xt7nk931350c https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7nk931350c/data/mets.xml Morton, David, 1886-1957. 1921  books b92-224-31182748 English G.P. Putnam's Sons, : New York ; London : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Ships in harbour  / by David Morton. text Ships in harbour  / by David Morton. 1921 2002 true xt7nk931350c section xt7nk931350c 



SHIPS IN HARBOUR




              BY

       DAVID MORTON



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Cbe Imtckerbocher PDrees
       1921

 


















        COPYRIGHT. 1921
              BY
    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS




























Printed in the United States of America

 























                To

              T. B. M.

                AND

             M. W. M.

TEis BooK is AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

 This page in the original text is blank.

 

  For the privilege of reprinting some of the
poems included in this book, the author's
thanks are due to The Bookman, The Century,
The New York Evening Post, Harper's Magazine,
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, The Designer, The
Nation, The New York Sun, Collier's Weekly,
Good Housekeeping, The Bellman, Contemporary
Verse, Everybody's Magazine, The Smart Set,
Ainslee's, The Sonnet, McCall's Magazine, The
Touchstone Magazine, The Forum, and The Lyric.



[vI

 This page in the original text is blank.

 



CONTENTS



WOODEN SHIPS .

OCTOBER DAY-MOON

A GARDEN WALL

NAPOLEON IN HADES

SYMBOLS

EXILED

MARY SETS THE TABLE

AUTUMN TEA TIME

BATTLEFIELDS

ONE DAY IN AUTUMN

AN OLD HOUSE AND GARDEN

IMMORTALIS

TOURING     .    .

SUMMER

OLD SHIPS

THE TOWN
                    [vii



              PAGE
   .   .        S

                 4

                 5

                 6



                 8

              9

                10

                11

                12

                13

                14

                15

               17

                18

                19

 



CONTENTS



                                           PAGE
AFTER SUMMER RAIN                           24

THE KINGS ARE PASSING DEATHWARD             V25

RENEWAL                                     26

RESPONDIT                                    27

JEWELS                                       28

CHORUS   .                                   29

SYMBOL   .                                   30

TO AN I NEQNOWSN ANCESTOR                   31

INTIMATION             -                    32

ON A DEAD NIOTH   .                         33

MYSTIC   .                                  34

LEVIATHANS                                  35

INVIOLATE                                    36

MANUSCRIPTS                                 37

IN AN OLD BURIAL GROUND                     38

ENCORE                                      39

REDEMPTION   -                              40

THE HUNTED                                  41

THE SCHOOLBOY READS HIS ILILAD              42

MOMENTS .                                   43

CLEAR MORNING                               44
                     [viii]

 



CONTENTS



                                           PAGE
RENAISSANCE                                 45

AN OLD LOVER.                               46

ONE DAY IN SUMMER                           47

VINES                                       48

AUDIENCE                                    49

THE DANCE                                    50

ON HEARING A BIRD SING AT NIGHT              51

DAWN                                        52

DAFFODILS OVER NIGHT                        53

VALUES   .                                  54

A GHOST OUT OF STRATFORD                    55

WHO WALKS WITH BEAUTY                    -  56

RACONTEUR    .                              57

AFFINITIES                                  58

TRANSFIGURATION   .                         59

ONE WAY OF SPRING                           60

FOR A SEQUESTERED LADY                      61

HERITAGE                                    63

SHIPPING NEWS"                             64

ARTICULATION                                65

MOONFLOWERS       .                         66

                     [ix]

 



CONTENTS



CHALLENGE

BEFORE SPRING

MOONS KNOW No TIME

MY NEIGHBOUR

AT THE NEXT TABLE

SALVAGE E

IN A GIRL'S SCHOOL

AT ELSINORE

To WILLIAM GRIFFITH

REVELATION

DISCOVERY

FOR BOB: A DOG

IN SUMMER

SURVIVAL 

NOMENCLATURE

To ONE RETURNED FROM J

ATTENDANTS

RENDEZVOUS

SONNETS FROM A HOSPITAL

THIS LANE IN MAY

FUGITIVE 



                    PAGE
                    67

                    68

                    69

                    70

                    71

                    72

                    73

                    74

   .    .   .    .  75

                     76

                     77

                     78

                     79

                     80

                     81

LJOURNEY.    .    .  82

                     83

                     84

                     85

                     89

                     o0



1 x I

 



CONTENTS



AN OLD GARDENER

THE VEIL .

