Poems, 1914-1919

And all that bears the signature of ease,
The plunge of ships that dance before the breeze
The flight across the twilight of the crane:
And all that joyous is, and young, and free,
That tastes of morning and the laughing surf;
The dawn, the dew, the newly turned-up turf,
The sudden smile, the unexpressive prayer,
The artless art, the untaught dignity, —
You speak them in the passage of an air.

WAGNER

O strange awakening to a world of gloom,
And baffled moonbeams and delirious stars,
Of souls that moan behind forbidden bars,
And waving forests swept by wings of doom;
Of heroes falling in unhappy fight,
And winged messengers from eyries dim;
And mountains ringed with flame, and shapes that swim
In the deep river’s green translucent night.

O restless soul, for ever seeking bliss,
Thirsty for ever and unsatisfied,
Whether the woodland starts to the echoing horn,
Or dying Tristram moans by shores forlorn,
Or Siegfried rides through fire to wake his bride,
And shakes the whirling planets with a kiss.

SHELLEY

Singer of cloud and star and rushing stream,
Let me bring but one garland to thy shrine,
For when a boy I drank of the dews divine
That in thy rainbow-coloured chalice gleam.
I scaled the silver ladder of thy dream,
And dizzy with the wonder of that wine,
I heard the song, and saw the eyes that shine
Unveiled, within the sanctuary supreme.

Then, like Actæon I became the prey,
The hunted quarry of remorseless hounds;
Hark! in the distance I can hear them bay!
But in my heart the vision and the voice
Endure; and though they slay me, I rejoice —
I saw that light, I heard those starry sounds.

PHÈDRE

Her gesture is the soaring of a hymn,
Her voice has robbed the spoil of Hybla’s bees;
And like the frozen music of a frieze,
Calm, as she moves majestic, every limb.
Clear as a crystal beaker’s sounding rim,
Her heart gives voice to sobbing melodies,
And her frame trembles, swept by passion’s breeze,
And sultry clouds her blazing eyes bedim.

A faery caught in her own fatal snare,
A wounded eagle struggling to be free,
Whose Kingdom was the snow and the sun’s flame
More queenly than all empresses is she,
Discrowned albeit, defeated and in despair;
The stricken lily puts the rose to shame.

THE WOUNDED

The wounded lie and groan upon the plain;
And one there is whom it is vain to lift;
So give him water. It is the last gift,
And very soon he shall not thirst again.
All white and gold the Chief with a troop of horse
Trots by. The soldier opens smiling eyes;
And at the latest gasp of life he cries:
“Long live!” with all his feeble flickering force.
Before he said his say he died content.
And we, the wounded on life’s battlefield,
Enrolled and sent to war to fight and die,
When conquered by our mortal wound, we cry
“Long live!” obedient to our sacrament,
When God with all His universe rides by.

Manchuria, 1904

SONNETS: 1913-1914

I

I saw you smiling over broken flowers,
Yourself a flower unbroken and more rare
Than petals that make sweet the moonlit air,
And load with scent the Summer’s golden hours.
Your perfect head, the ripple of your hair,
Like the soft sun that shines through April showers,
Leans from a fairyland of twinkling towers,
And beckons me to an enchanted stair.

Your eyes, your eyes, divide me from my sleep;
The echo of your laughter makes me weep,
You fill the measureless world, you frailest thing!
And in the silence of my deepest dream,