Florence on a Certain Night, and Other Poems

by Coningsby Dawson

FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

With you the world's at evening-light,

With me the world's at day;

Yet in my heart I think 'tis night

While you are far away:

While you are far away, dear lad,

While you are far away,

There comes no dawn, nor change of light,

Nor any hope in day.

With you it nears the hour of sleep;

With me 'tis time to pray,

That God may guide you o'er His deep

Back from the Far-Away;

Home from the Far-Away, dear lad,

Back from the Far-Away,

That God may drift you home in sleep,

And bring me back my day.

Christ placed his hand in mine and said,

Come, little child, for thou art mine."

I kissed him', raising up my head,

And whispered, "Yea, Lord, I am thine."

We wandered through white clover-flowers

Beside a murmuring brook all day;

When night led back the dream-tide hours

Within his shepherd arms I lay.

Older I grew, until at last

Unto a clanging town we came;

Christ wept for me, but in I passed

Alone. It was the town of Fame,

Wherein are lands of diverse name—

The Saffron East, the Purple West,

Whose walls enclose a Crimson Shame

But hold no Land of Quiet Rest.

Weary I grew and sad, and lame,

Until in scorn I heard one say,

How to the gate there seeking came

A wounded shepherd yesterday.

Painfully at the stroke of dawn

I to the open country crept;

And on a distant dewy lawn

I found Christ, while the city slept.

My crippled hands in his, I said,

O Lord and art thou truly mine?"

Upon his breast he laid my head,

Yea, little child, am I not thine?"

News, sent from far away,

Came unto me to-day,

Only these words to say,

Lo, he is dead."

He, who to comfort me,

Laughing right merrily,

Said, "Think, how glad we'll be

When I return."

He, strumming out Hope's song

Wending lone lands among,

Swept Life's harp overstrong—

Felt the strings break.

I shall return, you know,"

So he spake long ago;

How brave our love must grow,"

Wrote a week since.

Then news, from far away,

Came unto me this day,

Only these words to say,

Lo, he is dead."

"The Terror by Night: the Arrow by Day: the Pestilence walking in Darkness: the Destruction wasting at Noonday."

Thou Demon Fear, Assassin of Delight,

Who makest impotent Man's royal might,

Turning to poverty his wealth of days

With hushed pursuit of him in all his ways,

Whence art thou come, from what dead land of

Night?

Speak, only speak, occult, accursèd shade,

Who ne'er to human eyes hast yet displayed

Thine awful shape; ah, could we only hear

Thy thin, pale voice! Thy ghastly step draws

near,

But bring not thee—therefore we grow afraid.

What things men fear they do not dare to say

Lest, thus provoked, Fate should no more delay

But run on them and wreak those ills they dread:

To Death we kneel, to God we bow the head;

Yet of our fears we have the most dismay.

We fear our fears, but thee, Oh Fear, we hate,

For thou with all our sins art intimate

As He who made us; crimes wrought long ago,

Follies and half-faults, each one thou dost know

And dost avenge with rods deliberate.

Ah, were this all, our lives might yet go well

For, since we suffer here the pains of Hell,

Heav'n should be certain, Death—God's just

reprieve.

But thou with vain forebodings dost conceive

To break our hearts, and turn us infidel.

Oh for that silence, virgin of all sound,

Vast, uncalamitous which did abound

When Darkness, drooping from Eternity,

Trailed his slow pinions o'er Time's tideless

sea

Before Fear was called forth from underground.

Then Quiet, from the Nothingness of Space,

Gazed down on Chaos with untroubled face,

Such as babes have who enter Life still-born;

For Evening Strife, nor Hurricane of Morn,

Had then perturbed God's wonted resting-place.

Now, though through utterest lands we wend our

way,

We hear thy footstep, so we cannot stay;

Yea, though we search out Peace in dreams by

night,

Too soon we know thee following our flight,

And shrieking wake, and clamour for new-day.

Only Man's bygone days are truly sweet:

This day is darkened by To-morrow's threat,

To-morrow by the menace of To-day;

From out the Past is fled away for aye

The grinding doubt of possible defeat.

Ah, were we wise, our lives 'tis thus we'd spend:

Because the Past glides onward without end,

Engulfing our To-day and our Hereafter,

We'd greet This Day, or Next, with careless

laughter

As 'twere the Past, and so our fortunes mend.

Too weak are we, too diligent in doubt,

This fiend with sage philosophy to flout;

When all his lawful issue fail his need,

Fear doth with harlot Fancy quickly breed

Frenzy, to put Tranquillity to rout.

Nightly earth's infants, garret-roofs beneath,

Wake shuddering and hark, with indrawn breath

And small clenched hands and faces woe-begone,

Till through the creaking gloom there mounteth

one

Whom they in ignorance mistake for Death.

Nor are we braver when we older grow,

For still "'Tis Death!" we sob. "'Tis Death! Ah

woe,

Deep woe, is me!" whene'er thou drawest nigh:

Therefore, Oh Fear, full many times men die

And Dissolution's torments undergo.

Man, who was made in image like to God,

Whom angels tended wheresoe'er he trod

With glad huzzas and harpings all the way,

So that the untamed beasts allowed his sway,

Cringes a coward 'neath thine up-raised rod.

Secret Chastiser of our secret heart,

Speak, but this once, to tell us who thou art;

Whether the hound that runs before Death's

feet,

Discrowned Imagination in retreat,

Or Echo, of our own flight the counterpart

Like God, most silent ever thou dost keep.

Thine eyes must be as God's, which never sleep

But watch, aye watch, and know us all in all.

Oh, can it be, that thou art but the call

Of God, the Shepherd, guarding o'er His sheep?

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