Collected Poems Volume I Part 18

My heart is narrow, foolish, what you will; But this I know G.o.d meant who set us here, And gave each soul the Infinities to fulfil From its own widening sphere.

To annex new regions to the soul's domain, To expand the circle of the golden hours, Till it enfolds again and yet again New heavens, new fields, new flowers,

Oh, this is well; but still the central heart Is here at home, not wandering like the wind That gathers nothing, but must still depart Leaving a waste behind.

Where is the song I sang that April morn, When all the poet in his eyes awoke My sleeping heart to heaven; and love was born?

For while the glad day broke

We met; and as the softly kindling skies Thrilled through the scented vistas of the wood I felt the sudden love-light in his eyes Kindle my beating blood.

_Happy day, happy day, Chasing the clouds of the night away And bidding the dreams of the dawn depart Over the freshening April blue, Till the blossoms awake to welcome the May, And the world is made anew; And the blackbird sings on the dancing spray With eyes of glistening dew; "Happy, happy, happy day;"

For he knows that his love is true; He knows that his love is true, my heart, He knows that his love is true!_

I cannot sing it: these tears blind me: love, O love, come back before it is too late, Why, even Christ came down to us from above: I think His love was great;

Yet he stood knocking, knocking at the door Until his piteous hands were worn with scars; He did not hide that crown of love he wore Among the lonely stars.

This round of hours, the daily flowers I cull Are more to me than all the rolling spheres, A wounded bird at hand more pitiful Than some great seraph's tears.

How should I join the great wise choir above With my starved spirit's pale inhuman dearth, Who never heard the cry of heavenly love Rise from the sweet-souled earth?

Yet it is I he needs, and I for whom His greed exceeds, his dreams fly wide of the mark!

Is it all self? I wander in the gloom; The ways of G.o.d grow dark; I watch the rose that withers in the cheek, The leaden rings that mark us old and wise; And Time that writes what Pity dares not speak Around the fading eyes.

XII

And ever as Anwyl went the unknown end Faded before him, back and back and back He saw new empty heavens for ever bend Over his endless track;

And memory, burning with new hopeless fire, Showed him how every pa.s.sing infinite hour Made some new Crucifix for the World's Desire Is some new wayside flower:

He saw what joy and beauty owed to death; How all the world was one great sacrifice Of Him, in whom all creatures that draw breath Share G.o.d's eternal skies;

How Love is lord of all the world at once; And never bids the encircled spirit roam To the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns, But makes each heart its home,

And every home the heart of s.p.a.ce and Time, And each and all a heaven if love could reign One infinite untranscended heaven sublime With G.o.d's own joy and pain.

XIII

Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep, A little child came to him in his sleep And led him back to what was Paradise Before the years had darkened in his eyes, And showed him what he ne'er could lose again-- The light that once enshrined the child Etain.

Ah, was it Yrma with those radiant eyes That came to greet and lead him through the skies; Ay; all the world was one wide rose-white flame, As down the path to meet him Yrma came And caught the child up in her arms and cried, This is my child that moved in Etain's side, Thy child and Etain's: I the unknown ideal And she the rich, the incarnate, breathing real Are one; for me thou never canst attain But by the love I yield thee for Etain; Even as through Christ thy soul allays its dearth, Love's heaven is only compa.s.sed upon earth; And by that love, in thine own Etain's eyes Thou shalt find all G.o.d's untranscended skies.

As of old, as of old, with Etain that day, Over the hills, and far away, He roamed thro' the fairy forests of fern: Two young lovers were they.

And G.o.d sighed in the sunset, and the sea Grew quieter than the hills: the mystery Of ocean, earth and sky was like a word Uttered, but all unheard, Uttered by every wave and cloud and leaf With all the immortal glory of mortal grief; And every wave that broke its heart of gold In music on the rainbow-dazzled sh.o.r.e Seemed telling, strangely telling, evermore A story that must still remain untold.

Oh, _Once upon a time_, and o'er and o'er As aye the _Happy ever after_ came The enchanted waves lavished their faery lore

And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flame Around the whispers of the creaming foam, Till the old rapture with the new sweet name Through all the old romance began to roam.

