KING LEAR'S WIFE

TO T. STURGE MOORE

THE years come on, the years go by,
And in my Northern valley I,
Withdrawn from life, watch life go by.
But I have formed within my heart
A state that does not thus depart,
Richer than life, greater than being,
Truer in feeling and in seeing
Than outward turbulence can know;
Where time is still, like a large, slow
And lofty bird that moves her wings
In far, invisible flutterings
To gaze on every part of space
Yet poise for ever in one place;
Where line and sound, colour and phrase
Rebuild in clear, essential ways
The powers behind the veil of sense;
While tragic things are made intense
By passion brooding on old dread,
Till a faint light of beauty shed
From night-enfolded agony
Shews in the ways men fail and die
The deeps whose knowledge never cloys
But, striking inward without voice,
Stirs me to tremble and rejoice.
For twenty years and more than twenty
I have found my riches and my plenty
In poets dead and poets living,
Painters and music-men, all giving,
By life shut in creative deeds,
Live force and insight to my needs;
And long before I came to stand
And hear your voice and touch your hand
In that great treasure-house new-known,
Where in their tower above the Town
The masters of The Dial sit,
I loved in every word of it
Your finely tempered verse that told me
Of patient power, and still can hold me
By its authentic divination
Of the right knowledge of creation,
Its grave, still beauty brought to day
Tissue by tissue in nature's way,
Petal by petal sure to shew
Imagination's quiet glow
That burns intenseliest at the core.
And through that twenty years and more
I have been envious of your reach
In speaking form and plastic speech,
Your double energy of hand
That puts two arts at your command
While I must be content with one
And feel true life but half begun;
So that by graver as by pen
You can create earth, stars, and men,
And prove yourself by more than rime
A prince of poets in our time.
For these delights, and the delight
Of converse in a Surrey night
After the deep sound had lapsed by
Of ocean-haunted poetry,
For counsel and another zest
Added to beauty's life-long quest
I, in acknowledgment, would bring
The homage of an offering;
And, being too poor to reach the height
Of my conception or requite
Your greater giving equally,
I search in my capacity
And, by my self-appointed trade,
Find something I myself have made,
That here I offer. Let it be
A token betwixt you and me
Of admiration and loyalty.

February 29th, 1916.

PERSONS:

Lear, King of Britain.
Hygd, his Queen.
Goneril, daughter to Lear and Hygd.
Cordeil, daughter to Lear and Hygd.
Gormflaith, waiting-woman to Hygd.
Merryn, waiting-woman to Hygd.
A Physician.
Two Elderly Women.