Part 3

William Sharp was born at Garthland Place, Scotland, in 1855. He wrote several volumes of biography and criticism, published a book of plays greatly influenced by Maeterlinck (_Vistas_) and was editor of "The Canterbury Poets" series.

His feminine _alter ego_, Fiona Macleod, was a far different personality. Sharp actually believed himself possessed of another spirit; under the spell of this other self, he wrote several volumes of Celtic tales, beautiful tragic romances and no little unusual poetry. Of the prose stories written by Fiona Macleod, the most barbaric and vivid are those collected in _The Sin-Eater and Other Tales_; the longer _Pharais, A Romance of the Isles_, is scarcely less unique.

In the ten years, 1882-1891, William Sharp published four volumes of rather undistinguished verse. In 1896 _From the Hills of Dream_ appeared over the signature of Fiona Macleod; _The Hour of Beauty_, an even more distinctive collection, followed shortly. Both poetry and prose were always the result of two sharply differentiated moods constantly fluctuating; the emotional mood was that of Fiona Macleod, the intellectual and, it must be admitted the more arresting, was that of William Sharp.

He died in 1905.

THE VALLEY OF SILENCE

In the secret Valley of Silence No breath doth fall; No wind stirs in the branches; No bird doth call: As on a white wall A breathless lizard is still, So silence lies on the valley Breathlessly still.

In the dusk-grown heart of the valley An altar rises white: No rapt priest bends in awe Before its silent light: But sometimes a flight Of breathless words of prayer White-wing'd enclose the altar, Eddies of prayer.

THE VISION

In a fair place Of whin and grass, I heard feet pass Where no one was.

I saw a face Bloom like a flower-- Nay, as the rainbow-shower Of a tempestuous hour.

It was not man, or woman: It was not human: But, beautiful and wild, Terribly undefiled, I knew an unborn child.

_Oscar Wilde_

Oscar Wilde was born at Dublin, Ireland, in 1856, and even as an undergraduate at Oxford he was marked for a brilliant career. When he was a trifle over 21 years of age, he won the Newdigate Prize with his poem _Ravenna_.

Giving himself almost entirely to prose, he speedily became known as a writer of brilliant epigrammatic essays and even more brilliant paradoxical plays such as _An Ideal Husband_ and _The Importance of Being Earnest_. His aphorisms and flippancies were quoted everywhere; his fame as a wit was only surpassed by his notoriety as an aesthete. (See Preface.)

Most of his poems in prose (such as _The Happy Prince_, _The Birthday of the Infanta_ and _The Fisherman and His Soul_) are more imaginative and richly colored than his verse; but in one long poem, _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ (1898), he sounded his deepest, simplest and most enduring note. Prison was, in many ways, a regeneration for Wilde. It not only produced _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ but made possible his most poignant piece of writing, _De Profundis_, only a small part of which has been published. _Salome_, which has made the author's name a household word, was originally written in French in 1892 and later translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas, accompanied by the famous illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. More recently this heated drama, based on the story of Herod and Herodias, was made into an opera by Richard Strauss.

Wilde's society plays, flashing and cynical, were the forerunners of Bernard Shaw's audacious and far more searching ironies. One sees the origin of a whole school of drama in such epigrams as "The history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known: the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts." Or "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Wilde died at Paris, November 30, 1900.

REQUIESCAT

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast; I vex my heart alone, She is at rest.

Peace, peace; she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet; All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it.

IMPRESSION DU MATIN

The Thames nocturne of blue and gold Changed to a harmony in grey; A barge with ochre-coloured hay Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold

The yellow fog came creeping down The bridges, till the houses' walls Seemed changed to shadows, and St. Paul's Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang Of waking life; the streets were stirred With country waggons; and a bird Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

But one pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone.

_John Davidson_

John Davidson was born at Barrhead, Renfrewshire, in 1857. His _Ballads and Songs_ (1895) and _New Ballads_ (1897) attained a sudden but too short-lived popularity, and his great promise was quenched by an apathetic public and by his own growing disillusion and despair. His sombre yet direct poetry never tired of repeating his favorite theme: "Man is but the Universe grown conscious."

