IV. Winter

Prophet
I had thought ere this to have blest mine eyes
With thy vision benign, immortal tree ;
For since that fruit, more than with Euphrasy,
My spirits are all alert, my sense more keen.
Nor is the north that chides with the stript boughs An enemy, if it shows
All these but mortal, though in Paradise. But thou, O still unseen,
Come into sight; not yet I faint, but abide
And ever abide, yearning thee to behold,
Thee following, this girdling forest wide,
My heart by hope made bold,
I have laboured through, and now emerge at length
Torn by the briers, spent my strength ;
But branches wintry-bare deny the sheen
Of the amaranthine leaves and fruit of gold.
Till now at last the light
Fails from my hope as from the heaven,
432
Qui per- diderit animam suam inveniet.
HENRY CHARLES BEECHING
Where marshal the clouds, blown up with boisterous breath ;
The trees strain from the blast of death
Shrieking convulsed, so fierce the hail is driven Across the vault of night.
And now the waving brand
Of a cherub lightens down
And rends the air with crashing din ;
Ah, if it be by God’s command
To show light in the darkness of nature’s frown
That I my purpose win !
It flashes and still flashes, and now I see
Beyond the blaze glooming a tree, a tree,
Stately and large,—(O light deceive not,
O weary eyes not now believe not !)—
Unseen before ; to that I press,
Despite the tempest and limbs’ tardiness.
Lighten, O sword divine, to clear my way,
And thou, O happy heart, upstay
Steps that falter and swerve, since few
Remain ; come light again, I shall win through.
Angel of Death
My flame he hath not abhorred, Nor nature’s strife,
But lightened through my sword Hath passed to Life.
My task is done, and rewardea If faithfully ;
Henceforth no more 1s guarded The mystic tree.
433
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE At the End of Things
HE world uprose as a man to find Him— Ten thousand methods, ten thousand ends— Some bent on treasure ; the more on pleasure ; And some on the chaplet which fame attends: But the great deep’s voice in the distance dim Said: Peace, it is well; they are seeking Him.
b. 1860
When I heard that all the world was questing, I look’d for a palmer’s staff and found, By a reed-fringed pond, a fork’d hazel-wand On a twisted tree, in a bann’d waste-ground ; But I knew not then what the sounding strings Of the sea-harps say at the end of things.
They told me, world, you were keen on seeking ; I cast around for a scrip to hold Such meagre needs as the roots of weeds— All weeds, but one with a root of gold ; Yet I knew not then how the clangs ascend When the sea-horns peal and the searchings end,
An old worn wallet was that they gave me, With twelve old signs on its seven old skins 3
And a star I stole for the good of my soul, Lest the darkness came down on my sins;
For I knew not who in their life had heard
Of the sea-pipes shrilling a secret word.
434 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
I join’d the quest that the world was making, Which follow’d the false ways far and wide,
While a thousand cheats in the lanes and streets Offer’d that wavering crowd to guide ;
But what did they know of the sea-reed’s speech
When the peace-words breathe at the end for each ?
The fools fell down in the swamps and marshes ; The fools died hard on the crags and hills ; The lies which cheated, so long repeated, Deceived, in spite of their evil wills, Some knaves themselves at the end of all— Though how should they hearken when sea-fiutes call ?
But me the scrip and the staff had strengthen’d ; I carried the star; that star led me:
The paths I’ve taken, of most forsaken, Do surely lead to an open sea :
As a clamour of voices heard in sleep,
Come shouts through the dark on the shrouded deep.
Now it is noon; in the hush prevailing Pipes, harps and horns into flute-notes fall ; The sea, conceding my star’s true leading, In tongues sublime at the end of all Gives resonant utterance far and near :— ‘ Cast away fear ; Be of good cheer ; He ts bere, Is bere !?
And now I know that I sought Him only Even as child, when for flowers I sought ;
In the sins of youth, as in search for truth, To find Him, hold Him alone I wrought.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 435
The knaves too seek Him, and fools beguiled— So speak to them also, sea-voices mild !
Which then was wisdom and which was folly ? Did my star more than the cozening guide?
The fool, as I think, at the chasm’s brink, Prone by the swamp or the marsh’s side,
Did, even as I, in the end rejoice,
Since the voice of death must be His true voice.
4 Ladder of Life
ROM age to age in the public place, With the under steps in view, The stairway stands, having earth for base, But the heavens it passes through.
O height and deep,
And the quests, in sleep,
Yet the Word of the King says well,
That the heart of the King is unsearchable,
Of the utmost steps there are legends grand, And far stars shine as they roll ;
But, of child or man in the wonderful land, Is there one who has scaled the whole ?
Yet the great hope stirs,
Though Hts thoughts as yours
Are not, since the first man fell ;
For the heart of the King 1s unsearchable,
436 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
A pulsing song of the stairway strange Sing, lark, dissolved in the sky !
But no, for it passes beyond the range Of thy song and thy soaring high.
The star 1s kin
To our soul within—
God orders His world so well:
Yet the heart of the King ts unsearchable.
They say that the angels thereby come down, Thereby do the saints ascend,
And that God’s light shining from God’s own Town May be seen at the stairway’s end:
For good and ill
May be mixed at will,
The false shew true by a spell,
But the heart of the King 1s unsearchable.
Now, the stairway stands by the noisy mart And the stairway stands by the sea ;
About it pulses the world’s great heart And the heart of yourself and me.
We may read amiss
Both tn that and this,
And the truth we read in a well ;
Since the heart of the King is unsearchable
For a few steps here and a few steps there It is fill’d with our voices loud,
But above these slumbers the silent air And the hush of a dreaming cloud.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 437
In the strain and stress
Of that silentness,
Our hearts for the height may swell ;
But the heart of the King is unsearchable,
Some few of us, fill’d with a holy fire, The Cross and the Christ have kiss’d ; We have sworn to achieve our soul’s desire By mas3 and evangelist :
Of step the third
I can bring down word,
And you on the fifth may dwell ;
Yet the heart of the King ts unsearchable,
As each of us stands at his place assign’d And ponders the things we love,
It is meet and right we should call to mind That some must have pass’d above :
Yes, some there are
Who have passd so far,
They have never return’d to tell ;
And the heart of the King 1s unsearchable,
Some glimpse at least of the end we glean, Of the spiral curve and plan ;
For stretch as it may through the worlds unseen, They are ever the worlds of man ;
And—with all spaces—
His mind embraces
The way of the stairs as well—
For his heart, like the King’s, 1s unsearchable.
438 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
Restoration
CAME into the world for love of Thee,
I left Thee at Thy bidding ; I put off my white robes and shining crown And came into this world for love of Thee.
I have lived in the grey light for love of Thee, In mean and darken’d houses : The scarlet fruits of knowledge and of sin Have stain’d me with their juice for love of Thee.
I could not choose but sin for love of Thee, From Thee so sadly parted ; I could not choose but put away my sin And purge and scourge those stains for love of Thee.
My soul is sick with life for love of Thee, Nothing can ease or fill me:
Restore me, past the frozen baths of death,
My crown and robes, desired for love of Thee :
And take me to Thyself for love of Thee;
My loss or gain counts little, But Thou must need me since I need Thee so, Crying through day and night for love of Thee!
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 439
How TI came to the Sea I
VOICE in the dark imploring, A sweet flute play’d in the light, An organ pealing and pouring Through the world’s cathedral height— And again the charge and the flight, The clash and hurtle of fight. O thou art grand, thou art lonely, In thy melody, in thy moan, With the sense of a world unknown Filling the known world only !
Great voice, which invokes and urges The strenuous souls to strive,
Gather thy waves, thy surges ;
Thy breakers heap and drive, Thy long tides marshal and lead. The little ripple shall plead
In little whispers on golden sand ;
And further out on the rocky strand,
Where white crests crumble and white spume scourges, Thy drums and tocsins and horns shall blow. Thy long reverberant beats shall come and go,
From where thy surf-line in sky-line merges To where, by sounding buffet and blow—
Blare of paeans and muffle of dirges—
Capes which crumble and torn cliffs know
The strength and stress of thine ebb and flow— Waste and know thee and thee confess.
We do not know thee, we own, we know;
But our soul’s might in thy might rejoices,
Our hearts respond to thy wild vast voices !
Thought with its fleetness swift wings from the course
of thee;
440 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
Tongues in the speech of thee ; Hope at the source of thee ; Fire from the gleams of thee, strength from the force of thee ; Width through the reach of thee: Depth from thy deepness, unfathom’d by plummet, And height from thy night-sky’s impervious summit— Omen and sign ! These have we drawn from thee, these do we bring to thee; Nature’s great sacraments rise from and spring to thee. All other ministries—sun, when ’tis shrouded, Moon in the morning light meagre and pallid, Stars overclouded— All are invalid For spaces and seasons ; but thou, Thy greatest ministry is always now. O sacramental sea, terrible sea, Thine are the words of the mystery— Grand-word and Pass-Word and Number thine, Grades and Degrees to the height advancing, And the golden dawn and the glory glancing Far and away to the secret shrine !
I There shall be no more sea, they say, On Nature’s great coronation day,
When the Bridegroom comes to the Bride. Shall earth then lose her sacraments of tide— Motion, measures tremendous, echoing far and long— Glister, sparkle and glow, ring of an endless song ? O words prophetic, ye princes and priests attend ; This is the Quest’s end promised, the marvellous end Of all our voyage and venture since time began. To the Quest for ever the sea’s voice calleth man;
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 441
And this in a mystery-world, by only the side-light broken— That a Quest there is and an end—is the single secret spoken All over that vibrant main : Of the Quest for ever it tells, of the ends and dooms to gain.
I rise in the half-light early, I vest myself in haste ;
I pass over highway and byway, the fielded land and the waste ;
As much as a man may prosper, all eagerIclimb and godown,
For this day surely meseems that the Quest may receive a crown.
To and fro in the search I hurry, and some men bid me narrate
What means this fever, and why so eager, and whether their help I wait ;
Not as yet they know of the Quest, although they are questing early and late.
And others, my brothers, the same great end pursuing,
Stop me and ask, What news ? Fellow Craft, is there any- thing doing?
Is there light in the East anywhere, some sign set forth in a star,
Ora louder watchword utter’d from over the harbour bar ?
And above the light swift music of all its fleeting joys
The world spreads daily through length and breadth, the great Quest’s rumour and noise.
Who sought it first, who longest, and who has attain’d almost ?
All this in town and in village its heralds proclaim and post;
But the sun goes down and the night comes on for a space to quench endeavour,
While star after star through the spaces far shew the track of the Quest for ever !
442 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
III But still, in the hush and the haunting, [ stand, even I, by the shore, And the sea in the sunshine crooning pervades me with deep unrest, For it speaks of the Quest, of the Quest— With a torrent of tongues in a thousand tones And a far-off murmur of viewless zones, Old and new, new and old, of the Quest ; Amen, it speaks evermore ! The whole wide world of voice and of rushing sound You may seek through vainly, But never a voice is found To search the soul with such deep unrest, Or to speak of the Quest So plainly. Then surely thither the Quest’s way lies And a man shall not err therein ; Yet not on the surface surely seen with eyes, For thence the swallow has come and thereon the sea-mew flies ; And the haunting ships with tremulous sails, we learn, For ever about it hover, pass to their place and return ; And over the wastes thereof the tempests ravage and burn, Or the sea-spouts spin. But not of these is the Quest ; In the deep, in the deep it lies— Ah, let me plunge therein !
But the caves of the deep are silent, and the halls of the deep are still ; Not there is the clarion bird Or the wind’s loud organ heard ; No blythe voice cries on the hill.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 443
A sail, a sail for the seaman, sailing East and West ;
And a horse for the rover when he goeth over the dappled down and road !
But a man may better remain in his own abode
Who is vow’d to the wonderful end which crowns the Quest ;
For sail and compass, and coach and steed and the rest,
The king’s highway, and the beaten track, and the great sea-road—
Are these the way of the Quest?
Travel, travel and search, eyes that are eager glisten (To-day is perchance too late), I stand on the marge and listen (To-morrow is stored with fate) ; I stand on the marge and wait. I know that the deep, with its secret, is a sacramental hymn, Enough that it speaks to me vaguely with meanings reserved and dim, Saga and rune of eld; Enough that its volume and grandeur hint the great tale withheld ; While, far through the depth and the darkness, the echoing halls of the soul Reply to the roar and the roll, Themselves in the mystery-tongue, All the world over sung, As the sibyl awaking from dream In oracles hints at the theme That has never been spoken or spell’d.
444 ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
Of Consummation
ISE, O heart, is the heart which loves; but what of the heart which refrains— Not as if counting the cost, and preferring the ease to the pains, But knowing how treasures of all are neither received nor given, The aching void that is under love and above it the aching heaven?
Wise are the lips which have learn’d how long may linger the lips’ caress,
But wiser they who the hungering lips can chasten and repress,
For that which our fain mouths burn to kiss and loving arms to embrace
Has never been given to lips or arms in the world of time and space.
Wise, therefore, and wise above all, is he who does not swerve aside,
But knows to his greatest need on earth is service of earth denied ;
Who, least things asking of flesh and blood, and less than the least of rest,
Goes on demanding the perfect good and disdaining the second best.
After much conquest and toil no doubt, but high in his starry tracks,
Shall the greater ministers come to him burning the sacred flax,
Saying: So passes the world and so the glory and light expend ;
But the High Term, follow’d unflinching, cries: I can repay at the end.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE 445
Atayvwors The Morality of the Lost Word
ITH a measure of light and a measure of shade, The world of old by the Word was made ; By the shade and light was the Word conceal’d, And the Word in flesh to the world reveal’d Is by outward sense and its forms obscured ; The spirit within is the long lost Word, Besought by the world of the soul in pain Through a world of words which are void and vain, O never while shadow and light are blended Shall the world’s Word-Quest or its woe be ended, And never the world of its wounds made whole Till the Word made flesh be the Word made soul !
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
The Clearer Self
EFORE me grew the human soul, And after I am dead and gone, Through grades of effort and control The marvellous work shall still go on,
186 11-1899
Fach mortal in his little span Hath only lived, if he have shown What greatness there can be in man Above the measured and the known;
How through the ancient layers of night, In gradual victory secure,
Grows ever with increasing light The Energy serene and pure:
446
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
The Soul that from a monstrous past, From age to age, from hour to hour,
Feels upward to some height at last Of unimagined grace and power.
Though yet the sacred fire be dull,
In folds of thwarting matter furled, Ere death be nigh, while life is full,
O Master Spirit of the world,
Grant me to know, to seek, to find, In some small measure though it be, Emerging from the waste and blind, The clearer self, the grander me !
Peccavt, Domine
POWER to whom this earthly clime Is but an atom in the whole, O Poet-heart of Space and Time, O Maker and immortal Soul, Within whose glowing rings are bound, Out of whose sleepless heart had birth The cloudy blue, the starry round, And this small miracle of earth :
Who liv’st in every living thing, And all things are thy script and chart, Who rid’st upon the eagle’s wing, And yearnest in the human heart ; O Riddle with a single clue, Love, deathless, protean, secure, The ever old, the ever new, O Energy, serene and pure,
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN 447
Thou, who art also part of me, Whose glory I have sometime seen, O Vision of the Ought-to-be, O Memory of the Might-have-been, I have had glimpses of thy way, And moved with winds and walked with stars, But, weary, I have fallen astray, And, wounded, who shall count my scars?
O Master, all my strength is gone; Unto the very earth I bow; I have no light to lead me on; With aching heart and burning brow, I lie as one that travaileth In sorrow more than he can bear; I sit in darkness as of death, And scatter dust upon my hair.
The God within my soul hath slept, And I have shamed the nobler rule ; O Master, I have whined and crept ; O Spirit, I have played the fool. Like him of old upon whose head His follies hung in dark arrears, I groan and travail in my bed, And water it with bitter tears,
I stand upon thy mountain-heads,
And gaze until mine eyes are dim ; The golden morning glows and spreads ; The hoary vapours break and swim.
I see thy blossoming fields, divine, Thy shining clouds, thy blesséd trees— And then that broken soul of mine— How much less beautiful than these !
448
ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN
O Spirit, passionless, but kind, Is there in all the world, I cry, Another one so base and blind, Another one so weak as I? O Power, unchangeable, but just, Impute this one good thing to me, ] sink my spirit to the dust In utter dumb humility.
MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE 1861-1907
‘ He came unto Hits own, and His own
received Flim not’ rN Christ the Lord was passing by,
He came, one night, to a cottage door. He came, a poor man, to the poor ; He had no bed whereon to lie.
He asked in vain for a crust of bread, Standing there in the frozen blast. The door was locked and bolted fast.
‘Only a beggar!’ the poor man said.
Christ the Lord went further on, Until He came to a palace gate. There a king was keeping his state,
In every window the candles shone.
The king beheld Him out in the cold. He left his guests in the banquet-hall. He bade his servants tend them all.
‘1 wait on a Guest I know of old,’
MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE 449
**Tis only a beggar-man !’ they said. ‘ Yes,’ he said ; ‘it is Christ the Lord.’ He spoke to Him a kindly word,
He gave Him wine and he gave Him bread.
Now Christ is Lord of Heaven and Hell, And all the words of Christ are true. He touched the cottage, and it grew;
He touched the palace, and it fell.
The poor man is become a king.
Never was man so sad as he.
Sorrow and Sin on the throne make three, He has no joy in mortal thing.
But the sun streams in at the cottage door That stands where once the palace stood, And the workman, toiling to earn his food,
Was never a king before.
Good Friday in my Fleart
OOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright ! My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled, My words the words that priest and soldier said, My deed the spear to desecrate the dead. And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.
Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, ‘ Lov’st thou Me ?’ My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee, And night and day, since Thou dost rise, ere one.
MYST. Q
450 MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE
After St. Augustine
UNSHINE let it be or frost, Storm or calm, as Thou shalt choose ; Though Thine every gift were lost, Thee Thyself we could not lose.
BLISS CARMAN
r 1861-1929 Kent Creator
Tvedua wuplou én’ épé I [one of the grass and hill, Lord of the rain,
White Overlord of will, Master of pain,
I who am dust and air
Blown through the halls of death, Like a pale ghost of prayer,—
I am thy breath.
Lord of the blade and leaf, Lord of the bloom,
Sheer Overlord of grief, Master of doom,
Lonely as wind or snow,
Through the vague world and dim, Vagrant and glad I go;
I am thy whim.
BLISS CARMAN 451
Lord of the storm and lull, Lord of the sea,
I am thy broken gull, Blown far alee.
Lord of the harvest dew, Lord of the dawn,
Star of the paling blue Darkling and gone,
Lost on the mountain height Where the first winds are stirred, Out of the wells of night
I am thy word.
Lord of the haunted hush, Where raptures throng,
I am thy hermit thrush, Ending no song.
Lord of the frost and cold, Lord of the North, When the red sun grows old And day goes forth,
I shall put off this girth,— Go glad and free,
Earth to my mother earth, Spirit to thee.
II
Lord of my heart’s elation, Spirit of things unseen,
Be thou my aspiration Consuming and serene !
452 BLISS CARMAN
Bear up, bear out, bear onward This mortal soul alone,
To selfhood or oblivion, Incredibly thine own,—
As the foamheads are loosened And blown along the sea,
Or sink and merge forever
In that which bids them be.
I, too, must climb in wonder, Uplift at thy command,—
Be one with my frail fellows Beneath the wind’s strong hand,
A fleet and shadowy column Of dust or mountain rain, To walk the earth a moment And be dissolved again.
Be thou my exaltation
Or fortitude of mien,
Lord of the world’s elation Thou breath of things unseen |
A Creature Catechism
I
Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the sea ? le said a flying fish, Below the foundations of storm We feel the primal wish Of the earth take form,
BLISS CARMAN
Through the dim green water-fire We see the red sun loom,
And the quake of a new desire
Takes hold on us down in the gloom,
No more can the filmy drift
Nor draughty currents buoy
Our whim to its bent, nor lift Our heart to the height of its joy.
When sheering down to the Line Come polar tides from the North, Thy silver folk of the brine
Must glimmer and forth.
Down in the crumbling mill Grinding eternally,
We are the type of thy will To the tribes of the sea.
ul Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the air F
Lord, said a butterfly,
Out of a creeping thing, For days in the dust put by, The spread of a wing
Emerges with pulvil of gold On a tissue of green and blue, And there is thy purpose of old Unspoiled and fashioned anew,
453
454
BLISS CARMAN
Ephemera, ravellings of sky
And shreds of the Northern light, We age in a heart-beat and die Under the eaves of night.
