CONTENTS.
| PAGE | ||
| London: Sonnets Written in 1889. | ||
| I. | On First Entering Westminster Abbey | [3] |
| II. | Fog | [4] |
| III. | Saint Peter-ad-Vincula | [5] |
| IV. | Strikers in Hyde Park | [6] |
| V. | Changes in the Temple | [7] |
| VI. | The Lights of London | [8] |
| VII. | Doves | [9] |
| VIII. | In the Reading-Room of the British Museum | [10] |
| IX. | Sunday Chimes in the City | [11] |
| X. | A Porch in Belgravia | [12] |
| XI. | York Stairs | [13] |
| XII. | In the Docks | [14] |
| Oxford: Sonnets Written there between 1890 and 1895. | ||
| I. | The Tow-Path | [17] |
| II. | The Old Dial of Corpus | [18] |
| III. | Ad Antiquarium | [19] |
| IV. | Rooks in New College Gardens | [20] |
| V. | On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford | [21] |
| VI. | On the Same (continued) | [22] |
| VII. | A December Walk | [23] |
| VIII. | Undertones at Magdalen | [24] |
| IX. | Port Meadow | [25] |
| X. | Martyrs’ Memorial | [26] |
| XI. | A Last View | [27] |
| XII. | Retrieval | [28] |
| Lyrics. | ||
| A Ballad of Kenelm | [31] | |
| Two Irish Peasant Songs | [33] | |
| In a Ruin, after a Thunderstorm | [35] | |
| To a Child | [36] | |
| In a Perpendicular Church | [37] | |
| A Seventeenth-Century Song | [37] | |
| Columba and the Stork | [38] | |
| The Chantry | [39] | |
| April in Govilon | [40] | |
| On Leaving Winchester | [41] | |
| On the Cenotaph of the Prince Imperial in Saint George’s Chapel | [42] | |
| Of Joan’s Youth | [43] | |
| Passing the Minster | [43] | |
| The Yew-Tree | [44] | |
| Shropshire Landscape | [45] | |
| The Graham Tartan to a Graham | [46] | |
| In a London Street | [46] | |
| Athassel Abbey | [47] | |
| Romans in Dorset | [49] | |
| Lines on Various Fly-Leaves. | ||
| To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey | [53] | |
| For Izaak Walton | [53] | |
| A Footnote to a Famous Lyric | [54] | |
| A Memory of a Breconshire Valley | [56] | |
| Writ in my Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion” | [57] | |
| A Last Word on Shelley | [57] | |
| An Epitaph for William Hazlitt | [58] | |
| Emily Brontë | [58] | |
| Pax Paganica | [59] | |
| Valediction: R. L. S., 1894 | [59] | |
LONDON:
SONNETS WRITTEN IN 1889.
TO HERBERT E. CLARKE.
I.
ON FIRST ENTERING WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Holy of England! since my light is short
And faint, O rather by the sun anew
Of timeless passion set my dial true,
That with thy saints and thee I may consort;
And wafted in the cool enshadowed port
Of poets, seem a little sail long due,
And be as one the call of memory drew
Unto the saddle void since Agincourt!
Not now for secular love’s unquiet lease,
Receive my soul, who, rapt in thee erewhile,
Hath broken tryst with transitory things;
But seal with her a marriage and a peace
Eternal, on thine Edward’s altar-isle,
Above the stormless sea of ended kings.
II.
FOG.
Like bodiless water passing in a sigh,
Through palsied streets the fatal shadows flow,
And in their sharp disastrous undertow
Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky.
The towery vista sinks upon the eye,
As if it heard the horns of Jericho,
Black and dissolved; nor could the founders know
How what was built so bright should daily die.
Thy mood with man’s is broken and blent in,
City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown
The generous light in which thy life began.
Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin,
Greater and elder yet the love of man
Full in thy look, though the dark visor’s down.
III.
