A prison merely, a dark barrier
Between me everywhere
And life, or the larger province of the mind,
As dreams confined,
As the trouble of a dream,
I seek to make again a life long gone,
To be
My mind’s approach and consolation,
To give it form’s lucidity,
Resilient form, as porcelain pieces thrown
In buried China by a wrist unknown,
Or mirrored brigs upon Fowey sea.
Then to my memory comes nothing great
Of purpose, or debate,
Or perfect end,
Pomp, nor love’s rapture, nor heroic hours to spend —
But most, and strangely, for long and so much have I seen,
Comes back an afternoon
Of a June
Sunday at Elsfield, that is up on a green
Hill, and there,
Through a little farm parlour door,
A floor
Of red tiles and blue,
And the air
Sweet with the hot June sun cascading through
The vine-leaves under the glass, and a scarlet fume
Of geranium flower, and soft and yellow bloom
Of musk, and stains of scarlet and yellow glass.
Such are the things remain
Quietly, and for ever, in the brain,
And the things that they choose for history-making pass.
THE FUGITIVE
Beauty has come to make no longer stay
Than the bright buds of May
In May-time do.
Beauty is with us for one hour, one hour,
Life is so brief a flower;
Thoughts are so few.
Thoughts are so few with mastery to give
Shape to these fugitive
Dear brevities,
That even in its hour beauty is blind,
Because the shallow mind
Not sees, not sees.
And in the mind of man only can be
Alert prosperity
For beauty brief.
So, what can be but little comes to less
Upon the wilderness
Of unbelief.
And beauty that has but an hour to spend
With you for friend,
Goes outcast by.
But know, but know – for all she is outcast —
It is not she at last,
But you that die.
CONSTANCY
The shadows that companion me
From chronicles and poetry
More constant and substantial are
Than these my men familiar,
Who draw with me uncertain breath
A little while this side of death;
For you, my friend, may fail to keep
To-morrow’s tryst, so darkly deep
The motions mutable that give
To flesh its brief prerogative,
And in the pleasant hours we make
Together for devotion’s sake,
Always the testament I see
That is our twin mortality.
But those from the recorded page
Keep an eternal pilgrimage.
They stedfastly inhabit here
With no mortality to fear,
And my communion with them
Ails not in the mind’s stratagem
Against the sudden blow, the date
That once must fall unfortunate.
They fret not nor persuade, and when
These graduates I entertain,
I grieve not that I too must fall
As you, my friend, to funeral,
But rather find example there
That, when my boughs of time are bare,
And nothing more the body’s chance
Governs my careful circumstance,
I shall, upon that later birth,
Walk in immortal fields of earth.
SOUTHAMPTON BELLS
Long ago some builder thrust
Heavenward in Southampton town
His spire and beamed his bells,
Largely conceiving from the dust
That pinnacle for ringing down
Orisons and Noëls.
In his imagination rang,
Through generations challenging
His peal on simple men,
Who, as the heart within him sang,
In daily townfaring should sing
By year and year again.
Now often to their ringing go
The bellmen with lean Time at heel,
Intent on daily cares;
The bells ring high, the bells ring low,
The ringers ring the builder’s peal
Of tidings unawares.
And all the bells’ might well be dumb
For any quickening in the street
Of customary ears;
And so at last proud builders come
With dreams and virtues to defeat
Among the clouding years.
Now, waiting on Southampton sea
For exile, through the silver night
I hear Noël! Noël!
Through generations down to me
Your challenge, builder, comes aright,
Bell by obedient bell.
You wake an hour with me; then wide
Though be the lapses of your sleep
You yet shall wake again;
And thus, old builder, on the tide
Of immortality you keep
Your way from brain to brain.
THE NEW MIRACLE
Of old men wrought strange gods for mystery,
Implored