Davidson died by his own hand in 1909.

A BALLAD OF HELL

'A letter from my love to-day! Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!' She struck a happy tear away, And broke the crimson seal.

'My love, there is no help on earth, No help in heaven; the dead-man's bell Must toll our wedding; our first hearth Must be the well-paved floor of hell.'

The colour died from out her face, Her eyes like ghostly candles shone; She cast dread looks about the place, Then clenched her teeth and read right on.

'I may not pass the prison door; Here must I rot from day to day, Unless I wed whom I abhor, My cousin, Blanche of Valencay.

'At midnight with my dagger keen, I'll take my life; it must be so. Meet me in hell to-night, my queen, For weal and woe.'

She laughed although her face was wan, She girded on her golden belt, She took her jewelled ivory fan, And at her glowing missal knelt.

Then rose, 'And am I mad?' she said: She broke her fan, her belt untied; With leather girt herself instead, And stuck a dagger at her side.

She waited, shuddering in her room, Till sleep had fallen on all the house. She never flinched; she faced her doom: They two must sin to keep their vows.

Then out into the night she went, And, stooping, crept by hedge and tree; Her rose-bush flung a snare of scent, And caught a happy memory.

She fell, and lay a minute's space; She tore the sward in her distress; The dewy grass refreshed her face; She rose and ran with lifted dress.

She started like a morn-caught ghost Once when the moon came out and stood To watch; the naked road she crossed, And dived into the murmuring wood.

The branches snatched her streaming cloak; A live thing shrieked; she made no stay! She hurried to the trysting-oak-- Right well she knew the way.

Without a pause she bared her breast, And drove her dagger home and fell, And lay like one that takes her rest, And died and wakened up in hell.

She bathed her spirit in the flame, And near the centre took her post; From all sides to her ears there came The dreary anguish of the lost.

The devil started at her side, Comely, and tall, and black as jet. 'I am young Malespina's bride; Has he come hither yet?'

'My poppet, welcome to your bed.' 'Is Malespina here?' 'Not he! To-morrow he must wed His cousin Blanche, my dear!'

'You lie, he died with me to-night.' 'Not he! it was a plot' ... 'You lie.' 'My dear, I never lie outright.' 'We died at midnight, he and I.'

The devil went. Without a groan She, gathered up in one fierce prayer, Took root in hell's midst all alone, And waited for him there.

She dared to make herself at home Amidst the wail, the uneasy stir. The blood-stained flame that filled the dome, Scentless and silent, shrouded her.

How long she stayed I cannot tell; But when she felt his perfidy, She marched across the floor of hell; And all the damned stood up to see.

The devil stopped her at the brink: She shook him off; she cried, 'Away!' 'My dear, you have gone mad, I think.' 'I was betrayed: I will not stay.'

Across the weltering deep she ran; A stranger thing was never seen: The damned stood silent to a man; They saw the great gulf set between.

To her it seemed a meadow fair; And flowers sprang up about her feet She entered heaven; she climbed the stair And knelt down at the mercy-seat.

Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.

IMAGINATION

(_From "New Year's Eve"_)

There is a dish to hold the sea, A brazier to contain the sun, A compass for the galaxy, A voice to wake the dead and done!

That minister of ministers, Imagination, gathers up The undiscovered Universe, Like jewels in a jasper cup.

Its flame can mingle north and south; Its accent with the thunder strive; The ruddy sentence of its mouth Can make the ancient dead alive.

The mart of power, the fount of will, The form and mould of every star, The source and bound of good and ill, The key of all the things that are,

Imagination, new and strange In every age, can turn the year; Can shift the poles and lightly change The mood of men, the world's career.

_William Watson_

William Watson was born at Burley-in-Wharfedale, Yorkshire, August 2, 1858. He achieved his first wide success through his long and eloquent poems on Wordsworth, Shelley, and Tennyson--poems that attempted, and sometimes successfully, to combine the manners of these masters. _The Hope of the World_ (1897) contains some of his most characteristic verse.

