CHANGE AND FATE
TRANSFIGURED LIFE
As growth of form or momentary glance In a child's features will recall to mind The father's with the mother's face combin'd,--Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, Till in the blended likeness now we find A separate man's or woman's countenance:--So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain, Its very parents, evermore expand To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain, By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand There comes the sound as of abundant rain.
THE SONG-THROE
By thine own tears thy song must tears beget, 0 Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
The Song-god--He the Sun-god--is no slave Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul Fledges his shaft: to no august control Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart, The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.
THE SOUL'S SPHERE
Come prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,--Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre Blazed with momentous memorable fire;--Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight Conjectured in the lamentable night?...
Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!
What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van Of Love's unquestioning unreveale'd span,--Visions of golden futures: or that last Wild pageant of the accumulated past That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.
INCLUSIVENESS
The changing guests, each in a different mood, Sit at the roadside table and arise:
And every life among them in likewise Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?--Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell In separate living souls for joy or pain?
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.
ARDOUR AND MEMORY
The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;The summer clouds that visit every wing With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;The furtive flickering streams to light re-born 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn, While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:--These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight The wind swoops onward brandishing the light, Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;With ditties and with dirges infinite.
KNOWN IN VAIN
As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, with music high and soft, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft Together, within hopeless sight of hope For hours are silent:--So it happeneth When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?
HEART OF THE NIGHT
From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;From lethargy to fever of the heart;
From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;--Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran Till now. Alas, the soul!--how soon must she Accept her primal immortality,--The flesh resume its dust whence it began?
0 Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
0 Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late, Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
That when the peace is garnered in from strife, The work retrieved, the will regenerate, This soul may see thy face, 0 Lord of death!
THE LANDMARK