THE YEAR IS OLD

MARINERS 

AN ABANDONED INN .

PRONE   .

REVIVAL 

IMPOSTOR 

SNOW DUSK

MOOD

SHIPS IN HARBOUR  .



PAGE
  91

  92

  93

  94

  95



  96

  97

  98

  99

. 100

. 101



[ 3d]

 This page in the original text is blank.

 

SHIPS IN



HARBOUR



[11

 This page in the original text is blank.

 

WOODEN SHIPS



THEY    are remembering forests where they
       grew,-
  The midnight quiet, and the giant dance;
And all the murmuring summers that they knew
  Are haunting still their altered circumstance.
Leaves they have lost, and robins in the nest,
  Tug of the goodly earth denied to ships,
These, and the rooted certainties, and rest,-
  To gain a watery girdle at the hips.

Only the wind that follows ever aft,
  They greet not as a stranger on their ways;
But this old friend, with whom they drank and
      laughed,
  Sits in the stern and talks of other days
When they had held high bacchanalias still,
Or dreamed among the stars on some tall hill.



131

 

OCTOBER DAY-MOON



LOOSED from her secret moorings.
      The thin and silver moon,
Floats wide above these oceans
  Of yellow afternoon,-
Who slipped her fragile cables,
  And blew to sea too soon.

She bears no bales-but wonder,
  Not anything of note:
How should she, being merely
  A slender petal-boat . .
But rated in the shipping:
  The dearest tramp afloat.



14]

 


A GARDEN WALL



THE Roman wall was not more grave than
       this,
  That has no league at all with great affairs,
That knows no ruder hands than clematis,
  No louder blasts than blowing April airs.
Yet, with a grey solemnity it broods,
  Above the walk where simple folk go past,
And in its crannies keeps their transient moods,
  Holding their careless words unto the last.

The rains of summer, and the creeping vine
  That season after season clings in trust,
And shivered poppies red as Roman wine,-
  These things at last will haunt its crumbled
      dust-
Not dreams of empires shattered where they lie,
But children's laughter, birds. and bits of sky.



[5]

 

NAPOLEON IN HADES



THEY stirred uneasily, drew close their capes,
     And whispered each to each in awed
     surprise,
Seeing this figure brood along the shapes,
  World tragedies thick-crowding through his
      eyes.
On either side the ghostly groups drew back
  In huddled knots, yielding him way and room,
Their foolish mouths agape and fallen slack,
  Their bloodless fingers pointing through the
      gloom.

Still lonely and magnificent in guilt,
  Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream,
He paused at last upon the Stygian silt,
  And raised calm eyes above the angry
      stream. . .
Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came,
While Hades hummed with gossip of his name.



[6]

 


SYMBOLS



BEAUTIFUL words, like butterflies, blow by,
    With what swift colours on their fragile
      wings!-
Some that are less articulate than a sigh,
  Some that were names of ancient, lovely
      things.
What delicate careerings of escape,
  When they would pass beyond the baffled
      reach,
To leave a haunting shadow and a shape,-
  Eluding still the careful traps of speech.

And I who watch and listen, lie in wait,
  Seeing the cloudy cavalcades blow past,-
Happy if some bright vagrant, soon or late,
  May venture near the snares of sound, at last-
Most fortunate captor if, from time to time,
One may be taken, trembling, in a rhyme.



[71

 

EXILED



SENSING these sweet renewals through the
      earth,
  Where seed and soil most happily conspire
To furnish forth gay rituals of mirth,
  Of shaken leaves and pointed blooms of fire,-
I wonder then that thoughtful man, alone,
  Walks darkly and all puzzled with a doubt,
Bewildered, and in truth, half-fearful grown
  Of wild, wild earth and April's joyous rout.

When we are dust again with soil and seed,
  With happy earth through many a happy
      Spring,
We yet may learn that joy was all our need,-
  That man's long thought is but a broken wing,
Of less account, as things may come to pass,
Than Spring's first robin breasting through the
      grass.



[81

 

MARY SETS THE TABLE



SHE brings such gay and shining things to pass,
    With delicate, deft fingers that are learned
In ways of silverware and cup and glass,
  Arrayed in ordered patterns, trimly turned;-
And never guesses how this subtle ease
  Is older than the oldest tale we tell,
This gift that guides her through such tricks as
      these,--
  And my delight in watching her, as well.

