EPILOGUE.
Thus ran the words; or rather, thus did run
Their purport. Idly seeking in the chest
(You see it yonder), I had found them there:
Some blotted sheets of paper in a case,
With a woman’s name writ on it: “Adelaide.”
Twice on the writing there was scored the date
Of ten years back; and where the words had end
Was left a space, a dash, a half-writ word,
As tho’ the writer minded, presently
The matter to pursue.
I questioned her,
That worthy, worthy soul, my châtelaine,
Who, nothing loth, made answer.
There had been
Another lodger ere I had the rooms,
Three months gone by—a woman.
“Young, sir? No.
Must have seen forty if she’d seen a day!
A lonesome woman; hadn’t many friends;
Wrote books, I think, and things for newspapers.
Short in her temper—eyes would flash and flame
At times, till I was frightened. Paid her rent
Most regular, like a lady.
Ten years back,
They say (at least Ann Brown says), ten years back
The lady had a lover. Even then
She must have been no chicken.
Three months since
She died. Well, well, the Lord is kind and just.
I did my best to tend her, yet indeed
It’s bad for trade to have a lodger die.
Her brother came, a week before she died:
Buried her, took her things, threw in the fire
The littered heaps of paper.
Yes, the sheets,
They must have been forgotten in the chest;—
I never knew her name was Adelaide.”
A Dirge.
“Mein Herz, mein Herz ist traurig
Doch lustig leuchtet der Mai.”
THERE’S May amid the meadows,
There’s May amid the trees;
Her May-time note the cuckoo
Sends forth upon the breeze.
Above the rippling river
May swallows skim and dart;
November and December
Keep watch within my heart.
The spring breathes in the breezes,
The woods with wood-notes ring,
And all the budding hedgerows
Are fragrant of the spring.
In secret, silent places
The live green things upstart;
Ice-bound, ice-crown’d dwells winter
For ever in my heart.
Upon the bridge I linger,
Near where the lime-trees grow;
Above, swart birds are circling,
Beneath, the stream runs slow.
A stripling and a maiden
Come wand’ring up the way;
His eyes are glad with springtime,
Her face is fair with May.
Of warmth and sun and sweetness
All nature takes a part;
The ice of all the ages
Weighs down upon my heart.
The Sick Man and the Nightingale.
(FROM LENAU.)
SO late, and yet a nightingale?
Long since have dropp’d the blossoms pale,
The summer fields are ripening,
And yet a sound of spring?
O tell me, didst thou come to hear,
Sweet Spring, that I should die this year;
And call’st across from the far shore
To me one greeting more?
To Death.
(FROM LENAU.)
IF within my heart there’s mould,
If the flame of Poesy
And the flame of Love grow cold,
Slay my body utterly.
Swiftly, pause not nor delay;
Let not my life’s field be spread
With the ash of feelings dead,
Let thy singer soar away.
A June-Tide Echo.
(AFTER A RICHTER CONCERT.)
IN the long, sad time, when the sky was grey,
And the keen blast blew through the city drear,
When delight had fled from the night and the day,
My chill heart whispered, “June will be here!
“June with its roses a-sway in the sun,
Its glory of green on mead and tree.”
Lo, now the sweet June-tide is nearly done,
June-tide, and never a joy for me!
Is it so much of the gods that I pray?
Sure craved man never so slight a boon!
To be glad and glad in my heart one day—
One perfect day of the perfect June.
Sweet sounds to-night rose up, wave upon wave;
Sweet dreams were afloat in the balmy air.
This is the boon of the gods that I crave—
To be glad, as the music and night were fair.
For once, for one fleeting hour, to hold
The fair shape the music that rose and fell
Revealed and concealed like a veiling fold;
To catch for an instant the sweet June spell.
For once, for one hour, to catch and keep
The sweet June secret that mocks my heart;
Now lurking calm, like a thing asleep,
Now hither and thither with start and dart.
Then the sick, slow grief of the weary years,
The slow, sick grief and the sudden pain;
The long days of labour, the nights of tears—
No more these things would I hold in vain.
I would hold my life as a thing of worth;
Pour praise to the gods for a precious thing.
Lo, June in her fairness is on the earth,
And never a joy does the niggard bring.
To Lallie.
(OUTSIDE THE BRITISH MUSEUM.)
UP those Museum steps you came,
And straightway all my blood was flame,
O Lallie, Lallie!
The world (I had been feeling low)
In one short moment’s space did grow
A happy valley.
There was a friend, my friend, with you;
A meagre dame, in peacock blue
Apparelled quaintly:
This poet-heart went pit-a-pat;
I bowed and smiled and raised my hat;
You nodded—faintly.
My heart was full as full could be;
You had not got a word for me,
Not one short greeting;
That nonchalant small nod you gave
(The tyrant’s motion to the slave)
Sole mark’d our meeting.
Is it so long? Do you forget
That first and last time that we met?
The time was summer;
The trees were green; the sky was blue;
Our host presented me to you—
A tardy comer.
You look’d demure, but when you spoke
You made a little, funny joke,
Yet half pathetic.
Your gown was grey, I recollect,
I think you patronized the sect
They call “æsthetic.”
I brought you strawberries and cream,
I plied you long about a stream
With duckweed laden;
We solemnly discussed the—heat.
I found you shy and very sweet,
A rosebud maiden.
Ah me, to-day! You passed inside
To where the marble gods abide:
Hermes, Apollo,
Sweet Aphrodite, Pan; and where,
For aye reclined, a headless fair
Beats all fairs hollow.