What if the small breath quail, Or cease at a touch of the frost? Not a tremor of joy shall fail, Nor a pulse be lost.
This fluttering life, never still, Survives to oblivion’s despair. We are the type of thy will To the tribes of the air.
Ill Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the field ?
Lord, said a maple seed,
Though well we are wrapped and bound, We are the first to give heed,
When thy bugles give sound.
We banner thy House of the Hills With green and vermilion and gold, When the floor of April thrills With the myriad stir of the mould,
And her hosts for migration prepare. We too have the veined twin-wings, Vans for the journey of air.
With the urge of a thousand springs
BLISS CARMAN 455
Pent for a germ in our side,
We perish of joy, being dumb, That our race may be and abide For aeons to come.
When rivulet answers to rill In snow-blue valleys unsealed, We are the type of thy will To the tribes of the field.
Iv Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the ground?
Lord, when the time is ripe, Said a frog through the quiet rain, We take up the silver pipe
For the pageant again.
When the melting wind of the South Is over meadow and pond,
We draw the breath of thy mouth, Reviving the ancient bond.
Then must we fife and declare The unquenchable joy of earth,— Testify hearts still dare,
Signalize beauty’s worth.
Then must we rouse and blow On the magic reed once more, Till the glad earth-children know Not a thing to deplore.
456
BLISS CARMAN
When rises the marshy trill
To the soft spring night’s profound, We are the type of thy will
To the tribes of the ground.
M4
Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the earth?
Lord, said an artist born, We leave the city behind For the hills of open morn, For fear of our kind.
Onur brother they nailed to a tree For sedition ; they bully and curse All those whom love makes free. Yet the very winds disperse
Rapture of birds and brooks, Colours of sea and cloud,— Beauty not learned of books, Truth that is never loud.
We model our joy into clay, Or help it with line and hue, Or hark for its breath in stray Wild chords and new.
For to-morrow can only fulfil Dreams which to-day have birth ; We are the type of thy will
To the tribes of the earth.
BLISS CARMAN
On Love
O the assembled folk
At great St. Kavin’s spoke Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve ; I give you joy, my friends, That as the round year ends,
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave.
On other festal days
For penitence or praise
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving ; To-night we calendar
The rising of that star
Which lit the old world with new joy of living.
Ah, we disparage still
The Tidings of Good Will,
Discrediting Love’s gospel now as then!
And with the verbal creed
That God is love indeed,
Who dares make Love his god before all men?
Shall we not, therefore, friends,
Resolve to make amends
To that glad inspiration of the heart ; To grudge not, to cast out
Selfishness, malice, doubt,
Anger and fear ; and for the better part,
To love so much, so well,
The spirit cannot tell
The range and sweep of her own boundary !
There is no period
Between the soul and God ;
Love is the tide, God the eternal sea.... Q3
457
458 BLISS CARMAN
To-day we walk by love ;
To strive is not enough,
Save against greed and ignorance and might. We apprehend peace comes
Not with the roll of drums,
But in the still processions of the night.
And we perceive, not awe
But love is the great law
That binds the world together safe and whole, The splendid planets run
Their courses in the sun ;
Love is the gravitation of the soul.
In the profound unknown,
Illumined, fair, and lone,
Each star is set to shimmer in its place, In the profound divine
Each soul is set to shine,
And its unique appointed orbit trace.
There is no near nor far,
Where glorious Algebar
Swings round his mighty circuit through the night, Yet where without a sound
The winged seed comes to ground,
And the red leaf seems hardly to alight.
One force, one lore, one need
For satellite and seed,
In the serene benignity for all.
Letting her time-glass run
With star-dust, sun by sun,
In Nature’s thought there is no great nor small.
BLISS CARMAN 459
There is no far nor near
Within the spirit’s sphere.
The summer sunset’s scarlet-yellow wings Are tinged with the same dye
That paints the tulip’s ply.
And what is colour but the soul of things?
(The earth was without form ;
God moulded it with storm,
Ice, flood, and tempest, gleaming tint and hue; Lest it should come to ill
For lack of spirit still,
He gave it colour,—let the love shine through.) ...
Of old, men said, ‘ Sin not ;
By every line and jot
Ye shall abide ; man’s heart is false and vile.’ Christ said, ‘ By love alone
In man’s heart is God known;
Obey the word no falsehood can defile”...
And since that day we prove
Only how great is love,
Nor to this hour its greatness half believe. For to what other power
Will life give equal dower,
Or chaos grant one moment of reprieve !
Look down the ages’ line,
Where slowly the divine
Evinces energy, puts forth control ; See mighty love alone
Transmuting stock and stone,
Infusing being, helping sense and soul.
460 BLISS CARMAN
And what is energy,
In-working, which bids be
The starry pageant and the life of earth?
What is the genesis
Of every joy and bliss,
Each action dared, each beauty brought to birth?
What hangs the sun on high?
What swells the growing rye?
What bids the loons cry on the Northern lake? What stirs in swamp and swale,
When April winds prevail,
And all the dwellers of the ground awake? ...
What lurks in the deep gaze
Of the old wolf? Amaze,
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear.
But deeper than all these
Love muses, yearns, and sees,
And is the self that does not change nor veer,
Not love of self alone,
Struggle for lair and bone,
But self-denying love of mate and young, Love that is kind and wise,
Knows trust and sacrifice,
And croons the old dark universal tongue. ...
And who has understood
Our brothers of the wood,
Save he who puts off guile and every guise
Of violence,—made truce
With panther, bear, and moose,
As beings like ourselves whom love makes wise#
BLISS CARMAN 461
For they, too, do love’s will,
Our lesser clansmen still ;
The House of Many Mansions holds us all ; Courageous, glad and hale,
They go forth on the trail,
Hearing the message, hearkening to the call....
Open the door to-night
Within your heart, and light
The lantern of love there to shine afar.
On a tumultuous sea
Some straining craft, maybe,
With bearings lost, shall sight love’s silver star.
ALICE MEYNELL 1847-1922
To a Daisy
LIGHT as thou art, thou art enough to hide, Like all created things, secrets from me, And stand a barrier to eternity. And I, how can I praise thee well and wide
From where I dwell—upon the hither side? Thou little veil for so great mystery, When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled Literally between me and the world. Then shall I drink from in beneath a spring,
And from a poet’s side shall read his book. O daisy mine, what will it be to look From God’s side even of such a simple thing?
462 ALICE MEYNELL
Via, et Verttas, et Vita
¢ OU never attained to Him.’ ‘If to attain Be to abide, then that may be.’ ‘Endless the way, followed with how much pain!’ ‘The way was He.’
The Unknown God
NE of the crowd went up,
And knelt before the Paten and the Cup, Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayed Close to my side ; then in my heart I said :
‘O Christ, in this man’s life—
This stranger who is Thine—in all his strife, All his felicity, his good and ill,
In the assaulted stronghold of his will,
‘I do confess Thee here,
Alive within this life ; I know Thee near Within this lonely conscience, closed away Within this brother’s solitary day.
‘ Christ in his unknown heart,
His intellect unknown—this love, this art, This battle and this peace, this destiny ‘That I shall never know, look upon me !
‘ Christ in his numbered breath,
Christ in his beating heart and in his death, Christ in his mystery! From that secret place And from that separate dwelling, give me grace,’
ALICE MEYNELL 463
Ln Portugal, 1912
ND will they cast the altars down, Scatter the chalice, crush the bread ? In field, in village, and in town He hides an unregarded head ;
Waits in the corn-lands far and near, Bright in His sun, dark in His frost,
Sweet in the vine, ripe in the ear— Lonely unconsecrated Host.
In ambush at the merry board The Victim lurks unsacrificed ; The mill conceals the harvest’s Lord, The wine-press holds the unbidden Christ.
Christ in the Universe
ITH this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide: The signal to a maid, the human birth, The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of all The innumerable host of stars has heard How He administered this terrestrial ball. Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feet None knows the secret, cherished, perilous, The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet, Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
464 ALICE MEYNELL
No planet knows that this Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave, Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss, Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day, May His devices with the heavens be guessed, His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way Or His bestowals there be manifest.
But in the eternities, Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul ! To read the inconceivable, to scan The myriad forms of God those stars unroll When, in our turn, we show to them a Man,
KATHERINE TYNAN HINKSON
The Beloved marine
LOW gently over my garden, Wind of the Southern sea, In the hour that my Love cometh And calleth me !
My Love shall entreat me sweetly, With voice like the wood-pigeon ; ‘I am here at the gate of thy garden,
Here in the dawn.’
KATHERINE TYNAN HINKSON
Then I shall rise up swiftly All in the rose and grey, And open the gate to my Lover At dawning of day. He hath crowns of pain on His forehead, And wounds in His hands and feet ; But here mid the dews of my garden His rest shall be sweet.
Then blow not out of your forests, Wind of the icy North ;
But Wind of the South that is healing Rise and come forth!
And shed your musk and your honey, And spill your odours of spice,
For one who forsook for my garden
His Paradise !
The Flymg Wheel
HEN I was young the days were long, Oh, long the days when I was young: So long from morn to evenfall As they would never end at all.
Now I grow old Time flies, alas !
I watch the years and seasons pass. Time turns him with his fingers thin A wheel that whirls while it doth spin.
There is no time to take one’s ease, For to sit still and be at peace:
Oh, whirling wheel of Time, be still, Let me be quiet if you will!
465
466
_This myth, of Egyptian origin, formed part of the instruction given to those initiated in the Orphic mysteries, and written
KATHERINE TYNAN HINKSON
Yet still it turns so giddily,
So fast the years and seasons fly, Dazed with the noise and speed I run And stay me on the Changeless One.
I stay myself on Him who stays
Ever the same through nights and days: The One Unchangeable for aye,
That was and will be: the one Stay,
O’er whom Eternity will pass
But as an image in a glass ;
To whom a million years are nought,— I stay myself on a great Thought.
I stay myself on the great Quiet After the noises and the riot ;
As in a garnished chamber sit
Far from the tumult of the street.
Oh, wheel of Time, turn round apace ! But I have found a resting-place.
You will not trouble me again
In the great peace where [ attain.
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT The Final Mystery
1862-1938
versions of it were buried with the dead.
EAR now, O Soul, the last command of all— When thou hast left thine every mortal mark,
And by the road that lies beyond recall Won through the desert of the Burning Dark,
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT 467
Thou shalt behold within a garden bright A well, beside a cypress ivory-white.
Still is that well, and in its waters cool
White, white and windless, sleeps that cypress tree: Who drinks but once from out her shadowy pool Shall thirst no more to all eternity.
Forgetting all, by all forgotten clean,
His soul shall be with that which hath not been.
But thou, though thou be trembling with thy dread, And parched with thy desire more fierce than flame, Think on the stream wherefrom thy life was fed, And that diviner fountain whence it came.
Turn thee and cry—behold, it is not far—
Unto the hills where living waters are.
‘ Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth, Yet was I fathered by the starry sky :
Thou knowest I came not of the shadows’ birth, Let me not die the death that shadows die.
Give me to drink of the sweet spring that leaps From Memory’s fount, wherein no cypress sleeps.’
Then shalt thou drink, O Soul, and therewith slake The immortal longing of thy mortal thirst ;
So of thy Father’s life shalt thou partake,
And be for ever that thou wert at first.
Lost in remembered loves, yet thou more thou With them shalt reign in never-ending Now,
468
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 1862-1925
Prayer
Y sorrow had pierced me through; it throbbed in my heart like a thorn ; This way and that I stared, as a bird with a broken limb Hearing the hound’s strong feet thrust imminent through the corn, So to my God I turned: and I had forgotten Him.
Into the night I breathed a prayer like a soaring fire ;— So to the windswept cliff the resonant rocket streams,— And it struck its mark, I know; for I felt my flying desire Strain, like a rope drawn home, and catch in the land of dreams.
What was the answer? This—the horrible depth of night, And deeper, as ever I peer, the huge cliff’s mountainous shade, While the frail boat cracks and grinds, and never a star in sight, And the seething waves smite fiercer ;—and yet I am not afraid.
469 GEORGE SANTAYANA b. 1863
*O World, thou choosest not’
WORLD, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies ; To trust the soul’s invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
‘O Martyred Spirit’ MARTYRED Spirit of this helpless Whole, Who dost by pain for tyranny atone, And in the star, the atom, and the stone, Purgest the primal guilt, and in the soul ; Rich but in grief, thou dost thy wealth unroll, And givest of thy substance to thine own, Mingling the love, the laughter, and the groan In the large hollow of the heaven’s bowl. Fill full my cup; the dregs and honeyed brim I take from thy just hand, more worthy love For sweetening not the draught for me or him, What in myself I am, that let me prove ; Relent not for my feeble prayer, nor dim The burning of thine altar for my hymn.
470 HERBERT TRENCH Lindisfarne
UR seer, the net-mender,
The day that he died Looked out to the seaward At ebb of the tide; Gulls drove like the snow Over bight, over barn, As he sang to the ebb On the rock Lindisfarne : ‘ Hail, thou blue ebbing ! The breakers are gone From the stormy coast-islet Bethundered and lone! Hail, thou wide shrinking Of foam and of bubble— The reefs are laid bare And far off is the trouble ! For through this retreating As soft as a smile, The isle of the flood Is no longer an isle... .
1865-1923
By the silvery isthmus
Of sands that uncover,
Now feet as of angels
Come delicate over—
The fluttering children
Flee happily over !
To the beach of the mainland Return is now clear,
The old travel thither Dry-shod, without fear...,
HERBERT TRENCH 471
And now, at the wane, When foundations expand, Doth the isle of the soul, Lindisfarne, understand She stretcheth to vastness Made one with the land!’
Z Seek Thee in the Heart Alone
OUNTAIN of Fire whom all divide, We haste asunder like the spray But waneless doth Thy flame abide Whom every torch can take away !
I seek Thee in the heart alone, I shall not find in hill or plain ; Our rushing star must keep its moan, Our nightly soul its homeward pain.
Song out of thought, Light out of power, Even the consumings of this breast Advance the clearness of that hour When all shall poise, and be at rest.
It cracks at last—the glowing sheath, The illusion, Personality ;
Absorbed and interwound with death The myriads are dissolved in Thee.
472
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
1865-1939 The Rose of Battle
OSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care ; While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand, Turn if you may from battles never done, I call, as they go by me one by one, Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace, For him who hears love sing and never cease, Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade: But gather all for whom no love hath made A woven silence, or but came to cast A song into the air, and singing past To smile on the pale dawn ; and gather you Who have sought more than ts 1n rain or dew Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth, Or sighs amid the wandering starry mirth, Or comes in laughter from the sea’s sad lips ; And wage God’s battles in the long grey ships. The sad, the lonely, the insatiable, To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell ; God’s bell has claimed them by the little ery Of their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 473
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.
Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate ;
And when at last defeated in His wars,
They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
To the Secret Rose
AR off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise In druid vapour and make the torches dim ; Till vain frenzy awoke and he died ; and him Who met Fand walking among flaming dew, By a grey shore where the wind never blew, And lost the world and Emir for a kiss ; And him who drove the gods out of their liss And till a hundred morns had flowered red Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead ; And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods; And him who sold tillage and house and goods,
474 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
And sought through lands and islands numberless years Until he found with laughter and with tears
A woman of so shining loveliness,
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I too await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
ARTHUR SYMONS b. 1865
The Ecstasy
HAT is this reverence in extreme delight That waits upon my kisses as they storm,
Vehemently, this height
Of steep and inaccessible delight ;
And seems with newer ecstasy to warm
Their slackening ardour, and invite,
From nearer heaven, the swarm
Of hiving stars with mortal sweetness down?
Never before
Have I endured an exaltation
So exquisite in anguish, and so sore
In promise and possession of full peace.
Cease not, O nevermore
Cease,
To lift my joy, as upon windy wings,
Into that infinite ascension, where,
In baths of glittering air,
It finds a heaven and like an angel sings,
ARTHUR SYMONS 475
Heaven waits above,
There where the clouds and fastnesses of love Lift earth into the skies ;
And I have seen the glimmer of the gates, And twice or thrice
Climbed half the difficult way,
Only to say
Heaven waits,
Only to fall away from paradise.
But now, O what is this
Mysterious and uncapturable bliss
That I have known, yet seems to be Simple as breath, and easy as a smile, And older than the earth?
Now but a little while:
This ultimate ecstasy
Has parted from its birth,
Now but a little while been wholly mine, Yet am I utterly possessed
By the delicious tyrant and divine
Child, this importunate guest.
Indian Meditation
HERE shall this self at last find happiness ? O Soul, only in nothingness. Does not the Earth suffice to its own needs? And what am I but one of the Earth’s weeds? All things have been and all things shall go on Before me and when I am gone ; This self that cries out for eternity Is what shall pass in me: The tree remains, the leaf falls from the tree.
476 ARTHUR SYMONS
I would be as the leaf, I would be lost
In the identity and death of frost,
Rather than draw the sap of the tree’s strength And for the tree’s sake be cast off at length.
To be is homage unto being; cease
To be, and be at peace,
If it be peace for self to have forgot
Even that it is not.
The Turning Dervish
TARS in the heavens turn, I worship like a star, And in its footsteps learn Where peace and wisdom are.
Man crawls as a worm crawls ; Till dust with dust he lies,
A crooked line he scrawls Between the earth and skies.
Yet God, having ordained The course of star and sun, No creature hath constrained A meaner course to run.
I, by his lesson taught, Imaging his design, Have diligently wrought Motion to be divine.
I turn until my sense, Dizzied with waves of air, Spins to a point intense, And spires and centres there,
ARTHUR SYMONS 477
There, motionless in speed, I drink that flaming peace, Which in the heavens doth feed The stars with bright increase.
Some spirit in me doth move Through ways of light untrod, Till, with excessive love, I drown, and am in God.
MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN Sibylline
HERE is a glory in the apple boughs Of silver moonlight ; like a torch of myrrh, Burning upon an altar of sweet vows, Dropped from the hand of some wan worshipper : And there is life among the apple blooms Of whisp’ring winds ; as if a god addressed The flamen from the sanctuary glooms With secrets of the bourne that hope hath guessed, Saying: ‘Behold! a darkness which illumes, A waking which is rest.’
1865-1914
There is a blackness in the apple trees
Of tempest ; like the ashes of an urn Hurt hands have gathered upon blistered knees,
With salt of tears, out of the flames that burn: And there is death among the blooms, that fill
The night with breathless scent,—as when, above The priest, the vision of his faith doth will
Forth from his soul the beautiful form thereof,— Saying: ‘ Behold! a silence never still ;
The other form of love.’
478 MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN
The Watcher on the Tower
I The Voice of a Man HAT of the Night, O Watcher?
The Voice of a Woman
Yea, what of it? The Watcher
A star has risen ; and a wind blows strong. Voice of the Man The Night is dark. The Watcher
But God is there above it. Voice of the Woman The Night is dark; the Night is dark and long,
I Voice of the Man What of the Night, O Watcher? Voice of the Woman Night of sorrow | The Watcher Out of the East there comes a sound, like song. V otce of the Man The Night is dark. The Watcher Have courage! There ’s To-morrow! Voice of the Woman The Night is dark ; the Night is dark and long.
MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN 479
HI Voice of the Man What of the Night, O Watcher?
Voice of the Woman Is it other ?
The Watcher I see a gleam; a thorn of light; a thong.
Voice of the Man The Night is dark. The Watcher The Morning comes, my Brother. Voice of the Woman The Night is dark; the Night is dark and long.
IV Voice of the Man What now, what now, O Watcher ?
The Watcher
Red as slaughter The Darkness dies. The Light comes swift and strong.
V oice of the Man The Night was long.—What sayest thou, my Daughter?
V oice of the Woman The Night was dark; the Night was dark and long.
480
MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN
Attainment OF the Heights of Great Endeavour,—
Where Attainment looms forever,— Toiling upward, ceasing never, Climb the fateful Centuries : Up the difficult, dark places, Joy and anguish in their faces, On they strive, the living races, And the dead, that no one sees.
Shape by shape, with brow uplifted, One by one, where night is rifted, Pass the victors, many gifted, Where the heaven opens wide : While below them, fallen or seated, Mummy-like, or shadow-sheeted, Stretch the lines of the defeated,— Scattered on the mountainside.
And each victor, passing wanly, Gazes on that Presence lonely,
With unmoving eyes where only Grow the dreams for which men die: Grow the dreams, the far, ethereai, That on earth assume material Attributes, and, vast, imperial,
Rear their battlements on high.
