The Story Of A Round-House And Other Poems Part 17

My road calls me, lures me West, east, south, and north; Most roads lead men homewards, My road leads me forth

To add more miles to the tally Of grey miles left behind, In quest of that one beauty G.o.d put me here to find.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT

The perfect disc of the sacred moon Through still blue heaven serenely swims, And the lone bird's liquid music brims The peace of the night with a perfect tune.

This is that holiest night of the year When (the mowers say) may be heard and seen The ghostly court of the English queen, Who rides to harry and hunt the deer.

And the woodland creatures cower awake, A strange unrest is on harts and does, For the maiden Dian a-hunting goes, And the trembling deer are afoot in the brake.

They start at a shaken leaf: the sound Of a dry twig snapped by a squirrel's foot Is a nameless dread: and to them the hoot Of a mousing owl is the cry of a hound.

Oh soon the forest will ring with cries, The dim green coverts will flash: the gra.s.s Will glow as the radiant hunters pa.s.s After the quarry with burning eyes.

The hurrying feet will range unstayed Of questing G.o.ddess and hunted fawn, Till the east is grey with the sacred dawn, And the red c.o.c.k wakens the milking maid.

THE HARPER'S SONG

This sweetness trembling from the strings The music of my troublous lute Hath timed Herodias' daughter's foot; Setting a-clink her ankle-rings Whenas she danced to feasted kings.

Where gemmed apparel burned and caught The sunset 'neath the golden dome, To the dark beauties of old Rome My sorrowful lute hath haply brought Sad memories sweet with tender thought.

When night had fallen and lights and fires Were darkened in the homes of men, Some sighing echo stirred:--and then The old cunning wakened from the wires The old sorrows and the old desires.

Dead Kings in long forgotten lands, And all dead beauteous women; some Whose pride imperial hath become Old armour rusting in the sands And shards of iron in dusty hands,

Have heard my lyre's soft rise and fall Go trembling down the paven ways, Till every heart was all ablaze-- Hasty each foot--to obey the call To triumph or to funeral.

Could I begin again the slow Sweet mournful music filled with tears, Surely the old, dead, dusty ears Would hear; the old drowsy eyes would glow, Old memories come; old hopes and fears, And time restore the long ago.

THE GENTLE LADY

So beautiful, so dainty-sweet, So like a lyre's delightful touch-- A beauty perfect, ripe, complete That art's own hand could only s.m.u.tch And nature's self not better much.

So beautiful, so purely wrought, Like a fair missal penned with hymns, So gentle, so surpa.s.sing thought-- A beauteous soul in lovely limbs, A lantern that an angel trims.

So simple-sweet, without a sin, Like gentle music gently timed, Like rhyme-words coming aptly in, To round a mooned poem rhymed To tunes the laughing bells have chimed.

THE DEAD KNIGHT

The cleanly rush of the mountain air, And the mumbling, grumbling humble-bees, Are the only things that wander there.

The pitiful bones are laid at ease, The gra.s.s has grown in his tangled hair, And a rambling bramble binds his knees.

To shrieve his soul from the pangs of h.e.l.l, The only requiem bells that rang Were the harebell and the heather bell.

Hushed he is with the holy spell In the gentle hymn the wind sang, And he lies quiet, and sleeps well.

He is bleached and blanched with the summer sun; The misty rain and the cold dew Have altered him from the kingly one Whom his lady loved, and his men knew, And dwindled him to a skeleton.

The vetches have twined about his bones, The straggling ivy twists and creeps In his eye-sockets: the nettle keeps Vigil about him while he sleeps.

Over his body the wind moans With a dreary tune throughout the day, In a chorus wistful, eerie, thin As the gulls' cry, as the cry in the bay, The mournful word the seas say When tides are wandering out or in.

SORROW OF MYDATH

Weary the cry of the wind is, weary the sea, Weary the heart and the mind and the body of me, Would I were out of it, done with it, would I could be A white gull crying along the desolate sands.

Outcast, derelict soul in a body accurst, Standing drenched with the spindrift, standing athirst, For the cool green waves of death to arise and burst In a tide of quiet for me on the desolate sands.

Would that the waves and the long white hair of the spray Would gather in splendid terror, and blot me away To the sunless place of the wrecks where the waters sway Gently, dreamily, quietly over desolate sands.

TWILIGHT

Twilight it is, and the far woods are dim, and the rooks cry and call.

Down in the valley the lamps, and the mist, and a star over all, There by the rick, where they thresh, is the drone at an end, Twilight it is, and I travel the road with my friend.

I think of the friends who are dead, who were dear long ago in the past, Beautiful friends who are dead, though I know that death cannot last; Friends with the beautiful eyes that the dust has defiled, Beautiful souls who were gentle when I was a child.

INVOCATION

O wanderer into many brains, O spark the emperor's purple hides, You sow the dusk with fiery grains When the gold horseman rides.

O beauty on the darkness hurled, Be it through me you shame the world.

POSTED AS MISSING

Under all her topsails she trembled like a stag, The wind made a ripple in her bonny red flag; They cheered her from the sh.o.r.e and they cheered her from the pier, And under all her topsails she trembled like a deer.