Ii

Is this the end? is this the pilgrim’s day For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? Rather, from grass and air and many spheres In prophecy his spirit sinks away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested and believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say, “Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty”? or with kisses lain For witness on her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: “O banished light so nigh! Of them was I who bore thee and who blest; Even here remember me when thou shalt reign.”

The Still of the Year

UP from the willow-root Subduing agonies leap; The squirrel and the purple moth Turn over amid their sleep; The icicled rocks aloft Burn saffron and blue alway, And trickling and tinkling The snows of the drift decay. O mine is the head must hang And share the immortal pang! Winter or spring is fair; Thaw ’s hard to bear. Heigho! my heart ’s sick.

Sweet is cherry-time, sweet A shower, a bobolink, And the little trillium-blossom Tucked under her leaf to think; But here in the vast unborn Is the bitterest place to be, Till striving and longing Shall quicken the earth and me. What change inscrutable Is nigh us, we know not well; Gone is the strength to sigh Either to live or die. Heigho! my heart ’s sick.

A Foot-note to a Famous Lyric

TRUE love’s own talisman, which here Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach, A steel-and-velvet Cavalier Gave to our Saxon speech:

Chief miracle of theme and touch That upstart enviers adore: I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more.

No critic born since Charles was king But sighed in smiling, as he read: “Here ’s theft of the supremest thing A poet might have said!”

Young knight and wit and beau, who won Mid war’s adventure, ladies’ praise, Was’t well of you, ere you had done, To blight our modern bays?

O yet to you, whose random hand Struck from the dark whole gems like these, Archaic beauty, never planned Nor reared by wan degrees,

Which leaves an artist poor, and art An earldom richer all her years; To you, dead on your shield apart, Be “Ave!” passed in tears.

How shall this singing era spurn Her master, and in lauds be loath? Your worth, your work, bid us discern Light exquisite in both.

’T was virtue’s breath inflamed your lyre, Heroic from the heart it ran; Nor for the shedding of such fire Lives since a manlier man.

And till your strophe sweet and bold So lovely aye, so lonely long, Love’s self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold The pinnacles of song.