She thinks not how this art with spoon and plate,
  Is one with ancient women baking bread:
An epic heritance come down of late
  To slender hands, and dear, delightful head,-
How Trojan housewives vie in serving me,
Where .Mary sets the table things for tea.



[91

 

AUTUMN TEA TIME



THE late light falls across the floor,
     Turned amber from a yellow tree,-
And there are yellow cups for four,
  And lemon for the tea.

The maples, with a million flames,
  Have lit the golden afternoon,
An ambient radiance that shames
  The ineffective moon. . .

Till dull and smoky greys return,
Quenching the street with chills and damps-
Leaving these asters where they burn,
  Mellow like evening lamps.



[101

 

BATTLEFIELDS



UNTO these fields of torn and rutted earth,
     These hills that lift their many a naked
     scar,
There yet shall come the indomitable mirth
  Of Springs that have remembered where they
      are.
The slow processions of sweet sun and rain
  Will crown the changing seasons as they pass,
With healing and green fruit and swollen grain,
  And banners of the gay and dauntless grass.

Here little paths will find their way again,
  And here the patient cattle come to stand,
Until, grown half-incredulous, these men
  Looking from doorways on the evening land,
Can scarcely think-so deep the quiet lies-
How all of this was ever otherwise.



[11]

 

ONE DAY IN AUTUMN



W   ITH   all our going through this golden
      weather,
  Where leaves have littered every forest way,
If there be lovers, they should be together:
  For this is golden . . . but the end is grey.
Beyond this shimmer where the bright leaves fall,
  Behind this haze of silver shot with gold,
There is a greyness waiting for it all,-
  A little longer . . . and the world is old.

And never loneliness grew more and more,
  As this that haunts these late October days,
With smoky twilights gathering at the door,
  With grey mist clouding on familiar ways .
And well for him who has another near,
When fires are lighted for the dying year.



[12]

 


AN OLD HOUSE AND GARDEN



AFTER wet twilights, when the rain is done,
     I think they walk these ways that knew
     their feet,
And tread these sunken pavements, one by one,
  Keen for old Summers that were wild and
      sweet;
Where rainy lilacs blow against the dark,
  And grasses bend beneath the weight they
      bare,
The night grows troubled, and we still may mark
  Their ghostly heart-break on the tender air.

Be still! We cannot know what trysts they keep,
  What eager hands reach vainly for a door,
Remembered since they folded them in sleep,-
  Frail hands that lift like lilacs, evermore,
And lean along the darkness, pale and still,
To touch a window or a crumbling sill.



[131

 

IMMORTALIS



A LL loved and lovely women, dear to rhyme:
     Thais, Cassandra, Helen and their fames,
Burn like tall candles through forgotten time,
  Lighting the Past's dim arras with their names.
Around their faces wars the eager dark,
  Wherein all other lights are sunken now;
Yet, casting back, the seeker still may mark
  A flame of hair, a bright, immortal brow.

Surely, where they have passed, one after one,
  Wearing their radiance to the darkened
      room,-
Surely, new-comers to Oblivion
  May still descry, in that all-quenching gloom,
Rare faces, lovely, lifted and alight,
Like tapers burning through the windy night.



[141

 

TOURING



G OD of Summer-I have seen
     World on world of summer green--
Summer earth and summer sky,
Fields of summer turning by;
Hills beyond us fall away,
Tumbled slopes in disarray,
Fold and melt into a plain:
Fire and gold of summer grain.

Orchards curving on a hill,
Heavy-fruited, green and still,
Heave a shoulder to the sky,
Bend and bow and hurry by;
Fields of clover burn and pass,
Cattle knee-deep in the grass
Lift a lazy head and look
Pictures in a picture-book. .
Corn in swift, revolving rows,
Dripping sunlight where it goes,
Wheels and glitters and returns:
Bladed beauty's lifted urns;
Woods all shadowed, cooling earth,
                [15]

 

TOURING



Murmuring of a quiet mirth,
Pour damp odours where they pass,
Breath of fern and earth and grass
Ramblers on a lichened wall,
Ramblers, ramblers pouring all
Colour that the world has known
Out upon an aging stone.-
Little towns of street and spire,
Dooryard roses, heart's desire,
Light a dream within the mind,
Light a dream . . . and fall behind.

