Old songs that sung themselves to me, Sweet through a boy's day dream, While trout below the blossom'd tree Plashed in the golden stream.
* * * * * *
Twilight, and Tweed, and Eildon Hill, Fair and thrice fair you be;You tell me that the voice is still That should have welcomed me.
ONE FLOWER.
["Up there shot a lily red, With a patch of earth from the land of the dead, For she was strong in the land of the dead."]
WHEN autumn suns are soft, and sea winds moan, And golden fruits make sweet the golden air, In gardens where the apple blossoms were, In these old springs before I walked alone;I pass among the pathways overgrown, Of all the former flowers that kissed your feet Remains a poppy, pallid from the heat, A wild poppy that the wild winds have sown.
Alas! the rose forgets your hands of rose;The lilies slumber in the lily bed;
'Tis only poppies in the dreamy close, The changeless, windless garden of the dead, You tend, with buds soft as your kiss that lies In over happy dreams, upon mine eyes.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
I SHALL not see thee, nay, but I shall know Perchance, thy grey eyes in another's eyes, Shall guess thy curls in gracious locks that flow On purest brows, yea, and the swift surmise Shall follow, and track, and find thee in disguise Of all sad things, and fair, where sunsets glow, When through the scent of heather, faint and low, The weak wind whispers to the day that dies.
From all sweet art, and out of all 'old rhyme,'
Thine eyes and lips are light and song to me;The shadows of the beauty of all time, Carven and sung, are only shapes of thee;Alas, the shadowy shapes! ah, sweet my dear Shall life or death bring all thy being near?
LOST IN HADES.
I DREAMED that somewhere in the shadowy place, Grief of farewell unspoken was forgot In welcome, and regret remembered not;And hopeless prayer accomplished turned to praise On lips that had been songless many days;Hope had no more to hope for, and desire And dread were overpast, in white attire New born we walked among the new world's ways.
Then from the press of shades a spirit threw Towards me such apples as these gardens bear;And turning, I was 'ware of her, and knew And followed her fleet voice and flying hair, -Followed, and found her not, and seeking you I found you never, dearest, anywhere.
A STAR IN THE NIGHT.
THE perfect piteous beauty of thy face, Is like a star the dawning drives away;Mine eyes may never see in the bright day Thy pallid halo, thy supernal grace:
But in the night from forth the silent place Thou comest, dim in dreams, as doth a stray Star of the starry flock that in the grey Is seen, and lost, and seen a moment's space.
And as the earth at night turns to a star, Loved long ago, and dearer than the sun, So in the spiritual place afar, At night our souls are mingled and made one, And wait till one night fall, and one dawn rise, That brings no noon too splendid for your eyes.
A SUNSET ON YARROW.
THE wind and the day had lived together, They died together, and far away Spoke farewell in the sultry weather, Out of the sunset, over the heather, The dying wind and the dying day.
Far in the south, the summer levin Flushed, a flame in the grey soft air:
We seemed to look on the hills of heaven;You saw within, but to me 'twas given To see your face, as an angel's, there.
Never again, ah surely never Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood, The low good-night of the hill and the river, The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver, Twain grown one in the solitude.
HESPEROTHEN.
BY the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phaeacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the VANITY OF MELANCHOLY. And by the land of Phaeacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the places of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary, attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Francoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macraeones.
THE SEEKERS FOR PHAEACIA.
THERE is a land in the remotest day, Where the soft night is born, and sunset dies;The eastern shores see faint tides fade away, That wash the lands where laughter, tears, and sighs, Make life, - the lands beneath the blue of common skies.
But in the west is a mysterious sea, (What sails have seen it, or what shipmen known?)With coasts enchanted where the Sirens be, With islands where a Goddess walks alone, And in the cedar trees the magic winds make moanEastward the human cares of house and home, Cities, and ships, and unknown Gods, and loves;Westward, strange maidens fairer than the foam, And lawless lives of men, and haunted groves, Wherein a God may dwell, and where the Dryad roves.
The Gods are careless of the days and death Of toilsome men, beyond the western seas;The Gods are heedless of their painful breath, And love them not, for they are not as these;But in the golden west they live and lie at ease.
Yet the Phaeacians well they love, who live At the light's limit, passing careless hours, Most like the Gods; and they have gifts to give, Even wine, and fountains musical, and flowers, And song, and if they will, swift ships, and magic powers.
It is a quiet midland; in the cool Of twilight comes the God, though no man prayed, To watch the maids and young men beautiful Dance, and they see him, and are not afraid, For they are near of kin to Gods, and undismayed.
Ah, would the bright red prows might bring us nigh The dreamy isles that the Immortals keep!
But with a mist they hide them wondrously, And far the path and dim to where they sleep, -The loved, the shadowy lands along the shadowy deep.
A SONG OF PHAEACIA.
THE languid sunset, mother of roses, Lingers, a light on the magic seas, The wide fire flames, as a flower uncloses, Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze.
