New Poems Part 18

Or rather to behold her when She plies for me the unresting pen, And when the loud a.s.sault of squalls Resounds upon the roof and walls, And the low thunder growls and I Raise my dictating voice on high.

What glory for a boy of ten Who now must three gigantic men And two enormous, dapple grey New Zealand pack-horses array And lead, and wisely resolute Our day-long business execute In the far sh.o.r.e-side town. His soul Glows in his bosom like a coal; His innocent eyes glitter again, And his hand trembles on the rein.

Once he reviews his whole command, And chivalrously planting hand On hip-a borrowed att.i.tude- Rides off downhill into the wood.

I meanwhile in the populous house apart Sit snugly chambered, and my silent art Uninterrupted, unremitting ply Before the dawn, by morning lamplight, by The glow of smelting noon, and when the sun Dips past my westering hill and day is done; So, bending still over my trade of words, I hear the morning and the evening birds, The morning and the evening stars behold; So there apart I sit as once of old Napier in wizard Merchiston; and my Brown innocent aides in home and husbandry Wonder askance. What ails the boss? they ask.

Him, richest of the rich, an endless task Before the earliest birds or servants stir Calls and detains him daylong prisoner?

He whose innumerable dollars hewed This cleft in the boar and devil-haunted wood, And bade therein, from sun to seas and skies, His many-windowed, painted palace rise Red-roofed, blue-walled, a rainbow on the hill, A wonder in the forest glade: he still,

Unthinkable Aladdin, dawn and dark, Scribbles and scribbles, like a German clerk.

We see the fact, but tell, O tell us why?

My reverend washman and wise butler cry.

Meanwhile at times the manifold Imperishable perfumes of the past And coloured pictures rise on me thick and fast: And I remember the white rime, the loud Lamplitten city, shops, and the changing crowd; And I remember home and the old time, The winding river, the white moving rhyme, The autumn robin by the river-side That pipes in the grey eve.

The old lady (so they say), but I Admire your young vitality.

Still brisk of foot, still busy and keen In and about and up and down.

I hear you pa.s.s with bustling feet The long verandahs round, and beat Your bell, and "Lotu! Lotu!" cry; Thus calling our queer company, In morning or in evening dim, To prayers and the oft mangled hymn.

All day you watch across the sky The silent, shining cloudlands ply, That, huge as countries, swift as birds, Beshade the isles by halves and thirds, Till each with battlemented crest Stands anch.o.r.ed in the ensanguined west, An Alp enchanted. All the day You hear the exuberant wind at play, In vast, unbroken voice uplift, In roaring tree, round whistling clift.

AIR OF DIABELLI'S

CALL it to mind, O my love.

Dear were your eyes as the day, Bright as the day and the sky; Like the stream of gold and the sky above, Dear were your eyes in the grey.

We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!

Now along the silent river, azure Through the sky's inverted image, Softly swam the boat that bore our love, Swiftly ran the shallow of our love Through the heaven's inverted image, In the reedy mazes round the river.

See along the silent river,

See of old the lover's shallop steer.

Berried brake and reedy island, Heaven below and only heaven above.

Through the sky's inverted image Swiftly swam the boat that bore our love.

Berried brake and reedy island, Mirrored flower and shallop gliding by.

All the earth and all the sky were ours, Silent sat the wafted lovers, Bound with grain and watched by all the sky, Hand to hand and eye to . . . eye.

Days of April, airs of Eden, Call to mind how bright the vanished angel hours, Golden hours of evening, When our boat drew homeward filled with flowers.

O darling, call them to mind; love the past, my love.

Days of April, airs of Eden.

How the glory died through golden hours, And the shining moon arising; How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers.

Age and winter close us slowly in.

Level river, cloudless heaven, Islanded reed mazes, silver weirs; How the silent boat with silver Threads the inverted forest as she goes, Broke the trembling green of mirrored trees.

O, remember, and remember How the berries hung in garlands.

Still in the river see the shallop floats.

Hark! Chimes the falling oar.

Still in the mind Hark to the song of the past!

Dream, and they pa.s.s in their dreams.

Those that loved of yore, O those that loved of yore!

Hark through the stillness, O darling, hark!

Through it all the ear of the mind

Knows the boat of love. Hark!

Chimes the falling oar.

O half in vain they grew old.

Now the halcyon days are over, Age and winter close us slowly round, And these sounds at fall of even Dim the sight and m.u.f.fle all the sound.

And at the married fireside, sleep of soul and sleep of fancy, Joan and Darby.

Silence of the world without a sound; And beside the winter f.a.ggot

Joan and Darby sit and dose and dream and wake- Dream they hear the flowing, singing river, See the berries in the island brake; Dream they hear the weir, See the gliding shallop mar the stream.

Hark! in your dreams do you hear?

Snow has filled the drifted forest; Ice has bound the . . . stream.

Frost has bound our flowing river; Snow has whitened all our island brake.

Berried brake and reedy island, Heaven below and only heaven above azure Through the sky's inverted image Safely swam the boat that bore our love.

Dear were your eyes as the day, Bright ran the stream, bright hung the sky above.

Days of April, airs of Eden.

How the glory died through golden hours, And the shining moon arising, How the boat drew homeward filled with flowers.

Bright were your eyes in the night: We have lived, my love; O, we have loved, my love.

Now the . . . days are over, Age and winter close us slowly round.

Vainly time departs, and vainly Age and winter come and close us round.

Hark the river's long continuous sound.

Hear the river ripples in the reeds.

Lo, in dreams they see their shallop Run the lilies down and drown the weeds Mid the sound of crackling f.a.ggots.

So in dreams the new created Happy past returns, to-day recedes, And they hear once more,

From the old years, Yesterday returns, to-day recedes, And they hear with aged hearing warbles

Love's own river ripple in the weeds.

And again the lover's shallop; Lo, the shallop sheds the streaming weeds; And afar in foreign countries In the ears of aged lovers.

And again in winter evens Starred with lilies . . . with stirring weeds.

In these ears of aged lovers Love's own river ripples in the reeds.