English Poems - Richard Le Gallienne
ENGLISH
POEMS
By
Richard Le Gallienne
London: John Lane at The Bodley Head in Vigo Street.
Boston: Copland & Day
69 Cornhill.
A.D. 1895.
_First Edition
September 1892
Second Edition
October 1892
Third Edition
January 1894
Fourth Edition
Revised April 1895_
To Sissie Le Gallienne
EPISTLE DEDICATORY
_Dear Sister: Hear the conclusion of the whole matter. You dream like
mad, you love like tinder, you aspire like a star-struck moth--for what?
That you may hive little lyrics, and sell to a publisher for thirty
pieces of silver.
Hard by us here is a 'bee-farm.' It always reminds me of a publisher's.
The bee has loved a thousand flowers, through a hundred afternoons, he
has filled little sacred cells with the gold of his stolen kisses--for
what? That the whole should be wrenched away and sold at so much 'the
comb'--as though it were a hair-comb. 'Mummy is become merchandise ...
and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.'
Can we ever forget those old mornings when we rose with the lark, and,
while the earliest sunlight slanted through the sleeping house, stole to
the little bookclad study to read--Heaven bless us!--you, perhaps, Mary
Wollstonecraft, and I, Livy, in a Froben folio of 1531!!
Will you accept these old verses in memory of those old mornings? Ah,
then came in the sweet o' the year.
Yours now as then_,
R. Le G.
May 14th, 1892.
CONTENTS
_Epistle Dedicatory,
To the Reader_,
I. PAOLO AND FRANCESCA,
II. YOUNG LOVE--
i. Preludes,
ii. Prelude--'I make this rhyme,'
iii. 'But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,'
iv. Once,
v. The Two Daffodils,
vi. 'Why did she marry him?'
vii. The Lamp and the Star,
viii. Orbits,
ix. Never--Ever,
x. Love's Poor,
xi. Comfort of Dante,
xii. A Lost Hour,
xiii. Met once more,
xiv. A June Lily,
xv. Regret
xvi. Love Afar
xvii. Canst thou be true across so many miles?
_Postscript_
III. COR CORDIUM--
To my Wife, Mildred
The Destined Maid: a Prayer
With some old Love Verses
In a copy of Mr. Swinburne's _Tristram_
Comfort at Parting
Happy Letter
Primrose and Violet
'Juliet and her Romeo,'
In her Diary
Two Parables
A Love Letter
In the Night
The Constant Lover
The Wonder-Child
IV. MISCELLANEOUS--
The House of Venus
Satiety
What of the Darkness?
Ad Cimmerios
Old Love Letters
Death in a London Lodging
Time Flies
So soon Tired
Autumn
A Frost Fancy
The World is Wide
Saint Charles!
Good-Night
Beatrice
A Child's Evensong
An Epitaph on a Goldfish
Beauty Accurst
To a Dead Friend
Sunset in the City
The City in Moonlight
V. OF POETS AND POETRY--
Inscriptions
The Decadent to his Soul
To a Poet
The Passionate Reader to his Poet
Matthew Arnold
'Tennyson' at the Farm
'The Desk's Dry Wood,'
A Library in a Garden
On the Morals of Poets
Faery Gold
All Sung
Corydon's Farewell to his Pipe
ENGLISH POEMS
TO THE READER
_Art was a palace once, things great and fair,
And strong and holy, found a temple there:
Now 'tis a lazar-house of leprous men.
O shall me hear an English song again!
Still English larks mount in the merry morn,
An English May still brings an English thorn,
Still English daisies up and down the grass,
Still English love for English lad and lass--
Yet youngsters blush to sing an English song!_
_Thou nightingale that for six hundred years
Sang to the world--O art thou husht at last!
For, not of thee this new voice in our ears,
Music of France that once was of the spheres;
And not of thee these strange green flowers that spring
From daisy roots and seemed to bear a sting_.
_Thou Helicon of numbers 'undefiled,'
Forgive that 'neath the shadow of thy name,
England, I bring a song of little fame;
Not as one worthy but as loving thee,
Not as a singer, only as a child_.
PAOLO AND FRANCESCA
To R.K. Leather
(July 16th, 1892.)
PAOLO AND FRANCESCA
It happened in that great Italian land
Where every bosom heateth with a star--
At Rimini, anigh that crumbling strand
The Adriatic filcheth near and far--
In that same past where Dante's dream-days are,
That one Francesca gave her youthful gold
Unto an aged carle to bolt and bar;
Though all the love which great young hearts can hold,
How could she give that love unto a miser old?
