Poems of London and Other Verses Part 4

QUESTION

What of this gift of Life?

Pa.s.sionate, swift, and rife With pleasure or pain in the hand of the hurrying hours?

Oh little moment of s.p.a.ce, Oh Death's averted face, How shall we grasp, shall we grasp what still is ours?

Chill, chill on either hand Eternities must stand, And pants between them, pa.s.sionate and brief, The moment's self, to make Or unmake, but to take Just here, just now, before death turns the leaf.

Ah, if the leaf but turn, And if the soul discern Another message on another page!

But if death shuts the book?

We may not know nor look; We are fenced in upon a narrow stage;

While, splendid and intense, Quick-strung in every sense Life burns in us, and earth lies all around-- Far blue of summer seas, Young green of age-old trees-- Bound by the season, by the horizon bound.

Oh colour, sound, and light, Oh wondrous day and night, Pale dawns, and evenings' splendid stretch of gold; Keen beauty like a spear, Half pleasure and half fear, Goes through us for the things we may not hold.

Hot blood, hot noons, hot youth-- When Life seems all the truth, And Death a mumbled far old fairy-tale; When just the splendid days Suffice our eager gaze, The wondrous present that will never fail.

Then one day, with a fierce Clamour of heart, we pierce The light and see the shadows all behind, And then, and not till then, By the brief graves of men The utter loveliness of flowers we find.

So little stretch of days, And earth, with all her ways Lovely enough, I think, for Paradise; And body, mind, and heart, Each separate complex part, Wondrously made, and never quite made twice.

What of this gift of Life?

Shall it be worn in strife?

Shall it be idly spent, or idly stored?

Each for himself must dare If the answer is here--or there, Here for regret--or there for hope, O Lord?

LEONARDO TO MONNA LISA

I wish you were a beaker of Venetian gla.s.s That I might fill you with most precious wine And drink it, breathless--lo! the moments pa.s.s Of that subliminal communion.

I take you from my lips, and crush you--so!-- Into a thousand shining particles; So, at the last, my pa.s.sionate greed shall know That you were wholly mine.

I wish you were a rare, stringed instrument Beneath my hand, and from you I would wring Such unimagined music, as was sent Never before, along the quivering nerves; Such strange, sharp discords, out of which I'd mould Music more sweet than the spring nightingale's; Then, ere the magic of the sound was old, Would I not rend each string?

Possess you? Ah, not with the world's possession, You still, strange creature; neither force nor will Could make you serve a man's mere earthly pa.s.sion.

I would dissolve you, in one blinding flash, Into a drop of elemental dew, And let you trickle down the barren rock Into the black abyss, if so I knew That you henceforth were powerless to mock My spirit with your smile.

THE ETERNAL FLUX

Let us hold April back One splendid hour To bless the pa.s.sionate earth With golden shower Of sunlight from the blue; Oh April skies, That earth yearns up to; blue has burned to gold, Gold pales and dies In delicate faint rose, Oh flowing time, oh flux eternal. Hold The hour back. The April hour goes.

Then, let it be of May, When sound and sight And all that's beauty manifest Through all the day, Of deep on deep with green, Of light on light Across the waves of blossom, when the white Is lovelier than the rose, except the rose Is loveliest of all; When through the day the cuckoo calls unseen, And at nightfall The nightingale, whose music no man knows The magic heart of, sitting in the dark Sings still the world-old way; When all of these, Flowers and birds, and sunset and pale skies Seem gathered up in scent, And all of sound and sight Dissolved, ethereal, not of ears and eyes But only the soul-beauty of the brain Flows, in such waves of perfume, over all --Or like a song in colour, of such strain As spirits finer than our own must hear (The beautiful made clear); Then, then, when it is May, Surely our hand must touch eternity.

Day pales to night, stars pale upon the day, And May's last blossoming hour flows away.

Not of June either, though the hanging skies Make but a little span 'Twixt light and growing light; And when through that short darkness palely flies The silent great white moth --A spirit lost in the night, A soul, without will or way--; When the arch of trees Is duskily green, and close as a builded house Where love with love might stay, Guarded and still, from sight; When the hay is sweet in the fields And love is as sweet as hay; When the life-impulse of the wonderful untamed earth Has reached its fulness and height, Is broad and steady and wide As sweeps into splendid bays the flowing tide; When G.o.d might look on the land, When G.o.d might look on the sea, And say: "For ever be Perfect, completed, achieved, As now at this moment you stand."

Neither in June shall we stay the eternal flow Nor grasp the present with pitiful, mortal hand, For sliding past like water the June hours go.

"LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE MEASURE OF THE SOUL"

Love is the ultimate measure of the soul; Love is the biting acid, the sure test To strip the naked gold, discard the rest Of earthly stuffs; Love is the one thing whole In a world of broken parts, for Love is all.

Love is creation; Love is the low call Of deep to deep; Love is the force that shapes The thing that it believes, and while there gapes The black earth-pit, where the poor flesh must fall, Love builds on hope, and buds eternal life.

Love is a victory unsoiled by strife; Who is there that shall adequately name All that Love is, this thing as swift as flame And vast as heaven, yet in every life Tamed to the narrow needs of little men?

From humble love, that makes the partridge hen Brave for her chickens, to the Love that shakes The world from Calvary, all love partakes Of immortality; one cannot pen Divinity in words; Love is divine.

The very essence of G.o.d does Love enshrine; For let the heart, however sorely tried, Open itself to loving, and the wide Earth is a home; love-lacking must decline Where black fears crowd across the starless dark.

For Love is light; the faith that will embark, Unpiloted, upon uncharted seas Is Love alone; the fiery leap to seize The splendid distant aim, the invisible mark, What else but Love's? Love is the thing that stands Unchanged, on changing tides and shifting sands.

NOVEMBER 8

THE LITTLE SUMMER OF ALL SAINTS

The year stands still, the tearing winter winds Hold off their claws a moment, that the trees May keep the glory of their blended gold A little minute; there's not so much breeze As summer mornings hold.

Golden and still the hours; russet gold The birch-leaves o'er the silver of the bark; Pale gold the poplars, like a lady's hair, And thunderous gold along the hollows dark The sunlit brackens flare.

THE LOVERS

There are ghosts we walk with, lady of mine, Arm in arm, and side by side, Pallid ghosts, though the sun may shine, Ghosts that are cold in the warmth of day, And neither of us may fend them away, But step by step they go with us, stride by stride.

There are doors in your heart that are shut to me, And behind them dwellers I cannot know; And my soul has windows that open wide On a ghostly, memoried country-side, That--lady of mine--you never will see, Where your voice will never be heard, nor your footsteps go.

So we walk together, hand in hand, While dark eyes peer at us, pale forms come, And speak in my ear--or call your name With a voice I hear not, for praise or blame, And you walk alone with that ghostly band, While I go by the side of you, pitying, powerless, dumb.

THE GENTLE HEART