Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus Part 9

O ghosts that walk by Fringford brook, 'Tis more than peace you give, For you, who knew so well to die, Shall teach us how to live.

PRISON

In the prison-house of the dark I lay with open eyes, And pale beyond the pale windows I saw the dawn rise.

From past the bounds of s.p.a.ce Where earthly vapours climb, There stirred the voice I shall not hear On this side Time.

There is one death for the body, And one death for the heart, And one prayer for the hope of the end, When some links part.

Christ, from uncounted leagues, Beyond the sun and moon, Strike with the sword of Thine own pity-- Bring the dawn soon.

PRESAGE

The year declines, and yet there is A clearness, as of hinted spring; And chilly, like a virgin's kiss, The cold light touches everything.

The world seems dazed with purity, There hangs, this spell-bound afternoon, Beyond the naked cherry tree The new-wrought sickle of the moon.

What is this thraldom, pale and still, That holds so pa.s.sionless a sway?

Lies death in this ethereal chill, New life, or prelude of decay?

In the frail rapture of the sky There bodes, transfigured, far aloof, The veil that hides eternity, With life for warp and death for woof.

We see the presage--not with eyes, But dimly, with the shrinking soul-- Scarce guessing, in this fateful guise, The glory that enwraps the whole,

The light no flesh may apprehend, Lent but to spirit-eyes, to give Sign of that splendour of the end That none may look upon and live.

THE BIRD IN THE VALLEY

Above the darkened house the night is spread, The hidden valley holds Vapour and dew and silence in its folds, And waters sighing on the river-bed.

No wandering wind there is To swing the star-wreaths of the clematis Against the stone; Out of the hanging woods, above the sh.o.r.es, One liquid voice of throbbing crystal pours, Singing alone.

A stream of magic through the heart of night Its unseen pa.s.sage cleaves; Into the darkened room below the eaves It falls from out the woods upon the height, A strain of ecstasy Wrought on the confines of eternity, Glamour and pain, And echoes gathered from a world of years, Old phantoms, dim like mirage seen through tears, But young again.

"Peace, peace," the bird sings on amid the woods, "Peace, from the land that is the spirit's goal,-- The land that nonce may see but with his soul,-- Peace on the darkened house above the floods."

Pale constellations of the clematis, Hark to that voice of his That will not cease, Swing low, droop low your spray, Light with your white stars all the shadowed way To peace, peace!

BACK TO THE LAND

Out in the upland places, I see both dale and down, And the ploughed earth with open scores Turning the green to brown.

The bare bones of the country Lie gaunt in winter days, Grim fastnesses of rock and scaur, Sure, while the year decays.

And, as the autumn withers, And the winds strip the tree, The companies of buried folk Rise up and speak with me;--

From homesteads long forgotten, From graves by church and yew, They come to walk with noiseless tread Upon the land they knew;--

Men who have tilled the pasture The writhen thorn beside, Women within grey vanished walls Who bore and loved and died.

And when the great town closes Upon me like a sea, Daylong, above its weary din, I hear them call to me.

Dead folk, the roofs are round me, To bar out field and hill, And yet I hear you on the wind Calling and calling still;

And while, by street and pavement, The day runs slowly through, My soul, across these haunted downs, Goes forth and walks with you.

THE SCARLET LILIES

I see her as though she were standing yet In her tower at the end of the town, When the hot sun mounts and when dusk comes down, With her two hands laid on the parapet; The curve of her throat as she turns this way, The bend of her body--I see it all; And the watching eyes that look day by day O'er the flood that runs by the city wall.

The winds by the river would come and go On the flame-red gown she was wont to wear, And the scarlet lilies that crowned her hair, And the scarlet lilies that grew below.

I used to lie like a wolf in his lair, With a burning heart and a soul in thrall, Gazing across in a fume of despair O'er the flood that runs by the river wall.

I saw when he came with his tiger's eyes, That held you still in the grip of their glance, And the cat-smooth air he had learned in France, The light on his sword from the evening skies; When the heron stood at the water's edge, And the sun went down in a crimson ball, I crouched in a thicket of rush and sedge By the flood that runs by the river wall.

He knew where the stone lay loose in its place, And a foot might hold in the c.h.i.n.k between, The carven niche where the arms had been, And the iron rings in the tower's face; For the scarlet lilies lay broken round, Snapped through at the place where his tread would fall, As he slipped at dawn to the yielding ground, Near the flood that runs by the river wall.

I gave the warning--I ambushed the band In the alder-clump--he was one to ten-- Shall I fight for my soul as he fought then, Lord G.o.d, in the grasp of the devil's hand?

As the c.o.c.k crew up in the morning chill, And the city waked to the watchman's call, There were four left lying to sleep their fill At the flood that runs by the city wall.

Had I owned this world to its farthest part, I had bartered all to have had his share; Yet he died that night in the city square, With a scarlet lily above his heart.

And she? Where the torrent goes by the slope, There rose in the river a stifled call, And two white hands strove with a knotted rope In the flood that runs by the river wall.

Christ! I had thought I should die like a man, And that death, grim death, might himself be sweet, When the red sod rocked to the horses' feet, And the knights went down as they led the van;-- But the end that waits like a trap for me, Will come when I fight for my latest breath, With a white face drowned between G.o.d and me In the flood that runs by the banks of death.

FROSTBOUND

When winter's pulse seems dead beneath the snow, And has no throb to give, Warm your cold heart at mine, beloved, and so Shall your heart live.