Nay! but young Paolo was the happy lad,
A youth of dreaming eye yet dauntless foot,
Who all Francesca's wealth of loving had;
One brave to scale a wall and steal the fruit,
Nor fear because some dotard owned the root;
Yea! one who wore his love like sword on thigh
And kept not all his valour for his lute;
One who could dare as well as sing and sigh.
Ah! then were hearts to love, but they are long gone by.
Ye lily-wives so happy in the nest,
Whose joy within the gates of duty springs,
Blame not Love's poor, who, if they would be blest,
Must steal what comes to you with marriage rings:
Ye pity the poor lark whose scarce-tried wings
Faint in the net, while still the morning air
With brown free throats of all his brethren sings,
And can it be ye will not pity her,
Whose youth is as a lark all lost to singing there?
In opportunity of dear-bought joy
Rich were this twain, for old Lanciotto, he
Who was her lord, was brother of her boy,
And in one home together dwelt the three,
With brothers two beside; and he and she
Sat at one board together, in one fane
Their voices rose upon one hymn, ah me!
Beneath one roof each night their limbs had lain,
As now in death they share the one eternal pain.
As much as common men can love a flower
Unto Lanciotto was Francesca dear,
'Tis not on such Love wields his jealous power;
And therefore Paolo moved him not to fear,
Though he so green with youth and he so sere.
Nor yet indeed was wrong, the hidden thing
Grew at each heart, unknown of each, a year,--
Two eggs still silent in the nest through spring,
May draws so near to June, and not yet time to sing!
Yet oft, indeed, through days that gave no sign
Had but Francesca turned about and read
Paolo's bright eyes that only dared to shine
On the dear gold that glorified her head;
Ere all the light had from their circles fled
And the grey Honour darkened all his face:
They had not come to June and nothing said,
Day followed day with such an even pace,
Nor night succeeded night and left no starry trace.
Or, surely, had the flower Paolo pressed
In some sweet volume when he put it by.
Told how his mistress drew it to her breast
And called upon his name when none was nigh;
Had but the scarf he kissed with piteous cry
But breathed again its secret unto her,
Or had but one of every little sigh
Each left for each been love's true messenger:
They surely had not kept that winter all the year.
Yea! love lay hushed and waiting like a seed,
Some laggard of the season still abed
Though the sun calls and gentle zephyrs plead,
And Hope that waited long must deem it dead;
Yet lo! to-morrow sees its shining head
Singing at dawn 'mid all the garden throng:
Ah, had it known, it had been earlier sped--
Was it for fear of day it slept so long,
Or were its dreams of singing sweeter than the song?
But what poor flower can symbol all the might
And all the magnitude, great Love, of thee?
Ah, is there aught can image thee aright
In earth or heaven, how great or fair it be?
We watch the acorn grow into the tree,
We watch the patient spark surprise the mine,
But what are oaks to thy Ygdrasil-tree?
What the mad mine's convulsive strength to thine,
That wrecks a world but bids heaven's soaring steeples shine?
A god that hath no earthly metaphor,
A blinding word that hath no earthly rhyme,
Love! we can only call and no name more;
As the great lonely thunder rolls sublime,
As the great sun doth solitary climb,
And we have but themselves to know them by,
Just so Love stands a stranger amid Time:
The god is there, the great voice speaks on high,
We pray, 'What art thou, Lord?' but win us no reply.
So in the dark grew Love, but feared to flower,
Dreamed to himself, but never spake a word,
Burned like a prisoned fire from hour to hour,
Sang his dear song like an unheeded bird;
Waiting the summoning voice so long unheard,
Waiting with weary eyes the gracious sign
To bring his rose, and tell the dream he dared,
The tremulous moment when the star should shine,
And each should ask of each, and each should answer
--'Thine.'
Winter to-day, but lo! to-morrow spring!
They waited long, but oh at last it came,
Came in a silver hush at evening;
Francesca toyed with threads upon a frame,
Hard by young Paolo read of knight and dame
That long ago had loved and passed away:
He had no other way to tell his flame,
She dare not listen any other way--
But even that was bliss to lovers poor as they.
The world grew sweet with wonder in the west
The while he read and while she listened there,
And many a dream from out its silken nest
Stole like a curling incense through the air;
Yet looked she not on him, nor did he dare:
But when the lovers kissed in Paradise
His voice sank and he turned his gaze on her,
Like a young bird that flutters ere it flies,--
And lo! a shining angel called him from her eyes.