S. PETER-AD-VINCULA.
Too well I know, pacing the place of awe,
Three queens, young save in trouble, moulder by;
More in his halo, Monmouth’s mocking eye,
The eagle Essex in a harpy’s claw;
Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw
Sundown of Scotland: how with treasons lie
White martyrdoms; rank in a company
Breaker and builder of the eternal law.
Oft as I come, the bitter garden-row
Of ruined roses hanging from the stem,
Where winds of old defeat yet batter them,
Infects me: suddenly must I depart,
Ere thought of men’s injustice then, and now,
Add to these aisles one other broken heart.
IV.
STRIKERS IN HYDE PARK.
A woof reversed the fatal shuttles weave,
How slow! but never once they slip the thread.
Hither, upon the Georgian idlers’ tread,
Up spacious ways the lindens interleave,
Clouding the royal air since yester-eve,
Come men bereft of time, and scant of bread,
Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead,
Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve.
What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange
Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so,
The clear Republic waits the general throe,
Along her noonday mountains’ open range.
God be with both! for one is young to know
Her mother’s rote of evil and of change.
V.
CHANGES IN THE TEMPLE.
The cry is at thy gates, thou darling ground,
Again; for oft ere now thy children went
Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent
Some red old alley with a dial crowned;
Some house of honour, in a glory bound
With lives and deaths of spirits excellent;
Some tree, rude-taken from his kingly tent,
Hard by a little fountain’s friendly sound.
O for Virginius’ hand, if only that
Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon!
Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas,
Her walled oasis, and where once it was,
All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat
Echo, and ivy, and the loitering moon.
VI.
THE LIGHTS OF LONDON.
The evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot
Far down into the valley’s cold extreme,
Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream
Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not.
The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot
Yet cloudless, lean to watch, as in a dream,
From chaos climb, with many a hasty gleam,
London, one moment fallen and forgot.
Her booths begin to flare; her gases bright
Prick door and window; street and lane obscure
Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure,
Full as a marsh of mist and winking light:
Heaven thickens over, heaven that cannot cure
Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.
VII.
DOVES.
Ah, if man’s boast and man’s advance be vain!
And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home,
And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome,
That monstrous island of the middle main;
If each inheritor must sink again
Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb
Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?—
I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.
What folly lies in forecasts and in fears!
Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune,
Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s
Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon,
And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls.
“God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.”
VIII.
IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
Praised be the moon of books! that doth above
A world of men, the sunken Past behold,
And colour spaces else too void and cold,
To make a very heaven again thereof;
As when the sun is set behind a grove,
And faintly unto nether ether rolled,
All night, his whiter image and his mould
Grows beautiful with looking on her love.
Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray,
Lend to our steps both fortitude and light!
Feebly along a venerable way
They climb the infinite, or perish quite;
Nothing are days and deeds to such as they,
While in this liberal house thy face is bright.
IX.
SUNDAY CHIMES IN THE CITY.
Across the bridge, where in the morning blow
The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain
Homeward to drag the black sea-goer’s chain,
And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low;
Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow,
Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain:
From Wren’s forgotten belfries, in the rain,
Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go.
Forbid not these! Though no man heed, they shower
A subtle beauty on the empty hour,
From all their dark throats aching and outblown;
Aye in the prayerless places welcome most,
Like the last gull that up a naked coast
Deploys her white and steady wing, alone.
X.
A PORCH IN BELGRAVIA.
When, after dawn, the lordly houses hide
Till you fall foul of it, some piteous guest,
(Some girl the damp stones gather to their breast,
Her gold hair rough, her rebel garment wide,
Who sleeps, with all that luck and life denied
Camped round, and dreams how seaward and southwest
Blue over Devon farms the smoke-rings rest,
And sheep and lambs ascend the lit hillside,)
Dear, of your charity, speak low, step soft,
Pray for a sinner. Planet-like and still,
Best hearts of all are sometimes set aloft
Only to see and pass, nor yet deplore
Even Wrong itself, crowned Wrong inscrutable,
Which cannot but have been, for evermore.