Kingdoms, marble-templed, towered, Where the Arts, the many-dowered,— That for centuries have flowered, Trampled under War’s wild heel,—
MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN
Lift immortal heads and golden, Blossoms of the times called olden, Soul-alluring, earth-withholden, Universal in appeal.
As they enter,—high and lowly,—
On the hush these words fall slowly :—
‘Ye who kept your purpose holy, Never dreamed your cause was vain,
Look !—Behold, through time abating,
How the long, sad days of waiting, Striving, starving, hoping, hating, Helped your spirit to attain.
‘For to all who dream, aspire, Marry effort to desire,
On the cosmic heights, in fire Beaconing, my form appears :— I am marvel, I am morning !
Beauty in man’s heart and warning !— On my face none looks with scorning,
And no soul attains who fears.’
WALTER LESLIE WILMSHURST
Anima Naturae
G WIRL of the river aflow to the sea,
p_Aspen a-quiver all tremulously,
Skylark that shivereth song o’er the lea, Shaft of the sun ;
481
b. 1866
Snowflakes that sprinkle the wind-bitten wold,
Fireflies that twinkle with shimmer of gold,
Wavelets that wrinkle the sands where ye rolled,
Rivulet’s ripple and run ; MYST. R
482 WALTER LESLIE WILMSHURST
Lone mountain-meres that are silently dreaming Of far-flashing spheres that enmirrored are beaming, Clouds’ crystal tears when the rainbow is gleaming, I, also a son Of the Mother, inherit the soul of her infinite throng, See it and hear it my paths all about and among, Throb with your spirit and sing with the manifold song Of the infinite, manifold One.
Nox Nivosa
NOWFLAKES downfloating from the void Upon my face, Spilth of the silent alchemy employed In deeps of space Where viewless everlasting fingers ply The power whose secret is the mystery That doth my world encase ;
Power that with equal ease outshakes Yon architrave Of massy stars in heaven and these frail flakes Earth’s floor that pave ; Swings the flamed orbs with infinite time for dower And strews these velvet jewels not an hour Of sunshine that will brave ;
Yet of whose clustered crystals none But speaks the act
Of the hand that steers each ceaseless-wheeling sun And to whose tact
Fire-wreath and spangled ice alike respond ;
Thoughts from the void frozen to flower and frond, Divinely all compact ;
WALTER LESLIE WILMSHURST
Snowflakes, of pureness unalloyed, That in dark space Are built, and spilt from out the teeming void With prodigal grace, Air-quarried temples though you fall scarce-felt And all your delicate architecture melt To tears upon my face,—
I too am such encrystalled breath In the void planned
And bodied forth to surge of life and death ; And as I stand
Beneath this sacramental spilth of snow,
Crumbling, you whisper: ‘ Fear thou not to go Back to the viewless hand ;
‘ Thence to be moulded forth again Through time and space Till thy imperishable self attain Such strength and grace Through endless infinite refinement passed By the eternal Alchemist that at last Thou see Him face to face.’
The Mystery of Light
OULS there be to whom ’tis given Easily to enter heaven ; Scarce an effort on their part, Without struggle, prayer, or art ; Sometimes utterly unknowing Why such glory should be showing ; Wondering what the reason is Of the inflaming ecstasies That Christ giveth unto His,
483
484
WALTER LESLIE WILMSHURST
Often they, not understanding, Catch a rarer light expanding ; Doing but their daily task,
Falls away some filmy mask,
And before their eyes extended Heaven with earth is interblended ; And beyond this outward strife They see what hidden peace is rife In God’s great reservoirs of life.
Some in that rapt state elysian
Are accorded richer vision ;
Watch the thronging angels pass
To a high celestial Mass ;
See a veiléd, flaming Centre,
See a Great High Priest there enter, Whence a Host he lifteth up
And a crimson-brimming Cup, Which He bids all eat and sup.
Or a day falls, past relating, When a Dove, divinely mating, Stirs the sheltering leaves apart O’er some deeply-nested heart ; And, Himself within interning, Lo! the very bush is burning With the blazonry of love
Of that far-descended Dove
In His bridal-mate’s alcove.
Such things simple souls and holy Often know, whilst men less lowly Beat the breast and bend the brain In their labour to attain ;
WALTER LESLIE WILMSHURST 485
Till from heaven, tired of crying, They will turn, all heaven denying ; Seeking ways of lesser bliss
Which, in His large Mysteries, Christ denieth not to His.
Let not me, who have no mission Yet to see the shining Vision,
E’er forget that night and day
Are His strange vicarious way ;
He by one prepares the other, Glooming me to light my brother. May I ever blinded be
If my disability
Help my fellow-man to see.
In this night of my unknowing
His symbol-light shall be my showing.
Il] know that at the rise of sun
High Mass, for all, in heaven’s begun ; That when at noon-tide height it lingers Christ lifts the Host in His pierc’d fingers ; And at its setting it shall tell
How He descendeth, loving well,
Even to me, His child in hell.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
The Second Crucifixion
| Seer mockers in the roaring street
Say Christ is crucified again :
Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet, Twice broken His great heart in vain,
b. 1866
486 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
I hear, and to myself I smile, For Christ talks with me all the while.
No angel now to roll the stone From off His unawaking sleep, In vain shall Mary watch alone,
In vain the soldiers vigil keep.
Yet while they deem my Lord is dead My eyes are on His shining head.
Ah! never more shall Mary hear That voice exceeding sweet and low Within the garden calling clear: Her Lord is gone, and she must go,
Yet all the while my Lord I meet In every London lane and street.
Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain, And Bartimaeus still go blind; The healing hem shall ne’er again Be touched by suffering humankind,
Yet all the while I see them rest, The poor and outcast, in His breast.
No more unto the stubborn heart
With gentle knocking shall He plead, No more the mystic pity start,
For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.
So in the street I hear men say, Yet Christ is with me all the day.
487
LAURENCE HOUSMAN b. 1865
The Continuing City
OD, who made man out of dust, Willed him to be
Not to known ends, but to trust
His decree.
This is our city, a soul Walled within clay ;
Separate hearts of one whole, Bound we obey.
All that He meant us to be, Could we discern,—
Life had no meaning,—or we Had not to learn.
Thou, beloved, doubt not the truth Eyesight makes dim!
All life, to age from youth,
Brings us to Him:
Him Whom thou hast not seen, Canst not yet know:
Human hearts stand between, His to foreshow.
Couldst thou possess thine own, That were the key; He, to Whom hearts are known, Keeps it from thee.
488 LAURENCE HOUSMAN
Thou all thy days must live, Thyself the quest ;
Plucking the heart to give From thine own breast.
Till thou, from other eyes, At kindred calls,
Seest thine own towers arise, And thine own walls,—
Where, conquering the wide air, Peopling its waste,
Citadels everywhere
Like stars stand based :
Losing thy soul, thy soul Again to find ;
Rendering toward that goal Thy separate mind,
The Mystery of the Incarnation A DispuTaTION BETWEEN CHRIsT AND THE HuMAN Form (For the Feast of the Nativity) OMEST Thou peaceably, O Lord ?
‘Yea, I am Peace ! Be not so fearful to afford Thy Maker room! for I am the Reward To which all generations of increase Looking did never cease.
LAURENCE HOUSMAN 489
* Down from amid dark wings of storm I set My Feet
To earth. Will not My earth grow warm
To feel her Maker take the form He made, when now, Creation’s purpose meet, Man’s body is to be God’s Mercy-seat ??”
Lord, I am foul: there is no whole Fair part in me Where Thou canst deign to be! This form is not Thy making, since it stole Fruit from the bitter Tree. * Yet still thou hast the griefs to give in toll That I may test the sickness of man’s soul.’
O Lord, my work is without worth ! I am afraid, Lest I should mai the blissful Birth. Quoth Christ, ‘ Ere seas had shores, or earth Foundations laid, My Cross was made!’
* Naught canst thou do that was not willed By Love to be, To bring the Work to pass through Me. No knee Stiffens, or bends before My Sov’reignty, But from the world’s beginning hath fulfilled Its choice betwixt the valleyed and the hilled. For both, at one decree, My Blood was spilled.’
Yet canst Thou use these sin-stained hands? ‘ These hands,’ quoth Christ, ‘Of them I make My need: Since they sufficed to forge the bands R3
490 LAURENCE HOUSMAN
Wherein I hunger, they shall sow the seed ! And with bread daily they shall feed
My Flesh till, bought and bound, It stands A Sacrifice to bleed.’
Lord, let this house be swept and garnished first ! For fear lest sin Do there look in, Let me shut fast the windows: lest Thou thirst, Make some pure inner well of waters burst : For no sweet water can man’s delving win— Earth is so curst. Also bar up the door: Thou wilt do well To dwell, whilst with us, anchorite in Thy cell.
Christ said ‘ Let be: leave wide All ports to grief!
Here when I knock I will not be denied
The common lot of all that here abide; Were I so blinded, I were blind in chief : How should I see to bring the blind relief ?
Wilt Thou so make Thy dwelling? Then I fear Man, after this, shall dread to enter here: For all the inner courts will be so bright, He shall be dazzled with excess of light, And turn, and flee ! ‘ But from his birth I will array him right, And lay the temple open for his sight, And say to help him, as I bid him see: ** This is for thee!”
LAURENCE HOUSMAN 49!
Love, the Tempter (Season of Lent)
H, tempt me not! I love too well this snare Of silken cords. Nay, Love, the flesh is fair ; So tempt me not! This earth affords Too much delight ; Withdraw Thee from my sight, Lest my weak soul break free And throw me back to Thee!
Thy Face is all too marred, Nay, Love, not I— Z did not that! Doubtless Thou hadst to die: Others did faint for Thee; but I faint not. Only a little while hath sorrow got The better of me now; for Thou art grieved, Thinking I need Thee. Oh, Christ, lest I fall Weeping between Thy Feet, and give Thee all: Oh, Christ, lest love condemn me unreprieved Into Thy bondage, be it not believed That Thou hast need of me!
Dost Thou not know I never turned aside to mock Thy Woe ? I had respect to Thy great love for men: Why wilt Thou, then, Question of each new lust— ‘ Are these not ashes, and is this not dust f’ Ah, Love, Thou hast not eyes To see how sweet it is! Each for himself be wise ; Mock not my bliss!
492 LAURENCE HOUSMAN
Ere Thou cam’st troubling, was I not content ? Because I pity Thee, and would be glad To go mine own way, and not leave Thee sad, Is all my comfort spent ?
Go Thine own ways, nor dream Thou needest me! Yet if, again, Thou on the bitter Tree Wert hanging now, with none to succour Thee Or run to quench Thy sudden cry of thirst, Would not I be the first— Ah, Love, the prize !— To lift one cloud of suffering from Thine Eyes ?
Oh, Christ, let be! Stretch not Thine ever-pleading Hands thus wide, Nor with imperious gesture touch Thy Side ! Past is Thy Calvary. By the Life that died, Oh, tempt not me!
Nay, if Thou weepest, then must I weep too, Sweet Tempter, Christ! Yet what can J undo, I, the undone, the undone, To comfort Thee, God’s Son ? Oh, draw me near, and, for some lowest use, That I may be Lost and undone in Thee, Me from mine own self loose !
LAURENCE HOUSMAN 493
4 Prayer for the Healing of the Wounds of Christ
(For Advent)
S not the work done? Nay, for still the Scars Are open ; stil] Earth’s Pain stands deified, With Arms spread wide:
And still, like falling stars, Its Blood-drops strike the doorposts, where abide The watchers with the Bride,
To wait the final coming of their kin,
And hear the sound of kingdoms gathering in.
While Earth wears wounds, still must Christ’s Wounds remain, Whom Love made Life, and of Whom Life made Pain, And of Whom Pain made Death. No breath, Without Him, sorrow draws; no feet Wax weary, and no hands hard labour bear, But He doth wear The travail and the heat: Also, for all things perishing, He saith, ‘ My grief, My pain, My death.’
O kindred Constellation of bright stars, Ye shall not last for aye! Far off there dawns a comfortable day Of healing for those Scars: When, faint in glory, shall be wiped away Each planetary fire, Now, all the aching way the balm of Earth’s desire!
494 LAURENCE HOUSMAN
For from the healéd nations there shall come The healing touch: the blind, the lamed, the dumb, With sight, and speed, and speech, And ardent reach Of yearning hands shall cover up from sight Those Imprints of a night Forever past. And all the Morians’ lands Shall stretch out hands of healing to His Hands, While to His Feet The timid, sweet Four-footed ones of earth shall come and lay, Forever by, the sadness of their day: And, they being healed, healing spring from them, So for the Stem And Rod of Jesse, roots and trees and flowers, Touched with compassionate powers, Shall cause the thorny Crown To blossom down Laurel and bay.
So lastly to His Side,
Stricken when, from the Body that had died, Going down He saw sad souls being purified,
Shall rise, out of the deeps no man
Can sound or scan, The morning star of Heaven that once fell And fashioned Hell :—
Now, star to star
Mingling to melt where shadeless glories are.
O Earth, seek deep, and gather up thy soul, And come from high and low, and near and far, And make Christ whole !
495
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (4) 1867-1935 Star Teachers
VEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires, ‘The plumes of paradise, the dying light Rays through the fevered air in misty spires That vanish in the height.
These myriad eyes that look on me are mine; Wandering beneath them I have found again The ancient ample moment, the divine,
The God-root within men.
For this, for this the lights innumerable As symbols shine that we the true light win: For every star and every deep they fill
Are stars and deeps within.
Desire
ITH Thee a moment! Then what dreams have play!
Traditions of eternal toil arise,
Search for the high, austere and lonely way
The Spirit moves in through eternities.
Ah, in the soul what memories arise !
And with what yearning inexpressible, Rising from long forgetfulness I turn
To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still: White for Thy whiteness all desires burn. Ah, with what longing once again I turn !
496 GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (4)
The City
Full of Zeus the cities: full of Zeus the harbours: full of Zeus are all the ways of men. HAT domination of what darkness dies this hour, And through what new, rejoicing, winged, ethereal
power
O’erthrown, the cells opened, the heart released from fear?
Gay twilight and grave twilight pass. The stars appear
O’er the prodigious, smouldering, dusky, city flare.
The hanging gardens of Babylon were not more fair
Than these blue flickering glades, where childhood in its glee
Re-echoes with fresh voice the heaven-lit ecstasy.
Yon girl whirls like an eastern dervish. Her dance is
No less a god-intoxicated dance than his,
Though all unknowing the arcane fire that lights her feet,
What motions of what starry tribes her limbs repeat.
I, too, firesmitten, cannot linger: I know there lies
Open somewhere this hour a gate to Paradise,
Its blazing battlements with watchers thronged, O where ?
I know not, but my flame-winged feet shall lead me there.
O, hurry, hurry, unknown shepherd of desires,
And with thy flock of bright imperishable fires
Pen me within the starry fold, ere the night falls
And I am left alone below immutable walls,
Or am I there already, and is it Paradise
To look on mortal things with an immortal’s eyes ?
Above the misty brilliance the streets assume
A night-dilated blue magnificence of gloom
Like many-templed Nineveh tower beyond tower ;
And I am hurried on in this immortal hour.
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (4) = 497
Mine eyes beget new majesties: my spirit greets
The trams, the high-built glittering galleons of the streets
That float through twilight rivers from galaxies of light.
Nay, in the Fount of Days they rise, they take their flight,
And wend to the great deep, the Holy Sepulchre.
Those dark misshapen folk to be made lovely there
Hurry with me, not all ignoble as we seem,
Lured by some inexpressible and gorgeous dream.
The earth melts in my blood. The air that I inhale
Is like enchanted wine poured from the Holy Grail.
What was that glimmer then? Was it the flash of wings
As through the blinded mart rode on the King of Kings ?
O stay, departing glory, stay with us but a day,
And burning seraphim shall leap from out our clay,
And plumed and crested hosts shall shine where men have been,
Heaven hold no lordlier court than earth at College Green,
Ah, no, the wizardy is over ; the magic flame
That might have melted all in beauty fades as it came.
The stars are far and faint and strange. The night draws down.
Exiled from light, forlorn, I walk in Dublin Town,
Yet had I might to lift the veil, the will to dare,
The fiery rushing chariots of the Lord are there,
The whirlwind path, the blazing gates, the trumpets blown,
The halls of heaven, the majesty of throne by throne,
Enraptured faces, hands uplifted, welcome sung
By the thronged gods, tall, golden-coloured, joyful, young.
498 GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (4)
Krishna PAUSED beside the cabin door and saw the King of Kings at play, Tumbled upon the grass I spied the little heavenly runaway. The mother laughed upon the child made gay by its ecstatic morn, And yet the sages spake of It as of the Ancient and Unborn. I heard the passion breathed amid the honeysuckle scented glade, And saw the King pass lightly from the beauty that he had betrayed. I saw him pass from love to love; and yet the pure allowed His claim To be the purest of the pure, thrice holy, stainless, without blame. I saw the open tavern door flash on the dusk a ruddy glare, And saw the King of Kings outcast reel brawling through the starlit air. And yet He is the Prince of Peace of whom the ancient wisdom tells, And by their silence men adore the lovely silence where He dwells. I saw the King of Kings again, a thing to shudder at and fear, A form so darkened and so marred that childhood fled if it drew near. And yet He is the Light of Lights whose blossoming is Paradise, That Beauty of the King which dawns upon the seers’ enraptured eyes.
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (4) — 499
I saw the King of Kings again, a miser with a heart grown cold,
And yet Heis the Prodigal, the Spendthrift of the Heavenly Gold,
The largesse of whose glory crowns the blazing brows of cherubim,
And sun and moon and stars and flowers are jewels scattered forth by Him.
I saw the King of Kings descend the narrow doorway to the dust
With all his fires of morning still, the beauty, bravery, and lust.
And yet He is the life within the Ever-living Living Ones,
The ancient with eternal youth, the cradle of the infant suns,
The fiery fountain of the stars, and He the golden urn where all
The glittering spray of planets in their myriad beauty fall.
Unity NE thing in all things have I seen: One thought has haunted earth and air : Clangour and silence both have been Its palace chambers. Everywhere
I saw the mystic vision flow
And live in men and woods and streams, Until I could no longer know
The stream of life from my own dreams.
Sometimes it rose like fire in me Within the depths of my own mind, And spreading to infinity,
It took the voices of the wind:
500 GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL (4)
It scrawled the human mystery— Dim heraldry—on light and air ; Wavering along the starry sea
I saw the flying vision there.
Each fire that in God’s temple lit Burns fierce before the inner shrine, Dimmed as my fire grew near to it And darkened at the light of mine.
At last, at last, the meaning caught— The spirit wears its diadem ;
It shakes its wondrous plumes of thought And trails the stars along with them.
Reconciliation
BEGIN through the grass once again to be bound to the Lord ; I can see, through a face that has faded, the face full of rest Of the earth, of the mother, my heart with her heart in accord, As I lie ’mid the cool green tresses that mantle her breast I begin with the grass once again to be bound to the Lord.
By the hand of a child I am led to the throne of the King For a touch that now fevers me not is forgotten and far, And His infinite sceptred hands that sway us can bring Me in dreams from the laugh of a child to the song of
a star.
On the laugh of a child I am borne to the joy of the King.
501 CHARLES WEEKES That
... alone From all eternity
HAT is that beyond thy life, And beyond all life around, Which, when thy quick brain is still, Nods to thee from the stars ? Lo, it says, thou hast found Me, the lonely, lonely one.
DORA SIGERSON SHORTER IT am the World
AM the song, that rests upon the cloud ; I am the sun; I am the dawn, the day, the hiding shroud, When dusk is done.
1866-1918
I am the changing colours of the tree ; The flower uncurled ;
I am the melancholy of the sea ; I am the world.
The other souls that, passing in their place, Each in his groove ;
Outstretching hands that chain me and embrace, Speak and reprove.
‘O atom of that law, by which the earth Is poised and whirled ;
Behold! you hurrying with the crowd assert You are the world.’
502 DORA SIGERSON SHORTER
Am I not one with all the things that be Warm in the sun?
All that my ears can hear, or eyes can see, Till all be done.
Of song and shine, of changing leaf apart, Of bud uncurled :
With all the senses pulsing at my heart, I am the world.
One day the song that drifts upon the wind I shall not hear:
Nor shall the rosy shoots to eyes grown blind Again appear.
Deaf, in the dark, I shall arise and throw
From off my soul The withered world with all its joy and woe, That was my goal.
I shall arise, and like a shooting star Slip from my place ;
So lingering see the old world from afar Revolve in space.
And know more things than all the wise may know Till all be done ;
Till One shall come who, breathing on the stars, Blows out the sun.
