XVIII.

Shall we not laugh together, you and I, I being at last fulfilled, at last at rest Within the strength of your beloved breast, Shall we not laugh once at a day gone by When, wan as things that lie below the earth, Things choked and buried, sunless and unsought, This richest life was only lived in thought, Seed without fruit, unconsummated birth?

Love, in that time when you have called me yours And have with kisses long outbreathed old fears, Love, let me not remember these! these hours, Save with one smile to drown their thousand tears. Then fold me in your bosom so deep away That memory cannot touch this loveless day.

CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR SONGS. [Illustration: leaf]

SIX GREEN SINGERS.

The frost of the moon fell over my floor And six green singers stood at my door.

“What do ye here that music make?” “Let us come in for Christ’s sweet Sake.”

“Long have ye journeyed in coming here?” “Our Pilgrimage was the length of the year.”

“Where do ye make for?” I asked of them. “Our Shrine is a Stable in Bethlehem.”

“What will ye do as ye go along?” “Sing to the world an evergreen song.”

“What will ye sing for the listening earth?” “One will sing of a brave-souled Mirth,

“One of the Holiest Mystery, The Glory of glories shall one song be,

“One of the Memory of things, One of the Child’s imaginings,

“One of our songs is the fadeless Faith, And all are the Life more mighty than death.”

“Ere ye be gone that music make, Give me an alms for Christ’s sweet Sake.”

“Six green branches we leave with you; See they be scattered your house-place through.

“The staunch blithe Holly your board shall grace, Mistletoe bless your chimney-place,

“Laurel to crown your lighted hall, Over your bed let the Yew-bough fall,

“Close by the cradle the Christmas Fir, For elfin dreams in its branches stir,

“Last and loveliest, high and low, From ceil to floor let the Ivy go.”

From each glad guest I received my gift And then the latch of my door did lift--

“Green singers, God prosper the song ye make As ye sing to the world for Christ’s sweet Sake.”

IN A FAR COUNTRY.

Two strangers met on a mountain-side In a far country ... The moon was young, the year was old, The airs of the night were bitter-cold, And their heavy cloaks their dress did hide.

One stranger did the other stay In that far country: “What brings you into the icy dark With lifted eyes that only mark The lights of heaven, less light than day?”

The second said the first unto In the far country: “Many the lights of heaven are, But I watch for the birth of one more Star Not yet arisen. And what do you?”

The first man to the other spoke In the far country: “Even as you I wait the birth Of one new Light above the earth. What garb do you wear beneath your cloak?”

The second dropped his outer dress In that far country: He wore a sheep-skin frayed and thin Whose holes laid bare the shivering skin, And the wind made mock of his nakedness.

The other did his robe unfold In that far country, And plain to see in the starlight dim Were the furs and purple that covered him, They were so heavy and rich with gold.

The hand of each unto each did spring In that far country. “Brother, why dared ye the night?” “Because He, even as I, a Shepherd was.” “I came, because He was a King.”

Handfast they watched the Birth on high In the far country. _Shepherd and King forgotten be, But not that all men’s Brother was He Who for all men did live and die In a far country._

A MANGER SONG.

Whence got ye your soft, soft eyes of the mother, O soft-eyed cow? [Illustration: leaf] We saw the Mother of mothers bring forth, and that was how. [Illustration: leaf] We sheltered her that was shelterless for a little while, We watched the milking Babe at her breast, and we saw her smile. Even as we she lay upon straw, and even as we Took her sleep in the dark of the manger unfretfully, And when the dawn of the strange new Star discovered her thus, The ray that was destined for her and for Him fell also on us; The light passed into her eyes and ours, and full in its flood We were first to behold the first mothering look of the Mother of God.

CHILD’S CAROL

When there dawns a certain Star Comes a Stranger into the city; The feet of prayer his dear feet are, His hands they are the hands of pity.

Every houseplace rich and poor Shall show for welcome a sprig of green, And every heart shall open its door To let the Stranger enter in.

I will set my door ajar That he may enter if he please; The eyes of love his dear eyes are, His brow it is the brow of peace.