God of mercies-when I slept,
World on world of summer kept
Turning, turning softly by,-
Summer earth and summer sky:
Fields of summer that will be
Summer always unto me-
Never lost, not left behind:
Always summer for my mind.



[16]

 


SUMMER



FROM     what lost centuries that were sweet
      before,
  Comes this long wave of Summer, bursting
      white
In shivered apple-blossoms on the shore
  That is our homeland for a day and night!
A wide, hushed spirit floats above the foam,
  A sweetness that was ancient flower and face,
When wine-red poppies stained the walls of
      Rome,
  And daisies starred those summer fields of
      Thrace.

Something survives and haunts the leafy shade,
  Some fragrance that was petals, once, and
      lips,
And whispered, brief avowals that they made,-
  Borne hither, now, in vague, invisible ships,
Whose weightless cargoes, poured upon the air,
Are flowers forgot, and faces that were fair.



[17]



2

 

OLD SHIPS



THERE is a memory stays upon old ships,
       A weightless cargo in the musty hold,-
Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips,
  Of stormy midnights,-and a tale untold.
They have remembered islands in the dawn,
  And windy capes that tried their slender spars,
The tortuous channels where their keels have
      gone,
  And calm, blue nights of stillness and the stars.

Ah, never think that ships forget a shore,
  Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise;
There is a dream upon them, evermore;-
  And there be some who say that sunk ships
      rise
To seek familiar harbours in the night,
Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.



[181

 

THE TOWN



           (For Morristown, N. J.)
                      I
M   EN loved not Athens in her maiden days
     More tenderly than these their tree-lined
     Town
Which, lacking Muses for a wider praise,
  Lives in their hearts in still and sweet renown.
The market square, the wagons in the dawn,
  The streets like music when their names are
      said,
The Sunday spire, the green, untrammelled
      lawn,-
  These be the things on which their hearts are
      fed.

And one long street climbs slowly to a hill
  That lifts her crosses for the Town to see
How sleep those quiet neighbours, townsmen still,
  How there is peace for such as weary be . .
And as they come, each like a sleepy guest,
She takes them, one by one, and gives them rest.
                    [191

 


THE TOWN



                     II
              SUNDAY MORNING
A thoughtful quiet lies upon the street,
  There is a hushed suspension on the air,
And the slow bells summon unhurried feet
  To dim reclosures kept for praise and prayer.
Drawn blinds have shut the merchant's wares
     away,
  Where two by two the goodly folk go by,
Out of their toilsome days into this day
  Of special airs beneath a special sky.

A little while, and all at last are gone;
  The streets are stilled of passers up and down;
Only the pealing bells toll on and on,-
  Till these, too, cease, and all the silent Town.
In street, and roof, and spire, and grassy sod,
Lies steeped in sunlight, smiling back at God.

                     III

                   IN APRIL

The way of Spring with little steepled towns
  Is such a shy, transforming sorcery
Of special lights and swift, incredible crowns,
  That grave men wonder how such things may
     be.
                     [20

 


THE TOWN



No friendly spire, no daily-trodden way
  But somehow alters in the April air,
Grown dearer still, on some enchanted day,
  For shining garments they have come to wear.

The way the spring comes to our Town is such
  That something quickens in the hearts of men,
Turning them lovers at its subtle touch,
  Till they must lift their heads again-again-
As lovers do, with frank, adoring eyes,
Where the long street of lifted steeples lies.

                     IV

                 WATCHERS

I think those townsmen, sleeping on the hill,
  Are never careless how the Town may fare,
But jealous of her quiet beauty still,
  Her ways and worth are things for which they
      care:
For shuttered house, and gateways and the
      grass,
  And how the streets, tree-bordered all and
      cool,
Are still a pleasant way for folks to pass:
  Men at their work and children home from
      school.
                    [21]

 

THE TOWN



I cannot doubt that they are pleased to see
  Their planted elms grown dearer year by year:
Their living witness unto such as we .
  And they are less regretful when they hear
Some name we speak, some tale we tell again,
Of days when they were warm and living men.

                     V

             ACKNOWLEDGMENT

These morning streets, the lawns of windy grass,
  And spires that wear the sunlight like a crown,
The square where busy, happy people pass:
  The living soul that lights the little Town,-
These have been shining beauty for my mind,
  And joy, and friendship, and a tale to tell,
And these have been a presence that is kind,
  A quiet music and a healing well.

