Collected Poems Volume II Part 103

(_A few months after the Milton Ter-centenary._)

I

The crowd has pa.s.sed away, Faded the feast, and most forget!

Master, we come with lowly hearts to pay Our deeper debt.

II

High they upheld the wine, And royally, royally drank to thee!

Loud were their plaudits. Now the lonely shrine Accepts our knee.

III

All dark and silent now!

Master, thy few are faithful still, And nightly hear thy brooks that warbling flow By Siloa's hill.

AT NOON

(AFTER THE FRENCH OF VERLAINE)

The sky is blue above the roof, So calm, so blue; One rustling bough above the roof Rocks, the noon through.

The bell-tower in the sky, aloof, Tenderly rings!

A bird upon the bough, aloof, Sorrows and sings.

My G.o.d, my G.o.d, and life is here So simple and still!

Far off, the murmuring town I hear At the wind's will....

_What hast thou done, thou, weeping there?

O quick, the truth!

What hast thou done, thou, weeping there, With thy lost youth?_

TO A FRIEND OF BOYHOOD LOST AT SEA

O warm blue sky and dazzling sea, Where have you hid my friend from me?

The white-chalk coast, the leagues of surf Laugh to the May-light, now as then, And violets in the short sweet turf Make fragmentary heavens again, And sea-born wings of rustling snow Pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s as long ago.

Old friend, do you remember yet The days when secretly we met In that old harbor years a-back, Where I admired your billowing walk, Or in that perilous fishing smack What tarry oaths perfumed your talk, The sails we set, the ropes we spliced, The raw potato that we sliced,

For mackerel-bait--and how it shines Far down, at end of the taut lines!-- And the great catch we made that day,

Loading our boat with rainbows, quick And quivering, while you smoked your clay And I took home your "Deadwood d.i.c.k"

In yellow and red, when day was done And you took home my Stevenson?

Not leagues, as when you sailed the deep, But only some frail bars of sleep Sever us now! Methinks you still Recall, as I, in dreams, the quay, The little port below the hill: And all the changes of the sea, Like some great music, can but roll Our lives still nearer to the goal.

OUR LADY OF THE TWILIGHT

Our Lady of the Twilight From out the sunset-lands Comes gently stealing o'er the world And stretches out her hands, Over the blotched and broken wall, The blind and foetid lane, She stretches out her hands and all Is beautiful again.

No factory chimneys can defile The beauty of her dress: She stoops down with her heavenly smile To heal and love and bless: All tortured things, all evil powers, All shapes of dark distress Are turned to fragrance and to flowers Beneath her kind caress.

Our Lady of the Twilight, She melts our prison-bars!

She makes the sea forget the sh.o.r.e, She fills the sky with stars, And stooping over wharf and mill, Chimney and shed and dome, Turns them to fairy palaces, Then calls her children home.

She stoops to bless the stunted tree, And from the furrowed plain, And from the wrinkled brow she smooths The lines of care and pain: Hers are the gentle hands and eyes And hers the peaceful breath That ope, in sunset-softened skies, The quiet gates of death.

_Our Lady of the Twilight, She hath such gentle hands, So lovely are the gifts she brings From out the sunset-lands, So bountiful, so merciful So sweet of soul is she; And over all the world she draws Her cloak of charity._

THE HILL-FLOWERS

"_I will lift up mine eyes to the hills"_

I

_Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, Ere I waken in the city--Life, thy dawn makes all things new!

And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men, Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!_

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew, O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you, By the little path I know, with the sea far below, And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow;

As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy, And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne'er could cloy,

From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom, With a song to G.o.d the Giver, o'er that waste of wild perfume; Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light, While the cottage-cl.u.s.tered valleys held the lilac last of night,

So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise, And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise.

Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you, Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

II