XIV

And those two lovers only heard --Oh, love is a dream that knows no waking-- Far away, one secret bird, Where all the roses breathed one word, And every crispel on the beach-- Oh, love is a sea that is ever breaking!-- Lisped it in a sweeter speech; As hand in hand, by the sunset sea That breaks on the sh.o.r.es of mystery, They stood in the gates of the City of Pain To watch the wild waves flutter and beat In roses of white soft light at their feet, Roses of delicate music and light, Music and moonlight under their feet.

Crumbling and flas.h.i.+ng and softly cras.h.i.+ng In rainbow colours that dazzle and wane And wither and waken and, wild with delight, Dance and dance to a mystic tune And scatter their leaves in a flower-soft rain Over the s.h.i.+mmering golden sh.o.r.e Between the West and the waking moon, Between the sunset and the night; And then they sigh for the years of yore And gather their glory together again, Petal by petal and gleam by gleam, Till, all in one rus.h.i.+ng rose-bright stream They dazzle back to the deep once more, For the dream of the sea is an endless dream, And love is a sea that hath no sh.o.r.e, And the roses dance as they danced before.

XV

In other worlds I loved you, long ago: Love that hath no beginning hath no end: Low to her heart he breathed it, sweet and low; In other worlds I loved you, long ago; This is a word that all the sea-waves know And whisper as through the sh.o.r.eless West they wend, In other worlds I loved you, long ago: Love that hath no beginning hath no end.

XVI

"Yet love can die!" she murmured once again; For this was in that City by the Sea, That old grey City of Pain, Built on the s.h.i.+fting sh.o.r.es of Mystery And mocked by all the immeasurable main.

"Love lives to die!"

Under the deep eternal sky His deeper voice caught up that deep refrain;

"A year ago, and under yonder sun Earth had no Heaven to hold our hearts in one!

For me there was no love, afar or nigh: And, O, if love were thus in time begun, Love, even our love, in time must surely die."

Then memory murmured, "No"; And he remembered, a million years ago, He saw the sea-waves wistfully westward wend; And heard her voice whispering in their flow And calling through the silent sunset-glow.

_Love that hath no beginning hath no end._

"Love dies to live!" How wild, how deep the joy That knows no death can e'er destroy What cannot bear destruction! By these eyes I know that, ere the fas.h.i.+oning of the skies, Or ever the sun and moon and stars were made I loved you. Sweet, I am no more afraid.

"Love lives to die!"

Under the deep eternal sky Her wild sweet voice caught up that deep refrain: There, in that silent City by the Sea, Listening the wild-wave music of Infinity, There, in that old grey City of mortal pain, Their voices mingled in mystic unison With that immortal harmony Which holds the warring worlds in one.

Their Voice, one Voice, yet manifold, Possessed the seas, the fields, the sky, With utterance of the dream that cannot die; Possessed the West's wild rose and dappled gold, And that old secret of the setting sun Which, to the glory of Eternity, Time, tolling like a distant bell, Evermore faints to tell, And, ever telling, never yet has told.

One, and yet manifold Arose their Voice, oh strangely one again With murmurs of the immeasurable main; As, far beyond earth's cloudy bars, Their Soul surpa.s.sed the sunset and the stars, And all the heights and depths of temporal pain, Till seas of seraph music round them rolled.

And in that mystic plane They felt their mortal years Break away as a dream of pain Breaks in a stream of tears.

Love, of whom life had birth, See now, is death not sweet?

Love, is this heaven or earth?

Both are beneath thy feet.

Nay, both within thy heart!

O Love, the glory nears; The Gates of Pearl are flung apart, The Rose of Heaven appears.

Across the deeps of change, Like pangs of visible song, What angel-spirits, remote and strange, Thrill through the starry throng?

And oh, what wind that blows Over the mystic Tree, What whisper of the sacred Rose, What murmur of the sapphire Sea, What dreams that faint and fail From harps of burning gold, But tell in heaven the sweet old tale An earthly sunset told?

Hark! like a holy bell Over that spirit Sea, Time, in the world it loves so well, Tolls for Eternity.