The Deluge and Other Poems Part 3

THE WIFE

Ah me, I can no more, we wait on G.o.d's event.

THE SEEKER

There have been summer nights so exquisite The soul in me did pant with pain, And with its efforts vain To grasp the beauty of the infinite; When 'twixt my senses and the silent stars The world of forms was purged away, And all creation lay Intense, eternal, without bounds or bars; And all my yearning soul Reached up to, strove for, failed to grasp that Whole.

Ye who have felt the ache Of visible beauty burning through your brain, And vainly tried to break Through forms of beauty, Beauty to attain; Ye who have felt the weight Of much desire in a little s.p.a.ce; G.o.d in your narrow brain, and in the face Of mortals the large lineaments of Fate; Ye who have felt the pang, Even in love's most full communion Of the soul's loneliness, which may not hang For all its love, another soul upon;

Draw near, draw near to me now, ye who long Above the common things, For truth approaches us on flaming wings And all life's tangle shall be straightened now, And right shall rise triumphant over wrong, And nought be great or little, weak or strong, But all Creation share in knowledge vast As in design; with neither first nor last.

A moment let the waiting heart be dumb, Last silence ere the revelation come-- The truth! the truth!

[_He is struck dead._

THE MOTHER

Alas! the Wrath of G.o.d Flashing upon us from the angry skies, Ah woe! this is destruction.

THE WIFE

Let it be, Since low he lies, struck by a meteor, With truth upon his lips.

THE MOTHER

No meteor that; His father, my G.o.d-lover, struck him down.

THE WIFE

Since end must be what matter how it come?

Here will I sit, his head upon my breast, Where it has lain in sleep, my arms about His kingly body, sit, and wait the end, Mocking at G.o.d.

THE CHORUS

Alas! alas! alas!

The skies are torn, the heavens crash, From pole to pole in terror rending, Mountains against mountains dash, The blinding lightnings blaze and flash, And are shaken the foundations Of the earth, for earth is ending.

Black the air and black the waters, Lifeless the life-giving sun; Woe upon earth's sons and daughters, For the Wrath is now begun.

Ah, too late you clamour wildly, Earth is blind, and earth is dumb, You by earth and earth by you Child and mother are undone; Let your cry to G.o.d ascend, For from G.o.d the terrors come.

Now the father is destroyer And the mother is the grave, Woe is us for G.o.d forsakes us And 'tis G.o.d alone can save.

Oh, a union of destruction Sons of G.o.d and nature's daughters, Seed of terror, seed of evil, Nurtured for the hungry waters.

Is there help now? Oh beseeching, Raise for help impotent hands.

While the frenzied winds are roaring, Hound-like loosened from their bands, And the waters' tumult reaching To the stars, where quiet stands G.o.d contemplative. Destruction, 'Tis the uttermost destruction he demands!

Now the waters are uprising And the mountain summits bend, Headlong all the turrets hurling, Towers and temples now descend; All in black confusion whirling Earth and heaven rocking blend, In the waters wildly swirling To annihilation's end.

Alas! alas! alas!

Neither foothold, hand-hold, safety For the body nor the soul.

Cracks the earth, the heavens rend, And the waters of despair consuming roll.

SONNETS

TO J. F. W.

We've touched the borderland of death and life And come back to the primroses again, And see with different eyes the slanting rain Buffet the larches in a short-lived strife; With different eyes, for we have looked on death, And know what life is for; we felt the hand Of that sad Lady of the other Land, And now, with her released, we draw our breath.

Life is for gladness, not for mulish days Between the galling shafts of commonplace.

See, now, the willow ta.s.sels all ablaze Against the background of the windy blue!

And in the dusk the crocus glimmers through The footsteps of Persephone we trace.

TO ANDREW CHATTO

It is your thin, ungracious wine that runs Within a year of bottling, to your tongue, The n.o.blest wine is somewhat harsh when young; Lay it aside for many moons and suns, Send it, if so you will, its "wander-year,"

A-battling with the ocean's storm and strife, Then open it, when ripe are wine and life, And see what mellow sunshine you have there.

Here is another year to crown that head So full of years and honour, dear old friend, Whose wisdom makes a constant, quiet balm For tricks and trials of life, whose age doth blend Young-heartedness with philosophic calm, And sunshine on this generation shed.

NOVEMBER

There is a gleam of sunshine on the earth After so many weary days of rain, A break of yellowing clouds, which offers plain The sun's veiled disc (a very shadow-birth, But still the sun, with sun's November worth); The sky is of a Turner lived again, Such colours through the misty greyness gain They almost seem to touch with spring the earth.

How should we not be glad, when this one day Out of the saddest of all months, appears Suddenly beautiful? A single ray Of sunlight strikes through cloud, and clears The whole drear countryside of grey; So may one word dispel a cloud of tears.

TO A ROBIN IN DECEMBER

In Paradise there is no sweeter song Than that thin music that the robin makes On short December afternoons, and takes The winter woods, with utterance frail, yet strong; Till all the barren fields, and ruined brakes, The flowerless gardens, and the hedges bare Dream of the spring, and all the rainy air Seems soft and mellow as the summer lakes.

More precious than the treasures of the East, (Guarded by silver-footed antelope,) Or all the nightingales that haunt the grove Of Persian gardens; silver pipe of hope!

That Nature gives us when her gifts are least, Sing to our hearts, oh, little voice of love.