Poems of To-Day: an Anthology Part 27

Mavourneen is going From me and from you, Where Mary will fold him With mantle of blue!

From reek of the smoke And cold of the floor, And the peering of things Across the half-door.

O, men from the fields!

Soft, softly come thro'.

Mary puts round him Her mantle of blue.

_Padraic Colum._

136. ON A DEAD CHILD

Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!

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Though cold and stark and bare, The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee.

Thy mother's treasure wert thou;--alas! no longer To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be Thy father's pride;--ah, he Must gather his faith together, and his strength make stronger.

To me, as I move thee now in the last duty, Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond; Startling my fancy fond With a chance att.i.tude of the head, a freak of beauty.

Thy hand clasps, as 'twas wont, my finger, and holds it: But the grasp is the clasp of Death, heartbreaking and stiff; Yet feels to my hand as if 'Twas still thy will, thy pleasure and trust that enfolds it.

So I lay thee there, thy sunken eyelids closing,-- Go, lie thou there in thy coffin, thy last little bed!-- Propping thy wise, sad head, Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.

So quiet! doth the change content thee?--Death, whither hath he taken thee?

To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?

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The vision of which I miss, Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?

Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark, Unwilling, alone we embark, And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.

_Robert Bridges._

126. I NEVER SHALL LOVE THE SNOW AGAIN

I never shall love the snow again Since Maurice died: With corniced drift it blocked the lane, And sheeted in a desolate plain The country side.

The trees with silvery rime bedight Their branches bare.

By day no sun appeared; by night The hidden moon shed thievish light In the misty air.

We fed the birds that flew around In flocks to be fed: No shelter in holly or brake they found, The speckled thrush on the frozen ground Lay frozen and dead.

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We skated on stream and pond; we cut The crinching snow To Doric temple or Arctic hut; We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut By the fireside glow.

Yet grudged we our keen delights before Maurice should come.

We said, "In-door or out-of-door We shall love life for a month or more, When he is home."

They brought him home; 'twas two days late For Christmas Day: Wrapped in white, in solemn state, A flower in his hand, all still and straight Our Maurice lay.

And two days ere the year outgave We laid him low.

The best of us truly were not brave, When we laid Maurice down in his grave Under the snow.

_Robert Bridges._

127. TO MY G.o.dCHILD

_Francis M. W. M._

This labouring, vast, Tellurian galleon, Riding at anchor off the orient sun, Had broken its cable, and stood out to s.p.a.ce Down some frore Arctic of the aerial ways:

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And now, back warping from the inclement main, Its vaporous shroudage drenched with icy rain, It swung into its azure roads again; When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, you Lit, a white halcyon auspice, 'mid our frozen crew.

To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong, Giver of golden days and golden song; Nor is it by an all-unhappy plan You bear the name of me, his constant Magian.

Yet ah! from any other that it came, Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name.

When at the first those tidings did they bring, My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing: Though well may such a t.i.tle him endower, For whom a poet's prayer implores a poet's power.

The a.s.sisian, who kept plighted faith to three, To Song, to Sanct.i.tude, and Poverty, (In two alone of whom most singers prove A fatal faithfulness of during love!) He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely ken How G.o.d he could love more, he so loved men; The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy; And Fletcher's fellow--from these, and not from me, Take you your name, and take your legacy!

Or, if a right successive you declare When worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair, Take but this Poesy that now followeth My clayey best with sullen servile breath, Made then your happy freedman by testating death.

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My song I do but hold for you in trust, I ask you but to blossom from my dust.

When you have compa.s.sed all weak I began, Diviner poet, and ah! diviner man; The man at feud with the perduring child In you before Song's altar n.o.bly reconciled; From the wise heavens I half shall smile to see How little a world, which owned you, needed me.

If, while you keep the vigils of the night, For your wild tears make darkness all too bright, Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps, As it played lover over your sweet sleeps; Think it a golden crevice in the sky, Which I have pierced but to behold you by!

And when, immortal mortal, droops your head, And you, the child of deathless song, are dead; Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance The ranks of Paradise for my countenance, Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod Among the bearded counsellors of G.o.d; For if in Eden as on earth are we, I sure shall keep a younger company: Pa.s.s where beneath their ranged gonfalons The starry cohorts shake their s.h.i.+elded suns, The dreadful ma.s.s of their enridged spears; Pa.s.s where majestical the eternal peers, The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet-- A silvern segregation, globed complete In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet; Pa.s.s by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,

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Your cousined cl.u.s.ters, emulous to share With you the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their hair; Pa.s.s the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:-- Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

_Francis Thompson._