life

The fire that filled my heart of old
Gave luster while it burned;
Now only ashes gray and cold
Are in its silence urned.
Ah! better was the furious flame,
The splendor with the smart;
I never cared for the singer's fame
But, oh! for the singer's heart
Once more--
The burning fulgent heart!

No love, no hate, no hope, no fear,
No anguish and no mirth;
Thus life extends from year to year,
A flat of sullen dearth.
Ah! life's blood creepeth cold and tame,

Life, you've been mighty good to me,
Yet here's the end of the trail;
No more mountain, moor and sea,
No more saddle and sail.
Waves a-leap in the laughing sun
Call to me as of yore. . . .
Alas! my errant days are done:
I'll rove no more, no more.

Life, you've cheered me all the way;
You've been my bosom friend;
But gayest dog will have his day,
And biggest binge must end.
Shorebound I watch and see afar
A wistful isle grow wan,
While over is a last lone star
Dims out in lilac dawn.

'Tis not the untried soldier new to danger
Who fears to enter into active strife.
Amidst the roll of drums, the cannon's rattle,
He craves adventure, and thinks not of life.

But the scarred vetran knows the price of glory,
He does not court the conflict or the fray.
He has no longing to rehearse that gory
And most dramatic act, or wars dark play.

He who to love has always been a stranger,
All unafraid may linger in your spell.
My heart has known the warfare, and its danger.

I have been given my charge to keep--
Well have I kept the same!
Playing with strife for the most of my life,
But this is a different game.
I'll not fight against swords unseen,
Or spears that I cannot view--
Hand him the keys of the place on your knees--
'Tis the Dreamer whose dreams come true!

Ask him his terms and accept them at once.
Quick, ere we anger him, go!
Never before have I flinched from the guns,
But this is a different show.
I'll not fight with the Herald of God

1914-18


When all the world would keep a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom Friend to any crowd,
Men write in Fable, as old AEsop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.

When desperate Folly daily laboureth
To work confusion upon all we have,
When diligent Sloth demandeth Freedom's death,
And banded Fear commandeth Honour's grave--
Even in that certain hour before the fall,

Youth that trafficked long with Death,
And to second life returns,
Squanders little time or breath
On his fellow--man's concerns.
Earned peace is all he asks
To fulfill his broken tasks.

Yet, if he find war at home
(Waspish and importunate),
He hath means to overcome
Any warrior at his gate;
For the past he buried brings
Back unburiable things--

Nights that he lay out to spy,
Whence and when the raid might start;
Or prepared in secrecy
Sudden blows to break its heart--

[This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose]


This is a song to the white-armed one
Cold in the breast as the frost-wrapped Spring,
Whose feet are slow on the hills of life,
Whose round mouth rules by whispering.

This is a song to the white-armed one
Whose breast shall burn as a Summer field,
Whose wings shall rise to the doors of gold,
Whose poppy lips to the God shall yield.

Wan mists enwrap the still-born day;
The harebell withers on the heath;
And all the moorland seems to breathe
The hectic beauty of decay.
Within the open grave of May
Dishevelled trees drop wreath on wreath;
Wind-wrung and ravelled underneath
Waste leaves choke up the woodland way.

The grief of many partings near
Wails like an echo in the wind:
The days of love lie far behind,
The days of loss lie shuddering near.
Life's morning-glory who shall bind?
It is the evening of the year.

My youth was nothing but a black storm
Crossed now and then by brilliant suns.
The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores
Nothing's left of the fruit my garden held once.

I should employ the rake and the plow,
Having reached the autumn of ideas,
To restore this inundated ground
Where the deep grooves of water form tombs in the lees.

And who knows if the new flowers you dreamed
Will find in a soil stripped and cleaned
The mystic nourishment that fortifies?

—O Sorrow—O Sorrow—Time consumes Life,

First light. This misted field
is the world, that man
slipping the greased bolt

back and forth, that man
tunneled with blood
the dark smudges of whose eyes

call for sleep, calls
for quiet, and the woman
down your line,

the woman who screamed the loudest,
will be quiet.
The rushes, the grassless shale,

the dust, whiten like droppings.
One blue
grape hyacinth whistles