Ships in Harbour Part 8

I think your soul goes clad in dominoes, Haunting old gardens that are always June, To sit within the shadow of a rose, And strum and sing your every fragile tune.

For all we meet you where the great world rides, You have no league with anything we are: Your life is all entangled in the tides Of goblin moons and musics and a star.

You talk to us of what the moment brings, Of earnest men and worlds of work-a-day, Of stocks and stores and half a hundred things,-- And all the while, your soul is leagues away, Troubling old ghostly gardens where it goes, Motlied with moonlight and your dominoes.

REVELATION

Walking these long, late twilights of the Spring, Where all the fret of life seems nothing worth, And grief, itself, a half-forgotten thing, Less keen than these cool odours of the earth,-- I sometimes think we find the secret gate That gives on gardens of enchanted light, Restoring glories that we lost of late, To quiet wisdom and more certain sight.

A holier mood will haunt our stubborn will, Till we shall see revealments through the gra.s.s, And stop, abashed, before a daffodil, A shining weed, a stone on ways we pa.s.s, Stand with bared head before the evening star, And know these holy things for what they are.

DISCOVERY

I shall discover ... after all and all ...

From what alembic issues forth the Spring, What cryptic finger, moving by a wall, Leaves tulip writs in tulip colouring; I shall have knowledge of the tug and grip Of tender roots where they are thrust and curled, And what frail doors are opened to let slip The hidden spear into the lighted world.

So I shall know the mint of daffodils, In darkened rooms where colour comes to birth, The mouldy chamber where the rose distils A sweetness that is Summer for the earth ...

And all the strange, alchemic, secret spell, I shall discover, ... but I shall not tell.

FOR BOB: A DOG

(_In Memoriam_)

You, who would never leave us to our sleeping, But ever nosed us out of bed to play, How can we ever think of you as keeping So strangely still, as stirless as the clay?

We cannot think you dead to games and laughter; Surely in some bright place beyond the sun, Girls race and play, and you go racing after, And lie across their feet when games are done.

Who knows, but in our separate times and places When we have slept the last, last sleep away, You yet may come, your nose against our faces, And wake us to our bright, immortal play...

And if you startle us with rude surprise, You'll beg--and win--forgiveness with those eyes.

IN SUMMER

I think these stars that draw so strangely near, That lean and listen for the turning earth, Are never wholly careless when they hear The murmur of her hushed and quiet mirth,-- But looking out upon a world in bloom, They half-remember, and they heed and hark: An old, old sweetness in the scented gloom, An old, old music in the singing dark.

Their own full Summers gone, such aeons past, Bird-song and bloom and swallow from the sky, These dead, desireless worlds find here, at last, Something remembered when the earth turns by, Sweet with these blowing odours they had known, This happy music that was once their own.

SURVIVAL

Men building ships, and women cooking meals, The mothering girl-child with her doll in arms, The ploughman trudging at his horse's heels, The fires we lay, our chill at war's alarms:-- These epic, ancient gestures of the race Have still the greatness of those great who wrought In other days than ours, who keep their place Along our shadowy borderlands of thought.

A word evokes them,--aye, a lifted hand Stirs slumbrous queens whose sceptres were upraised For life or death in what forgotten land!-- Where cowherds pa.s.s, old Grecian kine are grazed, And many a rocking-horse and laughing boy Lead back the tragic chariots of Troy.

NOMENCLATURE

There is a magic in the shining name, A legacy that beauty yields to speech, Something more quick and subtle than her fame,-- Who else had blown beyond our stunted reach.

By what occult divining does the will Fashion the cryptic word whose sound and sense Evoke the trembling image, lovely still, Of something lost but for this recompense?

There have been ships whose names were music's own; But speak them--and the lifted prows go by!

Women who stir as from the sculptor's stone, For syllables still tender as a sigh ...

And banished Aprils that we saw and heard, Return their lights and colours ... in a word.

TO ONE RETURNED FROM A JOURNEY

You have come home with old seas in your speech, And glimmering sea-roads meeting in your mind: The curve of creeping silver up the beach, And mornings whose white splendours daze and blind.

You have brought word of ships and where they go, Their names like music, and the flags they fly: Steamer ... and barque ... and churning tug and tow, And a lone sail at sunset blowing by.

Sh.o.r.eline and mist have still their ancient way: Through all your speech the sea's long rise and fall Sound their slow musics in the words you say:-- And I who sit and listen to it all, Am like an absent lover who would hear News of one loved, incalculably dear.

ATTENDANTS

The mild-eyed Oxen and the gentle a.s.s, By manger or in pastures that they graze, Lift their slow heads to watch us where we pa.s.s, A reminiscent wonder in their gaze.

Their low humility is like a crown, A grave distinction they have come to wear,-- Their look gone past us--to a little Town, And a white miracle that happened there.

An old, old vision haunts those quiet eyes, Where proud remembrance drifts to them again, Of Something that has made them humbly wise, --These burden-bearers for the race of men-- And lightens every load they lift or pull, Something that chanced because the Inn was full.