Poems by William Ernest Henley Part 8

A hard north-easter fifty winters long Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck; Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck; Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong.

A wide blue cloak, a squat and st.u.r.dy throng Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck, A white vest broidered black, her person deck, Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong.

Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh, Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers, The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye, Ever and anon imploring you to buy, As looking down the street she onward lingers, Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry.

BACK-VIEW--To D. F.

I watched you saunter down the sand: Serene and large, the golden weather Flowed radiant round your peac.o.c.k feather, And glistered from your jewelled hand.

Your tawny hair, turned strand on strand And bound with blue ribands together, Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather, That round your lissome shoulder spanned.

Your grace was quick my sense to seize: The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses, The close-drawn scarf, and under these The flowing, flapping draperies - My thought an outline still caresses, Enchanting, comic, j.a.panese!

CROLUIS--To G. W.

The beach was crowded. Pausing now and then, He groped and fiddled doggedly along, His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng The stony peevishness of sightless men.

He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again, Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song, So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong, You hardly could distinguish one in ten.

He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand, And, grasping wearily his bread-winner, Stared dim towards the blue immensity, Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand.

He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir: His gesture spoke a vast despondency.

ATTADALE WEST HIGHLANDS--To A. J.

A black and gla.s.sy float, opaque and still, The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep, Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deep The calm grey skies; the solemn spurs of hill; Heather, and corn, and wisps of loitering haze; The wee white cots, black-hatted, plumed with smoke; The braes beyond--and when the ripple awoke, They wavered with the jarred and wavering glaze.

The air was hushed and dreamy. Evermore A noise of running water whispered near.

A straggling crow called high and thin. A bird Trilled from the birch-leaves. Round the s.h.i.+ngled sh.o.r.e, Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and clear, Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, idly heard.

FROM A WINDOW IN PRINCES STREET--To M. M. M'B.

Above the Crags that fade and gloom Starts the bare knee of Arthur's Seat; Ridged high against the evening bloom, The Old Town rises, street on street; With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, Like rampired walls the houses lean, All spired and domed and turreted, Sheer to the valley's darkling green; Ranged in mysterious disarray, The Castle, menacing and austere, Looms through the lingering last of day; And in the silver dusk you hear, Reverberated from crag and scar, Bold bugles blowing points of war.

IN THE DIALS

To GARRYOWEN upon an organ ground Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip, With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip, As in the tumult of a witches' round.

Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.

Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip.

The artist's teeth gleam from his bearded lip.

High from the kennel howls a tortured hound.

The music reels and hurtles, and the night Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags, Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags Look on dispa.s.sionate--critical--something 'mused.

The G.o.ds are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?

Living at least in Lempriere undeleted, The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose, Are one and all, I like to think, retreated In some still land of lilacs and the rose.

Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.

Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes, The G.o.ds are dead.

It must be true. The world, a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze!

Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:- 'The G.o.ds are Dead!'

To F. W.

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget, Forget, and, ceasing even from regret, Live without reason and despite of rhyme, As in a dream preposterous and sublime, Where place and hour and means for once are met.

Where is the use of effort? Love and debt And disappointment have us in a net.

Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .

Let us be drunk.

In vain our little hour we strut and fret, And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet: We cannot please the tragicaster Time.

To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime, Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet, Let us be drunk!

When you are old, and I am pa.s.sed away - Pa.s.sed, and your face, your golden face, is gray - I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine, Comforting you, a friendly star will s.h.i.+ne Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.

So may it be: that so dead Yesterday, No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay, May serve you memories like almighty wine, When you are old!

Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway Of death the past's enormous disarray Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign, Live on well pleased: immortal and divine Love shall still tend you, as G.o.d's angels may, When you are old.