Through the heart of every child And man and woman in the city He shall pass, and they be filled With love and peace and prayer and pity.

THE MUMMERS.

Here’s greeting for the master, And for the mistress greeting, And greeting for each gallant lad And every pretty sweeting, And greeting for the little children Dancing round our meeting.

We be your servants all, We be merry mummers; We know jolly winter’s face Though we ne’er saw summer’s; We come in wi’ the end o’ the year, For we be Christmas-comers.

This here do be Saint George, This the heathen Paynim, Dragon he will drink your healths When Saint George has slain him, This do be a beautiful maid And a trouble ’twere to train him!

There’s our mumming ended And nothing to distress ye-- Surely, we be little loth Since so kindly press ye. Here’s God bless ye, master, mistress, All the house, God bless ye!

CRADLE-SONG SONG FOR CHRISTMAS.

Child, when on this night you lie Softly, undisturbedly, On as white a bed of down As any child’s in London Town, By a fire that all the night Keeps your chamber warm and light: Dream, if dreams are yet your law, Your bed of down a bed of straw, Only warmed and lighted by One star in the open sky. Sweet you’ll sleep then, for we know Once a Child slept sweetly so.

THE MOON UPON HER WATCH-TOWER.

The moon upon her watch-tower With her golden eye Guarded the quarters East and West the sky. Just as midnight Was stepping past One drew his first breath, One drew his last. The moon upon her watch-tower Rang a soundless bell-- It might have been for welcome, It might have been farewell.

A BURYING.

I see the twelve fair months go by Bearing a coffin shoulder-high. What, laughing? Pretty pall-bearers, Pitiless of the buried years, Have ye never a tear to shed Nor sigh to drop for the newly-dead, Nor marble grief to mark his grave?-- No, none of these; but see, we have Green seed to mingle with his earth.-- What, is not this a burying?---- Nay, a birth.

“COLIN CLOUT, COME HOME AGAIN!”

Through the grey and heavy air, Through the January rain, When old England nipped and bare Shudders with the load of pain Wept upon her by the eyes Of sunless, sun-remembering skies: When the soul of man is fain Suddenly abroad to fare, Questing, questing everywhere The soul of beauty to regain, Dreaming like a boy to snare The great free bird no lure can chain, Following in a dull despair That cannot pierce their brief disguise Random flights of pallid lies Never fledged in Paradise:-- Comes the sound of gathering cries Calling down the centuries Urgently with might and main, “_Colin Clout, O Colin Clout! Colin, Colin, Colin Clout! England needs you, Colin Clout! Colin Clout, come home again!_”

Colin, can you never hear? Colin, will you never rise From the narrow plot of rest That sang for joy of such a guest To fill its dust with melodies, And to make it year by year Such a place of golden cheer, Of flowering deed and jolly jest, Of pastoral prettiness and the clear Summons to be sailing West Over oceans fabulous Leading on to stranger shores And distant ports adventurous-- That with its music in your ear, Drawn from your own imagined stores, You care to give no heed to us Whose laughter has been soured by doubt, Whose hearts are hedged with many a fear, Who learn to hold our lives so dear That all their wealth has trickled out, Who joy and beauty hand in hand Have driven homeless from the land And put the old ideals to rout:-- Yet even because, returning here, You needs must find your England thus, Let not her children call in vain, “_Colin Clout, O Colin Clout! Colin Clout, come home again!_”

Hark! I hear a shepherd’s pipe With three notes of music wipe Discord from this troubled star; I hear tumultuous gladness shake The marrows of the land awake, Wherein old slumbering visions are; I hear the stirrings of a day When all the earth will smell of may, When eager men will fling aside Their garments of enlightened pride Where time the moth has had his way, And don again the homespun dress Of England’s ancient simpleness-- O piping shepherd-reed at play, Blown with a poet’s golden breath, How suddenly a heart as gay, As innocent, as full of faith As children’s hearts are, ’gins to beat In the world’s bosom at my feet! How all my sisters’ eyes grow strong, And all my brothers’ eyes grow sweet, And we who boast so loud to-day Above our self-created strife That we have lost our fear of death Lose suddenly our fear of life, And go with gladness down the way To meet whatever is to meet.