Men who were lovers in the olden time,
  Who praised the beauty of bright hair and
      brow,
And left a little monument of rhyme,-
  Wrought not more tenderly than I would,
      now,
To turn some changing syllables of praise
For her whose quiet beauty fills my days.
                    [221

 


THE TOWN



                    VI

              THE TOWNSMAN

Here would I leave some subtle part of me,
  A moving presence through the friendly Town,
Abiding still, and happy still to be
  Where thoughtful men pass daily up and
      down;-
An essence stirring on the ways they fare,
  Haunting the drifted sunlight where they go,
Till one might mark a Something on the air,
  Most near and kind-though why, he would
      not know.

Happy, if it may chance, where two shall meet,
  Pausing to pass the friendly, idle word,
In the hushed twilight of the evening street,
  I might stand by, a secret, silent Third,-
Most happy listener, if I hear them tell
How, with the Town-and them-it still is well.



[28]

 

AFTER SUMMER RAIN



ADLL day the rain has filled the apple-trees,
    And stilled the orchard grasses of their
      mirth,
Turning these acres green and silvered seas
  That drowned the summer musics of the earth.
Now that this clearer twilight takes the hill,
  This thin, belated radiance, moving by,
Bird-calls return, and odours, rainy still,
  And colours glinting through the earth and
      sky.

Here where I watch the robins from the lane,
  That pirouette and preen among the leaves,
These swift, wet-winged arrivals in the rain
  Have spilled a wisdom from their dripping
      eaves,-
And beauty still is more than daily bread,
For fevered minds, and hearts discomforted.



1241

 

THE KINGS ARE PASSING DEATHWARD



THE Kings are passing deathward in the dark
     Of days that had been splendid where
     they went;
Their crowns are captive and their courts are
      stark
  Of purples that are ruinous, now, and rent.
For all that they have seen disastrous things:
  The shattered pomp, the split and shaken
      throne,
They cannot quite forget the way of Kings:
  Gravely they pass, majestic and alone.

With thunder on their brows, their faces set
  Toward the eternal night of restless shapes,
They walk in awful splendour, regal yet,
  Wearing their crimes like rich and kingly
      capes.  .
Curse them or taunt, they will not hear or see:
The Kings are passing deathward: let them be.



[25]

 

RENEWAL



STRANGE that this body in its lifted state
     Of independent will and power and lust,
Should still attest that kinship, dimmed of late,
  Its ancient, honoured brotherhood with dust;-
So that when Spring is quickening in the clay,
  Stirring dumb particles the way she fares,
This foolish flesh is no less moved than they,
  To sweet, unreasoned happiness, like theirs.

Not seed and soil alone, but heart and mind
  Are somehow swayed, till sober, earnest men,
In quick renewal with their dusty kind,
  Grow foolish-fond, like lads at play again. . .
So April, stirring blindly through the earth,
Can move us to a blind, unthinking mirth.



[26 I

 

RESPONDIT



A  PPLE-TREE, apple-tree, what is it worth:
     Beauty and passion and red-lipped mirth,
Fashioned of fire and the blossoming earth,-
Gone in a transient spring

Spending and spilling your wealth through the
      grass,
Coiner of coins that must rust and pass,-
Knowing the end is-alas, and alas!
What may a poet sing

"Sing of the dust that is blossomy boughs,
Dust that is more than your thought allows;
Sing you for ever impossible vows
Unto the springs to be.

"Dust in the dust is for fire and birth,
Beauty and passion and red-lipped mirth,
Fashioned of dust for the blossoming earth,-
Even of you and me."



127]

 

JEWELS



THE sea has worn her ships like precious stones,
    That marked her bosom's tremulous un-
      rest;
And for their loss no pendant moon atones
  That rides eternally upon her breast.
For sunk armadas or a little boat
  She still is wistful as a jewelled queen,
Who bears the burning memory at her throat,
  Of barque and sloop and brilliant brigantine.

The epic chanted to each sounding cave
  Is all of fleets gone down by lonely shores,-
The shining spars, the sails, the light they gave,
  Now scattered darkly on her grievous floors;-
And all the sea's long moan is like a sigh
For ruined ships remembered where they lie.



