Beneath her
midway West of South;
And sister was her quivered green
To
sapphire of the Nereid eyes
On sea when sun is
breeze; she winked
As they, and waved, heaved waterwise
Her flood of leaves and grasses linked:
A
myriad lustrous butterflies
A moment in the fluttering sheen;
Becapped with the slate air that throws
The reindeer's antlers black between
Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows,
A minute after; hooded, stoled
To suit a graveside Season's dirge.
Lo, but the breaking of a surge,
And she is in her lover's fold,
Illumined o'er a
boundless range
Anew: and through quick morning hours
The Tropic-Arctic countercharge
Did seem to pant in beams and showers.
But noon
beheld a larger heaven;
Beheld on our reflecting field
The Sower to the Bearer given,
And both their inner sweetest yield,
Fresh as when dews were grey or first
Received the flush of hues athirst.
Heard we the
woodland, eyeing sun,
As harp and harper were they one.
A murky cloud a fair pursued,
Assailed, and felt the limbs elude:
He sat him down to pipe his woe,
And some strange beast of sky became:
A giant's club
withheld the blow;
A milky cloud went all to flame.
And there were groups where
silvery springs
The
ethereal forest showed begirt
By companies in choric rings,
Whom but to see made ear alert.
For music did each
movement rouse,
And
motion was a minstrel's rage
To have our spirits out of house,
And bathe them on the open page.
This was a day that knew not age.
Since flew the vapoury twos and threes
From
western pile to eastern rack;
As on from peaks of Pyrenees
To Graians; youngness ruled the track.
When songful beams were shut in caves,
And rainy
drapery swept across;
When the ranked clouds were downy waves,
Breast of swan, eagle, albatross,
In ordered lines to
screen the blue,
Youngest of light was nigh, we knew.
The silver finger of it laughed
Along the narrow rift: it shot,
Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft,
Then haled on high the volumed blot,
To build the hurling palace, cleave
The dazzling chasm; the flying nests,
The many glory-garlands weave,
Whose presence not our sight attests
Till wonder with the splendour blent,
And
passion for the beauty flown,
Make evanescence permanent,
The thing at heart our endless own.
Only at gathered eve knew we
The marvels of the day: for then
Mount upon mountain out of sea
Arose, and to our
spacious ken
Trebled
sublime Olympus round
In
towering amphitheatre.
Colossal on
enormous mound,
Majestic gods we saw confer.
They wafted the Dream-messenger
From off the loftiest, the crowned:
That Lady of the hues of foam
In sun-rays: who, close under dome,
A figure on the foot's descent,
Irradiate to vapour went,
As one whose
mission was resigned,
Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads;
Melting she passed into the mind,
Where
mortal" target="_blank" title="a.不死的n.不朽的人物">
immortal with
mortal weds.
Whereby was known that we had viewed
The union of our earth and skies
Renewed: nor less alive renewed
Than when old bards, in nature wise,
Conceived pure beauty given to eyes,
And with undyingness imbued.
Pageant of man's
poetic brain,
His grand
procession of the song,
It was; the Muses and their train;
Their God to lead the glittering throng:
At whiles a beat of forest gong;
At whiles a
glimpse of Python slain.
Mostly divinest harmony,
The lyre, the dance. We could believe
A life in orb and brook and tree,
And cloud; and still holds Memory
A morning in the eyes of eve.
THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY
I know him, February's
thrush,
And loud at eve he valentines
On sprays that paw the naked bush
Where soon will
sprout the thorns and bines.
Now ere the foreign
singer thrills
Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours,
A
herald of the million bills;
And heed him not, the loss is yours.
My study, flanked with ivied fir
And budded beech with dry leaves curled,
Perched over yew and juniper,
He neighbours, piping to his world:-
The
wooded pathways dank on brown,
The branches on grey cloud a web,
The long green
roller of the down,
An image of the deluge-ebb:-
And farther, they may hear along
The
stream beneath the
poplar row.
By fits, like welling rocks, the song
Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.
But most he loves to front the vale
When waves of warm South-
western rains
Have left our heavens clear in pale,
With faintest beck of moist red veins:
Vermilion wings, by distance held
To pause aflight while
fleeting swift:
And high aloft the pearl inshelled
Her lucid glow in glow will lift;
A little south of coloured sky;
Directing,
gravely amorous,
The human of a tender eye
Through pure
celestial on us:
Remote, not alien; still, not cold;
Unraying yet, more pearl than star;
She seems a while the vale to hold
In
trance, and homelier makes the far.
Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes,
An orb of lustre quits the height;
And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths
The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.
His Island voice then shall you hear,
Nor ever after separate
From such a
twilight of the year
Advancing to the vernal gate.
He sings me, out of Winter's throat,
The young time with the life ahead;
And my young time his leaping note
Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.
Imbedded in a land of greed,
Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's,
My care was but to
soothe my need;
At peace among the littleworths.
To light and song my yearning aimed;
To that deep breast of song and light
Which men have barrenest proclaimed;
As 'tis to senses pricked with fright.
So mine are these new fruitings rich
The simple to the common brings;
I keep the youth of souls who pitch
Their joy in this old heart of things:
Who feel the Coming young as aye,
Thrice
hopeful on the ground we plough;
Alive for life, awake to die;
One voice to cheer the
seedling Now.
Full
lasting is the song, though he,
The
singer, passes:
lasting too,
For souls not lent in usury,
The
rapture of the forward view.
With that I bear my senses fraught
Till what I am fast shoreward drives.
They are the
vessel of the Thought.
The
vessel splits, the Thought survives.
Nought else are we when sailing brave,
Save husks to raise and bid it burn.
Glimpse of its livingness will wave
A light the senses can discern
Across the river of the death,
Their close. Meanwhile, O
twilight bird
Of promise! bird of happy breath!
I hear, I would the City heard.
The City of the smoky fray;
A prodded ox, it drags and moans:
Its Morrow no man's child; its Day
A vulture's
morsel beaked to bones.
It strives without a mark for strife;
It feasts beside a famished host:
The loose
restraint of
wanton life,
That threatened
penance in the ghost!
Yet there our battle urges; there
Spring heroes many: issuing thence,
Names that should leave no
vacant air
For fresh delight in confidence.
Life was to them the bag of grain,
And Death the weedy harrow's tooth.
Those warriors of the sighting brain
Give worn Humanity new youth.
Our song and star are they to lead
The tidal
multitude and blind
From bestial to the higher breed
By fighting souls of love divined,
They scorned the ventral dream of peace,