Ii

IF, by that second lover's power controlled, In sweet symbolic rite thy breath o'erfills Fields of no war with vagrant daffodils, From distance unto distance trailing gold; If dazzling sands or thickets thee enfold, Transfigured Usk, where from their mossy sills Grey hamlets kiss thee, and by herded hills Diviner run thy shallows than of old;--

If intellectual these, Oh! name my Vaughan Creator too: and close his memory keep Who from thy fountain, kind to him, hath drawn Birth, energy, and joy; devotion deep; A play of thought more mystic than the dawn, And death at home; and centuried sylvan sleep.

A Song of Far Travel

MANY a time some drowsy oar from the nearer bank invited, Crossed a narrow stream, and bore in among the reeds moon-lighted, There to leave me on a shore no ferryman hath sighted.

Many a time a mountain stile, dark and bright with sudden wetting, Lured my vagrant foot the while 'twixt uplifting and down-setting,-- Whither? Thousand mile on mile, beyond the last forgetting.

Long by hidden ways I wend (past occasion grown a ranger); Yet enchantment, like a friend, takes from death the tang of danger: Hardly river or road can end where I need step a stranger.

Spring

With a difference.--HAMLET.

AGAIN the bloom, the northward flight, The fount freed at its silver height, And down the deep woods to the lowest The fragrant shadows scarred with light.

O inescapeable joy of Spring! For thee the world shall leap and sing; But by her darkened door thou goest Henceforward as a spectral thing.

The Colour-Bearer

THY charge was: "Hold My banner Against our hidden foe; To war where sounds no manner Of glorious music, go!" And like Thy word my answer all joyless: "Be it so."

Ah, not to brave Thy censure But win Thy smile of light, My heart of misadventure Will end in the losing fight, And lie out yonder, wattled with wounds from left to right.

The day will pass of torment, The evenfall be sweet When I shall wear for garment The nakedness of defeat. But when afield Thou comest, and look'st in vain to meet

That eagle of the wartime, That oriflamme, outrolled With strength of staff aforetime, With cleanly and costly fold,-- Ride on, ride on! and seek me with lanthorns through the cold,

And take from me (turned donor That night on blood-soaked sand), The stick and rag of Honour There safe in a stiffened hand, Not left, not lost, nor ever a spoil in the victor's land.

Sanctuary

HIGH above hate I dwell: O storms! farewell. Though at my sill your daggered thunders play Lawless and loud to-morrow as to-day, To me they sound more small Than a young fay's footfall: Soft and far-sunken, forty fathoms low In Long Ago, And winnowed into silence on that wind Which takes wars like a dust, and leaves but love behind.

Hither Felicity Doth climb to me, And bank me in with turf and marjoram Such as bees lip, or the new-weanèd lamb; With golden barberry-wreath, And bluets thick beneath; One grosbeak, too, mid apple-buds a guest With bud-red breast, Is singing, singing! All the hells that rage Float less than April fog below our hermitage.

Emily Brontë

WHAT sacramental hurt that brings The terror of the truth of things Had changed thee? Secret be it yet. 'Twas thine, upon a headland set, To view no isles of man's delight, With lyric foam in rainbow flight, But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar, Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore.

Pascal

THOU lovedst life, but not to brand it thine (O rich in all forborne felicities!), Nor use it with marauding power, to seize And stain the sweet earth's blue horizon-line. Virgin the grape might in the trellis twine Where thou hadst long ago an hour of ease, And foot of thine across the unpressed leas Went light as some Idæan foot divine.

Spirit so abstinent, in thy deeps lay What passion of possession? Day by day Was there no thirst upon thee, sharp and pure, In forward sea-like surges unforgot? Yes: and in life and death those joys endure More blessedly, that men can name them not.

Borderlands

THROUGH all the evening, All the virginal long evening, Down the blossomed aisle of April it is dread to walk alone; For there the intangible is nigh, the lost is ever-during; And who would suffer again beneath a too divine alluring, Keen as the ancient drift of sleep on dying faces blown?

Yet in the valley, At a turn of the orchard alley, When a wild aroma touched me in the moist and moveless air, Like breath indeed from out Thee, or as airy vesture round Thee, Then was it I went faintly, for fear I had nearly found Thee, O Hidden, O Perfect, O Desired! O first and final Fair!

Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore

THERE in his room, whene'er the moon looks in, To silver now a shell, and now a fin, And o'er his chart glide like an argosy, Quiet and old sits he. Danger! he hath grown homesick for thy smile. Where hidest thou the while, heart's boast, Strange face of beauty sought and lost, Star-face that lured him out from boyhood's isle?

Blown clear from dull indoors, his dreams behold Night-water smoke and sparkle as of old, The taffrail lurch, the sheets triumphant toss Their veering weight across. On, on he wears, the seaman long exiled, To lands where stunted cedars throw A lace-like shadow over snow, Or tropic fountains wash their agates wild.

Again play up and down the briny spar Odours of Surinam or Zanzibar, Till blithely thence he ploughs, in visions new, The Labradorian blue; All homeless hurricanes about him break; The purples of spent day he sees From Samos to the Hebrides, And drowned men dancing darkly in his wake.

Where the small deadly foam-caps, well descried, Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide, Away, and far away, his barque is borne Riding the noisy morn, Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know The helm and tightening halyards still Follow the urging of his will, And scoff at sullen earth a league below.

Alas! Fate bars him from his heirdom high, And shackles him with many an inland tie, And of his only wisdom makes a jibe Amid an alien tribe: No wave abroad but moans his fallen state. The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! Why is it on a yellowing page he pores? Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate?

Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim, Familiar Danger, Oh, forget not him! Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole Unto his subject soul, Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth, Nor hath so tamely worn her chain, But she may know that voice again, And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth.

And give him back, before his passion fail, The singing cordage and the hollow sail, And level with those ageing eyes let be The bright unsteady sea; And like a film remove from sense and brain This pasture wall, these boughs that run Their evening arches to the sun, Yon hamlet spire across the sown champaign;

And on the shut space and the shallow hour, Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower, With rapt arrest and solemn loitering, Him whom thou lovedst, bring: That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip, Not having, at the last, less grace Of thee than had his roving race, Sum up his strength to perish with a ship.