Poems by William Ernest Henley Part 20

The spell-bound s.h.i.+ps stand as at gaze To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . .

Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades, What grace, what glamour, what wild will, Transfigure the shadows? Whose, Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?

Ghosts--ghosts--the sapphirine air Teems with them even to the gleaming ends Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, Everywhere--everywhere--till I and you At last--dear love, at last! - Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.

XI

Gulls in an aery morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .

The full sea, sleepily basking, Dreams under skies of dream.

Gulls in an aery morrice Circle and swoop and close . . .

Fuller and ever fuller The rose of the morning blows.

Gulls, in an aery morrice Frolicking, float and fade . . .

O, the way of a bird in the suns.h.i.+ne, The way of a man with a maid!

XII

Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers For ungirt loins and lamps unlit; In front, the unmanageable years, The trap upon the Pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lie, And with me quicken and control Some memory that shall magnify The universal Soul.

XIII--To James McNeill Whistler

Under a stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily--wretchedly--on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble to a broken tune (Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, transitory world.

What of the incantation That forced the huddled shapes on yonder sh.o.r.e To take and wear the night Like a material majesty?

That touched the shafts of wavering fire About this miserable welter and wash - (River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!) - Into long, s.h.i.+ning signals from the panes Of an enchanted pleasure-house, Where life and life might live life lost in life For ever and evermore?

O Death! O Change! O Time!

Without you, O, the insuperable eyes Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!

XIV--To J. A. C.

Fresh from his fastnesses Wholesome and s.p.a.cious, The North Wind, the mad huntsman, Halloas on his white hounds Over the grey, roaring Reaches and ridges, The forest of ocean, The chace of the world.

Hark to the peal Of the pack in full cry, As he thongs them before him, Swarming voluminous, Weltering, wide-wallowing, Till in a ruining Chaos of energy, Hurled on their quarry, They crash into foam!

Old Indefatigable, Time's right-hand man, the sea Laughs as in joy From his millions of wrinkles: Laughs that his destiny, Great with the greatness Of triumphing order, Shows as a dwarf By the strength of his heart And the might of his hands.

Master of masters, O maker of heroes, Thunder the brave, Irresistible message:- 'Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.'

XV

You played and sang a s.n.a.t.c.h of song, A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient wrong; And was it really I and you?

O, since the end of life's to live And pay in pence the common debt, What should it cost us to forgive Whose daily task is to forget?

You babbled in the well-known voice - Not new, not new the words you said.

You touched me off that famous poise, That old effect, of neck and head.

Dear, was it really you and I?

In truth the riddle's ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.

XVI

s.p.a.ce and dread and the dark - Over a livid stretch of sky Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train Of huge, primeval presences Stooping beneath the weight Of some enormous, rudimentary grief; While in the haunting loneliness The far sea waits and wanders with a sound As of the trailing skirts of Destiny, Pa.s.sing unseen To some immitigable end With her grey henchman, Death.

What larve, what spectre is this Thrilling the wilderness to life As with the bodily shape of Fear?

What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced, in a dusk Inviolable utterly, and dead As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes In hugger-mugger through eternity?

Life--life--let there be life!

Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!

Life--give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest h.e.l.l of the fight I may be s.n.a.t.c.hed and flung Into the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream.

XVII--CARMEN PATIBULARE--To H. S.

Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook And the rope of the Black Election, 'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule Can never achieve perfection: So 'It's O, for the time of the new Sublime And the better than human way, When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his own And the Wolf shall have his day!'

For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam And the power of provocation, You have c.o.c.kered the Brute with your dreadful fruit Till your fruit is mere stupration: And 'It's how should we rise to be pure and wise, And how can we choose but fall, So long as the Hangman makes us dread, And the Noose floats free for all?'