Then, Colin! then about your knees We’ll lie and list such fantasies As keep the spirit bright and young And guard the edge of youth as keen As a new-tempered virgin sword; We will re-learn the magic tongue, And where the meadow-rings are green Re-seek Titania and her lord, For you will bring a flitting home Of vanished Folk to English loam; About our business we will go With holiday-hearts whose dancing beat Is measured to your piping sweet, And on your music great will grow In the redress of antique wrongs; And from the richest of your songs, O dreamer-lover, shepherd-knight, Spell out a long-forgotten name, Re-kindling the expiring glow Of Chivalry’s high beacon-light, Till by its heaven-pointing flame Our generations understand Their England is too fair a land To suffer ugliness and blight And the dishonourable bane Of serfdom’s bowed and broken knee, Too fine a trading mart to be Where one may cause the many pain, And foul self-interest men empowers To turn to weeds what should be flowers.

For evil must be still to cope When Colin Clout comes home again, Because a world devoid of pain Would be a world made bare of hope, And both must act together till Slipt from its spiritual trance This globe is frozen to good and ill; But ere the life here bound by chance Flows to its last significance, Colin! bring home the dream we lost Because we grew too old for dreams, And bring again the golden barque With which in our high-hearted youth We sailed wild seas and perilous streams; And find again a road we crossed In olden time and failed to mark; And give us love of beauty back, And set us on the grassy track Of many an ancient-simple truth; Re-teach our voices how to sing Melodiously; and bring, O bring The rustless lance of honour in For men to strive again to win, As in the days when knightlihood For life’s most high expression stood, And man reached forth to touch that goal Not with his hands but with his soul.

Ah, Colin! ’tis a twice-told tale How that the woods were heard to wail, How birds with silence did complain, And fields with faded flowers did mourn, And flocks from feeding did refrain, And rivers wept for your return. Singer of England’s merriest hour, Return! return and make her flower, Charming your pipe unto your peers As once you did in other years; For we who wait on you, know this, Whatever tune your reed shall play Will hearken with as gladdened ears As Cuddy and as Thestylis, As Hobbinol and Lucida And all the simple shepherd-train, What time they gathered and ran, a gay Rejoicing happy-hearted rout, Across the sweetening meadow-hay Each calling other: “_Come about! The time of waiting is run out, And Colin Clout, O, Colin Clout, Colin Clout’s come home again!_”

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. [Illustration: leaf]

BRONWEN OF THE FLOWERS.

Bronwen gathered wild-flowers Up-and-down the lane; Her gathering touch upon them Sweeter was than rain.

Now a blossom overblown, Now a bud begun-- Her eye that lightened on them Was quicker than the sun.

One by one she named them, Oh, she did express In her pretty namings All their prettiness:

Some were fit for virgins, Some for merry dames, And the love with which she named them Was lovelier than their names.

JESSICA DANCES.

When Joy and Molly on the lawn Danced bare of foot like spirits of dawn Jessica watched in wonderment Until delight would not be pent, And shoe and sock she cast in mirth And felt her naked toes touch earth. Swiftly the fresh green joy shot in Through the fresh young rosy skin, And in a golden glee the child Went dancing innocently-wild Up and down and round and round Like daisies covering the ground, Called sunward by the age-long spell No ages can destroy Of youth that never sighed or sinned,-- While elfin Molly and fairy Joy Danced on like lilies in a dell Or harebells in the wind.

SYLVIA SINGS.

Sylvia said that day, “I’ll sing if you will play.” We could deny not anything, Not even deny to hear her sing Who like a little spirit lay Uncertain whether to flutter its wing, To go or stay.

So though it broke our hearts for pity, With hidden face one went To the tinkling instrument, And one with bended head Stayed by the bed, While the small voice sang over and over its ditty:--

“‘_Manners make ladies, but not such as these, Manners make ladies, but not such as these._’ Now again, please! ‘_Manners make ladies-- But not such as these._’”

She breathed it long and long And ah, so low, Her tiny meaningless song, For she was pleased to please us so-- But what we said Sitting beside her bed I do not know, There were so many tears to keep unshed.

