To lift the level, frowning brow of him

  Or dull the mortal misery in his eyes,

  The scornful weariness of every limb,

  The dust-begotten doubt that never dies,

  Antinous, beneath thy lids, though dim,

  The curling smoke of altars rose to thee,

  Conjuring thee to comfort and content.

  An emperor sent his galleys wide and far

  To seek thy healing for thee. Yea, and spent

  Honour and treasure and red fruits of war

  To lift thy heaviness, lest thou should’st mar

  The head that was an empire’s glory, bent

  A little, as the heavy poppies are.

  Did the perfection of thy beauty pain

  Thy limbs to bear it? Did it ache to be,

  As song hath ached in men, or passion vain?

  Or lay it like some heavy robe on thee?

  Was thy sick soul drawn from thee like the rain,

  Or drunk up as the dead are drunk each hour

  To feed the colour of some tulip flower?

  LONDON ROSES

  Rowses, Rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you —

  Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.

  Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,

  Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you —

  Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.

  Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming

  West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming

  Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,

  Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing

  Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.

  “Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you,

  Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,

  Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears —

  North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,

  Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.

  WINTER AT DELPHI

  Cold are the stars of the night,

  Wild is the tempest crying,

  Fast through the velvet dark

  Little white flakes are flying.

  Still is the House of Song.

  But the fire on the hearth is burning;

  And the lamps are trimmed, and the cup

  Is full for his day of returning.

  His watchers are fallen asleep,

  They wait but his call to follow,

  Ay, to the ends of the earth —

  But Apollo, the god, Apollo?

  Sick is the heart in my breast,

  Mine eyes are blinded with weeping;

  The god who never comes back,

  The watch that forever is keeping.

  Service of gods is hard;

  Deep lies the snow on my pillow.

  For him the laurel and song,

  Weeping for me and the willow:

  Empty my arms and cold

  As the nest forgot of the swallow;

  Birds will come back with the spring, —

  But Apollo, the god, Apollo?

  Hope will come Lack with the spring,

  Joy with the lark’s returning;

  Love must awake betimes,

  When crocus buds are a-burning.

  Hawthorns will follow the snow,

  The robin his tryst be keeping;

  Winds will blow in the May,

  Waking the pulses a-sleeping.

  Snowdrops will whiten the hills,

  Violets hide in the hollow:

  Pan will be drunken and rage —

  But Apollo, the god, Apollo?

  PARADOX

  I knew them both upon Miranda’s isle,

  Which is of youth a sea-bound seigniory:

  Misshapen Caliban, so seeming vile,

  And Ariel, proud prince of minstrelsy,

  Who did forsake the sunset for my tower

  And like a star above my slumber burned.

  The night was held in silver chains by power

  Of melody, in which all longings yearned —

  Star-grasping youth in one wild strain expressed,

  Tender as dawn, insistent as the tide;

  The heart of night and summer stood confessed.

  I rose aglow and flung the lattice wide —

  Ah, jest of art, what mockery and pang!

  Alack, it was poor Caliban who sang.

  IN MEDIA VITA

  Streams of the spring a-singing,

  Winds of the May that blow,

  Birds from the Southland winging,

  Buds in the grasses below.

  Clouds that speed hurrying over,

  And the climbing rose by the wall,

  Singing of bees in the clover,

  And the dead, under all!

  Lads and their sweethearts lying

  In the cleft of the windy hill;

  Hearts that are hushed of their sighing,

  Lips that are tender and still.

  Stars in the purple gloaming,

  Flowers that suffuse and fall,

  Twitter of bird-mates homing,

  And the dead, under all!

  Herdsman abroad with his collie,

  Girls on their way to the fair,

  Young lads a-chasing their folly,

  Parsons a-praying their prayer.

  Children their kites a-flying,

  Grandsires that nod by the wall,

  Mothers soft lullabies sighing,

  And the dead, under all!

  EVENING SONG

  Dear love, what thing of all the things that be

  Is ever worth one thought from you or me,

  Save only Love,

  Save only Love?

  The days so short, the nights so quick to flee,

  The world so wide, so deep and dark the sea,

  So dark the sea;

  So far the suns and every listless star,

  Beyond their light — Ah! dear, who knows how far,

  Who knows how far?

  One thing of all dim things I know is true,

  The heart within me knows, and tells it you,

  And tells it you.

  So blind is life, so long at last is sleep,

  And none but Love to bid us laugh or weep,

  And none but Love,

  And none but Love.