It was understood that he would be appointed poet laureate upon the death of Alfred Austin. But some of his radical and semi-political poems are supposed to have displeased the powers at Court, and the honor went to Robert Bridges. His best work, which is notable for its dignity and moulded imagination, may be found in _Selected Poems_, published in 1903 by John Lane Co.

ODE IN MAY[1]

Let me go forth, and share The overflowing Sun With one wise friend, or one Better than wise, being fair, Where the pewit wheels and dips On heights of bracken and ling, And Earth, unto her leaflet tips, Tingles with the Spring.

What is so sweet and dear As a prosperous morn in May, The confident prime of the day, And the dauntless youth of the year, When nothing that asks for bliss, Asking aright, is denied, And half of the world a bridegroom is, And half of the world a bride?

The Song of Mingling flows, Grave, ceremonial, pure, As once, from lips that endure, The cosmic descant rose, When the temporal lord of life, Going his golden way, Had taken a wondrous maid to wife That long had said him nay.

For of old the Sun, our sire, Came wooing the mother of men, Earth, that was virginal then, Vestal fire to his fire. Silent her bosom and coy, But the strong god sued and pressed; And born of their starry nuptial joy Are all that drink of her breast.

And the triumph of him that begot, And the travail of her that bore, Behold, they are evermore As warp and weft in our lot. We are children of splendour and flame, Of shuddering, also, and tears. Magnificent out of the dust we came, And abject from the Spheres.

O bright irresistible lord, We are fruit of Earth's womb, each one, And fruit of thy loins, O Sun, Whence first was the seed outpoured. To thee as our Father we bow, Forbidden thy Father to see, Who is older and greater than thou, as thou Art greater and older than we.

Thou art but as a word of his speech, Thou art but as a wave of his hand; Thou art brief as a glitter of sand 'Twixt tide and tide on his beach; Thou art less than a spark of his fire, Or a moment's mood of his soul: Thou art lost in the notes on the lips of his choir That chant the chant of the Whole.

ESTRANGEMENT[2]

So, without overt breach, we fall apart, Tacitly sunder--neither you nor I Conscious of one intelligible Why, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. So, with resigned and acquiescent heart, Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie, I seem to see an alien shade pass by, A spirit wherein I have no lot or part.

Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim, From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn That June on her triumphal progress goes Through arched and bannered woodlands; while for him She is a legend emptied of concern, And idle is the rumour of the rose.

SONG

April, April, Laugh thy girlish laughter; Then, the moment after, Weep thy girlish tears, April, that mine ears Like a lover greetest, If I tell thee, sweetest, All my hopes and fears. April, April, Laugh thy golden laughter, But, the moment after, Weep thy golden tears!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] From _The Hope of the World_ by William Watson. Copyright, 1897, by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

[2] From _The Hope of the World_ by William Watson. Copyright, 1897, by John Lane Company. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

_Francis Thompson_

Born in 1859 at Preston, Francis Thompson was educated at Owen's College, Manchester. Later he tried all manner of strange ways of earning a living. He was, at various times, assistant in a boot-shop, medical student, collector for a book seller and homeless vagabond; there was a period in his life when he sold matches on the streets of London. He was discovered in terrible poverty (having given up everything except poetry and opium) by the editor of a magazine to which he had sent some verses the year before. Almost immediately thereafter he became famous. His exalted mysticism is seen at its purest in "A Fallen Yew" and "The Hound of Heaven." Coventry Patmore, the distinguished poet of an earlier period, says of the latter poem, which is unfortunately too long to quote, "It is one of the very few _great_ odes of which our language can boast."

Thompson died, after a fragile and spasmodic life, in St. John's Wood in November, 1907.

DAISY

Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill-- O breath of the distant surf!--

The hills look over on the South, And southward dreams the sea; And with the sea-breeze hand in hand Came innocence and she.

Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs; Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things.

She listened with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape whose veins Run snow instead of wine.

She knew not those sweet words she spake, Nor knew her own sweet way; But there's never a bird, so sweet a song Thronged in whose throat all day.

Oh, there were flowers in Storrington On the turf and on the spray; But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Was the Daisy-flower that day!

Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face. She gave me tokens three:-- A look, a word of her winsome mouth, And a wild raspberry.

A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,--strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to her little hand.

For standing artless as the air, And candid as the skies, She took the berries with her hand, And the love with her sweet eyes.

The fairest things have fleetest end, Their scent survives their close: But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose.

She looked a little wistfully, Then went her sunshine way:-- The sea's eye had a mist on it, And the leaves fell from the day.

She went her unremembering way, She went and left in me The pang of all the partings gone, And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling why my soul Was sad that she was glad; At all the sadness in the sweet, The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still Look up with soft replies, And take the berries with her hand, And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan, For we are born in other's pain, And perish in our own.

TO OLIVIA

I fear to love thee, Sweet, because Love's the ambassador of loss; White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go. Love me not, delightful child. My heart, by many snares beguiled, Has grown timorous and wild. It would fear thee not at all, Wert thou not so harmless-small. Because thy arrows, not yet dire, Are still unbarbed with destined fire, I fear thee more than hadst thou stood Full-panoplied in womanhood.

AN ARAB LOVE-SONG

The hunched camels of the night[3] Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon. The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering.

Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come! And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.

Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart! Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother? And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?

FOOTNOTES:

[3] (Cloud-shapes observed by travellers in the East.)

_A. E. Housman_

A. E. Housman was born March 26, 1859, and, after a classical education, he was, for ten years, a Higher Division Clerk in H. M. Patent Office. Later in life, he became a teacher.

Housman has published only one volume of original verse, but that volume (_A Shropshire Lad_) is known wherever modern English poetry is read. Originally published in 1896, when Housman was almost 37, it is evident that many of these lyrics were written when the poet was much younger. Echoing the frank pessimism of Hardy and the harder cynicism of Heine, Housman struck a lighter and more buoyant note. Underneath his dark ironies, there is a rustic humor that has many subtle variations. From a melodic standpoint, _A Shropshire Lad_ is a collection of exquisite, haunting and almost perfect songs.

Housman has been a professor of Latin since 1892 and, besides his immortal set of lyrics, has edited Juvenal and the books of Manilius.

REVEILLE

Wake: the silver dusk returning Up the beach of darkness brims, And the ship of sunrise burning Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters, Trampled to the floor it spanned, And the tent of night in tatters Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying: Hear the drums of morning play; Hark, the empty highways crying "Who'll beyond the hills away?"

Towns and countries woo together, Forelands beacon, belfries call; Never lad that trod on leather Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a-plenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

WITH RUE MY HEART IS LADEN

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade.

TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's.

"LOVELIEST OF TREES"

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

_Douglas Hyde_

Doctor Douglas Hyde was born in Roscommon County, Ireland in, as nearly as can be ascertained, 1860. One of the most brilliant Irish scholars of his day, he has worked indefatigably for the cause of his native letters. He has written a comprehensive history of Irish literature; has compiled, edited and translated into English the _Love Songs of Connaught_; is President of The Irish National Literary Society; and is the author of innumerable poems in Gaelic--far more than he ever wrote in English. His collections of Irish folk-lore and poetry were among the most notable contributions to the Celtic revival; they were (see Preface), to a large extent, responsible for it. Since 1909 he has been Professor of Modern Irish in University College, Dublin.

The poem which is here quoted is one of his many brilliant and reanimating translations. In its music and its peculiar rhyme-scheme, it reproduces the peculiar flavor as well as the meter of the West Irish original.

I SHALL NOT DIE FOR THEE

For thee, I shall not die, Woman of high fame and name; Foolish men thou mayest slay I and they are not the same.

Why should I expire For the fire of an eye, Slender waist or swan-like limb, Is't for them that I should die?