503
JANE BARLOW
Beyond all Shores and Seas
IES yet a well of wonder 1 shores and seas beyond, Where shines that dimness under, More deep than in a dream, Full many a diamond With elfin gleam,
Glows up the glimmering water Full many a ruby’s fire : If ever an earth-born daughter Their wizard light behold, She may no more desire Our gems and gold.
Nay, some in sooth, who only Adream thereon did gaze, Thenceforth fare wandering lonely, And seek with sorrow vain The glory of such rays To find again.
Oft, oft, high-heavenward turning The quivering stars have conned, Or watched the wide west burning Nor shall their hearts appease, Whose hope lies hid beyond All shores and seas.
1857-1917
504 JANE BARLOW
One and All
’ER boundless fields of night, lo, near and far O Light, dewdrop’s blink, and Light, Aeonian star. Wan wraiths that flickering roam by marish ways ; Fierce surge of levin-bright foam where oceans blaze— Fly’s spark and flame gulfs dire, your fount is one, Deep in the worlds’ arch-fire of all suns’ Sun.
A burning seed of strife Fate strews, and so Life, men’s grudged dole, and Life, gods’ feast aglow. Clod’s captive, senses’ thrall, oft grieved, soon slain ; Immortal, glad o’er all to range and reign— Frail breath, and spirit eterne, beyond thought’s seeing Ye touch for one sole bourne all being’s Being.
JAMES STEPHENS
The Seeker 1a
SAT me down and looked around The little lamp-lit room, and saw Where many pictures gloomed and frowned In sad, still life, nor made a sound— A many for one to draw: Shadow and sea and ground Held by the artist’s law, Beauty without a flaw, All with a sense profound.
One teeming brain was wood and hill, And sloping pastures wide and green, And cool, deep seas where rivers spill
The snows of mountains far and chill, Sad pools where the shadows lean.
JAMES STEPHENS 505
Old trees that hang so still. Fields which the reapers glean. Plains where the wind is keen. Each with a nerve to thrill.
Elusive figures swayed and yearned By lake and misty greenwood dim, Seeking in sorrow: they had learned In one night’s dream might be discerned, A pace from the world’s rim,
Wages their woe had earned,
Rest from the labour grim,
God and the peace of Him—
These in a frame interned.
On through the forest, one step on, One step, O Powers, let me attain This hard, dead step, let me be gone Back where I and the morning shone, Back ere the dream shall wane When I and a star were one. Seen through the veils of pain Glory shall shine again : God, has the vision gone ?
The Fullness of Time
N a rusty iron throne
Past the furthest star of space I saw Satan sit alone, Old and haggard was his face ; For his work was done and he Rested in eternity.
506 JAMES STEPHENS
And to him from out the sun Came his father and his friend Saying, now the work is done Enmity is at an end:
And he guided Satan to Paradises that he knew.
Gabriel without a frown, Uriel without a spear, Raphael came singing down Welcoming their ancient peer, And they seated him beside One who had been crucified.
The Breath of Life
ND while they talked and talked, and while they sat Changing their base minds into baser coin ; And telling—they ! how truth and beauty join, And how a certain this was good, but that Was baser than the viper or the toad, Or the blind beggar glaring down the road,
I turned from them in fury, and I ran
To where the moon shone out upon the height, Down the long reaches of a summer night, Stretching slim fingers, and the starry clan Grew thicker than the flowers that we see Clustered in quiet fields of greenery.
Around me was the night-time sane and cold, The clouds that knew no care and no restraint Swung through the silences, or drifted faint
To pale horizons, wreathing fold on fold,
The moon’s sharp edge, each rolling cloud a sea, A foam of silver shining gloriously.
JAMES STEPHENS
The quietudes that sunder star from star, The hazy distances of loneliness,
Where never eagle’s wing or timid press Of lark or wren could venture, and the far Profundities untravelled and unstirred
By any act of man or thought or word.
These held me with amazement and delight: I yearned up through the spaces of the sky, Beyond the rolling clouds, beyond the high And delicate white moon, and up the height, And past the rocking stars, and out to where The ether failed in spaces sharp and bare.
The breath that is the very breath of life Throbbed close to me: I heard the pulses beat, That lift the universes into heat :
The slow withdrawal, and the deeper strife
Of His wide respiration, like a sea
It ebbed and flooded through immensity.
His breath alone in wave on mighty wave !
O moon and stars swell to a raptured song ! Ye mountains toss the harmony along !
O little men with little souls to save
Swing up glad chantings, ring the skies above, With boundless gratitude for boundless love !
Probing the ocean to its steepest drop ; Rejoicing in the viper and the toad,
And the blind beggar glaring down the road ; And they who talk and talk and never stop Equally quickening ; with a care to bend The gnat’s slant wing into a swifter end.
507
508 JAMES STEPHENS
Searching the quarries of all life, the deep Low crannies and shy places of the world, To warm the smallest insect that is curled In a deep root, or on the sun to heap Fiercer combustion, spending love on all In equal share, the mighty and the small.
The silence clung about me like a gift,
The tender night-time folded me around Protectingly, and in a peace profound
The clouds drooped slowly backward drift on drift Into the darkness, and the moon was gone,
And soon the stars had vanished every one.
But on the sky, a handsbreadth in the west,
A faint cold brightness crept and soared and spread, Until the rustling heavens overhead,
And the grey trees and grass were manifest :
Then through the chill a golden spear was hurled, And the big sun tossed laughter on the world.
JOHN CHARLES EARLE
Onward and Upward
PASS the vale. I breast the steep. I bear the cross: the cross bears me. Light leads me on to light. I weep For joy at what I hope to see When, scaled at last the arduous height, For every painful step I trod, I traverse worlds on worlds of light, And pierce some deeper depth of God.
JOHN CHARLES EARLE 509
‘Lo, [ am with you always’
IDE fields of corn along the valleys spread ; The rain and dews mature the swelling vine ;
I see the Lord is multiplying bread ;
I see Him turning water into wine ;
I see Him working all the works divine He wrought when Salemward His steps were led ;
The selfsame miracles around Him shine ; He feeds the famished ; He revives the dead ;
He pours the flood of light on darkened eyes ; He chases tears, diseases, fiends away ;
His throne is raised upon these orient skies ; His footstool is the pave whereon we pray.
Ah, tell me not of Christ in Paradise, For He is all around us here to-day.
‘Found of them that sought Him not?
WILL arise and to my Father go; This very hour the journey is begun. I start to reach the blissful goal, and, lo, My spirit at one bound her race has run. For seeking God and finding Him are one, He feeds the rillets that towards Him flow. It is the Father Who first seeks the son, And moves all heavenward movement, swift or slow. I dare not pride myself on finding Him. I dare not dream a single step was mine. His was the vigour in the palsied limb— His the electric fire along the line— When drowning, His the untaught power to swim Float o’er the surge, and grasp the rock divine.
510 JOHN CHARLES EARLE
Bodily Extension
HE body is not bounded by its skin ; Its efuence, like a gentle cloud of scent, Is wide into the air diffused, and, blent With elements unseen, its way doth win To ether frontiers, where take origin Far subtler systems, nobler regions meant To be the area and the instrument Of operations ever to begin Anew and never end. Thus every man Wears as his robe the garment of the sky— So close his union with the cosmic plan, So perfectly he pierces low and high— Reaching as far in space as creature can, And co-extending with immensity.
ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS : : b. 1869 Missa Viatoris
(In dread of Famine) ERE, Pan, on grey rock slab we set for Thee Thy Feast—the White Cake and the Red in Cup— Shepherd and Lamb, we, lost goats, offer up In pastoral wise Thine own Divinity.
The scared moon dips, the hardy sun comes up To spy our Secret from yon cloudy hill:
O Pan that Thou by cloud and sun mayst fill Our hills with food, we lift Thy Cake and Cup.
Heart of all good in men and beasts and earth,
Here on the hill our hearts, we lift them up: Life-Blood and Flesh—White Cake and Red in Cup— We break and pour Thee for our drought and dearth !
ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS gir
An Easter Hymn (Easter in South Africa falls in Autumn)
IS wide Hands fashioned us white grains and red His Eyes weep rains to swell them in their bed, Whereby the dust-grains of our lives are fed. Alleluia !
In Earth our mother’s bosom undecayed
The Seed-corn of the Flesh He took, He laid—
One white small Grain beneath a sealed rock’s shade. Alleluia !
How blind that Seed lay till this autumn morn
When forth it sprouted blade and flower and corn,
And with Its lifted Head the seal was torn ! Alleluia !
Hope of men’s bodies’ grains both red and white—
Shrivelled and sere and void of speech and sight,
Is that blind Seed Who burst His way to light. Alleluia !
We, God’s red millet grains, men hold so cheap, Innumerable beneath our grey rocks sleep, Yet He that cared to sow us cares to reap.
Alleluia !
The Black Christ (At Easter in South Africa)
ILATE and Caiaphas
They have brought this thing to pass— That a Christ the Father gave, Should be guest within a grave.
512 ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS
Church and State have willed to last This tyranny not over-past ;
His dark southern Brows around They a wreath of briars have bound, In His dark despiséd Hands
Writ in sores their writing stands.
By strait starlit ways I creep,
Caring while the careless sleep, Bearing balms, and flow’rs to crown That poor Head the stone holds down, Through some crack or crevice dim
I would reach my sweets to Him.
Easter suns they rise and set,
But that stone is steadfast yet:
Past my lifting ’tis but I
When ’tis lifted would be nigh.
I believe, whate’er they say,
The sun shall dance an Easter Day,
And I that through thick twilight grope With balms of faith, and flow’rs of hope, Shall lift mine eyes and see that stone Stir and shake, if not be gone.
From ‘The Death of St. Francis’
HAT art Thou, dearest Lord, and what am I, Vile worm and worthless dust ?” He answered me. On Holy Cross Day to my prayer there came An Angel bearing in his rainbow wings Nailed Hands and Feet, the Image of my Lord.
ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS 513
How can I tell it? The thing is sacred, dear,
O brothers mine, I give you all I can,
And yet I leave you but the husk of it,
The heart of it I selfish take away.
How can I tell? The thing is sacred, dear,— Hands grew to hands, feet seemed to grow to feet, His Hands to my hands, Feet of His to mine ; Exalted and extended on His cross,
I seemed in one great stab of eager pain
To feel His heart beating within my heart.
Brethren, this thing so sacred, and so dear, I would that I could tell you, for it seems Surely a sin to give God’s poor my all,
And yet to keep Love’s purest ingot back, That fever-throb of His within my heart, That moment’s gold refined in sharpest fire, And anguish of a crucifying world.
‘What art Thou, dearest Lord, and what am I, Vile worm and worthless servant ?”
Answer came, I felt His Heart to beat within my heart. It seemed He lent His Sacred Heart to me: One moment did I know His wish, His work, As if mine own they were, and knew with them The worm-like weakness of my wasted life, My service worthless to win back His world. (Sharp Sister Faintness knits dark brows at me, And o’er her shoulder looks sweet Sister Death, Holding a glass my last hour’s sands run down.)
I cannot tell the half of it, yet hear What rush of feeling still comes back to me, MYST, 8
514 ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS
From that proud torture hanging on His Cross, From that gold rapture of His Heart in mine.
I knew in blissful anguish what it means
To bea part of Christ, and feel as mine
The dark distresses of my brother limbs,
To feel it bodily and simply true,
To feel as mine the starving of His poor,
To feel as mine the shadow of curse on all, Hard words, hard looks, and savage misery, And struggling deaths, unpitied and unwept. To feel rich brothers’ sad satieties,
The weary manner of their lives and deaths, That want in love, and lacking love lack all. To feel the heavy sorrow of the world Thicken and thicken on to future hell,
To mighty cities with their miles of streets, Where men seek work for days, and walk and starve, Freezing on river-banks on winter nights, And come at last to cord or stream or steel.
The horror of the things our brothers bear !
It was but naught to that which after came,
The woe of things we make our brothers bear,
Our brothers and our sisters! In my heart
Christ’s Heart seemed beating, and the world’s whole sin,— Its crimson malice and grey negligence,—
Rose up and blackening hid the Face of God.
I that in Christ had tasted to the full
The nails and knotted scourges of the world, Now felt the contrary and greater woe,—
The utmost ache of God’s atoning grief,— Their bitterness who scourge and drive the nails,
ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS 515
And bring upon themselves a darker pain
Than any felt by scourged or crucified.
Upon my heart gnawed, worse than sorrow of death,— Sorrow of selfishness, and cursed my Cross
With black forsaking of the Face of Love.
My God, my God, Thou wast forsaking me!...
Ah! brothers mine, how any words are cold
To tell the agony of being part
Of every schism in the Crucified,
Of feeling hand smite out at fellow hand,
And foot spurn fellow foot, and breasts refuse
The milk of mercy to the lips that were
Flesh of their own flesh. The sucked and empty names Of ‘ brother ’ and of ‘ sister ? how they hissed, Hissed through the savage teeth that tore the flesh, Withered in mouths that kissed to endless shame. No sob of Love but echoing fell away
In earthquake thunders of unthankfulness,
Vile worm and worthless servant, how I knew My work, our work, as nothing in that tide Of a vast world’s refusal of the Cross
Setting toward that world’s appointed doom !
The thing is very sacred, very dear,
Sweet Jesu, help me tell them, how my heart Swelled near to breaking with the Love of Thine, That felt it all and Loved and Loved and Loved. I felt the Sacred Heart within my own,
And knew one pulse therein of purest strength, That drove a cry of passion to my lips,
* Father, forgive, they know not what they do.’
516 ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS
Could I but tell you how that cry seemed truth— The truest prayer my lips had ever made— I had told you almost all! It may not be.
O Heart of Jesus, Sacred, Passionate,
Anguish it was, yet anguish that was bliss,
To love them heart to heart, each selfish heart, To clasp them close, and pray in utter truth— ‘ Father, forgive, they know not what they do.’ One was the heart of him that ground the poor, Poor weary heart, so blinded and misled !
One was the heart of her that reeked in shame, Poor weary heart, so blinded and misled !
One was my heart that wasted half its years, And knew so little how to use the rest
To God’s sole glory, and the love of men,
Poor weary heart, so blinded and misled !
But O! that Sacred Heart rushed out to them In veriest anguish and in veriest bliss, Demanding, craving, in sure hope of them, ‘Father, forgive, they know not what they do.’
And O! that Sacred Heart burnt up in Flame Against that harsh misleader of our world, And O! I felt an awful thrill of Love
As with one heart-beat of wild ecstasy
I set my heel upon that Serpent’s head
In resolute anguish, watching how the fangs Snapped at my heel, and gored it into blood, My heel that yet shall grind his head to dust. Was it I that did it ? Nay, the Christ in me, But when I woke His Prints were in my hands, And in my feet, while in my side there showed As it were the Heart-Wound from the soldier’s lance.
517
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
The Teresian Contemplative
HE moves in tumult; round her lies The silence of the world of grace ; The twilight of our mysteries Shines like high noonday on her face ; Our piteous guesses, dim with fears, She touches, handles, sees, and hears.
In her all longings mix and meet ; Dumb souls through her are eloquent ; She feels the world beneath her feet Thrill in a passionate intent ; Through her our tides of feeling roll And find their God within her soul.
Her faith the awful Face of God Brightens and blinds with utter light;
Her footsteps fall where late He trod ; She sinks in roaring voids of night ;
Cries to her Lord in black despair,
And knows, yet knows not, He is there.
A willing sacrifice she takes The burden of our fall within ; Holy she stands; while on her breaks The lightning of the wrath of sin; She drinks her Saviour’s cup of pain, And, one with Jesus, thirsts again.
1871-1914
518 ROBERT HUGH BENSON
From ‘ Christian Evidences?
OW God forbid that Faith be blind assent, Grasping what others know; else Faith were nought But learning, as of some far continent Which others sought, And carried thence, better the tale to teach, Pebbles and shells, poor fragments of the beach.
Now God forbid that Faith be built on dates, Cursive or uncial letters, scribe or gloss, What one conjectures, proves, or demonstrates: This were the loss Of all to which God bids that man aspire, This were the death of life, quenching of fire.
Nay, but with Faith I see. Not even Hope, Her glorious sister, stands so high as she. For this but stands expectant on the slope That leads where He Her source and consummation sets His seat,
Where Faith dwells always to caress His Feet.
Nay, but with Faith I saw my Lord and God Walk in the fragrant garden yesterday. Ah! how the thrushes sang; and, where He trod Like spikenard lay Jewels of dew, fresh-fallen from the sky, While all the lawn rang round with melody.
Nay, but with Faith I marked my Saviour go, One August noonday, down the stifling street That reeked with filth and man; marked from Him flow Radiance so sweet, The man ceased cursing, laughter lit the child, The woman hoped again, as Jesus smiled.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON 519
Nay, but with Faith I sought my Lord last night, And found Him shining where the lamp was dim ; The shadowy altar glimmered, height on height, A throne for Him: Seen as through lattice work His gracious Face Looked forth on me and filled the dark with grace.
Nay then, if proof and tortured argument Content thee—teach thee that the Lord is there, Or risen again ; I pray thee be content, But leave me here With eye unsealed by any proof of thine, With eye unsealed to know the Lord is mine,
GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
1874-1936 The Holy of Flies
: LDER father, though thine eyes Shine with hoary mysteries, Canst thou tell what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies ?
‘Smaller than all lives that be, Secret as the deepest sea, Stands a little house of seeds, Like an elfin’s granary.
* Speller of the stones and weeds, Skilled in Nature’s crafts and creeds, Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds,’
520 GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON
‘God Almighty, and with Him Cherubim and Seraphim, Filling all eternity—
Adonai Elohim.’
ALEISTER CROWLEY The Quest
PART, immutable, unseen, Being, before itself had been, Became. Like dew a triple queen Shone as the void uncovered : The silence of deep height was drawn A veil across the silver dawn On holy wings that hovered.?
The music of three thoughts became
The beauty, that is one white flame,
The justice that surpasses shame, The victory, the splendour,
The sacred fountain that is whirled
From depths beyond that older world A new world to engender.?
The kingdom is extended. Night
Dwells, and I contemplate the sight
That is not seeing, but the light That secretly is kindled,
1 A qabalistic description of Macroprosopus. ‘ Dew,’ ‘Deep Height,’ &c., are his titles.
* Microprosopus. ; 2 eect the Bride. In its darkness the Light may yet be ‘ound.
ALEISTER CROWLEY 521
Though oft-time its most holy fire Lacks oil, whene’er my own Desire Before desire has dwindled.
I see the thin web binding me
With thirteen cords of unity?
Toward the calm centre of the sea. (O thou supernal mother ! *)
The triple light my path divides
To twain and fifty sudden sides 3 Each perfect as each other.
Now backwards, inwards still my mind Must track the intangible and blind, And seeking, shall securely find Hidden in secret places Fresh feasts for every soul that strives, New life for many mystic lives, And strange new forms and faces.
My mind still searches, and attains
By many days and many pains
To That which Is and Was and reigns Shadowed in four and ten; #
And loses self in sacred lands,
And cries and quickens, and understands Beyond the first Amen.5
1 The Hebrew characters composing the name Achd, Unity, add up to 13.
2 Binah, the Great Deep: the offended Mother who shall be reconciled to her daughter by Bn, the Son.
8 Bn adds to 52.
4 Jehovah, the name of 4 letters, 1+2+3+4=10.
5 The first Amen is=g1 or 7X13. The second is the Inscrutable Amoun.
83
522 ALEISTER CROWLEY
The Neophyte*
O-NIGHT I tread the unsubstantial way
That looms before me, as the thundering night Falls on the ocean: I must stop, and pray One little prayer, and then—what bitter fight Flames at the end beyond the darkling goal ? These are my passions that my feet must tread ; This is my sword, the fervour of my soul ; This is my Will, the crown upon my head. For see! the darkness beckons: I have gone, Before this terrible hour, towards the gloom, Braved the wild dragon, called the tiger on With whirling cries of pride, sought out the tomb Where lurking vampires battened, and my steel Has wrought its splendour through the gates of death My courage did not falter: now I feel My heart beat wave-wise, and my throat catch breath As if I choked ; some horror creeps between The spirit of my will and its desire, Some just reluctance to the Great Unseen That coils its nameless terrors, and its dire Fear round my heart; a devil cold as ice Breathes somewhere, for I feel his shudder take My veins: some deadlier asp or cockatrice Slimes in my senses: I am half awake, Half automatic, as I move along Wrapped in a cloud of blackness deep as hell, Hearing afar some half-forgotten song As of disruption ; yet strange glories dwell Above my head, as if a sword of light, Rayed of the very Dawn, would strike within The limitations of this deadly night That folds me for the sign of death and sin—
1 This poem describes the Initiation of the true ‘ Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ’ in its spiritual aspect.
