Part 17 (1/2)

Live on, O brave and true, In us thy children, in ours whose life is thine - Our best and theirs! What is that best but thee - Thee, and thy gift to us, to pa.s.s Like light along the infinite of s.p.a.ce To the immitigable end?

Between the river and the stars, O royal and radiant soul, Thou dost return, thine influences return Upon thy children as in life, and death Turns stingless! What is Death But Life in act? How should the Unteeming Grave Be victor over thee, Mother, a mother of men?

XLVII

Crosses and troubles a-many have proved me.

One or two women (G.o.d bless them!) have loved me.

I have worked and dreamed, and I've talked at will.

Of art and drink I have had my fill.

I've comforted here, and I've succoured there.

I've faced my foes, and I've backed my friends.

I've blundered, and sometimes made amends.

I have prayed for light, and I've known despair.

Now I look before, as I look behind, Come storm, come s.h.i.+ne, whatever befall, With a grateful heart and a constant mind, For the end I know is the best of all.

1888-1889

LONDON VOLUNTARIES--To Charles Whibley

I--GRAVE

St. Margaret's bells, Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles, Sing in the storied air, All rosy-and-golden, as with memories Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.

O, the low, lingering lights! The large last gleam (Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!) Touching these solemn ancientries, and there, The silent River ranging tide-mark high And the callow, grey-faced Hospital, With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!

The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees, And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky (Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!) Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.

The sober Sabbath stir - Leisurely voices, desultory feet! - Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street, Where in their summer frocks the girls go by, And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer, Just as they did an hundred years ago, Just as an hundred years to come they will:- When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low, And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil, Nor any sunset fade serene and slow; But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die.

II--ANDANTE CON MOTO

Forth from the dust and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and l.u.s.t aflare, The wrangle and jangle of unrests, Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win - As from swart August to the green lap of May - To quietness and the fresh and fragrant b.r.e.a.s.t.s Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn Forward and up, in wider and wider way, Shall float the sands, and brim the sh.o.r.es, On this our lith of the World, as round it roars And spins into the outlook of the Sun (The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge), With light, with living light, from marge to marge Until the course He set and staked be run.

Through street and square, through square and street, Each with his home-grown quality of dark And violated silence, loud and fleet, Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O, hark, Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain Ring back a rough refrain Upon the marked and cheerful tramp Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust, The tired midsummer blooms!

O, the mysterious distances, the glooms Romantic, the august And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees Turns to a tryst of vague and strange And monstrous Majesties, Let loose from some dim underworld to range These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour, His silent, s.h.i.+ning sorcery winged with power!

Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep.

But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?

'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakeh.e.l.l cat--how furtive and acold!