WHO having known through night a great star falling
With half the host of heaven in its wake,
And o’er chaotic seas a dread voice calling,
And a new purple dawn of presage break,
Can hope to conquer thee, proud Son of Morning,
Arrayed in mighty lusts of heart and eyes,
With blood-red rubies set for thine adorning
And sorceries wherein men’s souls grow wise?
Who shall withstand the onslaught of thy chariot,
Who ride to battle with thy gorgeous kings?
Dost thou not count the silver to Iscariot,
And Tyrian scarlet and the marvellous rings?
But ivory limbs and the flung festal roses,
The maddening music and the Chian wine,
Are overpast when one glad heart discloses
A pride more strange and terrible than thine!
That looked unsatisfied upon thy splendour,
And turned, all shaken with his love, away
To one dear face that holds him true and tender
Until the trumpets of the Judgment Day.
A pride that binds him till the last fierce ember
Shall fade from pride’s tall roaring pyre in hell;
The gentleness and grace he shall remember,
The flower she gave, the love that she did tell.
BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS
I LEFT behind the green and gracious weald,
And climbing stiffly up the steep incline
Found high above each little cloistered field,
Above the sombre autumn woods of pine—
Where gentle skies are clear and crystalline—
The place remote from dense and foolish towns;
And there, where all the winds are sharp with brine,
I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs.
The sun hung out of heaven like a shield
Emblazoned o’er with heraldry divine.
I suddenly saw, as though with eyes unsealed,
A portent sent me for an awful sign,
A fairy sea whereon the cold stars shine;
And standing on the sward of withered browns,
Burnt by the noontide and cropped close and fine,
I heard the sheep bells ringing on the Downs.