MYFANWY AMONG THE LEAVES.

Dying leaf and dead leaf, Yellow leaf and red leaf And white-backed beam, Lay along the woodland road As quiet as a dream.

Summer was over, The year had lost her lover, Spent with her grief All along the woodland road Leaf fell on leaf.

Then came a shuffling, Such a happy ruffling Of the dried sweet Surf of leaves upon the road Round a baby’s feet.

Year-old leaf ran after Three-year-old laughter, Danced through the air As she caught them from the road And flung them anywhere.

Old leaf and cold leaf, Brown leaf and gold leaf And white-backed beam, Followed down the woodland road Myfanwy in a dream.

FOR JOAN.

I shall love no other child, Joan, as I love you; The second life our children build Remains for you to do.

You would have been out-loved in one That never will be born, And the love that should my flower have grown Grows nothing but my thorn.

You for that unborn other’s sake My deepest heart do clutch, But sometimes--sometimes all you take Hurts, for her sake, too much.

A CHILD’S FEAR.

“Come to your poor old Mother,” she said Smiling, and gathered to her breast With her good hands her baby’s head; But the child’s eyes looked out oppressed. “_Not_ old--_not_ old--it isn’t true! Everyone may be old but you.”

Old?--Old, you see, is much too near The half-imagined thing that takes Our Mothers where they do not hear Even when their baby wakes And cries for comfort in the gloom-- Babies to cry, and Mothers not come!

Within the safe arms round her curled, “Oh,” she half sobbed, “I wish you’d be The youngest person in the world-- How old are you? not _old_?” begged she, And caught a little panting breath, Then lay quite still and thought of death.

A CHRISTENING.

This day we are met to set a name On thy mysterious dust and flame, That in the years to follow, when Thy feet shall walk the ways of men, Thou mayst according to his plan Be known thereby to man.

O being undiscoverable! Thy name thyself will never spell. Whate’er thou art, whate’er wilt be, Man’s tongue will never utter thee; Towering upon thy inmost throne Thou shalt of none be known.

We watch in wonder how thy brow Grows strange and silent in sleep, and how Even more silent and more strange Thy waking is that brings no change When thy dim dreams of slumber press To dimmer dreamlessness.

But looking with a love that seems To pierce thy undiscovered dreams, Within thy small unfolded being Some dream of our own making seeing, “All that she feels and dreams,” we say, “We too will know one day.”

Ah, even when human speech has come To make thy mouth no longer dumb, When quickened thought and sympathy Like angels look from either eye, Thyself will still be hidden as deep As now, awake, asleep.

We must our knowledge of thee still By nothing save by love fulfil, And with the dreamings of the heart Still guess at the dream of what thou art Which only of thee and God is known, Child whom this day names Joan.

THE SINGER.

I had a holy hour last night. The room her presence made so pure Was shaded in uncertain light, But oh, the light it held was sure.

There while about her golden head The shadows and the low light played, She eagerly and softly read The shining songs her soul had made.

Flower and shell and sand and sea, And flight of gulls against the sun, And many a friend, and many a tree, And youth begun and age nigh-done,

Death and life, and life and death, Divinely in her vision smiled; She spoke them with the silver breath Half of angel, half of child.

Upon her bed I lay at rest, But once when kneeling by her chair I leaned my head beside her breast And heard the wordless singing there.

THE GIRL WITH THE BALL.

She ran with her ball in her light dress floating and free, [Illustration: leaf] Tossing it, tossing it up in the evening light, [Illustration: leaf] She ran with her ball at the edge of the outgoing sea [Illustration: leaf] On sand which the dropping sun turned bright.

Over the sea hung birds more white than the skin Of the last few swimmers who took the waves with their breasts; The birds dipped straight as her ball when a silver fin Glanced in the shallow crests.

She ran so swift, and suddenly stopped as swift To look at a shell, or splash up a pool in rain; Wind blew, and she in the wind began to drift Foam-like, and suddenly ran again.