[28]

 

CHORUS



ALWAYS it was the old songs moved us most,
     For always there were other voices near,
A silver singing threading like a ghost,
  A thinner music than our ears could hear;
So that we sang more softly than we might,
  As leaving room for some expected tone;
Our singing was half listening in the night,
  For other singing drowned along our own,

And always there was silence at the end,
  For something that beguiled us with the
      thought
Of presences returning, friend to friend,
  Seeking again the fellowship they sought,
Pleased that we sing old songs they still may
      know,
Who sang with us, or listened, long ago.



[29]

 

SYMBOL



MY faith is all a doubtful thing,
        Wove on a doubtful loom,-
Until there comes, each showery Spring,
  A cherry-tree in bloom;

And Christ who died upon a tree
  That death had stricken bare,
Comes beautifully back to me,
  In blossoms, everywhere.



[301

 

TO AN UNKNOWN ANCESTOR



A4MONG the goodly folk whose name I bear.
       Men of the plough, the priesthood, and
     the mill,
Whose whispered wisdom follows where I fare,
  With ghostly promptings that must haunt me
     still,-
What place was there for you, whose different
    fame
  Delighted, once, the Don Juans of the town
The family annals have forgot your name,
  And time at last has hushed your gay renown.

But often in the chamber of my mind,
The righteous rise and leave, their counsels
     done,
And there is counsel of another kind,-
The room turns tavern, and there enters one
I pledge as kinsman in a reeling toast,
Still unregenerate and delightful ghost.



[31I

 

INTIMATION



H  ERE where the sunlight makes more strangely
     fair
  Each shining street, each steeple where it
     stands,
Something like Spring is blowing down the air,
  Touching the Town with light, transforming
     hands.
Half-shy and hesitant, a Something stays
  One trembling instant where the sun is
     sweet,-
A quickening presence on these winter ways,
  Haunting and swift-and gone on shining feet.

Yet, there was hint of coming daffodils,
  And slender spears uprising on the lawn,
And apple-blossoms on the April hills .
  Only the timid prophetess was gone,
Leaving a faith as gallant as the grass,
How that these things would surely come to
     pass.



[32J

 


ON A DEAD MOTH



WHO knows what trouble trembled in that
        throat,
  What sweet distraction for the summer moon,
That lured you out, a frail, careering boat,
  Across the midnight's purple, deep lagoon!
Some fire of madness lit that tiny brain,
  Some soft propulsion clouded through your
     breast,
And lifted you, a white and moving stain
  Against the dark of that disastrous quest.

The sadness of all brief and lovely things,
  The fine and futile passions that we bear,
Haunt the bright wreck of your too fragile
     wings,
  And win a pity for you, ended there,-
Like us, hurled backward to the final shade,
From mad adventures for a moon or maid.



[[83



3

 

MYSTIC



]ZOR Something glimpsed upon the topmost
      hill,
  For Something glinting down a country lane,
Where apple-blossoms shimmer white and spill
A ghostly shower close along the rain,-
For Something guessed beyond the hedge or tree,
Hinted and hid behind the evening star,
I am made captive and am never free
  Of Something that is neither near nor far.

A waking through the windy shapes of grass,
  A trembling as of light along a bough,-
These are for footprints and a way to pass,
  To follow after and to make a vow,-
To seek past glamours that are hourly spent,
And find but fainting lights down ways she
       went.



134]

 

LEVIATHANS



you who have seen the foam upon bright
       wrecks
  Of stately ships that never come to port,
Where sea-things crawl upon those sunken decks,
  And fishes through those cabins take their
     sport,
There where at last the gilded, gay saloon
  Turns watery cavern for the spawn of seas,
And spars, once splendid, rot beneath the moon
  That once was glad to sail with such as these,-

Let never word of pity pass your lips:
  For these were proud in ways you cannot
     know,
And pride is slow to die in ruined ships
  Who can but dream that some day they will go,
Their wounds all healed, their clean strength
     whole again,
Monarch of seas, marvel of moons and men.



[355]

 

IN VIOLATE



  WOULD be dumb before the evening star,
     And no light word should stir upon my
        lips
For autumn dusks where dying embers are,
  For evening seas and slow, returning ships.
I would be hushed before the face I love,
  Rising in star-like quiet close to mine,
Lest all the beauty thought is dreaming of
  Be rudely shaken and be spilled like wine.

