Responsibilities Part 3

Hope that you may understand!

What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons Do, but awake a hope to live That had gone With the dragons?

I

THE WITCH

Toil, and grow rich, What's that but to lie With a foul witch And after, drained dry, To be brought To the chamber where Lies one long sought With despair.

II

THE PEAc.o.c.k

What's riches to him That has made a great peac.o.c.k With the pride of his eye?

The wind-beaten, stone-grey, And desolate Three-rock Would nourish his whim.

Live he or die Amid wet rocks and heather, His ghost will be gay Adding feather to feather For the pride of his eye.

THE MOUNTAIN TOMB

Pour wine and dance if Manhood still have pride, Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes upon the mountain side, Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet That there be no foot silent in the room Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet; Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries The everlasting taper lights the gloom; All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.

TO A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND

I

Dance there upon the sh.o.r.e; What need have you to care For wind or water's roar?

And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool's triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind.

What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind?

II

Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn'd?

Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever's offered And dream that all the world's a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end.

But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue.

A MEMORY OF YOUTH

The moments pa.s.sed as at a play, I had the wisdom love brings forth; I had my share of mother wit And yet for all that I could say, And though I had her praise for it, A cloud blown from the cut-throat north Suddenly hid love's moon away.

Believing every word I said I praised her body and her mind Till pride had made her eyes grow bright, And pleasure made her cheeks grow red, And vanity her footfall light, Yet we, for all that praise, could find Nothing but darkness overhead.

We sat as silent as a stone, We knew, though she'd not said a word, That even the best of love must die, And had been savagely undone Were it not that love upon the cry Of a most ridiculous little bird Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.

FALLEN MAJESTY

Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face, And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone, Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping place, Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.

The lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet, These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd Will gather, and not know it walks the very street Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.

FRIENDS

Now must I these three praise-- Three women that have wrought What joy is in my days; One that no pa.s.sing thought, Nor those unpa.s.sing cares, No, not in these fifteen Many times troubled years, Could ever come between Heart and delighted heart; And one because her hand Had strength that could unbind What none can understand, What none can have and thrive, Youth's dreamy load, till she So changed me that I live Labouring in ecstasy.

And what of her that took All till my youth was gone With scarce a pitying look?

How should I praise that one?

When day begins to break I count my good and bad, Being wakeful for her sake, Remembering what she had, What eagle look still shows, While up from my heart's root So great a sweetness flows I shake from head to foot.

THE COLD HEAVEN