Then from the silence sprang a kiss like flame,
And they hung lost together; while around
The world was changed, no more to be the same
Meadow or sky, no little flower or sound
Again the same, for earth grew holy ground:
While in the silence of the mounting moon
Infinite love throbbed in the straining bound
Of that great kiss, the long-delaying boon,
Granted indeed at last, but ended, ah! so soon.
As the great sobbing fulness of the sea
Fills to the throat some void and aching cave,
Till all its hollows tremble silently,
Pressed with sweet weight of softly-lapping wave:
So kissed those mighty lovers glad and brave.
And as a sky from which the sun has gone
Trembles all night with all the stars he gave
A firmament of memories of the sun,--
So thrilled and thrilled each life when that great kiss was done.
But coward shame that had no word to say
In passion's hour, with sudden icy clang
Slew the bright morn, and through the tarnished day
An iron bell from light to darkness rang:
She shut her ears because a throstle sang,
She dare not hear the little innocent bird,
And a white flower made her poor head to hang--
To be so white! once she was white as curd,
But now--'Alack!' 'Alack!' She speaks no other word.
The pearly line on yonder hills afar
Within the dawn, when mounts the lark and sings
By the great angel of the morning star,--
That was his love, and all free fair fresh things
That move and glitter while the daylight springs:
To thus know love, and yet to spoil love thus!
To lose the dream--O silly beating wings--
Great dream so splendid and miraculous:
O Lord, O Lord, have mercy, have mercy upon us.
She turned her mind upon the holy ones
Whose love lost here was love in heaven tenfold,
She thought of Lucy, that most blessed of nuns
Who sent her blue eyes on a plate of gold
To him who wooed her daily for her love--
'Mine eyes!' 'Mine eyes!' 'Here,--go in peace, they are!'
But ever love came through the midnight grove,
Young Love, with wild eyes watching from afar,
And called and called and called until the morning star.
Ah, poor Francesca, 'tis not such as thou
That up the stony steeps of heaven climb;
Take thou thy heaven with thy Paolo now--
Sweet saint of sin, saint of a deathless rhyme,
Song shall defend thee at the bar of Time,
Dante shall set thy fair young glowing face
On the dark background of his theme sublime,
And Thou and He in your superb disgrace
Still on that golden wind of passion shall embrace.
* * * * *
So love this twain, but whither have they passed?
Ah me, that dark must always follow day,
That Love's last kiss is surely kissed at last,
Howe'er so wildly the poor lips may pray:
Merciful God, is there no other way?
And pen, O must thou of the ending write,
The hour Lanciotto found them where they lay,
Folded together, weary with delight,
Within the sumptuous petals of the rose of night.
Yea, for Lanciotto found them: many an hour
Ere their dear joy had run its doomed date,
Had they, in silken nook and blossomed bower,
All unsuspect the blessed apple ate,
Who now must grind its core predestinate.
Kiss, kiss, poor losing lovers, nor deny
One little tremor of its bliss, for Fate
Cometh upon you, and the dark is nigh
Where all, unkissed, unkissing, learn at length to lie.
Bent on some journey of the state's concern
They deemed him, and indeed he rode thereon
But questioned Paolo--'What if he return!'
'Nay, love, indeed he is securely gone
As thou art surely here, beloved one,
He went ere sundown, and our moon is here--
A fear, love, in this heart that yet knew none!'
How could he fright that little velvet ear
With last night's dream and all its ghostly fear!
So did he yield him to her eager breast,
And half forgot, but could not quite forget,
No sweetest kiss could put that fear to rest,
And all its haggard vision chilled him yet;
Their warder moon in nameless trouble set,
There seemed a traitor echo in the place,
A moaning wind that moaned for lovers met,
And once above her head's deep sunk embrace
He saw--Death at the window with his yellow face.
Had that same dream caught old Lanciotto's reins,
Bent in a weary huddle on his steed,
In darkling haste along the blindfold lanes,
Making a clattering halt in all that speed:--
'Fool! fool!' he cried, 'O dotard fool, indeed,
So ho! they wanton while the old man rides,'
And on the night flashed pictures of the deed.
'Come!'--and he dug his charger's panting sides,
And all the homeward dark tore by in roaring tides.
As some great lord of acres when a thief
Steals from his park some flower he never sees,
Calls it a lily fair beyond belief,
Prisons the wretch, and fines before he frees;
Such jealous madness did Lanciotto seize:
All in an instant is Francesca dear,
He claims the wife he never cared to please,
All in an instant seems his castle near,--
And those poor lovers sleep, forgot at last their fear.