XI.
YORK STAIRS.
Many a musing eye returns to thee,
Against the formal street disconsolate,
Who kept in green domains thy bridal state,
With young tide-waters leaping at thy knee;
And lest the ravening smoke, and enmity
Corrode thee quite, thy lover sighs, and straight
Desires thee safe afar, too graceful gate!
Throned on a terrace of the Boboli.
Nay, nay, thy use is here. Stand queenly thus
Till the next fury; teach the time and us
Leisure and will to draw a serious breath:
Not wholly where thou art the soul is cowed,
Nor the fooled capital proclaims aloud
Barter is god, while Beauty perisheth.
XII.
IN THE DOCKS.
Where the bales thunder till the day is done,
And the wild sounds with wilder odours cope;
Where over crouching sail and coiling rope,
Lascar and Moor along the gangway run;
Where stifled Thames spreads in the pallid sun,
A hive of anarchy from slope to slope;
Flag of my birth, my liberty, my hope,
I see thee at the masthead, joyous one!
O thou good guest! So oft as, young and warm,
To the home-wind thy hoisted colours bound,
Away, away from this too thoughtful ground,
Sodden with human trespass and despair,
Thee only, from the desert, from the storm,
A sick mind follows into Eden air.
OXFORD:
SONNETS WRITTEN THERE IN 1890 AND 1895.
TO LIONEL JOHNSON.
I.
THE TOW-PATH.
Furrow to furrow, oar to oar succeeds,
Each length away, more bright, more exquisite;
The sister shells that hither, thither flit,
Strew the long stream like dropping maple-seeds.
A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads,
Who with short calls his pace doth intermit:
An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sit,
Auspicious Pan among the river reeds.
West of the glowing hay-ricks, (tawny-black,
Where waters by their warm escarpments run),
Two lovers, slowly crossed from Kennington,
Print in the early dew a married track,
And drain the aroma’d eve, and spend the sun,
Ere, in laborious health, the crews come back.
II.
THE OLD DIAL OF CORPUS.
Warden of hours and ages, here I dwell,
Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook
For good unborn; and, towards a willow nook,
Pole, princely in the senate and the cell;
And doubting the near boom of Osney bell,
Turning on me that sweetly subtile look,
Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book:
Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell.
Naught steadfast may I image nor attain
Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope
After my god, like him, inconstant bright.
But sun and shade must unto you remain
Alternately a symbol and a hope,
Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light.
III.
AD ANTIQUARIUM.
My gentle Aubrey, who in everything
Hadst of thy city’s youth so lovely lust,
Yet never lineal to her towers august
Thy spirit could fix, or perfectly upbring,
Sleep, sleep! I ope, not unremembering,
Thy comely manuscript, and, interthrust,
Find delicate hueless leaves more sad than dust,
Two centuries unkissed of any spring.
Filling a homesick page beneath a lime,
Thy mood beheld, as mine thy debtor’s now,
The endless terraces of ended Time,
Vague in green twilight. Goodly was release
Into that Past where these poor leaves, and thou,
Do freshen in the air of eldest peace.
IV.
ROOKS IN NEW COLLEGE GARDENS.
Through rosy cloud, and over thorny towers,
Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled,
From Isis’ valley border, hundred-hilled,
The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers:
Not for men only, and their musing hours,
By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build
These dewy spaces early sown and stilled,
These dearest inland melancholy bowers.
Blest birds! A book held open on the knee
Below, is all they guess of Adam’s blight:
With surer art the while, and simpler rite,
They follow Truth in some monastic tree,
Where breathe against their docile breasts, by night,
The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity.
V.
ON THE PRE-REFORMATION CHURCHES ABOUT OXFORD.
Imperial Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green,
And Templar Sandford in the boatman’s call,
And sweet-belled Appleton, and Marcham wall
That dost upon adoring ivies lean;
Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene
Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall;
Clear Cassington that soars perpetual;
Holton and Hampton Poyle, and towers between:
If one of all in your sad courts that come,
Belovèd and disparted! be your own,
Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures
Some memory of a great communion known
At home in quarries of old Christendom,—
Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours.