  LAMENT FUR MARSYAS

  Marsyas sleeps. Oil, never wait,

  Maidens, by the city gate,

  Till he come to plunder gold

  Of the daffodils you hold,

  Or your branches white with may;

  He is whiter gone than they.

  He will startle you no more

  When along the river shore

  Damsels beat the linen clean.

  Nor when maidens play at ball

  Will he catch it where it fall:

  Though ye wait for him and call,

  He will answer not, I ween.

  Happy Earth to hold him so,

  Still and satisfied and low,

  Giving him his will — ah, more

  Than a woman could before!

  Still forever holding up

  To his parted lips the cup

  Which hath eased him, when to bless

  All who loved were powerless.

  Ah! for that too-lovely head,

  Low among the laureled dead,

  Many a rose earth oweth yet;

  Many a yellow jonquil brim,

  Many a hyacinth dewy-dim,

  For the singing breath of him —

  Sweeter than the violet.

  “I SOUGHT THE WOOD IN WINTER”

  I sought the wood in summer

  When every twig was green;

  The rudest boughs were tender,

  And buds were pink between.

  Light-fingered aspens trembled

  In fitful sun and shade,

  And daffodils were golden

  In every starry glade.

  The brook sang like a robin —

  My hand could check him where

  The lissome maiden willows

  Shook out their yellow hair.

  “How frail a thing is Beauty,”

  I said, “when every breath

  She gives the vagrant summer

  But swifter woos her death.

  For this the star dust troubles,

  For this have ages rolled:

  To deck the wood for bridal

  And slay her with the cold.”

  I sought the wood in winter

  When every leaf was dead;

  Behind the wind-whipped branches

  The winter sun set red.

  The coldest star was rising

  To greet that bitter air,

  “I SOUGHT THE WOOD IN WINTER”

  The oaks were written giants;

  Nor bud nor bloom was there.

  The birches, white and slender,

  In deathless marble stood,

  The brook, a white immortal,

  Slept silent in the wood.

  “How sure a thing is Beauty,”

  I cried. “No bolt can slay,

  No wave nor shock despoil her,

  No ravishers dismay.

  Her warriors are the angels

  That cherish from afar,

  Her warders people Heaven

  And watch from every star.

  The granite hills are slighter,

  The sea more like to fail;

  Behind the rose the planet,

  The Law behind the veil.”

  “SLEEP, MINSTREL, SLEEP”

  “Sleep, minstrel, sleep; the winter wind’s awake,

  And yellow April’s buried deep and cold.

  The wood is black, and songful things forsake

  The haunted forest when the year is old.

  Above the drifted snow the aspens quake,

  The scourging clouds a shrunken moon enfold,

  Denying all that nights of summer spake

  And swearing false the summer’s globe of gold.

  Sleep, minstrel, sleep; in such a bitter night

  Thine azure song would seek the stars in vain;

  Thy rose and roundelay the winter’s spite

  Would scarcely spare — O never wake again!

  These leaden skies do not thy masques invite,

  Thy sunny breath would warm not their disdain;

  How should’st thou sing to boughs with winter dight,

  Or gather marigolds in winter rain?

  Sleep, minstrel, sleep; we do not grow more kind;

  Your cloak was thin, your wound was wet and deep;

  More bitter breath there was than winter wind,

  And hotter tears than now thy lovers weep.

  Upon the world-old breast of comfort find

  How gentle Darkness thee will gently keep.

  Thou wert the summer’s, and thy joy declined

  When winter winds awoke. Sleep, minstrel, sleep.

  IN ROSE-TIME

  Oh, this is the joy of the rose:

  That it blows,

  And goes.

  Winter lasts a five-month,

  Spring-time stays but one;

  Yellow blow the rye-fields

  When the rose is done.

  Pines are clad at Yuletide

  When the birch is bare,

  And the holly’s greenest

  In the frosty air.

  Sorrow keeps a stone house

  Builded grim and gray;

  Pleasure hath a straw thatch

  Hung with lanterns gay.

  On her petty savings

  Niggard Prudence thrives,

  Passion, ere the moonset,

  Bleeds a thousand lives.

  Virtue hath a warm Hearth —

  Folly’s dead and drowned;

  Friendship hath her own when

  Love is underground.

  Ah! for me the madness

  Of the spendthrift flower,

  Burning myriad sunsets

  In a single hour.

  For this is the joy of the rose:

  That it blows,

  And goes.

  POPPIES ON LUDLOW CASTLE

  Through halls of vanished pleasure,

  And hold of vanished power,

  And crypt of faith forgotten,

  I came to Ludlow tower.

