sonnet

As when the sceptre dangles from the hand
Of some king doting, faction runneth wild,
Thieves shake their chains and traitors, long exiled,
Hover about the confines of the land,
Till the young Prince, anointed, takes command,
Full of high purpose, simple, trustful, mild,
And, smitten by his radiance undefiled,
The ruffians are abashed, the cowards stand: —
So in my kingdom riot and despair
Lived by thy lack, and called for thy control,
But at thy coming all the world grew fair;
Away before thy face the villains stole,

A perfect love is nourished by despair.
I am thy pupil in the school of pain;
Mine eyes will not reproach thee for disdain,
But thank thy rich disdain for being fair.
Aye! the proud sorrow, the eternal prayer
Thy beauty taught, what shall unteach again?
Hid from my sight, thou livest in my brain;
Fled from my bosom, thou abidest there.
And though they buried thee, and called thee dead,
And told me I should never see thee more,
The violets that grew above thy head
Would waft thy breath and tell thy sweetness o'er,

Although I decked a chamber for my bride,
And found a moonlit garden for the tryst
Wherein all flowers looked happy as we kissed,
Hath the deep heart of me been satisfied?
The chasm 'twixt our spirits yawns as wide
Though our lips meet, and clasp thee as I list,
The something perfect that I love is missed,
And my warm worship freezes into pride.
But why — O waywardness of nature! — why
Seek farther in the world? I had my choice,
And we said we were happy, you and I.
Why in the forest should I hear a cry,

Among the myriad voices of the Spring
What were the voice of my supreme desire,
What were my cry amid the vernal choir,
Or my complaint before the gods that sing?
O too late love, O flight on wounded wing,
Infinite hope my lips should not suspire,
Why, when the world is thine, my grief require,
Or mock my dear-bought patience with thy sting!
Though I be mute, the birds will in the boughs
Sing as in every April they have sung,
And, though I die, the incense of heart-vows
Will float to heaven, as when I was young.

Sweet semi-circled Cynthia played at maw,
The whilst Endymion ran the wild-goose chase:
Great Bacchus with his cross-bow killed a daw,
And sullen Saturn smiled with pleasant face:
The ninefold Bugbears of the Caspian lake
Sat whistling ebon hornpipes to their ducks;
Madge-owlet straight for joy her girdle brake,
And rugged Satyrs frisked like stags and bucks:
The untamed tumbling fifteen-footed Goat
With promulgation of the Lesbian shores
Confronted Hydra in a sculler boat,
At which the mighty mountain Taurus roars:

Look on that picture, and on this. . . . Behold
The Face that frown'd the rights of realms away;
The imperial forehead, filleted with gold;
The arrogant chin, the lips of frozen clay.
This is the later Caesar, whose great day
Was one long sunset in blood-ruby rolled,
Till, on an ocean-island lone and gray,
It sank unblest, forgotten, dead, and cold.
Yea, this is he who swept from plain to plain,
Watering the harvest-fields with crimson rain;
This is the Eagle who on garbage fed.
Turn to the wall the pitiless eyes. Art, Thought,

O melancholy Tree! thou who dost stand
Like a sad mourner in his sable shroud
Fast by the grave of her he loved, too proud
In his deep muffled woe, to have it scanned,
Whilst on each side of that dear space of land
(Too sacred for the common weeping crowd,)
The attendant woods, remote, on either hand,
Rave and lament in murmurs low or loud:
Wilt thou, O russet Tree! lend me thy shade
Each noontide, when the sun inflames the sky
And glares with hideous splendour from on high
Taking the sweet green sadness from the glade?

As the brook's song that lulls the quiet lawn,
As meadowy music heard on mountains high,
As cherubs' hymns sung in the ear of Dawn,
When the entranced stars go lingering by, —
So sweet the tremulous voice of her I love!
It seems as if thy bosom, all too weak
To utter the rude murmur of a dove,
Were framed almost too delicate to speak.
Hast thou a little lyre hung in thy breast,
Thy fine heart-strings weft for its slender chords?
Methinks, so sweetly are thy thoughts exprest,
'Tis this that makes the music of thy words!

Cambridge, October 1913

Grey walls, broad fields, fresh voices, rippling weir,
I know you well: ten faces, for each face
That passes smiling, haunt this hallowed place,
And nothing not thrice noted greets me here.
Soft watery winds, wide twilight skies and clear,
Refresh my spirit at its founts of grace,
And a strange sorrow masters me, to pace
These willowed paths, in this autumnal year.
Soon, lovely England, soon thy secular dreams,
Thy lisping comrades, shall be thine no more.

TO —

Thou whom of all the beings I have seen
I could adore most truly, — if our fate
Had so permitted it; but now I ween
To love were far more cruel than to hate:
O, had we met at some more happy date
I might have won thee for my angel bride;
And thou in me hadst found a truer mate
Than Constancy had ever known beside:
Our bodies as our kindred souls allied;
I know no state of happiness more blest;
For thee, deserting all, I could have died,
Or have died, all-deserted, on thy breast!