His horse left steaming at his journey's end,
Up through his palace stairs with springing tread
He strode; the silence met him like a friend,
Fain to dissuade him from that deed of dread,
Making a breeze about his burning head,
Laying large hands of comfort on his soul;
Within the ashes of his cheek burned red
A long-shut rose of youth, as to the goal
Of death he sped, as once to love's own tryst he stole.
He caught a sound as of a rose's breath,
He caught another breath of deeper lung,
Rose-leaves and oak-leaves on the wind of death;
He drew aside the arras where they clung
In the dim light, so lovely and so young--
They lay in sin as in a cradle there,
Twin babes that in one bosom nestling hung:
Even Lanciotto paused, ah, will he spare?
Who could not quite forgive a wrong that is so fair!
The grave old clock ticked somewhere in the gloom,
A dozen waiting seconds rose and fell
Ere his pale dagger flickered in the room,
Then quenched its corpse-light in their bosoms' swell--
'Thus, dears, I mate you evermore in hell.'
Their blood ran warm about them and they sighed
For the mad smiter did his work too well,
Just drew together softly and so died,
Fell very still and strange, and moved not side by side.
Yea, moved not, though two hours he watched the twain
And heard their blood drip drip upon the floor,
Twice with stern voice he spake to them again,
And then, a little tenderly, once more,--
'Thus, dears, in hell I mate you evermore.'
And when the curious fingers of the day
Unravelled all the dark, and morning wore,
And the young light played round them where they lay,
The souls were many leagues upon the hellward way.
YOUNG LOVE
N.B.--_This sequence of poems has appeared in former
editions under the title of 'Love Platonic_.'
I
1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.
For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
And the night fadeth like a spent out swimmer
Hurled from the headlands of some shining coast.
O, happy soul, thy mouth at last is singing,
Drunken with wine of morning's azure deep,
Sing on, my soul, the world beneath thee swinging,
A bough of song above a sea of sleep.
2
Who is the lady I sing?
Ah, how can I tell thee her praise
For whom all my life's but the string
Of a rosary painful of days;
Which I count with a curious smile
As a miser who hoardeth his gain,
Though, a madhearted spendthrift the while,
I but gather to waste again.
Yea, I pluck from the tree of the years,
As a country maid greedy of flowers,
Each day brimming over with tears,
And I scatter like petals its hours;
And I trample them under my feet
In a frenzy of cloven-hoofed swine,
And the breath of their dying is sweet,
And the blood of their hearts is as wine.
O, I throw me low down on the ground
And I bury my face in their death,
And only I rise at the sound
Of a wind as it scattereth,
As it scattereth sweetly the dried
Leaves withered and brittle and sere
Of days of old years that have died--
And, O, it is sweet in my ear
And I rise me and build me a pyre
Of the whispering skeleton things,
And my heart laugheth low with the fire,
Laugheth high with the flame as it springs;
And above in the flickering glare
I mark me the boughs of my tree,
My tree of the years, growing bare.
Growing bare with the scant days to be.
Then I turn to my beads and I pray
For the axe at the root of the tree--
Last flower, last bead--ah! last day
That shall part me, my darling, from thee!
And I pray for the knife on the string
Of this rosary painful of days:
But who is the Lady I sing?
Ah, how can I tell thee her praise!
II
I make this rhyme of my lady and me
To give me ease of my misery,
Of my lady and me I make this rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.
And I weave its warp from day to day
In a golden loom deep hid away
In my secret heart, where no one goes
But my lady's self, and--no one knows.
With bended head all day I pore
On a joyless task, and yet before
My eyes all day, through each weary hour,
Breathes my lady's face like a dewy flower.
Like rain it comes through the dusty air,
Like sun on the meadows to think of her;
O sweet as violets in early spring
The flower-girls to the city bring,
O, healing-bright to wintry eyes
As primrose-gold 'neath northern skies--
But O for fit thing to compare
With the joy I have in the thought of her!
So all day long doth her holy face
Bring fragrance to the barren place,
And whensoe'er it comes nearest me,
My loom it weaveth busily.
Some days there be when the loom is still
And my soul is sad as an autumn hill,
But how to tell the blessed time
When my heart is one glowing prayer of rhyme!
Think on the humming afternoon
Within some busy wood in June,
When nettle patches, drunk with the sun,
Are fiery outposts of the shade;
While gnats keep up a dizzy reel,
And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade,
Loud drones his fairy threshing-wheel:--
Hour when some poet-wit might feign
The drowsy tune of the throbbing air
The weaving of the gossamer
In secret nooks of wood and lane--
The gossamer, silk night-robes of the flowers,
Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours.