ALEISTER CROWLEY 523
O Light! descend! My feet move vaguely on In this amazing darkness, in the gloom
That I can touch with trembling sense. There shone Once, in my misty memory, in the womb
Of some unformulated thought, the flame And smoke of mighty pillars; yet my mind
Is clouded with the horror of this same
Path of the wise men: for my soul is blind Yet: and the foemen I have never feared
I could not see (if such should cross the way), And therefore I am strange: my soul is seared With desolation of the blinding day
I have come out from: yes, that fearful light Was not the Sun: my life has been the death, This death may be the life: my spirit sight Knows that at last, at least. My doubtful breath Is breathing in a nobler air; I know,
I know it in my soul, despite of this,
The clinging darkness of the Long Ago,
Cruel as death, and closer than a kiss,
This horror of great darkness. I am come Into this darkness to attain the light:
To gain my voice I make myself as dumb: That I may see I close my outer sight :
So, Iam here. My brows are bent in prayer: I kneel already in the Gates of Dawn;
And I am come, albeit unaware,
To the deep sanctuary: my hope is drawn From wells profounder than the very sea. Yea, I am come, where least I guessed it so, Into the very Presence of the Three
That Are beyond all Gods. And now I know What spiritual Light is drawing me
Up to its stooping splendour. In my soul
524 ALEISTER CROWLEY
I feel the Spring, the all-devouring Dawn, Rush with my Rising. There, beyond the goal, The Veil is rent !
Yes: let the veil be drawn.
The Rose and the Cross
UT of the seething cauldron of my woes, Where sweets and salt and bitterness I flung;
Where charméd music gathered from my tongue, And where I chained strange archipelagoes Of fallen stars; where fiery passion flows
A curious bitumen ; where among
The glowing medley moved the tune unsung Of perfect love: thence grew the Mystic Rose,
Its myriad petals of divided light ;
Its leaves of the most radiant emerald ; Its heart of fire like rubies. At the sight
I lifted up my heart to God and called : How shall I pluck this dream of my desire ? And lo! there shaped itself the Cross of Fire!
EVELYN UNDERHILL (MRS. STUART MOORE)
b. 1875 Limmanence
COME in the little things, Saith the Lord : Not borne on morning wings Of majesty, but I have set My Feet Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.
EVELYN UNDERHILL 525
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power; Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your strait garden plot I come to flower: About your porch My Vine
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine ;
Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.
I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord :
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet Your hard and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes That peep from out the brake, I stand confest. On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize Of motherhood—
There doth My Godhead rest.
I come in the little things,
Saith the Lord:
My starry wings
I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take: Meekly I fit My stature to your need. In beggar’s part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead~ As man, to speak with man— ; Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan, Pass the low lintel of the human heart,
526 EVELYN UNDERHILL
Lntroversion
HAT do you seek within, O Soul, my Brother ? What do you seek within ? I seek a Life that shall never die, Some haven to win From mortality.
What do you find within, O Soul, my Brother ? What do you find within ? I find great quiet where no noises come. Without, the world’s din: Silence in my home.
Whom do you find within, O Soul, my Brother ? Whom do you find within ? I find a friend that in secret came: His scarred hands within He shields a faint flame.
What would you do within, O Soul, my Brother ? What would you do within? Bar door and window that none may see: That alone we may be (Alone! face to face, In that flame-lit place !) When first we begin To speak one with another.
EVELYN UNDERHILL 527
Oxbridge Road
HE Western Road goes streaming out to seek the cleanly wild,
It pours the city’s dim desires towards the undefiled,
It sweeps betwixt the huddled homes about its eddies grown
To smear the little space between the city and the sown:
The torments of that seething tide who is there that can see?
There’s one who walked with starry feet the western road by me!
He is the Drover of the soul; he leads the flock of men
All wistful on that weary track, and brings them back again.
The dreaming few, the slaving crew, the motley caste of life—
The wastrel and artificer, the harlot and the wife—
They may not rest, for ever pressed by one they cannot sees
The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me.
He drives them east, he drives them west, between the dark and light;
He pastures them in city pens, he leads them home at night.
The towery trams, the threaded trains, like shuttles to and fro
To weave the web of working days in ceaseless travel go.
How harsh the woof, how long the weft! who shall the fabric see ?
The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me!
528 EVELYN UNDERHILL
Throughout the living joyful year at lifeless tasks to strive,
And scarcely at the end to save gentility alive ;
The villa plot to sow and reap, to act the villa lie,
Beset by villa fears to live, midst villa dreams to die;
Ah, who can know the dreary woe ? and who the splendour see ?
The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me.
Behold ! he lent me as we went the vision of the seer ;
Behold! I saw the life of men, the life of God shine clear.
I saw the hidden Spirit’s thrust ; I saw the race fulfil
The spiral of its steep ascent, predestined of the Will.
Yet not unled, but shepherded by one they may not see—
The one who walked with starry feet the western road by me!
Regnum Caelorum Vim Patitur
HEN our five-angled spears, that pierced the world And drew its life-blood, faint before the wall
Which hems its secret splendour—when we fall,
Lance broken, banner furled,
Before that calm invincible defence
Whereon our folly hurled
The piteous armies of intelligence—
Then, often-times, we know
How conquering mercy to the battle field
Comes through the darkness, freely to bestow
The prize for which we fought
Not knowing what we sought,
And salve the wounds of those who would not yield.
EVELYN UNDERHILL 529
He loves the valiant foe; he comes not out to meet The craven soul made captive of its fear:
Not these the victories that to him are sweet!
But the impetuous soldiery of truth,
And knighthood of the intellectual quest,
Who ask not for his ruth
Nor would desire his rest :
These are to him most dear,
And shall in their surrender yet prevail.
Yea! at the end of unrewarded days,
By swift and secret ways
As on a sudden moonbeam shining clear,
Soft through the night shall slide upon their gaze The thrice-defended vision of the Grail:
And when his peace hath triumphed, these shall be The flower of his celestial chivalry.
And did you think, he saith
As to and fro he goes the trenches through, My heart impregnable, that you must bring The ballisters of faith
Their burning bolts to fling,
And all the cunning intricate device
Of human wit,
One little breach to make
That so you might attain to enter it ?
Nay, on the other side
Love’s undefended postern is set wide : But thus it is I woo
My dearest sons, that an ignoble ease
Shall never please,
Nor any smooth and open way entice. Armed would I have them come
Against the mighty bastions of their home;
530 EVELYN UNDERHILL
Out of high failure win Their way within, And from my conquering hand their birthright take.
Corpus Christt OME, dear Heart !
The fields are white to harvest: come and see As in a glass the timeless mystery Of love, whereby we feed On God, our bread indeed. Torn by the sickles, see him share the smart Of travailing Creation: maimed, despised, Yet by his lovers the more dearly prized Because for us he lays his beauty down— Last toll paid by Perfection for our loss ! Trace on these fields his everlasting Cross, And o’er the stricken sheaves the Immortal Victim’s crown.
From far horizons came a Voice that said,
‘Lo! from the hand of Death take thou thy daily bread,’ Then I, awakening, saw
A splendour burning in the heart of things:
The flame of living love which lights the law
Of mystic death that works the mystic birth,
I knew the patient passion of the earth,
Maternal, everlasting, whence there springs
The Bread of Angels and the life of man.
Now in each blade
I, blind no longer, see
The glory of God’s growth: know it to be An earnest of the Immemorial Plan.
Yea, I have understood
EVELYN UNDERHILL 531
How all things are one great oblation made: He on our altars, we on the world’s rood.
Even as this corn,
Earth-born,
We are snatched from the sod ;
Reaped, ground to grist,
Crushed and tormented in the Mills of God, And offered at Life’s hands, a living Eucharist.
ELLA DIETZ
Emanation
UT of the depths of the Infinite Being eternal, Out of the cloud more bright than the brightness of sun, Out of the inmost the essence of spirit supernal, We issued as one.
First essence electric, concentric, revolving, subduing,
We throbbed through the ether, a part of the infinite germ,
Dissolving, resolving, absorbing, reforming, renewing, The endless in term.
Through forms multifarious onward and ever advancing,
Progressing through ether from molecule to planetand star,
Forms infinitesimal revealed by the sunbeam while dancing, Controlled from afar.
Then part of the elements swayed by invisible forces, The spirit of flame interchangeably water and air, And matter more gross, still moulded by stars in their courses, To forms new and rare.
532 ELLA DIETZ
Part of the salt of the sea—of the fathomless ocean—
Part of the growth of the earth, and the light hid within,
The Boundless and Endless revealed in each varying motion Unknown yet to sin.
The breath of all life, harmonious, ductile, complying,
Obedient lapsed in the force of the Infinite Will,
Untiring, unresting, incessant, unknowing, undying, Love’s law we fulfil.
Spirit of growth in the rocks, and the ferns, and the mosses, Spirit of growth in the trees, and the grasses, and flowers, Rejoicing in life, unconscious of changes or losses,
Of days or of hours.
Spirit of growth in the bird and the bee, ever tending
To form more complex its beauty and use thus combined,
Adapted perfection, the finite and infinite blending, One gleam from One Mind.
Thus spirally upward we come from the depths of creation,
The man and the woman—the garden of Eden have found,
And joined by the Lord in an endless and holy relation Ensphered and made round.
The innermost law of their being fulfilling, obeying, The King and the Queen, perfected, companioned, are crowned, The Incomprehensible thus in expression conveying Its ultimate bound.
Obedience still is the law of each fresh emanation, The prayer to the Father, ‘ Not my will, but Thy will be done,’ Then deathless, immortal, we pass through all forms of creation, The twain lost in One.
ELLA DIETZ 533
The King’s Daughter
The Word, the Redeemed is such as needs to be washed, and cleansed, and clothed upon.
In her lives the Imrah, the Word which is distilled and purified.
The feminine Imrah, or seven times purified words of El6hah and of Jehovah.
It is a quickening Word, which comforts in affliction, and is tne reward of all who keep Jehovah’s precepts.
Mrs. BREWSTER MACPHERSON.
AM beloved of the Prince of the garden of pieasure, I am beloved ; I em his pearl, and his dove, and his heart’s hidden treasure, I am approved ; To-day he has given his love, oh! his love without measure, Which can never be moved.
He has called me ‘ Beloved of my soul’, and my heart beats, repeating ‘ Beloved of my soul’, And my blood dances swift through my veins in a musical beating; The twin currents roll, Pouring forth their wild love, then again to their centre retreating Under righteous control.
O king of my life’s hidden spring! O lord of my being! Beloved of my heart ; Our lips breathed one prayer, and our souls, in a sudden, agreeing, Knit, joining each part Of the long-severed Word that the prophets beheld in their seeing— Beloved thou art.
534 ELLA DIETZ
The long-severed name of the Lord we are loving and fearing ; Our Sabbaths of rest Do welcome the Son; the Redeemed hail the Bride- groom’s appearing— His Name ever blest ; The Word in our hearts spoken now, in soft accents endearing,
With joy is confest.
Yea! Imrah—the Word, the Redeemed, the Bride of the Morning, The joy of the earth; O Imrah, beloved, whom the world had outcast in its scorning, Rejoice in thy birth; Ten thousands shall bless thee and bring thee thy gems of adorning, And comfort thy dearth.
HAROLD MONRO God
NCE, long before the birth of time, a storm Of white desire, by its own ardour hurled, Flashed out of infinite Desire, took form, Strove, won, survived: and God became the world.
1879-1932
Next, some internal force began to move Within the bosom of that latest earth:
The spirit of an elemental love
Stirred outward from itself, and God was birth.
HAROLD MONRO 535
Then outward, upward, with heroic thew,
Savage from young and bursting blood of life,
Desire took form, and conquered, and anew
Strove, conquered, and took form: and God was strife
Thus, like a comet, fiery flight on flight ; Flash upon flash, and purple morn on morn: But always out of agony—delight ;
And out of death—God evermore reborn,
Till, waxing fair and subtle and supreme, Desiring his own spirit to possess,
Man of the bright eyes and the ardent dream Saw paradise, and God was consciousness.
He is that one Desire, that life, that breath, That Soul which, with infinity of pain, Passes through revelation and through death Onward and upward to itself again.
Out of the lives of heroes and their deeds, Out of the miracle of human thought,
Out of the songs of singers, God proceeds ; And of the soul of them his Soul is wrought.
Nothing is lost: all that is dreamed or done Passes unaltered the eternal way, Immerging in the everlasting One,
Who was the dayspring and who is the day.
536
ALFRED NOYES
The Loom of Years N the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling
sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of
Years.
b. 1880
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dew- drenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
ALFRED NOYES 537
Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight ?
Ah, hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,
One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon,
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon,
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
Art, the Herald
‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness’
EYOND ; beyond; and yet again beyond! What went ye out to seek, oh foolish-fond? Is not the heart of all things here and now ? Is not the circle infinite, and the centre Everywhere, if ye would but hear and enter ? Come; the porch bends and the great pillars bow
538 ALFRED NOYES
Come; come and see the secret of the sun ;
The sorrow that holds the warring worlds in one; The pain that holds Eternity in an hour;
One God in every seed self-sacrificed,
One star-eyed, star-crowned universal Christ, Re-crucified in every wayside flower.
The Paradox *T Am that I Am’
I LL that is broken shall be mended; All that is lost shall be found ; I will bind up every wound When that which is begun shall be ended. Not peace I brought among you but a sword To divide the night from the day, When I sent My worlds forth in their battle-array To die and to live, To give and to receive, Saith the Lord. I Of old time they said none is good save our God ; But ye that have seen how the ages have shrunk from my rod, And how red is the wine-press wherein at my bidding they trod, Have answered and said that with Eden [ fashioned the snake, That I mould you of clay for a moment, then mar you and break, And there is none evil but I, the supreme Evil, God. Lo, I say unto both, I am neither ; But greater than either;
ALFRED NOYES 539
For meeting and mingling in Me they become neither evil nor good; Their cycle is rounded, they know neither hunger nor food, They need neither sickle nor seed-time, nor root nor fruit, They are ultimate, infinite, absolute. Therefore I say unto all that have sinned, East and West and South and North The wings of my measureless love go forth To cover you all: they are free as the wings of the wind. I Consider the troubled waters of the sea Which never rest ; As the wandering waves are ye; Yet assuaged and appeased and forgiven, As the seas are gathered together under the infinite glory of heaven, I gather you all to my breast. But the sins and the creeds and the sorrows that trouble the sea Relapse and subside, Chiming like chords in a world-wide symphony As they cease to chide ; For they break and they are broken of sound and hue, And they meet and they murmur and they mingle anew, Interweaving, intervolving, like waves: they have no stay: They are all made as one with the deep, when they sink and are vanished away ; Yea, all is toned at a turn of the tide To a calm and golden harmony ; But I—shall I wonder or greatly care, For their depth or their height ? Shall it be more than a song in my sight How many wandering waves there were
540 ALFRED NOYES
Or how many colours and changes of light ? It is your eyes that see And take heed of these things: they were fashioned for you, not for Me.
Iv With the stars and the clouds I have clothed Myself here for your eyes To behold That which Is. I have set forth the strength of the skies As one draweth a picture before you to make your hearts wise ; That the infinite souls I have fashioned may know as I know, Visibly revealed In the flowers of the field, Yea, declared by the stars in their courses, the tides in their flow, And the clash of the world’s wide battle as it sways to and fro, Flashing forth as a flame The unnameable Name, The ineffable Word, I am the Lord. v I am the End to which the whole world strives : Therefore are ye girdled with a wild desire and shod With sorrow ; for among you all no soul Shall ever cease or sleep or reach its goal Of union and communion with the Whole, Or rest content with less than being God. Still, as unending asymptotes, your lives In all their myriad wandering ways Approach Me with the progress of the golden days; Approach Me; for my love contrives
ALFRED NOYES 541
That ye should have the glory of this For ever; yea, that life should blend With life and only vanish away From day to wider wealthier day, Like still increasing spheres of light that melt and merge in wider spheres Even as the infinite years of the past melt in the infinite future years. Each new delight of sense, Each hope, each love, each fear, Widens, relumes and recreates each sphere, From a new ring and nimbus of pre-eminence. I am the Sphere without circumference : I only and for ever comprehend All others that within me meet and blend. Death is but the blinding kiss Of two finite infinities ; Two finite infinite orbs The splendour of the greater of which absorbs The less, though both like Love have no beginning and no end. vI Therefore is Love’s own breath Like Knowledge, a continual death ; And all his laughter and kisses and tears, And woven wiles of peace and strife, That ever widen thus your temporal spheres, Are making of the memory of your former years A very death in life. VII I am that I am; Ye are evil and good ; With colour and glory and story and song ye are fed as with food :
542 ALFRED NOYES
The cold and the heat, The bitter and the sweet, The calm and the tempest fulfil my Word ; Yet will ye complain of my two-edged sword That has fashioned the finite and mortal and given you the sweetness of strife, The blackness and whiteness, The darkness and brightness, Which sever your souls from the formless and void and hold you fast-fettered to life ?
VIII Behold now, is Life not good ? Yea, is it not also much more than the food, More than the raiment, more than the breath ? Yet Strife is its name ! Say, which will ye cast out first from the furnace, the fuel or the flame ? Would ye all be as Iam; and know neither evil nor good ; neither life ; neither death ; Or mix with the void and the formless till all were as one and the same ?
Ix Iam that Iam; the Container of all things: kneel, lift up your hands To the high Consummation of good and of evil which none understands ; The divine Paradox, the ineffable Word, in whose light the poor souls that ye trod Underfoot as too vile for their fellows are at terrible union with God ! Am I not over both evil and good, The righteous man and the shedder of blood ? Shall I save or slay ?
ALFRED NOYES 543
I am neither the night nor the day, Saith the Lord. Judge not, oh ye that are round my footstool, judge not, ere the hour be born That shall laugh you also to scorn.
x Ah, yet I say unto all that have sinned, East and West and South and North The wings of my measureless love go forth To cover you all: they are free as the wings of the wind. XI But one thing is needful ; and ye shall be true To yourselves and the goal and the God that ye seek ; Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you If ye love one another, if your love be not weak. xII Since I sent out my worlds in their battle-array To die and to live, To give and to receive, Not peace, not peace, I have brought among you but a sword, To divide the night from the day, Saith the Lord ; Yet all that is broken shall be mended, And all that is lost shall be found, I will bind up every wound, When that which is begun shall be ended,
ALFRED NOYES
SONE From ‘ The Forest of Wild Thyme’
HAT is there hid in the heart of a rose, Mother-mine ? Ah, who knows, who knows, who knows ? A man that died on a lonely hill May tell you, perhaps, but none other will, Little child.
What does it take to make a rose, Mother-mine ?
The God that died to make it knows
It takes the world’s eternal wars,
It takes the moon and all the stars,
It takes the might of heaven and hell
And the everlasting Love as well, Little child.
The Two Worlds
IS outer world is but the pictured scroll Of worlds within the soul,
A coloured chart, a blazoned missal-book
Whereon who rightly look
May spell the splendours with their mortal eyes
And steer to Paradise.
O, well for him that knows and early knows
In his own soul the rose
Secretly burgeons, of this earthly flower
The heavenly paramour :
ALFRED NOYES 545
And all these fairy dreams of green-wood fern, These waves that break and yearn,
Shadows and hieroglyphs, hills, clouds and seas, Faces and flowers and trees,
Terrestrial picture-parables, relate Each to its heavenly mate.
O, well for him that finds in sky and sea This two-fold mystery,
And loses not (as painfully he spells The fine-spun syllables)
The cadences, the burning inner gleam, The poet’s heavenly dream.
Well for the poet if this earthly chart Be printed in his heart, —
When to his world of spirit woods and seas With eager face he flees
And treads the untrodden fields of unknown flowers And threads the angelic bowers,
And hears that unheard nightingale whose moan Trembles within his own,
And lovers murmuring in the leafy lanes Of his own joys and pains.
For though he voyages further than the flight Of earthly day and night,
Traversing to the sky’s remotest ends A world that he transcends,
Safe, he shall hear the hidden breakers roar Against the mystic shore ;
Shall roam the yellow sands where sirens bare Their breasts and wind their hair ;
Shall with their perfumed tresses blind his eyes, And still possess the skies.
