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Title: The Selected Poems of Marjorie Pickthall
Author: Pickthall, Marjorie Lowry Christie (1883-1922)
Editor: Pierce, Lorne Albert (1890-1961)
Date of first publication: 1957
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1957
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 7 April 2012
Date last updated: 7 April 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #934

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






_The_

_Selected_

_Poems of_

MARJORIE

PICKTHALL




_Edited and with an introduction by_

_LORNE PIERCE_




MCCLELLAND AND STEWART LIMITED

Publishers    Toronto




First Selected Edition

Copyright, Canada, 1957

by

McClelland and Stewart Limited



  _No part of this book may be reproduced
  in any form without permission in writing
  from the publisher_



Printed and Bound in Canada




_To my friend E. J. Pratt_




  DEDICATION

  _Lord, on this paper white,
  My soul would write
  Tales that were heard of old
  Of perilous things and bold;
  Kings as young lions for pride;
  Lost cities where they died
  Last in the gate; the cry
  That told some Eastern throng
  A prophet was gone by;
  The song of swords; the song
  Of beautiful, fierce lords
  Gone down among the swords;
  The traffick and the breath
  Of nations spilled in death;
  The glory and the gleam
  Of a whole age
  Snared in a golden page,--
  Such is my dream._

  _Yet thanks, if yet You give
  The crumbs by which I live,--
  Blown shreds of beauty, broken
  Words half unspoken,
  So faint, so faltering,
  They may not truly show
  The blue on a crow's wing,
  The berry of a brier
  Cupped in new snow
  As though the snow lit fire..._

  MARJORIE PICKTHALL




  _Contents_

  Introduction by Lorne Pierce

  Vision
  Pegowis
  Two Souls
  Père Lalement
  When Winter Comes
  Snow in April
  The Green Month
  On Amaryllis
  Before a Shower
  The Breaking of the Drought
  Riding
  Dawn
  Serenade
  Birds at Evening
  The Sleep-Seekers
  Evening
  Frost Song
  The Shepherd Boy
  Wiltshire
  The Tramper's Grave
  Duna
  Pieter Marinus
  Ebb Tide
  Bega
  St. Yves' Poor
  The Singing Shepherd
  The Bridegroom of Cana
  The Young Baptist
  The Little Sister of the Prophet
  A Mother in Egypt
  Ecclesiastes
  The Princess in the Tower
  Two Lyrics
  Going Home
  Marian's Easter
  The Lovers of Marchaid
  Palome's Book
  Thoughts
  The Chosen
  The Immortal
  Imperfection
  Comfort
  Salutaris Hostia
  Love
  Made in His Image
  Vita Brevis
  Miranda's Tomb
  To Timarion
  Persephone Returning to Hades
  To Alcithoë
  In Avilion
  Hanno
  Kwannon
  Marching Men
  When it is Finished
  A Violet Leaf from Keats' Grave
  A Saxon Epitaph
  An Epitaph
  Gifts
  Resurgam
  The Wood Carver's Wife
  The Silent Shepherds
  The Naiad
  Sleepy-Hoods
  How Look'd She?
  Jeremy Frost
  Songs
  Malachi's Song
  Tinker's Song
  Finis




_Introduction_

  I shall say, Lord, "Is it music, is it morning,
  Song that is fresh as sunrise, light that sings?"
  When on some hill there breaks the immortal warning
  Of half-forgotten springs.


The poem from which these lines are taken, "Resurgam," sums up, in a
way, the strength and weakness of Marjorie Pickthall.  On the one hand,
there are grace and charm, restrained Christian mysticism, and
unfailing cadence; on the other, preoccupation with the unearthly, with
death and regret, with loneliness and grief, where the tendency is
toward emotional interpretations of life, and rapture and intuition are
substituted for the discipline of reason.  Something of a pagan in the
classical sense, as well as part Protestant and part Anglo-Catholic,
she took beauty where she found it and believed that it held all of
goodness and truth.  Her faith could be summed up in a quotation from
the Bible which she treasured: "Mine eyes shall see the King in His
glory!" Her favourite saint was Francis of Assisi.  Her poems very
often seem to be private acts of devotion--reticent, wistful, and
personal, a kind of oblation jewelled with symbolism, bright with
imagery, and always softly cadenced as if joining in the age-old litany
of the Mass.  Passion, grief, feelings of injustice or outrage, were
nearly always muted in her verse.  Only in her novels and short stories
did she ever try to come to grips with mankind, and even then she
tended to submerge her intimate thoughts and feelings in romantic
situations from which the tangible and the real too often escaped.  In
both prose and verse her humour remained more or less constant, a
fundamental fact in both her art and life that partook of her
blitheness and gaiety, sometimes a commentary upon life and sometimes a
kind of anodyne to still the hurts of reality.