Yea, as the weaving of the gossamer,
If truly that the mystic golden boom,
Is the strange rapture of my hidden loom,
As I sit in the light of the thought of her;
And it weaveth, weaveth, day by day,
This parti-coloured roundelay;
Weaving for ease of misery,
Weaving this rhyme of my lady and me,
Weaving, weaving this warp of rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.
My lady, lover, may never be mine
In the same sweet way that thine is thine,
My lady and I may never stand
By the holy altar hand in hand,
My lady and I may never rest
Through the golden midnight breast to breast,
Nor share long days of happy light
Sweet moving in each other's sight:
Yea, even must we ever miss
The honey of the chastest kiss.
III
But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief--but try
Some metre like a sky,
Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet
When I, thy master, shall have come to die.
Twitter and tweet
Thy carollings
Of little things,
Of fair and sweet;
For it is meet,
O robin red!
That little theme
Hath little song,
That little head
Hath little dream,
And long.
But we have starry business, such a grief
As Autumn's, dead by some forgotten sheaf,
While all the distance echoes of the wain;
Grief as an ocean's for some sudden isle
Of living green that stayed with it a while,
Then to oblivious deluge plunged again!
Grief as of Alps that yearn but never reach,
Grief as of Death for Life, of Night for Day:
Such grief, O Song, how hast thou strength to teach,
How hope to make assay?
IV
ONCE
Once we met, and then there came
Like a Pentecostal flame,
A word;
And I said not,
Only thought,
She heard!
All I never say but sing,
Worshipping;
Wrapt in the hidden tongue
Of an ambiguous song.
How we met what need to say?
When or where,
Years ago or yesterday,
Here or there.
All the song is--once we met,
She and I;
Once, but never to forget,
Till we die.
All the song is that we meet
Never now--
'Hast thou yet forgotten, sweet?'
'Love, hast thou?'
V
THE DAY OF THE TWO DAFFODILS
'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said;
'O yes, but see my crocuses,' said she.
And so we entered in and sat at talk
Within a little parlour bowered about
With garden-noises, filled with garden scent,
As some sweet sea-shell rings with pearly chimes
And sighs out fragrance of its mother's breast.
We sat at talk, and all the afternoon
Whispered about in changing silences
Of flush and sudden light and gathering shade,
As though some Maestro drew out organ stops
Somewhere in heaven. As two within a boat
On the wide sea we sat at talk, the hours
Lapping unheeded round us as the waves.
And as such two will ofttimes pause in speech,
Gaze at high heaven and draw deep to their hearts
The infinite azure, then meet eyes again
And flash it to each other; without words
First, and then with voice trembling as trumpets
Tremble with fierce breath, voice cadenced too
As deep as the deep sea, Aeolian voice,
Voice of star-spaces, and the pine-wood's voice
In dewy mornings, Life's own awful voice:
So did We talk, gazing with God's own eyes
Into Life's deeps--ah, how they throbbed with stars!
And were we not ourselves like pulsing suns
Who, once an aeon met within the void,
So fiery close, forget how far away
Each orbit sweeps, and dream a little space
Of fiery wedding. So our hearts made answering
Lightnings all that afternoon through purple mists
Of riddled speech; and when at last the sun,
Our sentinel, made sign beneath the trees
Of coming night, and we arose and passed
Across the threshold to the flowers again,
We knew a presence walking in the grove,
And a voice speaking through the evening's cool
Unknown before: though Love had wrought no wrong,
His rune was spoken, and another rhyme
Writ in his poem by the master Life.
'Pray, pluck me some,' I said. She brought me two,
For daffodils were very fine that year,--
O very fine, but daffodils no more.
VI
WHY DID SHE MARRY HIM?
Why did she marry him? Ah, say why!
How was her fancy caught?
What was the dream that he drew her by,
Or was she only bought?
Gave she her gold for a girlish whim,
A freak of a foolish mood?
Or was it some will, like a snake in him,
Lay a charm upon her blood?
Love of his limbs, was it that, think you?
Body of bullock build,
Sap in the bones, and spring in the thew,
A lusty youth unspilled?
But is it so that a maid is won,
Such a maiden maid as she?
Her face like a lily all white in the sun,
For such mere male as he!
Ah, why do the fields with their white and gold
To Farmer Clod belong,
Who though he hath reaped and stacked and sold
Hath never heard their song?
Nay, seek not an answer, comfort ye,
The poet heard their call,
And so, dear Love, will I comfort me--
He hath thy lease, that's all.