Astrophel and Other Poems Part 13

Men may reap no fruits of fields wherein they sow not; Hope or fear is all the seed we have to sow.

Winter seals the sacred springs up that they flow not: Wind and sun and change unbind them, and they flow.

Am I thou or art thou I? The years that show not Pa.s.s, and leave no sign when time shall be to show."

Hope makes suit to faith lest fear give ear to sorrow: Doubt strews dust upon his head, and goes his way.

All the golden hope that life of death would borrow, How, if death require again, may life repay?

Earth endures no darkness whence no light yearns thorough; G.o.d in man as light in darkness lives, they say: Yet, would midnight take a.s.surance of the morrow, Who shall pledge the faith or seal the bond of day?

Darkness, mute or loud with music or with mourning, Starry darkness, winged with wind or clothed with calm, Dreams no dream of grief or fear or wrath or warning, Bears no sign of race or goal or strife or palm.

Word of blessing, word of mocking or of scorning, Knows it none, nor whence its breath sheds blight or balm.

Yet a little while, and hark, the psalm of morning: Yet a little while, and silence takes the psalm.

All the comfort, all the wors.h.i.+p, all the wonder, All the light of love that darkness holds in fee, All the song that silence keeps or keeps not under, Night, the soul that knows gives thanks for all to thee.

Far beyond the gates that morning strikes in sunder, Hopes that grief makes holy, dreams that fear sets free, Far above the throne of thought, the lair of thunder, Silent s.h.i.+nes the word whose utterance fills the sea.

MEMORIAL VERSES ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM BELL SCOTT

A life more bright than the sun's face, bowed Through stress of season and coil of cloud, Sets: and the sorrow that casts out fear Scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud,

Dead on the breast of the dying year, Poet and painter and friend, thrice dear For love of the suns long set, for love Of song that sets not with sunset here,

For love of the fervent heart, above Their sense who saw not the swift light move That filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre The thoughts that pa.s.sion was fain to prove

In fervent labour of high desire And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre Alive and strong as the sun, and caught From darkness light, and from twilight fire.

Pa.s.sion, deep as the depths unsought Whence faith's own hope may redeem us nought, Filled full with ardour of pain sublime His mourning song and his mounting thought.

Elate with sense of a sterner time, His hand's flight clomb as a bird's might climb Calvary: dark in the darkling air That shrank for fear of the crowning crime,

Three crosses rose on the hillside bare, Shown scarce by grace of the lightning's glare That clove the veil of the temple through And smote the priests on the threshold there.

The soul that saw it, the hand that drew, Whence light as thought's or as faith's glance flew, And stung to life the sepulchral past, And bade the stars of it burn anew,

Held no less than the dead world fast The light live shadows about them cast, The likeness living of dawn and night, The days that pa.s.s and the dreams that last.

Thought, clothed round with sorrow as light, Dark as a cloud that the moon turns bright, Moved, as a wind on the striving sea, That yearns and quickens and flags in flight,

Through forms of colour and song that he Who fain would have set its wide wings free Cast round it, clothing or chaining hope With lights that last not and shades that flee.

Scarce in song could his soul find scope, Scarce the strength of his hand might ope Art's inmost gate of her sovereign shrine, To cope with heaven as a man may cope.

But high as the hope of a man may s.h.i.+ne The faith, the fervour, the life divine That thrills our life and transfigures, rose And shone resurgent, a sunbright sign,

Through shapes whereunder the strong soul glows And fills them full as a sunlit rose With sense and fervour of life, whose light The fool's eye knows not, the man's eye knows.

None that can read or divine aright The scriptures writ of the soul may slight The strife of a strenuous soul to show More than the craft of the hand may write.

None may slight it, and none may know How high the flames that aspire and glow From heart and spirit and soul may climb And triumph; higher than the souls lie low

Whose hearing hears not the livelong rhyme, Whose eyesight sees not the light sublime, That s.h.i.+nes, that sounds, that ascends and lives Unquenched of change, un.o.bscured of time.

A long life's length, as a man's life gives s.p.a.ce for the spirit that soars and strives To strive and soar, has the soul shone through That heeds not whither the world's wind drives

Now that the days and the ways it knew Are strange, are dead as the dawn's grey dew At high midnoon of the mounting day That mocks the might of the dawn it slew.

Yet haply may not--and haply may-- No sense abide of the dead sun's ray Wherein the soul that outsoars us now Rejoiced with ours in its radiant sway.

Hope may hover, and doubt may bow, Dreaming. Haply--they dream not how-- Not life but death may indeed be dead When silence darkens the dead man's brow.

Hope, whose name is remembrance, fed With love that lightens from seasons fled, Dreams, and craves not indeed to know, That death and life are as souls that wed.

But change that falls on the heart like snow Can chill not memory nor hope, that show The soul, the spirit, the heart and head, Alive above us who strive below.

AN OLD SAYING

Many waters cannot quench love, Neither can the floods drown it.

Who shall snare or slay the white dove Faith, whose very dreams crown it, Gird it round with grace and peace, deep, Warm, and pure, and soft as sweet sleep?

Many waters cannot quench love, Neither can the floods drown it.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, As a seal upon thine arm.

How should we behold the days depart And the nights resign their charm?

Love is as the soul: though hate and fear Waste and overthrow, they strike not here.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, As a seal upon thine arm.

A MOSS-ROSE

If the rose of all flowers be the rarest That heaven may adore from above, And the fervent moss-rose be the fairest That sweetens the summer with love,

Can it be that a fairer than any Should blossom afar from the tree?

Yet one, and a symbol of many, Shone sudden for eyes that could see.

In the grime and the gloom of November The bliss and the bloom of July Bade autumn rejoice and remember The balm of the blossoms gone by.

Would you know what moss-rose now it may be That puts all the rest to the blush, The flower was the face of a baby, The moss was a bonnet of plush.