VI.
ON THE SAME (CONTINUED).
Is this the end? Is this the pilgrim’s day
For dread, for dereliction, and for tears?
Rather, from grass and air and many spheres,
In prophecy his spirit sinks away;
And under English eaves, more still than they,
Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears
The long-arrested, the believing years
Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say:
“Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best
Who had such beauty”? or, with kisses lain
For witness on her darkened doors, go by
With a new psalm: “O banished light so nigh!
Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest:
Even here remember me when thou shalt reign.”
VII.
A DECEMBER WALK.
Whithersoever cold and fair ye flow,
Calm tides of moonlit midnight, bear my mind!
Past Christchurch gate, with leafy frost entwined,
And Merton in a huge tiara’s glow,
And groves in bridal gossamers below
Saint Mary’s armoured spire; and whence aligned
In altered eminence for dawn to find,
Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow.
White sacraments of weather, shine on me!
Upbear my footfall, and my fancy sift,
Lest either blemish an ensainted ground
Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound,
On recollected wing mine angel drift
Across new spheres of immortality.
VIII.
UNDERTONES AT MAGDALEN.
Fair are the finer creature-sounds; of these
Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop
Susurrant in the garth from weeds atop;
And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries
Of wrens in council from a hundred leas;
And Cherwell fish in laughter fain to stop
The water-plantain’s way; and deer that crop
Delicious herbage under choral trees.
The cry for silver and gold in Christendom
Without, threads not her silence and her dark.
Only against the isolate Tower there break
Low rhythmic rumours of good men to come:
Invasive seas of hushed approach, that make
Memorial music, would the ear but hark.
IX.
PORT MEADOW.
The plain gives freedom. Hither, from the town,
How oft a dreamer and a book of yore
Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more
From Cowley border surge the game’s renown;
But bade the vernal sky with spices drown
His head by Plato’s in the grass, before
Yon oar that’s never old, the sunset oar,
At Medley Lock was lain in music down!
So seeming far the confines and the crowd,
The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire,
From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven,
Go happier than the inly-moving cloud
That lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire,
Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven.
X.
MARTYRS’ MEMORIAL.
Such natural debts of love our Oxford knows,
So many ancient dues undesecrate,
I marvel how the landmark of a hate
For witness unto future time she chose;
How out of her corroborate ranks arose
The three, in great denial only great,
For Art’s enshrining! . . Thus, averted straight,
My soul to seek a holier captain goes:
That sweet adventurer whom Truth befell
Whenas the synagogues were watching not;
Whose crystal name on royal Oriel
Hangs like a shield; who to an outland spot
Led hence, beholds his Star; and counts it well
Of all his dear domain to live forgot.
XI.
A LAST VIEW.
Where down the glen, across the shallow ford,
Stretches the open aisle from scene to scene,
By halted horses silently we lean,
Gazing enchanted from our steeper sward.
How yon low loving skies of April hoard
An hundred pinnacles, and how with sheen
Of spike and ball her languid clouds between,
Grey Oxford grandly rises riverward!
Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls,
Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls;
Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar.
Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well:
And powers that aye aglow in you, impel
Our quickening spirits from the slime we are.
XII.
RETRIEVAL.
Stars in the bosom of thy triple tide,
June air and ivy on thy gracile stone,
O glory of the West, as thou wert sown,
Be perfect: O miraculous, abide!
And still, for greatness flickering from thy side,
Eternal alchemist, upraise, enthrone
True heirs in true succession, later blown
From that same seed of fire which never died.
Nor love shall lack her solace, to behold
Ranged to the morrow’s melancholy verge,
Thy lights uprisen in Thought’s disclosing spaces;
And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old,
In radiant broad tumultuary surge
For ever, the young voices, the young faces.