, even that of Cain,
 By which to learn thy soul`s lost pedigree.

 Thou toilest blindly in thy central hive
 Of the world`s hopes impatient and alive,
 Waiting the reason which shall light thy years
 To a new gospel of initiative,

 Rueful, unconscious, to thy labour bound
 And dumb to love, above or underground.
 He were the Sage of the new discipline
 Who first should wake thy silence into sound.

 Where is the poet who shall sing of Man
 In his new world, a better Caliban,
 And show him Heaven? What nobler Prospero
 To cure his ache on an Eternal plan?

 The voice that should arouse that slumbering clod
 Must echo boldly as to steps unshod
 Of angels heralding the advent day
 Of a new Saviour and a latest God.

 But whose the voice? And where the listeners?
 I sought and found not. Rather in my ears
 The discord grew of that ungodly host
 Whose laughter mocks the music of the Spheres.

Source
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