And I, I went upon my way,
Well—rather sadder, let us say;
The world looked flatter.
I had been sad enough before,
A little less, a little more,
What does it matter?
In a Minor Key.
(AN ECHO FROM A LARGER LYRE.)
THAT was love that I had before,
Years ago, when my heart was young;
Ev’ry smile was a gem you wore,
Ev’ry word was a sweet song sung.
You came—all my pulses burn’d and beat.
(O sweet wild throbs of an early day!)
You went—with the last dear sound of your feet
The light wax’d dim and the place grew grey.
And I us’d to pace with a stealthy tread
By a certain house which is under a hill;
A cottage stands near, wall’d white, roof’d red—
Tall trees grow thick—I can see it still!
How I us’d to watch with a hope that was fear
For the least swift glimpse of your gown’s dear fold!
(You wore blue gowns in those days, my dear—
One light for summer, one dark for cold.)
Tears and verses I shed for you in show’rs;
I would have staked my soul for a kiss;
Tribute daily I brought you of flow’rs,
Rose, lily, your favourite eucharis.
There came a day we were doomed to part;
There’s a queer, small gate at the foot of a slope:
We parted there—and I thought my heart
Had parted for ever from love and hope.
* * * * *
Is it love that I have to-day?
Love, that bloom’d early, has it bloom’d late
For me, that, clothed in my spirit’s grey,
Sit in the stillness and stare at Fate?
Song nor sonnet for you I’ve penned,
Nor passionate paced by your home’s wide wall;
I have brought you never a flow’r, my friend,
Never a tear for your sake let fall.
And yet—and yet—ah, who understands?
We men and women are complex things!
A hundred tunes Fate’s inexorable hands
May play on the sensitive soul-strings.
Webs of strange patterns we weave (each owns)
From colour and sound; and like unto these,
Soul has its tones and its semitones,
Mind has its major and minor keys.
Your face (men pass it without a word)
It haunts my dreams like an odd, sweet strain;
When your name is spoken my soul is stirr’d
In its deepest depths with a dull, dim pain.
I paced, in the damp grey mist, last night
In the streets (an hour) to see you pass:
Yet I do not think that I love you—quite;
What’s felt so finely ’twere coarse to class.
And yet—and yet—I scarce can tell why
(As I said, we are riddles and hard to read),
If the world went ill with you, and I
Could help with a hidden hand your need;
But, ere I could reach you where you lay,
Must strength and substance and honour spend;
Journey long journeys by night and day—
Somehow, I think I should come, my friend!
A Farewell.
(AFTER HEINE.)
THE sad rain falls from Heaven,
A sad bird pipes and sings;
I am sitting here at my window
And watching the spires of “King’s.”
O fairest of all fair places,
Sweetest of all sweet towns!
With the birds, and the greyness and greenness,
And the men in caps and gowns.
All they that dwell within thee,
To leave are ever loth,
For one man gets friends, and another
Gets honour, and one gets both.
The sad rain falls from Heaven;
My heart is great with woe—
I have neither a friend nor honour,
Yet I am sorry to go.
A Cross-Road Epitaph.
“Am Kreuzweg wird begraben
Wer selber brachte sich um.”
WHEN first the world grew dark to me
I call’d on God, yet came not he.
Whereon, as wearier wax’d my lot,
On Love I call’d, but Love came not.
When a worse evil did befall,
Death, on thee only did I call.
Epitaph.
(ON A COMMONPLACE PERSON WHO DIED IN BED.)
THIS is the end of him, here he lies:
The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes,
The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast;
This is the end of him, this is best.
He will never lie on his couch awake,
Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak.
Never again will he smile and smile
When his heart is breaking all the while.
He will never stretch out his hands in vain
Groping and groping—never again.
Never ask for bread, get a stone instead,
Never pretend that the stone is bread.
Never sway and sway ’twixt the false and true,
Weighing and noting the long hours through.
Never ache and ache with the chok’d-up sighs;
This is the end of him, here he lies.
Sonnet.
MOST wonderful and strange it seems, that I
Who but a little time ago was tost
High on the waves of passion and of pain,
With aching heart and wildly throbbing brain,
Who peered into the darkness, deeming vain
All things there found if but One thing were lost,
Thus calm and still and silent here should lie,
Watching and waiting,—waiting passively.
The dark has faded, and before mine eyes
Have long, grey flats expanded, dim and bare;
And through the changing guises all things wear
Inevitable Law I recognise:
Yet in my heart a hint of feeling lies
Which half a hope and half is a despair.
Translated from Geibel.
O SAY, thou wild, thou oft-deceived heart,
What mean these noisy throbbings in my breast?
After thy long, unutterable woe
Wouldst thou not rest?
Fall’n from Life’s tree the sweet rose-blossom lies,
And fragrant youth has fled. What made to seem
This earth as fair to thee as Paradise,
Was all a dream.
The blossom fell, the thorn was left to me;
Deep from the wound the blood-drops ever flow,
All that I have are yearnings, wild desires,
And wrath and woe.
They brought me Lethe’s water, saying, “Drink!”
“Drink, for the draught is sweet,” I heard them say,
“Shalt learn how soft a thing forgetting is.”
I answered: “Nay.”
What tho’ indeed it were an idle cheat,
Nathless to me ’twas very fair and blest:
With every breath I draw I know that love
Reigns in my breast.
Let me go forth,—and thou, my heart, bleed on:
A lonely spot I seek by night and day,
That love and sorrow I may there breathe forth
In a last lay.
The Gresham Press,
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHILWORTH AND LONDON.
