Lyra Heroica Part 42

He is the Reaper, and binds the sheaf, Shall not the season its order keep?

Can it be changed by a man's belief?

Millions of harvests still to reap; Will G.o.d reward, if I die for a creed, Or will He but pity, and sow more seed?

Surely He pities who made the brain, When breaks that mirror of memories sweet, When the hard blow falleth, and never again Nerve shall quiver nor pulse shall beat; Bitter the vision of vanis.h.i.+ng joys; Surely He pities when man destroys.

Here stand I on the ocean's brink, Who hath brought news of the further sh.o.r.e?

How shall I cross it? Sail or sink, One thing is sure, I return no more; Shall I find haven, or aye shall I be Tossed in the depths of a sh.o.r.eless sea?

They tell fair tales of a far-off land, Of love rekindled, of forms renewed; There may I only touch one hand Here life's ruin will little be rued; But the hand I have pressed and the voice I have heard, To lose them for ever, and all for a word!

Now do I feel that my heart must break All for one glimpse of a woman's face; Swiftly the slumbering memories wake Odour and shadow of hour and place; One bright ray through the darkening past Leaps from the lamp as it brightens last,

Showing me summer in western land Now, as the cool breeze murmureth In leaf and flower--And here I stand In this plain all bare save the shadow of death; Leaving my life in its full noonday, And no one to know why I flung it away.

Why? Am I bidding for glory's roll?

I shall be murdered and clean forgot; Is it a bargain to save my soul?

G.o.d, whom I trust in, bargains not; Yet for the honour of English race, May I not live or endure disgrace.

Ay, but the word, if I could have said it, I by no terrors of h.e.l.l perplext; Hard to be silent and have no credit From man in this world, or reward in the next; None to bear witness and reckon the cost Of the name that is saved by the life that is lost.

I must be gone to the crowd untold Of men by the cause which they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old; Never a story and never a stone Tells of the martyrs who die like me, Just for the pride of the old countree.

_Lyall._

CXVI

THE OBLATION

Ask nothing more of me, sweet; All I can give you I give.

Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet: Love that should help you to live, Song that should spur you to soar.

All things were nothing to give Once to have sense of you more, Touch you and taste of you, sweet, Think you and breathe you and live, Swept of your wings as they soar, Trodden by chance of your feet.

I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet: He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.

_Swinburne._

CXVII

ENGLAND

England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found?

Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned.

Time may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason, and fraud, and fear: Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from far and near: Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from year to year.

Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame and smite, We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of night, We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in light.

Life that s.h.i.+nes from thee shows forth signs that none may read not by eyeless foes: Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows: Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows.

Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth: Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth: Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent's tooth.

Greed and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain; Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain: Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the strength of Spain.

Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of thee England's place: Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed with grace: Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as fair of face, How shalt thou be abased? or how shalt fear take hold of thy heart? of thine, England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes divine?

Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her darkness s.h.i.+ne.

England, none that is born thy son, and lives by grace of thy glory, free, Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he wors.h.i.+ps thee; None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea.

_Swinburne._

CXVIII

A JACOBITE IN EXILE

The weary day rins down and dies, The weary night wears through: And never an hour is fair wi' flower, And never a flower wi' dew.

I would the day were night for me, I would the night were day: For then would I stand in my ain fair land, As now in dreams I may.

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier s.h.i.+ne the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance.

O weel were they that fell fighting On dark Drumossie's day: They keep their hame ayont the faem And we die far away.

O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep, But night and day wake we; And ever between the sea banks green Sounds loud the sundering sea.

And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep But sweet and fast sleep they: And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them Is e'en their country's clay; But the land we tread that are not dead Is strange as night by day.

Strange as night in a strange man's sight, Though fair as dawn it be: For what is here that a stranger's cheer Should yet wax blithe to see?

The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep, The fields are green and gold: The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring, As ours at home of old.

But hills and flowers are nane of ours, And ours are over sea: And the kind strange land whereon we stand, It wotsna what were we Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame, To try what end might be.

Scathe and shame, and a waefu' name, And a weary time and strange, Have they that seeing a weird for dreeing Can die, and cannot change.

Shame and scorn may we thole that mourn, Though sair be they to dree: But ill may we bide the thoughts we hide, Mair keen than wind and sea.

Ill may we thole the night's watches, And ill the weary day: And the dreams that keep the gates of sleep, A waefu' gift gie they; For the songs they sing us, the sights they bring us, The morn blaws all away.