MYST, T
546 ALFRED NOYES
He, where the deep unearthly jungles are, Beneath his Eastern star
Shall pass the tawny lion in his den And cross the quaking fen.
He learnt his path (and treads it undefiled) When, as a little child,
He bent his head with long and loving looks O’er earthly picture-books.
His earthly love nestles against his side, His young celestial guide.
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR
The Immortal Hour
TILL as great waters lying in the West, So is my spirit still. I lay my folded hands within Thy breast, My will within Thy will. O Fortune, idle pedlar, pass me by. O Death, keep far from me who cannot die, The passion-flowers are lacing o’er the sill Of my low door.—As dews their sweetness fill, So do I rest in Thee. It is mine hour. Let none set foot therein, It is mine hour unflawed of pain or sin. Tis laid and steeped in silence, till it be A solemn dazzling crystal, to outlast And storm the eyes of poets when long-past Is all the changing dream of Thee and Me.
b. 1876
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR 547
The Night Obscure of the Soul
HEN the Soul travails in her Night Obscure, The nadir of her desperate defeat, What heavenly dream shall help her to endure, What flaming Wisdom be her Paraclete ? No curious Metaphysic can withhold The heart from that mandragora she craves :— Unreasonable, old as Earth is old, The blind ecstatic miracle that saves. Far off the pagan trumpeters of Pride Call to the blood.—Love moans.—Some fiery fashion Of rapture like the anguish of the bride Leaps from the dark perfection of the Passion, Crying: ‘O beautiful God, still torture me, For if thou slay me, I will trust in Thee.’
The Question
SAW the Son of God go by Crowned with the crown of Thorn,
‘Was It not finished, Lord ?” I said, ‘ And all the anguish borne ?’”
He turned on me His awful eyes: © Hast thou not understood ? Lo! Every soul is Calvary, And every sin a Rood.’
548
ANONYMOUS At the Feet of [sis
ER feet are set in darkness—at Her feet We kneel, for She is Mother of us all— A mighty Mother, with all love replete ; We, groping ’midst the shadow’s dusky pall, Ask not to see the upper vision bright, Enough for us Her feet shine clear—all virgin white.
Her wings are tipped with golden light, but we Ken but the shadow at Her pinions’ base—
We kneel before Her feet, we cannot see
The glory that illuminates Her face,
For he who t’wards the vision gazeth up
Finds first the stricken breast—the sacrificial cup !
Her feet gleam in the darkness—at Her feet
We lay the price of those twin pearls of Heav’n—
All that man hath—an offering incomplete
Is his who yet his best would leave ungiv’n ;
And as She stoops Her guerdon to bestow,
His life’s blood in Her cup, outstretched there, needs must flow!
Her wings are in the shadow—Lo! they cast
That shadow e’en o’er Heav’n’s own light, we cry, For in the darkness, terrible and vast,
She spreads the wing to which the soul must hie ; But, to that shelter led, our upward gaze
Beholds Her pinions formed of Light’s celestial rays!
ANONYMOUS 549
Her feet are in the darkness, but Her face
Is in high Heav’n—all Truth inhabits there ;
All Knowledge and all Peace, and perfect grace, And in the wonder of Her joy they share
Who, blindly clinging to Her feet erstwhile, Obtained the priceless gift—the vision of Her smile.
A Ballade of the Centre
HEN all the shores of knowledge fade Beyond the realms of night and day, When the quick stir of thought is stayed And, as a dream of yesterday, The bonds of striving fall away : There dawns sometimes a point of fire Burning the utter dark, that may Fulfil our desperate desire.
Into the darkness, unafraid, Wherein soft hands of silence lay Their veil of peace upon the blade Of too bright thought, we take our way. In changing of desire we pay Whatever price the gods require, Knowing the end is theirs—and they Fulfil our desperate desire.
Upon the stillness we have made Between our working and our play A deeper stillness yet is laid. Like some white bird above the sway
550 ANONYMOUS
Of summer waves within the bay Peace lights upon us ere we tire,
And does (yet how, we cannot say) Fulfil our desperate desire.
Envoi God of the world, to Whom we pray, Thou Inmost God to Whom aspire All hopes that Thou wilt not betray— Fulfil our desperate desire !
JOHN MASEFIELD The Ballad of Sir Bors
OULD I could win some quiet and rest, and a little ease, In the cool grey hush of the dusk, in the dim green place of the trees, Where the birds are singing, singing, singing, crying aloud The song of the red, red rose that blossoms beyond the seas,
b. 1878
Would I could see it, the rose, when the light begins to fail,
And a lone white star in the West is glimmering on the mail ;
The red, red passionate rose of the sacred blood of the Christ,
In the shining chalice of God, the cup of the Holy Grail.
JOHN MASEFIELD ssi
The dusk comes gathering grey, and the darkness dims the West,
The oxen low to the byre, and all bells ring to rest ;
But I ride over the moors, for the dusk still bides and waits,
That brims my soul with the glow of the rose that ends the Quest.
My horse is spavined and ribbed, and his bones come through his hide,
My sword is rotten with rust, but I shake the reins and ride,
For the bright white birds of God that nest in the rose have called,
And never a township now is a town where I can bide.
It will happen at last, at dusk, as my horse limps down the fell,
A star will glow like a note God strikes on a silver bell,
And the bright white birds of God will carry my soul to Christ,
And the sight of the Rose, the Rose, will pay for the years of hell.
The Seekers
RIENDS and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blessed abode,
But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road,
Not for us are content, and quict, and peace of mind, For we go seeking a city that we shall never find.
There is no solace on earth for us—for such as we— Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see.
552 JOHN MASEFIELD
Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain,
And the watch-fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.
We seek the City of God, and the haunt where beauty dwells, And we find the noisy mart and the sound of burial bells.
Never the golden city, where radiant people meet, But the dolorous town where mourners are going about the street.
We travel the dusty road till the light of the day is dim, And sunset shows us spires away on the world’s rim.
We travel from dawn to dusk, till the day is past and by, Seeking the Holy City beyond the rim of the sky.
Friends and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blest abode,
But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road.
From ‘The Everlasting Mercy’
DID not think, I did not strive, The deep peace burnt my me alive; The bolted door had broken in, I knew that I had done with sin. I knew that Christ had given me birth To brother all the souls on earth, And every bird and every beast Should share the crumbs broke at the feast.
JOHN MASEFIELD 553
O glory of the lighted mind.
How dead I’d been, how dumb, how blind. The station brook, to my new eyes, Was babbling out of Paradise,
The waters rushing from the rain Were singing Christ has risen again. I thought all earthly creatures knelt From rapture of the joy I felt.
The narrow station-wall’s brick ledge, The wild hop withering in the hedge, The lights in huntsman’s upper story Were parts of an eternal glory,
Were God’s eternal garden flowers,
I stood in bliss at this for hours,
O glory of the lighted soul.
The dawn came up on Bradlow Knoll,
The dawn with glittering on the grasses, The dawn which pass and never passes.
© It ’s dawn,’ I said, ‘ And chimney ’s smoking, And all the blessed fields are soaking.
It ’s dawn, and there ’s an engine shunting ; And hounds, for huntsman’s going hunting. It’s dawn, and I must wander north
Along the road Christ led me forth.’...
O wet red swathe of earth laid bare,
O truth, O strength, O gleaming share, O patient eyes that watch the goal,
O ploughman of the sinner’s soul.
O Jesus, drive the coulter deep
To plough my living man from sleep.
T 3
554
JOHN MASEFIELD
Slow up the hill the plough team plod, Old Callow at the task of God,
Helped by man’s wit, helped by the brute Turning a stubborn clay to fruit,
Hid eyes for ever on some sign
To help him plough a perfect line.
At top of rise the plough team stopped, The fore-horse bent his head and cropped; Then the chains chack, the brasses jingle, The lean reins gather through the cringle, The figures move against the sky,
The clay wave breaks as they go by.
I kneeled there in the muddy fallow,
I knew that Christ was there with Callow, That Christ was standing there with me, That Christ had taught me what to be, That I should plough, and as I ploughed My Saviour Christ would sing aloud, And as I drove the clods apart
Christ would be ploughing in my heart, Through rest-harrow and bitter roots, Through all my bad life’s rotten fruits.
O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn, The young green corn divinely springing, The young green corn forever singing; And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blesséd feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
JOHN MASEFIELD 555
The corn that makes the holy bread By which the soul of man is fed, The holy bread, the food unpriced, Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.
MICHAEL FIELD? Midsummer Nights Dream
UT s0 deep the wild-bee hummeth, And s0 still the glow-worm glows,
That we know a Saviour cometh,
And we lay our hearts with those—
All the mysteries earth strives with through the June nights and the rose.
Strange the joy that sets us weeping—
Holy John, thy Feast is come !
Yea, we feel a Babe is leaping
In the womb where he is dumb (Christendom. To the song that God’s own Mother sings so loud to
High that singing, high and humble!
Lo, our Queen is taking rule:
Faint midsummer thunders rumble,
And gold lilies light the pool,
While the generations whisper that a Queen is taking rule.
‘Where the Blessed Feet Have Trod’
OT alone in Palestine those blessed Feet have trod, For I catch their print,
I have seen their dint
On a plot of chalky ground, Little villas dotted round ;
| te. Katherine Harris Bradley(1846-1913) and Edith Emma Cooper (2862-1914).
556 MICHAEL FIELD
On a sea-worn waste, Where a priest, in haste, Passeth with the Blesséd Sacrament to one dying, frail, Through the yarrow, past the tamarisk, and the plaited snail : Bright upon the grass I see Bleeding Feet of Calvary— And I worship, and I clasp them round! On this bit of chalky, English ground, Jesu, Thou art found: my God I hail, My Lord, my God!
LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
Emblems of Love
She
NLY to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain ; And to this hour the whole world must consent. Is it not very marvellous, our lives Can only come to this out of a long Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?
He
Shall life do more than God ? for hath not God Striven with himself, when into known delight His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,— This mystery of a world sign of his striving ? Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind With labouring in the wonder of it, that here Being—the world and we—is suffered to be !—
1881-1939
LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 557
But, lying on thy breast one notable day, Sudden exceeding agony of love
Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge. I was not: yet I saw the will of God
As light unfashion’d, unendurable flame, Interminable, not to be supposed ;
And there was no more creature except light,— The dreadful burning of the lonely God’s Unutter’d joy. And then, past telling, came Shuddering and division in the light:
Therein, like trembling, was desire to know
Its own perfect beauty ; and it became
A cloven fire, a double flaming, each
Adorable to each ; against itself
Waging a burning love, which was the world ;— A moment satisfied in that love-strife
I knew the world !—And when I fell from there, Then knew I also what this life would do
In being twain,—in being man and woman! For it would do even as its endless Master, Making the world, had done; yea, with itself Would strive, and for the strife would into sex Be cloven, double burning, made thereby Desirable to itself. Contrivéd joy
Is sex in life ; and by no other thing
Than by a perfect sundering, could life Change the dark stream of unappointed joy To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves And worships its own Being. This is ours! Yet only for that we have been so long Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.— But we, well knowing by our strength of joy There is no sundering more, how far we love From those sad lives that know a half-love only,
558 LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever Sealed in division of love, and therefore made To pour their strength always into their love’s Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we:
The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage
Its flame against itself, here turned to one Self-adoration.—Ah, what comes of this? The joy falters a moment, with closed wings Wearying in its upward journey, ere
Again it goes on high, bearing its song,
Its delight breathing and its vigour beating The highest height of the air above the world.
She
What hast thou done to me !—I would have soul, Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, My body knows itself to be nought else But thy heart’s worship of me; and my soul Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. Nay, all my body is become a song Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song.
He And mine is all like one rapt faculty, As it were listening to the love in thee, My whole mortality trembling to take Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit.
She
Surely by this, Beloved, we must know Our love is perfect here,—that not as holds The common dullard thought, we are things lost
LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE 559
In an amazement that is all unware;
But wonderfully knowing what we are!
Lo, now that body is the song whereof
Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight? Knoweth not beautifully now our love,
That Life, here to this festival bid come
Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, Filled and empower’d by heavenly lust, is all The glad imagination of the Spirit ?
He
Were it not so, Love could not be at all: Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth Of sense to hold and understand the vision Made by impassion’d body,—vision of thee! But music mixt with music are, in love, Bodily senses ; and as flame hath light, Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, No way concealed therein, when love comes near, Nor in the perfect wedding of desires Suffering any hindrance.
She Ah, but now,
Now am I given love’s eternal secret! Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy Of our for ever mated spirits; but now The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them Round him in fashion’d radiance of desire, As into light of these exulting bodies Flaming Spirit is uttered ?
560 LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE
He Yea, here the end
Of love’s astonishment! Now know we Spirit, And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. Now all life’s loveliness and power we have Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning Carries all shining upward, till in us Life is not life, but the desire of God, Himself desiring and himself accepting. Now what was prophecy in us is made Fulfilment : we are the hour and we are the joy, We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate And drawing into his light the greeting fire Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love Wedding himself to utterance of himself.
JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT 1887-1916
I saw the Sun at Midnight, nsing red
| SAW the Sun at midnight, rising red, Deep-hued yet glowing, heavy with the stain Of blood-compassion, and I saw It gain
Swiftly in size and growing till It spread
Over the stars; the heavens bowed their head As from Its heart slow dripped a crimson rain, Then a great tremor shook It, as of pain—
The night fell, moaning, as It hung there dead.
O Sun, O Christ, O bleeding Heart of flame ! Thou giv’st Thine agony as our life’s worth, And mak’st it infinite, lest we have dearth
Of rights wherewith to call upon thy Name; Thou pawnest Heaven as a pledge for Earth, And for our glory sufferest all shame,
JOSEPH MARY PLUNKETT 561
I see His Blood upon the Rose
SEE his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower ;
The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice—and carven by his power Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree.
DAVID ATWOOD WASSON
The Mystic
4. Knowledge
HE Secret of the World is lowly, Self-sung nigh my pleading ear ; It presses close, enchanting, holy, Murmuring,—what, I cannot hear: A dream embosoming all my waking, Solace shaming all my fear.
1823-1887
In hours serenest and profoundest, List I ’yond the breadth of time : Over the sea of calm Thou soundest 3 Now I catch the tune, the rhyme, And now shall know !—Alas! the silence Ripples, broken; dies the chime.
562
DAVID ATWOOD WASSON
Partial, the universal Mother Tells her secret to the stars:
And they intone it each to other, Trooping in their silver cars.
Winging and witching comes the echo, But mine ear the meaning bars.
When the sunlight, aether flooding, Rains its richness down the sky,
The Fact on every beam is brooding, And on every leaf an eye
Implanteth, where the dauntless, dimless, Godlike vision I espy.
The psalmist pine-tree, sounding, sweeping One great chord forevermore ;
Deep-chested Ocean’s chant, as, keeping Time upon the throbbing shore,
His billowy palm still falls and rises,— Both recount that wondrous lore.
The World is rich, it hath possession ; Joy of wealth fills land and sea ;
The fields in bloom, the stars in session, Birds and blades on bough and lea.
All know the truth, the joy, the wonder, Not revealed to man, to me.
Nature, be just in thy bestowing! Best to best shouldst thou confide.
Oh! why from him, whose bliss is knowing, Knowledge, cruel, dost thou hide ?
Since, that withholden, naught is given; Given, naught withheld beside.
DAVID ATWOOD WASSON au. Life A goblet drained is all my knowing,— Cup whence I have quaffed the wine: From out the Unknown comes the flowing And exhaustless juice divine,
That lends the blood its priceless crimson, And the eye its living shine.
Embrace me, Mystery of Being ; Fill my arteries, flood my brain, And through me pour thy heart, till seeing, Thought, are drowned, like dew in rain, In powerful, pure participation : Separate life is separate pain.
Temple unseen of Truth immortal, Thought hath brought me to thy door ; Never passes he the portal, I am drawn the threshold o’er ; And lo! I am a leaf that quivers In God’s joy-wind evermore !
Now are the light-waves round me rolling, Now the love-tides through me run, Body and soul anew ensouling : Seeing and being melt in one. The ear is self-same with the music, Beam with vision, eye with sun,
563
564
CLARENCE A. WALWORTH Musa Extatica
HE altar tiles are under her feet,
Buff and blue; The tiles lie smooth beneath her feet, But touch not her sandal shoe. Her eyes entranced might seem to gaze Where arches concentrate and meet In a maze ; But the arches are not in view. Where does the vision lie ? What fixes the maiden’s eye? What makes her smile ? Ts it far, or is it near? What makes her garments float so clear Above the bed of tile ? They are not lifted by the air. Why hold her hands behind her head, Dipped in that foam of golden hair, As if she heard some distant tread, And stood prepared to call ? Why does her bosom rise and fall ? Its even swell of deep emotion Is like the roll on a placid ocean Of billows from afar. Who can tell what these billows are ? Is it joy coming, or desire outgoing ? Does she command, or is she wooing ? Why does she smile ? why bend her brow ? Why nod ? why beckon now, Whiles censuring, and whiles approving, Is she conveying her desire To some viewless choir, Or a crowd of spirits moving ?
CLARENCE A. WALWORTH 565
Wait! wait! Now she is still.
If thou hast a poet’s ear
For sacred song, come near ! The beating of her heart will tell.
‘Lo! me on holy ground,
With burning bushes all around. Oh! whither shall I turn?
I burn! I burn!
Electric currents come and go. They thread my spirit through and through: And a crowding tide of thought Holds my spirit overwrought,
And urges love to fond despair. Oh! give me air!
I die! I die!
Blow on me from the upper sky, Or joy that has no breath, Unsung must end in death.
Oh! give me air divine!
Brace me with the breath of wine! Give me such milk as flows from the breast Of the all-hallowing Eucharist, That I may troll
Sweet carols to the Oversoul. Either fill me
With blood of song, or kill me.
‘Oh! Iam drunk, but not with drink; Wild, but not all beyond command.
How could imagination think
To gauge, by law of plumb and line,
A vision reared by heavenly wand,
A beauty all entrancing and divine,
Which makes thought reel as if with wine ?
566 CLARENCE A. WALWORTH
It steals my reason, yet I own it;
It steals my thought to crown it. My heart in sweet delirium
Lies safe at home.
It gives me more than it can take, Though I leave all for its dear sake ; A mighty vision haunts me, Enchants and disenchants me, Heals my wounds, yet makes me bleed. Not for the world would I dispel it. Oh! could I, as I see it, tell it,
I were a bard indeed.
‘Oh! Iam mad, but not with folly, Sad am I without melancholy, Glad, but with sober merriment ; Fond am I, without detriment To reason. Bonded to higher will That may not be denied,
My own I seek to kill,
All fearless of the suicide.
Oh! I am calm,
I know where I am.
Yea, when most overwrought
I still am mistress of my thought ; Though oft to others I may seem A vessel driving to the coast
On the foam of a dream,
And utterly lost,
There ’s method in my madness, There ’s measure in my gladness ; And into rhythmic rule I bring True anthems to my Lord and King, Of Jove, all ruling love, I sing.
CLARENCE A. WALWORTH
By love inspired, by love oppressed, Within my breast
Electric forces gathering
Leap into buds ;
Thoughts crystallize into thick geodes The grasses wave their myriad flags ; Hills helmeted with lofty crags
Rein up like warriors ;
The hemlocks bending low,
Like water carriers,
Beneath their yokes of snow,
Keep measure with their feet
To the time I beat ;
Pines, crowding to look o’er
The common score,
Bend eagerly down till their bonnets meet ; Clouds march in groups ;
Waves march in columns over the sea ; Stars gallop in troops ;
Nights and days keep time ;
The fuguing seasons chime
With nature and with me ;—
All praise the Lord together.
To the last cliffs of space I shout,
My choristers to gather.
Sing out! sing out!
Keep tune, keep time,
To the pitch and motion of my rhyme! Faster! faster! faster !
Look at me!
One! two! three!
Tis the measure of the mighty Master. So beats revolving life in Trinity.
*Tis the secret of infinity—
567
568 CLARENCE A. WALWORTH
Who keeps true time shall time outlast ; Who loses, stubbornly slow,
From heaven shall be outcast,
And its music shall never know.
Sing all! sing out!
Prolong the chant with joyous shout. Faith praises with untiring tongue.
The hearts that weary die unblest,
Harps must not be unstrung,
Love may repose but never rest.’
ALFRED GURNEY The New World
*That new world which is the old.’—-TENNYSON.
NEW world did Columbus find ? Ah! ’tis not so that world is found ; God’s golden harvest-sheaves who bind Are tillers of another ground.
No new world like the old we need ; One thing suffices—one alone, A garnered world-harvest from seed The wounded Hands of Christ have sown.
