Poems by William Ernest Henley Part 21

So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign And the trick there's no recalling, They will haggle and hew till they hack you through And at last they lay you sprawling: When 'Hey! for the hour of the race in flower And the long good-bye to sin!'

And for the lack the fires of h.e.l.l gone out Of the fuel to keep them in!'

But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, Your growth began with the life of Man, And only his death can end you.

They may tug in line at your hempen twine, They may flourish with axe and saw; But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs In the living rock of Law.

And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, When the spent sun reels and blunders Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit As it seethes in spate and thunders, Stern on the glare of the tortured air Your lines august shall gloom, And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed In the ruining roar of Doom.

XVIII--I. M.--MARGARET EMMA HENLEY (1888-1894)

When you wake in your crib, You, an inch of experience - Vaulted about With the wonder of darkness; Wailing and striving To reach from your feebleness Something you feel Will be good to and cherish you, Something you know And can rest upon blindly: O, then a hand (Your mother's, your mother's!) By the fall of its fingers All knowledge, all power to you, Out of the dreary, Discouraging strangenesses Comes to and masters you, Takes you, and lovingly Woos you and soothes you Back, as you cling to it, Back to some comforting Corner of sleep.

So you wake in your bed, Having lived, having loved; But the shadows are there, And the world and its kingdoms Incredibly faded; And you group through the Terror Above you and under For the light, for the warmth, The a.s.surance of life; But the blasts are ice-born, And your heart is nigh burst With the weight of the gloom And the stress of your strangled And desperate endeavour: Sudden a hand - Mother, O Mother! - G.o.d at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the infinite Peace of the Grave.

October 1891

XIX--I. M.--R. L. S. (1850-1894)

O, Time and Change, they range and range From suns.h.i.+ne round to thunder! - They glance and go as the great winds blow, And the best of our dreams drive under: For Time and Change estrange, estrange - And, now they have looked and seen us, O, we that were dear, we are all-too near With the thick of the world between us.

O, Death and Time, they chime and chime Like bells at sunset falling! - They end the song, they right the wrong, They set the old echoes calling: For Death and Time bring on the prime Of G.o.d's own chosen weather, And we lie in the peace of the Great Release As once in the gra.s.s together.

February 1891

XX

The shadow of Dawn; Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams Of Life and Death and Sleep; Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound Of the old, unchanging Sea.

My soul and yours - O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, Into the ghostliness, The infinite and abounding solitudes, Beyond--O, beyond!--beyond . . .

Here in the porch Upon the mult.i.tudinous silences Of the kingdoms of the grave, We twain are you and I--two ghosts Omnipotence Can touch no more . . . no more!

XXI

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life Is the pa.s.sion that burns the blood in the act of strife - Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.

But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the sh.o.r.e, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song - O, you envy the blessed death that can live no more!

XXII

Trees and the menace of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell, As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds, It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.

Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night (Night and the wretchedness of the sky) Is it the hurry of the rain?

Or the noise of a drive of the Dead, Streaming before the irresistible Will Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land Between their place and ours?

Like the forgetfulness Of the work-a-day world made visible, A mist falls from the melancholy sky.

A messenger from some lost and loving soul, Hopeless, far wandered, dazed Here in the provinces of life, A great white moth fades miserably past.

Thro' the trees in the strange dead night, Under the vast dead sky, Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, And the unimagined vast.i.tudes beyond.

XXIII--To P. A. G.

Here they trysted, here they strayed, In the leaf.a.ge dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June.

'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,'

Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet, While they dreamed, was yesterday.

Many a maid and many a man Found the leaf.a.ge close and boon; Many a destiny began - O, the morn was merry June!

Dead and gone, dead and gone, (Hark the blackbird in the may!), Life and Death went hurrying on, Cheek on cheek--and where were they?

Dust on dust engendering dust In the leaf.a.ge fresh and boon, Man and maid fulfil their trust - Still the morn turns merry June.

Mother Life, Father Death (O, the blackbird in the may!), Each the other's breath for breath, Fleet the times of the world away.

XXIV--To A. C.

Not to the staring Day, For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and mult.i.tude, The Trees--G.o.d's sentinels Over His gift of live, life-giving air, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves.

Midsummer-manifold, each one Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams That haunt their leafier privacies, Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile Of laughter flickering back from s.h.i.+ne to shade, And disappearances of homing birds, And frolicsome freaks Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs.

But at the word Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, Night of the many secrets, whose effect - Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread - Themselves alone may fully apprehend, They tremble and are changed.

In each, the uncouth individual soul Looms forth and glooms Essential, and, their bodily presences Touched with inordinate significance, Wearing the darkness like the livery Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, They brood--they menace--they appal; Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring Wild hands of warning in the face Of some inevitable advance of the doom; Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing As in some monstrous market-place, They pa.s.s the news, these Gossips of the Prime, In that old speech their forefathers Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard The troubled voice of Eve Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.

Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell The tale of their dim life, with all Its compost of experience: how the Sun Spreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude And those mild messages the Stars Descend in silver silences and dews; Or what the sweet-breathing West, Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leaf.a.ge laughed; And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year - The sting of the stirring sap Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, Their summer amplitudes of pomp, Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, Embittered housewifery Of the lean Winter: all such things, And with them all the goodness of the Master, Whose right hand blesses with increase and life, Whose left hand honours with decay and death.