Children who played on the shore in the last of the day Paused and watched in wonder her rise and fall Like elders watching a child: she was younger than they As she ran by the sea with her ball.

Her hair was loose and she had no shoes on her feet, And her image ran under her feet on the wet gold shore, She threw up her ball and she caught it, and once laughed sweet As though the world had never heard laughter before.

THE STORY-TELLER.

Over the hearth on which we burned Brown beech-nuts, lichen-twigs, and cones, I sat beside her while she turned A forkèd wand within the pyre, Until two little spirts of fire Sprang from the hazel’s withered bones.

Then, with her eyes upon her branch Pointed with ruddy nuts of flame, Like one who has no power to staunch The heart’s-blood flowing from his side, She through her mouth undammed a tide Of legends that I could not name:--

Strange villages where damsels fished For lovers in a rainbow sea By night: a crazy man who wished To act like God, and very soon Out-freaked the fools that raked the moon: Gold underneath an apple-tree

Discovered by a thrice-dreamed dream: Half-tales, half-ballads--until the room Shook in its shadows with a stream Of pedlars, witches, cats in crowns, Denizens of enchanted towns, And kings confined in forests of gloom.

Her voice went up and down like wind That wanders lost among the eaves; The flamelets on her hazel thinned And dwindled into smouldering eyes; Her voice failed like the wind that dies, She threw a handful of black leaves

On the bright litter of the hearth And thrust her hazel’s double spark Within. The smell of smoking earth Rose from the stones where ceased to burn The fiery lines of cone and fern And berry: the room was dumb and dark.

THE REFLECTION.

She had no life except to be what men Required of her to be. They came for sympathy, and came again For sympathy.

She never knew the way her heart to spare When they were hurt or worn, Whatever one may for another bear By her was borne.

They said, you give us of yourself so much! She heard them with a smile, Knowing she only gave to such and such Themselves awhile.

Their interests, their frets, their loneliness, Their sorrows and despairs, She wore for them--they saw her in no dress That was not theirs.

She learned to understand the solitudes When she by none was sought; Men of themselves grow sick, and in those moods Needed her not,

Getting relief of others who gave things By their own purpose lit; If she too had some freshness in her springs, None wanted it.

She grew accustomed to be quietly shut Away, was used to see Love limping dutifully in a rut That once ran free;

She knew the signs when friends began to cast What they had asked her for-- Some asked for much, some little, all at last Asked nothing more.

And when she died they sorrowed, it is true, But not for long, because They had seen some pale reflection that she threw, Not what she was.

SOLITARY.

He moved his fellow-men among And changed with them some forms of speech. His heart was separate from his tongue, They would not hear his heart beseech.

Their needs were very like his own, Quivering in bodies numb and dazed; They smiled and talked and felt alone.-- Did not their hearts look on amazed?

SPRING-DAWN.

Heaven, the Spring’s coming true again! Easterly over the sky’s spring-blue again Passes a pearly flight of cloud-- Somewhere a dovecote is empty, surely! And all of its birds have flown in a brood Over the pure blue purely!

Westerly owl-grey gatherings Linger a little yet: Soon, owls! soon you will shrink Out of the sun, I think, Who even now turns silver-wet The last of your ghostly gatherings.

Back to your windy barns again, To your forsaken granaries, Haunting, hating breed of the Winter! For the grass in the mould begins to teem, By every gate where the cuckoo flies Primrose and fragile wind-flower enter, And, lovelier truth than any dream, Blue light is mirrored in ancient tarns again!

THE WORLD’S AMAZING BEAUTY.

The world’s amazing beauty would make us cry Aloud; but something in it strikes us dumb. Beech-forests drenched in sunny floods Where shaking rays and shadows hum, The unrepeated aspects of the sky, Clouds in their lightest and their wildest moods, Bare shapes of hills, June grass in flower, The sea in every hour, Slopes that one January morning flow Unbrokenly with snow, Peaks piercing heaven with motions sharp and harsh, Slow-moving flats, grey reed and silver marsh, A flock of swans in flight Or solitary heron flapping home, Orchards of pear and cherry turning white, Low apple-trees with rosy-budded boughs, Streams where young willows drink and cows, Earth’s rich ploughed loam Thinking darkly forward to her sheaves, Water in Autumn spotted with yellow leaves, Light running overland, Gulls standing still above their images On strips of shining sand While evening in a haze of green Half-hides The calm receding tides-- What in the beauty we have seen in these Keeps us still silent? something we have not seen?