For present loveliness there is no speech,
  A word may wrong a flower or a face,
And stars that swim beyond our stuttering reach
  Are safer in some golden, silent place. .
Only when these are broken, or pass by,
Wonder and worship speak . . . or sing
           . or cry.



[361

 

MANUSCRIPTS



As some monastic scrivener in his cell,
       Sensing a chill along the stony crypt,
Might labour yet more gorgeously to spell
  The final, splendid entries of his script,-
So with bright rubrics has the Autumn writ
  A coloured chronicle of things that pass,
Thumbing a yellow parchment that is lit
  With brief, illumined letters through the grass.

With what a prodigality of stains,
  Is fashioned this last entry and design,
By one aware of cold, approaching rains,-
  Who senses, through each iridescent line,
A presence at the shoulder-chills and blights,
Winds that will snuff his letters out like lights.



[37]

 

IN AN OLD BURIAL GROUND



J HAVE imagined . . . but I have not known
       What swift, recaptured seasons, lost of
       late,
  What long-regretted Aprils yet may wait
For each of these beyond his crypted stone.
Some Springtime that was all too quickly blown,
  Some Summer that was roses in his heart,
  May wake again in every sweetest part,
And show themselves familiarly his own.

It well may be there are eternal days
  For every frailest thing, beyond this door,
  Where roses are not ruined any more,
And April with her jonquils stays and stays,
  Outlingering walls of granite where they blow

  I have imagined . . . but I do not know.



[381

 

ENCORE



THIS old slow music will have never done
       With dancers who were graceful long ago;
A sigh returns them, one by ghostly one,
  To tunes and measures that they knew-and
      know.
These lifted faces, floating on a stream,
  Are one with other faces that were fair,-
That once were light,and summertime and dream,
  And drifted laughter over hall and stair.

The viols end, and two by two they pass
  Out of this blaze into the leafy dark,
Too ghostly and too dim across the grass,
  Too soon obscured and blotted, all,-till Hark!
This old, slow music that is like a sigh
For silver feet gone, ah, how lightly by.



[391

 

REDEMPTION



T HE old gods wait where secret beauty stirs,
       By green, untempled altars of the Spring,
If haply, still, there be some worshippers
  Whose hearts are moved with long remember-
      ing.
The cloven feet of Pan are on the hill,
  His reedy musics sadder than all rains,
Since none will seek-pipe ever as he will-
  Those unanointed and neglected fanes.

Beauty and joy-the bread and wine and all-
  We have foresworn; our noisy hearts forget;
We stray and on strange altars cry and call
  Ah, patient gods, be patient with us yet,
And Pan, pipe on, pipe on, till we shall rise,
And follow, and be happy, and be wise.



[401

 

THE HUNTED



T HERE is no rest for them, even in Death:
       As life had harried them from lair to lair,
Still with unquiet eyes and furtive breath,
  They haunt the secret by-ways of the air.
They know Earth's outer regions like a street,
  And on pale ships that make no port of call,
They pass in silence when they chance to meet,
  Saying no names, telling no tales at all.

Yet, on November nights of wind and storm,
  Shivered and driven from their ghostly shores,
They peer in lighted windows glowing warm,
  And thrill again at dear, remembered
       doors-
But they are wary listeners in the night:
Speak but a name, and they are off in flight.



[411

 

THE SCHOOL BOY READS HIS ILIAD



THE sounding battles leave him nodding still:
       The din of javelins at the distant wall
Is far too faint to wake that weary will
  That all but sleeps for cities where they fall.
He cares not if this Helen's face were fair,
  Nor if the thousand ships shall go or stay;
In vain the rumbling chariots throng the air
  With sounds the centuries shall not hush away.

Beyond the window where the Spring is new,
  Are marbles in a square, and tops again,
And floating voices tell him what they do,
  Luring his thought from these long-warring
      men,-
And though the camp be visited with gods,
He dreams of marbles and of tops, and nods.



[421

 

MOMENTS



EARTH has been splendid in her changing
       moods,
  Whose scattered glories mark the moment
      spent;
Reliques of mirth or thoughtful solitudes
  Betoken what a Christ or Dante meant.
What smiling dream, what happy, happy hour
  Yielded an Athens for the bride of Time!
What darker reve