Ah, hear me promise, and as true
As you to us am I to you:
Ne'er shall you come and as a child
Sit in the market piping mild,
With dance suggestion in your glance,
And I not dance, and I not dance!
But you the same will always be,
While ninety springs will alter me;
Yet truly as you come and play,
So truly will I dance, I say.
There is a strange thing to be seen
One distant April pink and green:
Before a young child piping sweet
An old child dancing with spent feet.
You must mean more than just this hour,
You perfect thing so subtly fair,
Simple and complex as a flower,
Wrought with such planetary care;
How patient the eternal power
That wove the marvel of your hair.
How long the sunlight and the sea
Wove and re-wove this rippling gold
To rhythms of eternity;
And many a flashing thing grew old,
Waiting this miracle to be;
And painted marvels manifold.
Still with his work unsatisfied,
Eager each new effect to try,
The solemn artist cast aside
Rainbow and shell and butterfly,
As some stern blacksmith scatters wide
The sparks that from his anvil fly.
How many shells, whorl within whorl,
Litter the marges of the sphere
With rack of unregarded pearl,
To shape that little thing, your ear:
Creation, just to make one girl,
Hath travailed with exceeding fear.
The moonlight of forgotten seas
Dwells in your eyes, and on your tongue
The honey of a million bees,
And all the sorrows of all song:
You are the ending of all these,
The world grew old to make you young.
All time hath traveled to this rose;
To the strange making of this face
Came agonies of fires and snows;
And Death and April, nights and days
Unnumbered, unimagined throes,
Find in this flower their meeting place.
Strange artist, to my aching thought
Give answer: all the patient power
That to this perfect ending wrought,
Shall it mean nothing but an hour?
Say not that it is all for nought
Time brings Eternity a flower.
Richard Le Gallienne.
WHAT of the Darkness? Is it very fair?
Are there great calms? And find we silence there? Like soft-shut lilies, all your faces glow
With some strange peace our faces never know,
With some strange faith our faces never dare,
Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it there?
Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie?
Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry?
Is it a Hand to still the pulse's leap?
Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep?
Day shows us not such comfort anywhere -
Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it there?
Out of the Day's deceiving light we call -
Day that shows man so great, and God so small,
That hides the stars, and magnifies the grass
O is the Darkness too a lying glass!
Or undistracted, do you find truth there?
What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?
Richard Le Gallienne.
I DARE not think that thou art by, to stand
And face omnipotence so near at hand!
When I consider thee, how must I shrink;
How must I say, I do not understand,
I dare not think!
I cannot stand before the thought of thee,
Infinite Fullness of Eternity!
So close that all the outlines of the land
Are lost, — in the inflowing of thy sea
I cannot stand.
I think of thee, and as the crystal bowl
Is broken, and the waters of the soul
Go down to death within the crystal sea,
I faint and fail when (thou, the perfect whole)
I think of thee.
I STOOD within the heart of God;
It seemed a place that I had known:
(I was blood-sister to the clod,
Blood-brother to the stone.)
I found my love and labor there,
My house, my raiment, meat and wine,
My ancient rage, my old despair,
Yea, all things that were mine.
I saw the spring and summer pass,
The trees grow bare, and winter come;
All was the same as once it was
Upon my hills at home.
Then suddenly in my own heart
I felt God walk and gaze about;
He spoke; his words seemed held apart
With gladness and with doubt.
"OF WOUNDS AND SORE DEFEAT" 279
"Here is my meat and wine," He said,
"My love, my toil, my ancient care;
Here is my cloak, my book, my bed,
And here my old despair.
"Here are my seasons: winter, spring,
Summer the same, and autumn spills
The fruits I look for; everything
As on my heavenly hills."
"OF WOUNDS AND SORE DEFEAT"
OF wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle stay;
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay;
Of weariness and fear,
I made my shouting spear;
Of loss, and doubt, and dread,
And swift oncoming doom
I made a helmet for my head
And a floating plume.
From the shutting mist of death,
From the failure of the breath,
I made a battle-horn to blow
Across the vales of overthrow.
O hearken, love, the battle-horn!
The triumph clear, the silver scorn!
O hearken where the echoes bring,
Down the gray disastrous morn,
Laughter and rallying!
William Vaughn Moody.
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