A Channel Passage and Other Poems Part 4

Swept away, made nothing now for ever, dead, Still the rosary lives and s.h.i.+nes on memory, free Now from fear of death or change as childhood, fled Years on years before its last live leaves were shed: None may mar it now, as none may stain the sea.

THE HIGH OAKS

BARKING HALL, JULY 19TH, 1896

Fourscore years and seven Light and dew from heaven Have fallen with dawn on these glad woods each day Since here was born, even here, A birth more bright and dear Than ever a younger year Hath seen or shall till all these pa.s.s away, Even all the imperious pride of these, The woodland ways majestic now with towers of trees.

Love itself hath nought Touched of tenderest thought With holiest hallowing of memorial grace For memory, blind with bliss, To love, to clasp, to kiss, So sweetly strange as this, The sense that here the sun first hailed her face, A babe at Her glad mother's breast, And here again beholds it more beloved and blest.

Love's own heart, a living Spring of strong thanksgiving, Can bid no strength of welling song find way When all the soul would seek One word for joy to speak, And even its strength makes weak The too strong yearning of the soul to say What may not be conceived or said While darkness makes division of the quick and dead.

Haply, where the sun Wanes, and death is none, The word known here of silence only, held Too dear for speech to wrong, May leap in living song Forth, and the speech be strong As here the silence whence it yearned and welled From hearts whose utterance love sealed fast Till death perchance might give it grace to live at last.

Here we have our earth Yet, with all the mirth Of all the summers since the world began, All strengths of rest and strife And love-lit love of life Where death has birth to wife, And where the sun speaks, and is heard of man: Yea, half the sun's bright speech is heard, And like the sea the soul of man gives back his word.

Earth's enkindled heart Bears benignant part In the ardent heaven's auroral pride of prime: If ever home on earth Were found of heaven's grace worth So G.o.d-beloved a birth As here makes bright the fostering face of time, Here, heaven bears witness, might such grace Fall fragrant as the dewfall on that brightening face.

Here, for mine and me, All that eyes may see Hath more than all the wide world else of good, All nature else of fair: Here as none otherwhere Heaven is the circling air, Heaven is the homestead, heaven the wold, the wood: The fragrance with the shadow spread From broadening wings of cedars breathes of dawn's bright bed.

Once a dawn rose here More divine and dear, Rose on a birth-bed brighter far than dawn's, Whence all the summer grew Sweet as when earth was new And pure as Eden's dew: And yet its light lives on these l.u.s.trous lawns, Clings round these wildwood ways, and cleaves To the aisles of shadow and sun that wind unweaves and weaves.

Thoughts that smile and weep, Dreams that hallow sleep, Brood in the branching shadows of the trees, Tall trees at agelong rest Wherein the centuries nest, Whence, blest as these are blest, We part, and part not from delight in these; Whose comfort, sleeping as awake, We bear about within us as when first it spake.

Comfort as of song Grown with time more strong, Made perfect and prophetic as the sea, Whose message, when it lies Far off our hungering eyes, Within us prophesies Of life not ours, yet ours as theirs may be Whose souls far off us s.h.i.+ne and sing As ere they sprang back sunward, swift as fire might spring.

All this oldworld pleasance Hails a hallowing presence, And thrills with sense of more than summer near, And lifts toward heaven more high The song-surpa.s.sing cry Of rapture that July Lives, for her love who makes it loveliest here; For joy that she who here first drew The breath of life she gave me breathes it here anew.

Never birthday born Highest in height of morn Whereout the star looks forth that leads the sun Shone higher in love's account, Still seeing the mid noon mount From the eager dayspring's fount Each year more l.u.s.trous, each like all in one; Whose light around us and above We could not see so lovely save by grace of love.

BARKING HALL: A YEAR AFTER

Still the sovereign trees Make the sundawn's breeze More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose, As wind and sun fulfil Their living rapture: still Noon, dawn, and evening thrill With radiant change the immeasurable repose Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.

Still the love-lit place Given of G.o.d such grace That here was born on earth a birth divine Gives thanks with all its flowers Through all their l.u.s.trous hours, From all its birds and bowers Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset s.h.i.+ne Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade The life of all the living things it lit be glad.

Soft as light and strong Rises yet their song And thrills with pride the cedar-crested lawn And every brooding dove.

But she, beloved above All utterance known of love, Abides no more the change of night and dawn, Beholds no more with earth-born eye These woods that watched her waking here where all things die.

Not the light that shone When she looked thereon s.h.i.+nes on them or shall s.h.i.+ne for ever here.

We know not, save when sleep Slays death, who fain would keep His mystery dense and deep, Where s.h.i.+nes the smile we held and hold so dear.

Dreams only, thrilled and filled with love, Bring back its light ere dawn leave nought alive above.

Nought alive awake Sees the strong dawn break On all the dreams that dying night bade live.

Yet scarce the intolerant sense Of day's harsh evidence How came their word and whence Strikes dumb the song of thanks it bids them give, The joy that answers as it heard And lightens as it saw the light that spake the word.

Night and sleep and dawn Pa.s.s with dreams withdrawn: But higher above them far than noon may climb Love lives and turns to light The deadly noon of night.

His fiery spirit of sight Endures no curb of change or darkling time.

Even earth and transient things of earth Even here to him bear witness not of death but birth.

MUSIC: AN ODE

I

Was it light that spake from the darkness, or music that shone from the word, When the night was enkindled with sound of the sun or the first-born bird?

Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage of seasons that fall and rise, Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, and blinded with light that dies, Lived not surely till music spake, and the spirit of life was heard.

II

Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be, Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the thrall was free.

Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of life and death, Dumb with pa.s.sionless patience that breathed but forlorn and reluctant breath, Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, and communed aloud with the sea.

III

Morning spake, and he heard: and the pa.s.sionate silent noon Kept for him not silence: and soft from the mounting moon Fell the sound of her splendour, heard as dawn's in the breathless night, Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soul quicken and leap to light: And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness of earth were as chords in tune.

THE CENTENARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE NILE

AUGUST 1898

'_Horatio Nelson_--_Honor est a Nilo_'

A hundred years have lightened and have waned Since ancient Nile by grace of Nelson gained A glory higher in story now than time Saw when his kings were G.o.ds that raged and reigned.

The day that left even England more sublime And higher on heights that none but she may climb Abides above all shock of change-born chance Where hope and memory hear the stars keep chime.

The strong and sunbright lie whose name was France Arose against the sun of truth, whose glance Laughed large from the eyes of England, fierce as fire Whence eyes wax blind that gaze on truth askance.

A name above all names of heroes, higher Than song may sound or heart of man aspire, Rings as the very voice that speaks the sea To-day from all the sea's enkindling lyre.

The sound that bids the soul of silence be Fire, and a rapturous music, speaks, and we Hear what the sea's heart utters, wide and far: "This was his day, and this day's light was he."