THE WHITE BLACKBIRDS.

Among the stripped and sooty twigs of the wild cherry tree [Illustration: leaf] Sometimes they flit and swing as though two blossoms of the Spring [Illustration: leaf] Had quickened on these bleak October branches suddenly.

They are like fairy birds flown down from skies which no one knows, Their pointed yellow bills are bright as April daffodils, Their plumy whiteness heavenly as January snows.

Loveliest guests that choose our garden-plot for loitering! Oh, what a sudden flower of joy is set upon the hour When in their cherry cages two white blackbirds sit and swing.

NIGHTINGALES.

The nightingales around our house Among the lovely orchard boughs: Where the young apple-dawn too soon Turns whiter than the daylit moon, And ’mid its shadowy silver bowers The quince is flushed with heavenly flowers That opening poise as though for flight: The nightingales sing day and night, With piercing, long, insistent calling, And chuckle of sweet waters falling, And unimaginable trill That makes my heart beat and stand still.

Oh, even so, by night and day When first the earth broke into May Ere men shut thunder up in shells, They came and sang their miracles; And so, in myriad Mays to come, When all those damnèd storms are dumb And only heaven’s lightning crowns Her clouds of thunder on the Downs, They still will come, by night and day To sing the radiant Spring away, Till men lie crumbled with their towns And earth no more breaks into May.

NIGHT-PIECE.

Now independent, beautiful and proud, Out of the vanishing body of a cloud Like its arisen soul the full moon swims Over the sea, into whose distant brims Has flowed the last of the light. I am alone. Even the diving gannet now is flown From these unpeopled sands. A mist lies cold Upon the muffled boundaries of the world. The lovely earth whose silence is so deep Is folded up in night, but not in sleep.

BEFORE WINTER.

The day is gone of the sun and the swallow And the glory on the trees: Before the gale the length of the pave The dry old corpse of a plane-leaf flees, And its step is harsh and hollow As it chatters into its grave.

The shivering dawn now hides and slouches Long in the cover of dark, Till up the sky, like a murderer pale, He drags at last a dull red mark, And the hound of the grey wind crouches And pants on his rusty trail.

ON THE SNOW.

I knew no woman, child, or man Had been before my steps to-day. By Dippel Woods the snow-lanes ran Soft and uncrushed above their clay; But little starry feet had traced Their passages as though in words, And all those lanes of snow were laced With runnings of departed birds.

THREE MILES TO PENN.

To-day I walked three miles to Penn With an uneasy mind. The sun shone like a frozen eye, A light that had gone blind, The glassy air between the sky And earth was frozen wind-- All motion and all light again Were closed within a rind, As I by wood and field to Penn Took trouble in my mind.

The slopes of cloud in heaven that lay, Unpeopled hills grown old, Had no more movement than the land Locked in a flowing mould; The sheep like mounds of cloudy sand Stood soundless in the cold; There was no stir on all the way Save what my heart did hold, So quiet earth and heaven lay, So quiet and so old.

WHEN YOU SAY.

When you say, I still am young, You are young no more; When, I’m old, is on your tongue, Age is still in store.

Youth and age will never grope To say what they may be: One only knows it has a hope, And one a certainty.

THE OUTLET.

Grief struck me. I so shook in heart and wit I thought I must speak of it or die of it.

A certain friend I had with strength to lend, When mine was spent I went to find my friend,

Who, rising up with eyes wild for relief, Hung on my neck and spoke to me of grief.

I raked the ashes of my burned-out strength And found one coal to warm her with at length.

I sat with her till I was icy cold. At last I went away, my grief untold.

TWO CHORUSES FROM “MERLIN IN BROCELIANDE.”