No earthly Paradise avails, No Eldorado in the West ;
The Spirit’s Breath must fill their sails Who seek the Highlands of the Blest.
By stripes is healing wrought, and stars Point ever to a central Sun;
He flies the conquering flag, whose scars, Transfigured, speak of Victory won,
ALFRED GURNEY 569
O Royal Heart, Thy Kingdom come! All else may change ; all else may go:
Not eastward, westward, is our Home, But onward, upward :—even so !
One Sign alone is love-designed, God’s Evergreen, the Eternal Rood ; Happy the home-seekers who find Its meaning plain—a world renewed !
EDWIN J. ELLIS
Preface to ‘ Fate in Arcadia’
ERE kneels my word, that may not say Even to the inward ear of night More than the laughter of the day Or the soft weeping of twilight.
No waking hours, no sleep shall find
The world’s continual dream revealed. The Living Word is silent mind,
And every book is closed and sealed.
Our Mother Earth for daily things Has given the daily mother-tongue ; But the mute wonder that she brings, All lips have kissed ; no voice has sung,
And even now the usual word Spread like an empty couch and cold Measures the sound our fathers heard, But holds no more the hint untold.
574
EDWIN J. ELLIS
For He is risen whom we seek : The linen clothes without the form Are folded, lest too clear they speak The Divine Body, buried warm.
Then every song is free from blame, Though silence veil her inmost part Like the dark centre of the flame, Or the hot patience of the heart.
The Wanderer
H, Christ, it were enough to know That brooding on the unborn things Thou gatherest up the years that go Like a hen’s brood beneath her wings.
It were enough to know that those, More evil than the years that fall,
Who heard Thee mocked Thy safe repose And would not trust Thee at Thy call.
It were enough that Thou hast died, Because Thyself Thou couldst not save, Unless by losing from Thy side Thy sons that drove Thee to Thy grave.
Yet more and more we know and see, For Golgotha the shade retains
Of Him who died, the Form of Thee, Of Him who bore Thy fleshly pains.
Nor there alone, this Form shall be Still seen within us, Thou dost say
Until there shine on earth and sea Light of the unforeboded Day.
EDWIN J. ELLIS
O Christ the Wanderer, marked as Cain, We know the sign upon Thy brow ;
We know the trailing cross, the stain ; The passing footstep whispers now.
It was Thy hand, we learn at last, That nailed Thee in that far-off year ; Thy hand as now Thou wanderest past, Drives deep within Thy side the spear.
While evil holds the world in grip And men revile the eternal powers, This vision holds Thee lip to lip lose to our love and makes Thee ours,
JOHN GRAY The Tree of Knowledge
ROM what meek jewel seed Did this tree spring?
1893-1930
How first beat its new life in bleak abode
Of virgin rock, strange metals for its food,
Towards its last hewn mould, the bitter rood ?
First did it sprout, indeed, A double wing.
Earth hung with its gross weight Its loins unto: The tender wings, with hope in every vein, Beat feebly upward, saying: ‘ Is this the pain The Sooth spake of ; to lift to God again This blackness’ dark estate Reformed anew?
57!
572 JOHN GRAY
* Mine ’tis, of fruit mine own, To work this deed : Earnest of promise absolute, these green Sweet wings; a million engines pulse therein, Yet can I leave not for a space, to lean Upon a fulcrum known, To know my need.’
With which, the seed upthrust To God a scale ; Wondering at its fibre and tough growth ; Saying, the while it purposed: ‘ For He knoweth My sore extremity, how I am loth To cleave unto the dust Which makes me hale.’
Long while the scale increased In height and girth ; Cast many branches forth and many wings ; Wherein and under, formed and fashioned things Had great content and speech and twitterings : Insect and fowl] and beast And sons of earth.
Stern, netherward did grope Each resolute root Of the tree, making question in the deep Of spirits, where the mighty metals sleep, How long ere from its base the rock should leap; Saying: * Yet have I hope Of that my fruit.’
JOHN GRAY 573
Sprang from its topmost bough The hope at length Fearsome and fierce and passionate. The sire Warmed his son’s vitals with celestial fire, Feeding him with sweet gum of strong desire, Lest be not stanch enow His godly strength.
Until the gardener came With his white spouse, Wounding the tree, and ravishing the son, (Whence curses fallen and a world undone.) For that rape, wrathfully a shining one Drave them with fearful flame Without their house.
Race upon savage race, Rough brood on brood, Defiled before it, whiles the tree scanned each ; Leaned leaf and branch to grapple and beseech ; Till, on a certain day, requiring speech Of the tree, at its base The whole world stood :
‘ What hast thou given us, Thou barren tree? “ Knowledge,” thou answerest ? Thou hast set agape The door of Knowledge only. Thy limbs ape Some truth. We love thee not, nor love thy shape. Imposture, thus and thus We fashion thee."
574 JOHN GRAY
Sorely then handled it The gardener’s sons. Strangely they built it newly, having cleft Its being all asunder ; stem bereft Of quivering limbs, save one to right and left, Urging the self-same wit It gave them once.
‘Lo! all my glories fall. Of these my woes, What know those wrathful men, save, in yon place, Perhaps, yon athlete, stripped for my embrace ? If longing cheat me not, writ in his face, He knows about it all, He knows, he knows.
‘Sorrow! What sin they now, Those wrathful men ? Passion} thou’rt come to me again too soon Too hot thou givst me back the fiery boon I gave thee ; love consumes me, that I swoon ; Thou, on my topmost bough, My fruit again.’
Ox the Holy Trinity
RE aught began, Beyond the span Of sense, the Word (O priceless hoard !) Was, which God fashioned in his youth.
JOHN GRAY
O Fatherbreast, Wherefrom, with zest, The Word did bloom ! Yet did the womb
Retain the Word in very truth.
Of twain a fount, Love paramount, The double troth, Known unto both,
The ever gentle Spirit flows. Equal, and none Can make but one; One are the three ; Yet what it be
That triple spirit only knows, The triple crown Hath deep renown ; Ring without clasp No sense can grasp,
It is a depth without a floor, Is rest, is grace,
Shape, form and space ;
The source, the ring Of everything ;
A point which never moveth more
To its abode There is no road 3 Curiously
It beareth thee
Into a desert strangely strange.
Is wide, is broad,
Unmeasured road ;
The desert has
Nor time nor space, Its way is wonderfully strange,
$75
576
JOHN GRAY
That desert plot No foot hath trod ; Created wit Ne’er came to it; It is, and no man knoweth what. Is there, is here, Is far, is near, Is deep, is high, And none reply Whether this thing be this or that, Is light, is pure, Is most obscure, Nameless, alone, It is unknown, Free both of end and origin. It standeth dark, Is bare and stark ; Reveal his face Who knows its place, And say what fashion it is in. Become a child, Deaf, blind and mild ; Be eye and thought Reduced to naught, Self and negation driven back, Space, time resign, And every sign, No leader hath The narrow path, So com’st thou to the desert track, O soul, abroad, Go in to God ; Sink as a yes In nothingness, Sink in unfathomable flood.
JOHN GRAY 577
I fly from thee, Thou greetest me}; Self left behind, If I but find Thee, O thou good of every good !
EUGENE MASON 1862-1935
Apparition
OW shall I find Him, who can be my guide ? Wears He a human form, a tear-marred face, By blood-red raiment may He be descried, Or broods He far withdrawn through stellar space ? Perchance, informing all, His coils entwine And bind the monstrous fabric cell to cell, Or, veiled in service, ’neath this Bread and Wine A homely God, He deigns with men to dwell. Lo! just beyond the skyline He may stand, Speak just without the waftage of mine ear, I all but touch Him with my outstretched hand, Clear to my senses He may straight appear.
I hush my drumming heart, I stay my breath To catch His step, to hearken what He saith.
FRED. G. BOWLES
Resurrection
S the slow Evening gather’d in her grey, And one clear star its ancient pathway trod— With long, low cadences of dear delay The lark, descending, left his song with God !
MYST. U
578 FRED. G. BOWLES
And Peace came, like a reverential soul, With far-off tremors of a further world, And thro’ the silver mist of twilight stole Unto the heart of all. And upward curl’d The April moon, resurgent of the sun, To the blue dusk of the exalted dome Of heav’n; and the white wind-flowers, one by one, Shook in light slumber on their hilly home. It was so sweet to stoop and feel around ! Each blade of grass a breathing lyre of life Whereon the wind, in arias of sound, Told subtle music; how the great World, rife With scent of violet, and primrose-strewn, Strain’d tender fingers from each dewy sod To the dear Christ of chrysalis and moon— And, dusk descending, left her soul with God!
An Insurgent of Art
IKE a tired lover I rest on her bosom,
I, the Insurgent of Art... Thou, the Glory, Worshipped of Cherubim, leaning toward me; Now through the yellowing clouds of the rushes, Now o’er the music of waters melodic,
Now from the wavering blue fields of heaven,
Or from the daffodil’s soundless pale trumpet, Drawing my soul with miraculous ardours !
What is thy purpose ? Ah! What is thy doing? White stars are water-blooms set in the ocean,
Young lives are petals from one burning Blossom, Fallen from altitudes starry and primal—
Welcome the wind that shall blow them to shelter, Breathe on their circumstance, shape the Soul’s eddy,
FRED. G. BOWLES 579
Separately fire and transform all this wonder.
I, thy lost lover, long-waiting, have found Thee, I, who had seen Thy sheathed colours, descending, Melt into violets, flow into pansies,
Know that the Master hath need of the artist ! Out of the force of His Being, atomic,
Came I, and go I, ripe seed of His sowing ; Reticent, mutinous, still have I found Thee, Steadfast I worship, for Thou art so near me—
Set in a Soul, my one Holy of Holies!
NORA CHESSON
Hertha
AM the spirit of all that lives, Labours and loses and forgives. My breath’s the wind among the reeds; I’m wounded when a birch-tree bleeds. I am the clay nest ’neath the eaves And the young life wherewith it brims, The silver minnow where it swims Under a roof of lily-leaves Beats with my pulses; from my eyes The violet gathered amethyst. I am the rose of winter skies, The moonlight conquering the mist.
1871-1906
I am the bird the falcon strikes ; My strength is in the kestrel’s wing, My cruelty is in the shrikes.
My pity bids the dock-leaves grow Large, that a little child may know
580
NORA CHESSON
Where he shall heal the nettle’s sting. I am the snowdrop and the snow, Dead amber, and the living fir— The corn-sheaf and the harvester.
My craft is breathed into the fox When, a red cub, he snarls and plays With his red vixen. Yea, Iam
The wolf, the hunter, and the lamb ; I am the slayer and the slain,
The thought new-shapen in the brain. I am the ageless strength of rocks, The weakness that is all a grace,
Being the weakness of a flower.
The secret on the dead man’s face Written in his last living hour,
The endless trouble of the seas
That fret and struggle with the shore, Strive and are striven with evermore— The changeless beauty that they wear Through all their changes—all of these Are mine. The brazen streets of hell
I know, and heaven’s gold ways as well. Mortality, eternity,
Change, death, and life are mine—are me.
581
EVA GORE-BOOTH
The Quest
OR years I sought the Many in the One,
I thought to find lost waves and broken rays, The rainbow’s faded colours in the sun— The dawns and twilights of forgotten days.
But now I seek the One in every form, Scorning no vision that a dewdrop holds,
The gentle Light that shines behind the storm, The Dream that many a twilight hour enfolds,
Harvest
HOUGH the long seasons seem to separate Sower and reaper or deeds dreamed and done, Yet when a man reaches the Ivory Gate Labour and life and seed and corn are one.
Because thou art the doer and the deed,
Because thou art the thinker and the thought, Because thou art the helper and the need,
And the cold doubt that brings all things to nought.
Therefore in every gracious form and shape The world’s dear open secret shalt thou find, From the One Beauty there is no escape
Nor from the sunshine of the Eternal mind.
The patient labourer, with guesses dim, Follows this wisdom to its secret goal.
He knows all deeds and dreams exist in him, And all men’s God in every human soul.
582 EVA GORE-BOOTH
Form
HE buried statue through the marble gleams, Praying for freedom, an unwilling guest, Yet flooding with the light of her strange dreams The hard stone folded round her uncarved breast.
Founded in granite, wrapped in serpentine, Light of all life and heart of every storm, Doth the uncarven image, the Divine,
Deep in the heart of each man, wait for form.
SUSAN MITCHELL The Living Chalice
HE Mother sent me on the holy quest, Timid and proud and curiously dressed In vestures by her hand wrought wondrously ; An eager burning heart she gave to me. The Bridegroom’s Feast was set and I drew nigh— Master of Life, Thy Cup has passed me by.
Before new-dressed I from the Mother came, In dreams I saw the wondrous Cup of Flame. Ah, Divine Chalice, how my heart drank deep, Waking I sought the Love I knew asleep.
The Feast of Life was set and I drew nigh— Master of Life, Thy Cup has passed me by.
Eye of the Soul, awake, awake and see
Growing within the Ruby Radiant Tree,
Sharp pain hath wrung the Clusters of my Vine ; My heart is rose-red with its brimméd wine. Thou hast new-set the Feast and I draw nigh— Master of Life, take me, Thy Cup am I.
SUSAN MITCHELL 583
Immortality
GE cannot reach me where the veils of God
Have shut me in,
For me the myriad births of stars and suns Do but begin,
And here how fragrantly there blows to me The holy breath,
Sweet from che flowers and stars and hearts of men, From life and death.
We are not old, O heart, we are not old, The breath that blows
The soul aflame is still a wandering wind That comes and goes ;
And the stirred heart with sudden raptured life A moment glows.
A moment here—a bulrush’s brown head In the grey rain,
A moment there—a child drowned and a heart Quickened with pain ;
The name of Death, the blue deep heaven, the scent Of the salt sea,
The spicy grass, the honey robbed From the wild bee.
Awhile we walk the world on its wide roads And narrow ways,
And they pass by, the countless shadowy troops Of nights and days;
We know them not, O happy heart, For you and I
Watch where within a slow dawn lightens up Another sky.
584 SUSAN MITCHELL
Love's Mendicant
HAT do I want of thee ? No gift of smile or tear Nor casual company, But in still speech to me Only thy heart to hear.
Others contentedly
Go lonely here and there ;
I cannot pass thee by, Love’s Mendicant am I Who meet thee everywhere.
No merchandise I make ; Thou mayst not give to me The counterfeits they take. I claim Him for Love’s sake, The Hidden One in thee.
JAMES H. COUSINS
The Quest
EY said: ‘She dwelleth in some place apart, Immortal Truth, within whose eyes Who looks may find the secret of the skies And healing for life’s smart ! ’
I sought Her in loud caverns underground,—
On heights where lightnings flashed and fell;
I scaled high Heaven ; I stormed the gates of Hell, But Her I never found
JAMES H. COUSINS 585
Till thro’ the tumults of my Quest I caught A whisper: ‘ Here, within thy heart, I dwell; for Iam thou: behold, thou art The Seeker—and the Sought.’
FV 1st0om
HEN I from life’s unrest had earned the grace Of utter ease beside a quiet stream ;
When all that was had mingled in a dream
To eyes awakened out of time and place ;
Then in the cup of one great moment’s space
Was crushed the living wine from things that seem ;
I drank the joy of very Beauty’s gleam,
And saw God’s glory face to shining face.
Almost my brow was chastened to the ground,
But for an inner Voice that said: ‘ Arise!
Wisdom is wisdom only to the wise:
Thou art thyself the Royal thou hast crowned :
In Beauty thine own beauty thou hast found,
And thou hast looked on God with God’s own eyes.’
ALICE MARY BUCKTON
The Great Response
ET me come nearer Thee, O Perfect Soul ! Down-looking on me, whereso’er I tread, With earnest gaze from cliff, and sky o’erhead, From clustered leaves and buds and bowers of green— Let me come nearer Thee! U3
586 ALICE MARY BUCKTON
Seeking Thine intercourse I wander wide O’er hills and valleys, under moon and stars, Rapt in a secret tumult of delight At every passing cloud, and changing light On stream and mountain side.
I kiss thy cheek, fair rose! Its pearly hue Reflects the darker passion blood of mine: Thy tender breath, responding to the lips,
Is sweeter to the soul than new-mixt wine.
Young veinéd leaf uncurled, And tendril green, Clinging about my finger slenderly, Thou seést not: what wouldst thou have of me? What happy sense hast thou, to know the touch Of the unseen ?
Blue dome of heaven that guards The living world Like a green gem within a casket rare, Fretted with brooks, and set in silver seas, What Breast contains ye both, the moving Earth And the free Air?
And lo! within my soul Some happy Thing Betrayed the secret sigh of heart’s content : And, from the hollows of the breathless hills There came a quiet Voice: Look round on Me, The Presence, the Desire that moves and fills, The whole—the part !
ALICE MARY BUCKTON
I rise upon the winds: I draw the stars Thro’ realms of night, on paths of trackless dawn! Mine Eye contains the light of Day: mine Arm Unfurls the cloud, and flings the grateful shade On hill and lawn!
In glimmering regions, yet unfound, I penetrate The Abyss of Being, and the Springs of Thought : I order things that be: and blamelessly Divide the heavens and earth, reproved of nought, Of Joy and Power, insatiate !
I linger in the twilight land of grief: With health divine breathing on frozen hearts that know me not; They lift their marred and chilly lips to me, Swooning into my bosom dreamlessly, For Grief and Death are mine!
I gather up the fleeting Souls that seem All day to die: Their beauty, melting, passeth not away ! Woven into the golden mist of Life They ’merge again upon the teeming Strife That worketh endlessly !
And Man, the fairest of my children! Thou That battlest darkly with thy Destiny, Whom I have made for god-like liberty, And fain had lifted up to be with Me—
My son and fellow-worker! know
587
588 ALICE MARY BUCKTON
I only Am: unhasting, uncontrolled, My Perfect Will Fulfils its perfect Self, around, above! My Hipven Name is Joy! O mortal, yield Unto the Breath that would thy being fill, The Breath of Love!
Before the Dawn
HOU, for whom words have exhausted their sweet- ness— Thou, the All-End of all human desire— Thou, in whose Presence the ages are hourless, Gather me nigher!
Husht in the chambers where Reason lies sleeping,
Ere the Day claim us, to which we are told,—
Wrapped in the veil of Thy slumbering Beauty, Fold me, oh fold !
Fill me afresh with the wonder of wakening— Draw me again with Thy splendour and might— Open my lids but a moment, and grant me
Sight of Thy sight !
Out of the furthest high Throne of Thy Dwelling, A motionless Flame on the Bosom of Thought, Deign to uncover Thyself, O Eternal
Seeker and Sought!
Pure in the Body that offers Thee homage,
Blest in the Thought that embraces Thee far,
Next to Thy secret and innermost Breathing Thy worshippers are !
ALICE MARY BUCKTON 589
Forth to the Day that I know not awaiting,
Out to the highway Thy glory hath trod,
Glad as a child, and as passionless, fearless, Lead me, O God!
ANNA BUNSTON (MRS. DE BARY)
A Basque Peasant returning from Church
LITTLE lark, you need not fly To seek your Master in the sky, He treads our native sod; Why should you sing aloft, apart ? Sing to the heaven of my heart; In me, in me, in me is God!
O strangers passing in your car, You pity me who come so far
On dusty feet, ill shod; You cannot guess, you cannot know Upon what wings of joy I go
Who travel home with God,
From far-off lands they bring your fare, Earth’s choicest morsels are your share, And prize of gun and rod; At richer boards I take my seat, Have dainties angels may not eat: In me, in me, in me is God!
O little lark, sing loud and long
To Him who gave you flight and song, And me a heart aflame.
He loveth them of low degree,
And He hath magnified me, And holy, holy, holy is His Name!
590 ANNA BUNSTON
A Great Mystery
Shall I, the gnat which dances in Thy ray, Dare to be reverent ?>—COVENTRY PATMORE
TRANGELY, strangely, Lord, this morning Camest Thou beneath my roof, Shorn of all Thy royal adorning, Stripp’d of judgement and reproof, The King of kings yet gladly scorning, Every plea but love’s behoof. ‘Can this be God ?’ I said, ‘ who enters, This be God who climbs my stair ? God sits high in heavenly centres, And though He hath us in His care, *Tis as His adopted children, Slaves redeemed from Satan’s snare. God is mightier than the mountains, Far more majesty would wear, This One comes like summer fountains, Hath no snow upon His hair. With eagle pinions God will cover Those who seek for refuge there, But these are dove-like wings that hover, God was never half so fair.’ Then with voice like falling water Viewless angels sang to me, Fear not thou, O virgin daughter, Thy King desires thy poverty.