  A-top of arch and stairway,

  Of crypt, and donjon cell,

  Of council hall, and chamber,

  Of wall, and ditch, and well,

  High over grated turrets

  Where clinging ivies run,

  A thousand scarlet poppies

  Enticed the rising sun,

  Upon the topmost turret,

  With death and damp below, —

  Three hundred years of spoilage, —

  The crimson poppies grow.

  This hall it was that bred him,

  These hills that knew him brave,

  The gentlest English singer

  That fills an English grave.

  How have they heart to blossom

  So cruel gay and red,

  When beauty so hath perished

  And valour so hath sped?

  When knights so fair are rotten,

  And captains true asleep,

  And singing lips are dust-stopped

  Six English earth-feet deep?

  When ages old remind me

  How much hath gone for naught,

  What wretched ghost remaineth

  Of all that flesh hath wrought;

  Of love and song and warring,

  Of adventure and play,

  Of art and comely building,

  Of faith and form and fray —

  I’ll mind the flowers of pleasure,

  Of short-lived youth and sleep,

  That drank the sunny weather

  A-top of Ludlow keep.

  PRAIRIE DAWN

  A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;

  A pungent odor from the dusty sage;

  A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;

  A breaking of the distant table-lands

  Through purple mists ascending, and the flare

  Of water-ditches silver in the light;

  A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;

  A sudden sickness for the hills of home.

  AFTERMATH

  Canst thou conjure a vanished morn of spring,

  Or hid the ashes of the sunset glow

  Again to redness? Are we strong to wring

  From trodden grapes the juice drunk long ago?

  Can leafy longings stir in autumn’s blood,

  Or can I wear a pearl dissolved in wine,

  Or go a-Maying in a winter wood,

  Or paint with youth thy wasted cheek, or mine?

  What bloom, then, shall abide, since ours hath sped?

  Thou art more lost to me than they who dwell

  In Egypt’s sepulchres, long ages fled;

  And would I touch — Ah me! I might as well

  Covet the gold of Helen’s vanished head,

  Or kiss back Cleopatra from the dead!

  THOU ART THE PEARL

  I read of knights who laid their armour down,

  And left the tourney’s prize for other hands,

  And clad them in a pilgrim’s sober gown,

  To seek a holy cup in desert lands.

  For them no more the torch of victory;

  For them lone vigils and the starlight pale,

  So they in dreams the Blessed Cup may see —

  Thou art the Grail!

  An Eastern king once smelled a rose in sleep,

  And on the morrow laid his scepter down.

  His heir his titles and his lands might keep, —

  The rose was sweeter wearing than the crown.

  Nor cared he that its life was but an hour,

  A breath that from the crimson summer blows,

  Who gladly paid a kingdom for a flower —

  Thou art the Rose!

  A merchant man, who knew the worth of things,

  Beheld a pearl more priceless than a star;

  And straight returning, all he hath he brings

  And goes upon his way, ah, richer far!

  Laughter of merchants in the market-place,

  Nor taunting gibe nor scornful lips that curl,

  Can ever cloud the rapture on his face —

  Thou art the Pearl!

  ARCADIAN WINTER

  Woe is me to tell it thee,

  Winter winds in Arcady!

  Scattered is thy flock and fled

  From the glades where once it fed,

  And the snow lies drifted white

  In the bower of our delight,

  Where the beech threw gracious shade

  On the cheek of boy and maid:

  And the bitter blasts make roar

  Through the fleshless sycamore.

  White enchantment holds the spring,

  Where thou once wert wont to sing,

  And the cold hath cut to death

  Reeds melodious of thy breath.

  He, the rival of thy lyre,

  Nightingale with note of fire,

  Sings no more; but far away,

  From the windy hill-side gray,

  Calls the broken note forlorn

  Of an aged shepherd’s horn.

  Still about the fire they tell

  How it long ago befell

  That a shepherd maid and lad

  Met and trembled and were glad;

  When the swift spring waters ran,

  And the wind to boy or man

  Brought the aching of his sires —

  Song and love and all desires.

  Ere the starry dogwoods fell

  They were lovers, so they tell.

  Woe is me to tell it thee,

  Winter winds in Arcady!

  Broken pipes and vows forgot,

  Scattered flocks returning not,

  Frozen brook and drifted hill,

  Ashen sun and song-birds still;

  Songs of summer and desire

  Crooned about the winter fire;

  Shepherd lads with silver hair,

  Shepherd maids no longer fair.

  PROVENCAL LEGEND

  On his little grave and wild,