Poems by William Ernest Henley Part 18

V--ALLEGRO MAESTOSO

Spring winds that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre?

Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between Her cheerful margents, grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being?

Why should the lovely leaf.a.ge of the Park Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing?

- Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides, Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, In the divine conviction robed and crowned The globe fulfils his immemorial round But as the marrying-place of all things made!

There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood.

There is no woman but disdains - The sacred impulse of the May Brightening like s.e.x made suns.h.i.+ne through her veins - To vail the ensigns of her womanhood.

None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest: These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised!

For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of l.u.s.t from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, A br.i.m.m.i.n.g reach of beauty met with strength, It s.h.i.+nes and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision mult.i.tudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

Praise G.o.d for giving Through this His messenger among the days His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living!

For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan - Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned, But the gay genius of a million Mays Renewing his beneficent endeavour! - Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned Since in the dim blue dawn of time The universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevails, By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme, Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth.

For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared, As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith: while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song; The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps the rolling universe ensphered, And life, and all for which life lives to long, Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.

RHYMES AND RHYTHMS

PROLOGUE

Something is dead . . .

The grace of sunset solitudes, the march Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power Of round on round of s.h.i.+ning soldier-stars Patrolling s.p.a.ce, the bounties of the sun - Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable - The mult.i.tudinous friendliness of the sea, Possess no more--no more.

Something is dead . . .

The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs, His melancholy close and closer yet Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring That made the heart a centre of miracles Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours Arise no more--no more.

Something is dead . . .

'Tis time to creep in close about the fire And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice In the young life that round us leaps and laughs, A fountain in the suns.h.i.+ne, in the pride Of G.o.d's best gift that to us twain returns, Dear Heart, no more--no more.

I

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade On desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shade What is the voice of strange command Calling you still, as friend calls friend With love that cannot brook delay, To rise and follow the ways that wend Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street A roaring reach of death and life, Of vortices that clash and fleet And ruin in appointed strife, Hark to it calling, calling clear, Calling until you cannot stay From dearer things than your own most dear Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow, Out of the sight of lamp and star, It calls you where the good winds blow, And the unchanging meadows are: From faded hopes and hopes agleam, It calls you, calls you night and day Beyond the dark into the dream Over the hills and far away

II--To R. F. B.

We are the Choice of the Will: G.o.d, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.

East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.

Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease - (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!) -

Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.

Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark; Stark was ever the sea, but our s.h.i.+ps were yet more stark;

We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones; The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;

Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night;

And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound, Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;

And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze, Floats from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e of the universal seas;

And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers, And the end of the road to h.e.l.l with the sense of her dews and showers!

Who says that we shall pa.s.s, or the fame of us fade and die, While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?

For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father's debt, And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set;

And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave, Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave.

III

A desolate sh.o.r.e, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk - The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: Growling, hideous and hoa.r.s.e, Tales of unnumbered s.h.i.+ps, Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance, In some vile alley of the night Waylaid and bludgeoned - Dead.

Deep cellared in primeval ooze, Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, They lie where the lean water-worm Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, Thus fouled and desecrate, The summons of the Trumpet, and the while These Twain, their murderers, Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, Hang at the heels of their children--She aloft As in the s.h.i.+ning streets, He as in ambush at some accomplice door.

The stalwart s.h.i.+ps, The beautiful and bold adventurers!

Stationed out yonder in the isle, The tall Policeman, Flas.h.i.+ng his bull's-eye, as he peers About him in the ancient vacancy, Tells them this way is safety--this way home.