At that ‘ Ave Maria’ I arose and I obeyed; O my King Cophetua, I, Thy blessed beggar-maid,
ANNA BUNSTON 591
Who once lay among the potsherds Stand in silver plumes arrayed ; I, who lonely in the vineyards Morn and noon and evening strayed, Now am wrapt in Thine embraces, ’Neath Thy banner ‘ Love’ am laid, Made partaker of Thy graces, I, the outcast beggar-maid,
No excuse and no invention Makes me less unworthy Thee,
No prostration, no pretension Of unique humility,
But Thy glorious condescension Blazes through my misery,
And Thy love finds full extension In the nothingness of me.
Dark my soul, yet Thou hast sought her, My night allows Thy day to shine,
Thou the grape art, I the water— Both together make the wine.
I the clay and Thou the craftsman, I the boat and Thou the strand,
I the pencil, Thou the draughtsman, I the harp and Thou the hand.
But the world with envy raging Fain would snatch me, Lord, from Thee, And Death and Hell their war are waging, Therefore go not far from me, By the mystery of this housel, By this momentary truth, By the love of this espousal, By this kindness of my youth,
592 ANNA BUNSTON
By Thy promise of remembrance, By that sweet perversity That makes my dark uncomely semblance Seem desirable to Thee— Leave me not lest faith should falter, O! secure my fealty, I the victim on Thine altar, Thou the fire consuming me.
‘O Sovereign Lord, Thou Lover of Men’s Souls !?
HOU hope of all Humanity,
What of all this that meets the sight, The blood, the tears, the misery ?
Raiment of needlework outspread
Wrought curiously with golden thread, That my bride may be fitly adorned to-night.
But, oh thou Bridegroom of the Soul, What of the sounds, the sounds of fear, The groans of men, the bells that toll ? Thou hearest the minstrels tune their lutes, Thou hearest the young men try their flutes For the feast of the marriage that draweth near,
Yet, oh thou Bridegroom of the Soul,
What of the mind’s captivity ?
What of the spirit’s doubt and dole ? Out of the ebony halls of night, Aloes, cassia, myrrh, delight,
The bride in her palace of ivory.
ANNA BUNSTON 593
Then, oh thou Bridegroom of the Soul, What of the songs from woods new-clothed, The laughing flowers, the sunlit knoll ? My footsteps that follow along the shore, My fingers about the latch and door, My face at the window of my betrothed.
Under a Wiltshire Apple Tree
OME folk as can afford, So I’ve heard say, Set up a sort of cross Right in the garden way To mind ’em of the Lord,
But I, when I do see Thik apple tree
An’ stoopin’ limb
All spread wi’ moss,
I think of Him
And how He talks wi’ me.
I think of God
And how He trod
That garden long ago;
He walked, I reckon, to and fro And then sat down
Upon the groun’
Or some low limb
What suited Him
Such as you see
594
ANNA BUNSTON
On many a tree,
And on thik very one Where I at set 0” sun Do sit and talk wi’ He.
And, mornings too, I rise and come An’ sit down where the branch be low; A bird do sing, a bee do hum,
The flowers in the border blow,
And all my heart’s so glad and clear As pools when mists do disappear :
As pools a-laughing in the light When mornin’ air is swep’ an’ bright, As pools what got all Heaven in sight So’s my heart’s cheer
When He be near.
He never pushed the garden door, He left no footmark on the floor ;
I never heard ’Un stir nor tread And yet His Hand do bless my head, And when ’tis time for work to start I takes Him with me in my heart.
And when I die, pray God I see At very last thik apple tree
An’ stoopin’ limb,
And think of Him
And all He been to me.
595
DARRELL FIGGIS
Slaibh Mor
STOOD among the ancient hills, While all the dusk eve’s blue array Swept round with softly rustling wings To still the glamour of the day. The raurmur of persistent rills, A lone thrush with his communings Of music, folded in some trees, A piping robin ere he flew, And the soft touch of a calm breeze Sighing across the heavenly view, Were the sole voices whispering round The slope hills with reflective sound, So still the whole earth was: So very still it was. The solemn conclave of the hills, In an erect fraternity, Expectant of the hour to be, Were trembling in the calm that fills The house of Being with its peace. A measured rhythm flowed abroad From old Earth of the heart so strong, That was itself a manner of song, Bidding the day’s tame tumults cease Before the coming of her lord. The throstle, as he communed low, Enchanted seemed, and tranced, and spelled, To catch the measure of that flow That from the mighty heart upwelled, That his own song thereby should be Lost in the inner immensity.
DARRELL FIGGIS
The trickling music of the rills Along the bosom of the hills
Was to that larger rhythm bent, And in that larger silence played. The very winds that came and went Were in their courses stayed, Hushed in a mute expectancy.
The silent Earth was bent in prayer. And I, as I stood there,
Scarce witting what my body knew, Was hushed to adoration too.
Like a charmed cadence throbbing low Along her scarred, mute visage so,
Flowed the Earth’s spirit thro’ the air Emerging from its ancient lair,—
Flowed round the dusk and glooming hills That stood in solemn peacefulness, Flowed thro’ the shimmer of air that fills The valleys with a shadowy tress,
Flowed up where stars began to peep, Flowed where the hushed winds lay asleep, And sank again while peace profound Wrapped all the ancient hills around. Not a breath stirred ;
No voice or song was heard.
It was a silence vaster than the dead;
It was a silence where in all its power Being raised up its mighty head an hour, And I, tho’ I scarce knew what chanced, Caught in the measured rhythm, and tranced, Was yet raised to a terrible dread
Of the great hush that wrapped the hills: That spell upon the standing hills.
DARRELL FIGGIS 597
I could have fled, but that the awe Of an unfurling and strange might Had me transfigured in its law.
And yet the fear that stirred in me Was mingled with a wild delight That thrilled with very ecstasy Thro’ every nerve and vein and mesh Building my quivering house of flesh.
Then a strange shudder shook the hills. Some movement swayed them in eclipse, As tho’ a dread apocalypse
Were waiting till they were unfurled With all the travail of the world.
They were transformed, and shadowy-high They stood there, and yet floated by; While from some inner place of flame A boom of distant music came Suddenly thro’ the air,
And huge and silent chords of sound Soared o’er the quivering hills around, As I hung trembling there.
My house of flesh could scarce contain The rolling chords that swept abroad And undissolved remain,
My joy stirred in me with such pain. Loosed on the silence that had been, Obeying its symphonic lord,
The music rolled thro’ time and space, Booming in changing chord on chord Amidst a silence that seemed still Upon the old Earth’s brooding face.
It rolled round each reverberate hill ; It crashed its high symphonic will
598 DARRELL FIGGIS
And floated all the vales between, In clouds of colour mounting high, In waves of music sweeping by, Booming above the ancient peace Betwixt the ancient silences.
What chanced I do not know.
How is it I should know ?
Like rolling clouds before the day The booming music rolled away ; And, like a storm of splendour past, The silence seemed yet to outlast The music it had ushered so.— Then slowly the wise thrush arose And mused away the evening’s close.
CLIFFORD BAX The Meaning of Man
Take courage ; for the race of man is divine. The Golden Verses,
EAR and fair as Earth may be Not from out her womb are we,— Like an elder sister only, like a foster-mother, she, For we come of heavenly lineage, of a pure undying race, We who took the poppied potion of our life, and quaffing deep Move enchanted now forever in the shadow world of sleep, In the vast and lovely vision that is wrought of time and space.
b. 1886
CLIFFORD BAX 599
Overhead the sun and moon Shining at the gates of birth Give to each a common boon,— All the joy of earth ; Mountains lit with moving light, Forest, cavern, cloud and river, Ebb and flow of day and night Around the world forever. These and all the works of man may he who will behold, Mighty shapes of bygone beauty, songs of beaten gold, Starlike thoughts that once, in ages gone, were found by seér-sages, All the throng’d and murmuring Past, the life men loved of old. Yet sometimes at the birth of night when hours of heat and splendour Melt away in darkness, and the flaming sun has set Across the brooding soul will sweep, like music sad and tender, Sudden waves of almost passionate regret, For then the hills and meadowlands, the trees and flowerful grasses, All the world of wonder that our eyes have gazed upon, Seems remote and mournful, as a rainbow when it passes Leaves the heart lamenting for the beauty come and gone, And in the deep that is the soul there surges up a cry * Whence are all the starry legions traversing the sky ? Whence the olden planets and the sun and moon and earth ? Out of what came all of these and out of what came I ?? And far away within the same unfathomable deep Comes an answer rolling ‘ Earth and moon and sun,
600 CLIFFORD BAX
All that is, that has been, or that ever time shall reap, Is but moving home again, with mighty labours done, The Many to the Everlasting One.’
And this is the meaning of man, The task of the soul, The labour of worlds, and the plan That is set for the whole, For the spark of the spirit imprisoned within it, In all things one and the same, Aeon by aeon and minute by minute, Is longing to leap into flame, To shatter the limits of life and be lost in a glory intense and profound As the soul with a cry goes out into music and seeks to be one with the sound.
For as those that are sunken deep In the green dim ocean of sleep, In a thousand shapes for a thousand ages the one great Spirit is bound. The air we inhale and the sea, The warm brown earth and the sun, Came forth at the Word of the One From the same First Mother as we, And now, as of old when the world began The stars of the night are the kindred of man, For all things move to a single goal, The giant sun or the thinking soul. Ah what though the Tree whose rise and fall Of sap is fed from the Spirit of All, With suns for blossoms and planets for leaves, Be vaster yet than the mind conceives ? Earth is a leaf on the boundless Tree, And the unborn soul of the earth are we.
CLIFFORD BAX 601
O man is a hungering exiled people, a host in an unknown land, A wandering mass in the vast with only a black horizon to face, Yet still, though we toil for a time in the heat over measureless deserts of sand The longing for beauty that shines in the soul is the guiding-star of the race. It is this that alone may redeem A world ignoble with strife, This only bring all that we dream From the shattered chaos of life. And this that forever shall spur us and lead us from peak unto peak on the way Till body and spirit be welded in one and the long Night fall on the Day, And all the sonorous music of time, the hills and the woods and the wind and the sea, The one great song of the whole creation, of all that is and that yet shall be, Chanted aloud as a paean of joy by the Being whose home is the vast Shall tremble away in silence, and all be gone at the last, Save only afar in the Heart of the Singer of whom it was chanted and heard Remembrance left of the music as a sunset-fire in the west, Remembrance left of the mighty Enchanted Palace that rose at His Word, This, and a joy everlasting, an immense inviolate rest.
602
ELSA BARKER He who knows Love
E who knows Love—becomes Love, and his eyes Behold Love in the heart of everyone, Even the loveless: as the light of the sun Is one with all it touches. He is wise With undivided wisdom, for he lies In Wisdom’s arms. His wanderings are done, For he has found the Source whence all things ran— The guerdon of the quest, that satisfies.
He who knows Love becomes Love, and he knows All beings are himself, twin-born of Love. Melted in Love’s own fire, his spirit flows Into all earthly forms, below, above ; He is the breath and glamour of the rose, He is the benediction of the dove.
The Slumberer
THOU mysterious One, lying asleep Within the lonely chamber of my soul! Thou art my life’s true goal, Thine is the only altar that I keep. Rapt in the contemplation of thy repose, I see in thy still face that Mystic Rose Whose perfume is my soul’s imaginings, And Beauty at whose awesomeness I weep With over-plenitude of ecstasy. Thy slumber is the great world-mystery—
ELSA BARKER
The paradigm of all the latent things
That in their destined hour Time magnifies: Its emblems are the intimate hush that lies Over the moonlit lake ;
The wonder and the ache
Of unborn love that trembles in its sleep; The hope that thrills the heavy earth
With presage of becoming, and vast birth; The secret of the caverns of the deep.
The Mystic Rose
» WOMAN, am that wonder-breathing rose That blossoms in the garden of the King. In all the world there is no lovelier thing, And the learned stars no secret can disclose
Deeper than mine—that almost no one knows,
The perfume of my petals in the spring Is inspiration to all bards that sing Of love, the spirit’s lyric unrepose.
Under my veil is hid the mystery Of unaccomplished aeons, and my breath The Master-Lover’s life replenisheth.
The mortal garment that is worn by me
The loom of Time renews continually ; And when I die—the universe knows death,
603
604 ELSA BARKER
Microprosopos
EHIND the orient darkness of thine eyes, The eyes of God interrogate my soul
With whelming love. The luminous waves that roll Over thy body are His dream. It lies On thee as the moon-glamour on the skies ;
And all around—the yearning aureole
Of His effulgent being—broods the whole Rapt universe, that our love magnifies.
O thou, through whom for me Infinity
Is manifest! Bitter and salt, thy tears
Are the heart-water of the passionate spheres, With all their pain. I drink them thirstily! While in thy smile is realized for me
The flaming joys of archangelic years,
PAUL HOOKHAM
A Meditation
C HE Self is Peace; that Self am I. The Self is Strength; that Self am I.’ What needs this trembling strife
With phantom threats of Form and Time and Space ?
Could once my Life Be shorn of their illusion, and efface From its clear heaven that stormful imagery,
My Self were seen An Essence free, unchanging, strong, serene.
PAUL HOOKHAM
The Self is Peace. How placid dawns The Summer’s parent hour
Over the dewy maze that drapes the fields, Each drooped wild flower,
Or where the lordship of the garden shields
Select Court beauties and exclusive lawns ! Tis but the show
And fitful dream of Peace the Self can know.
The Self is Strength. Let Nature rave, And tear her maddened breast,
Now doom the drifting ship, with blackest frown,
Or now, possessed With rarer frenzy, wreck the quaking town, And bury quick beneath her earthy wave—
She cannot break One fibre of that Strength, one atom shake.
The Self is one with the Supreme Father in fashioning, Though clothed in perishable weeds that feel Pain’s mortal sting, The unlifting care, the wound that will not heal; Yet these are not the Self—they only seem. From faintest jar Of whirring worlds the true Self broods afar.
Afar he whispers to the mind To rest on the Good Law, To know that naught can fall without its range, Nor any flaw Of Chance disturb its reign, or shadow of Change ; That what can bind the life the Law must bind— Whatever hand Dispose the lot, it is by that Command ;
605
606 PAUL HOOKHAM
To know no suffering can beset Our lives, that is not due, That is not forged by our own act and will; Calmly to view Whate’er betide of seeming good or ill. The worst we can conceive but pays some debt Or breaks some seal,
To free us from the bondage of the Wheel.
WILFRED ROWLAND MARY CHILDE
Foreword
A Song of the Little City
T intervals of tunes And under lonely towers, Where silences of noons Cover their secret flowers, In places no one knows, Where winding ways go down, In the dim heart of a rose, I find the Little Town.
When my soul wearieth
Of cities proud and great, Whose skies are dark as death, But gold is in their gate: When my soul sorry is
For ships of great renown, And rich men’s palaces,
I seek the Little Town.
b. 1890
WILFRED ROWLAND MARY CHILDE 607
Upon a hill it stands,
Built up with quiet walls, Guarding inviolate lands,
A place of festivals,
A place of happy bells, Where comes no earthly one, Beyond the heavens and hells, Between the moon and sun.
Between the moon and sun, Far, far beyond the stars, Where comes not any one, Nor roll the great world’s cars, With an angel all day through, That wears a golden crown, And is robed in red and blue,
I find the Little Town.
Fountains are playing there, And children dance all day, Who are far lovelier
Than any fabled fay,
And in their festivals
Far, far away behold,
From the high carven walls, Dim mountains made of gold,
And high above it all,
With arches rich and fine, A minster towering tall Proclaims the place divine: Where none to veil Him be, And the birds of Eden sing, I find the lord of me,
The Little City’s King.
608 WILFRED ROWLAND MARY CHILDE
Turris E-burnea
A Song of God’s Fool the Mystie
Y soul is like a fencéd tower, And holds a secret room :
[ hide me in it many an hour
Amid its dim perfume:
I have my holy bloom,
The Rose of Heaven in flower:
I hold my inner bower
In strait and dreaming gloom,
My soul my fencéd tower.
The Rose of soil angelica, That shines not over earth,
I have its buds and petals all, Inestimable of worth,
Its blood-red calyces
Dyed with the wine cf God, Roots earthy from that sod, Which dews in Syon bless, And leaves of loveliness.
Its radiant heart unfolds to me, Its starry soul is plain
In glimmering felicity,
Dyed deep with love and pain: And while my glad eyes gaze Upon its petalled crown,
I hear a song come down
With thanksgiving and praise Of the celestial town.
WILFRED ROWLAND MARY CHILDE 609
The moon, that torch Dianian, Dreams ever paganly :
But I am only a simple man
In a white tower by the sea: There comes a liturgy,
Even for a little span,
Great voices Christian,
Songs of my Lord to me,
To me, a simple man.
A tower of ivory it is
Beside a shoreless sea:
I look out of my lattices And the saints appear to me, A singing company
From heaven’s high palaces, Chaunting their litanies : White luting Cecily
Their first choir-maiden is.
The sea-wave crashes in my ears ; Again their viols cease :
I have been here for endless years, And the room is full of peace. Dim-sliding harmonies
And dreaming voice of seers Come past all barriers :
With God I have no fears,
And round me roll His seas,
MYST. x
610
SAROJINI NAYADU
The Souls Prayer
N childhood’s pride I said to Thee: ‘O Thou, who mad’st me of Thy breath, Speak, Master, and reveal to me Thine inmost laws of life and death.
*‘ Give me to drink each joy and pain Which Thine eternal hand can mete, For my insatiate soul would drain
Earth’s utmost bitter, utmost sweet.
‘ Spare me no bliss, no pang of strife, Withhold no gift or grief I crave, The intricate lore of love and life And mystic knowledge of the grave.’
Lord, Thou didst answer stern and low: ‘ Child, I will hearken to thy prayer, And thy unconquered soul shall know All passionate rapture and despair.
‘Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame, And love shall burn thee like a fire,
And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame, To purge the dross from thy desire.
‘So shall thy chastened spirit yearn To seek from its blind prayer release, And spent and pardoned, sue to learn The simple secret of My peace.
‘I, bending from my sevenfold height, Will teach thee of My quickening grace, Life ts a prism of My light,
And Death the shadow of Wy face.’
SAROJINI NAYADU 611
Ln Salutation to the Eternal Peace
EN say the world is full of fear and hate, And all life’s ripening harvest-fields await The restless sickle of relentless fate.
But I, sweet Soul, rejoice that I was born, When from the climbing terraces of corn I watch the golden orioles of Thy morn.
What care I for the world’s desire and pride, Who know the silver wings that gleam and glide, The homing pigeons of Thine eventide ?
What care I for the world’s loud weariness, Who dream in twilight granaries Thou dost bless With delicate sheaves of mellow silences ?
Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom, Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom, The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?
For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee, O inmost wine of living ecstasy ! O intimate essence of eternity!
To a Buddha seated on a Lotus
ORD BUDDHA, on thy lotus-throne, [ With praying eyes and hands elate, What mystic rapture dost thou own, Immutable and ultimate ?
What peace, unravished of our ken, Annihilate from the world of men ?
x2
612 SAROJINI NAYADU
The wind of change for ever blows
Across the tumult of our way, To-morrow’s unborn griefs depose
The sorrows of our yesterday.
Dream yields to dream, strife follows strife, And Death unweaves the webs of Life.
For us the travail and the heat,
The broken secrets of our pride,
The strenuous lessons of defeat,
The flower deferred, the fruit denied ; But not the peace, supremely won, Lord Buddha, of thy Lotus-throne.
With futile hands we seek to gain
Our inaccessible desire,
Diviner summits to attain,
With faith that sinks and feet that tire But nought shall conquer or control The heavenward hunger of our soul.
The end, elusive and afar,
Still lures us with its beckoning flight, And all our mortal moments are
A session of the Infinite.
How shall we reach the great, unknown Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne ?
613
R. A. ERIC SHEPHERD
Lntimations
THINK that in the savour of some tlowers God hides the loveliness we fain would know ; And that He makes it poignant with His showers To lure us on toward what He longs to show. I know He seeks in tiny wistful airs To give my soul bright gleams of what shall be, And that in plainsong endings quick despairs Glitter like angels o’er a shadowed sea. There is no thing God may not make His own That smelleth sweet and is of good report. ... The leastest thing that we have longest known May truth reveal beyond the range of thought. And so each tiniest act and merest ploy May grow instinct with sacramental joy!