I

Marjorie Pickthall was born September 14, 1883, near Chiswick, England,
the only child of Arthur C. Pickthall and Helen Mary Mallard.  Her
father was the son of a Church of England clergyman and her mother's
father was an officer in the Royal Navy, part Irish and part Huguenot.
After several moves the Pickthalls came to Canada in 1889 and settled
in Toronto.  Marjorie attended a Church of England School on Beverley
Street, and later Bishop Strachan School.  A delicate child she was
often out of school, but always immersed in her drawing and painting,
her diary and violin, and her own stories and verses.  All the
anniversaries of her year were marked by gifts of books.  She sold her
first story to the Toronto _Globe_ in 1898, a poem to the _Mail and
Empire_ in the same year, and a prize poem, "O Keep the World Forever
at the Dawn," to the Mail and Empire in 1900.  She was at last launched
upon a literary career and never turned back.  In the next four or five
years her poems appeared in the _National Monthly, Acta Victoriana,
Century, The Atlantic, Westminster, McClures, Metropolitan, University
Magazine, Scribners, Harpers_, and others, and in 1906 she launched the
first of three juvenile thrillers illustrated by C. W. Jefferys.  From
her prize poem of 1900 to "Bega," "The Little Sister of the Prophet,"
and "The Bridegroom of Cana," all published in 1909, the distance was
great and illustrates her progress from a beginner to the full maturity
of her powers.  When _Drift of Pinions_, her first book, appeared in
1913, she had already written much of her best poetry, and was to
continue not only the repetition of her favourite attitudes and
metaphors, but even the vocabulary that included such words as _gray,
little, silver, rose, dreams, mist, dove,_ and _moth_.

Marjorie Pickthall foraged far and wide, but she sought those
experiences most congenial to her nature, many of them denied to her in
the only world of reality she knew.  In the beginning she devoured
Henty, Kipling and Scott, Lytton, Stevenson and Conrad, and her
earliest stories were reminiscent of them.  Later she came upon John
Maclean's _The Indians: Their Manners and Customs_, and all her
materials were ready for three juvenile books of adventure.  Soon,
however, she was to discover Fiona Macleod, and enter into the Celtic
realm of haunting dreams, preoccupation with loneliness and death, and
longing for the unobtainable.  Thereafter, every landscape held
something of the "dim sweet isles of the West."  She also found
Ingram's _Flora Symbolica_, and this invested with hidden meanings the
flowers she had always loved to paint.  Then she discovered Katherine
Tynan, Alice Meynell, Louise Imogen Guiney, W. B. Yeats, and even
Masefield, to whom, in his Celtic moods, she felt nearer than anyone.
As if this were not enough she entered the Norse world through William
Morris, loitered about legendary Brittany and the Holy Land, and
explored the frontiers of the New World with its Indians, French
missionaries, and _coureurs de bois_.

Then, in 1910, when she was twenty-seven, her dream house on an isle of
dreams collapsed.  The death of her mother was for her an overwhelming
catastrophe, taking her whole world.  She had no defences ready and her
grief was tragic.

  Life is too little for the way of Love,
  A lifted wing, a flower too soon unfurled,
  A green grave with one patient star above,
  And that is all the world.

It was then that she found in several persons identified with Victoria
College, Toronto, the counsel and consolation she so much needed.  A
position was secured for her in Victoria College Library, and after a

considerable interval she returned to poetry again.  The first poem
written after the crisis, "Rain in the Nest," appeared in the _Atlantic
Monthly_.  Miss Helena Coleman and Professor Pelham Edgar guided her
reticent genius, and brought her strong friends, among them Sir Andrew
Macphail, Editor of _The University Magazine_, who published her first
book of poems, _Drift of Pinions_, dated at Victoria College.

Marjorie Pickthall sailed for England at Christmas time, 1912, and
lived with an uncle at Hammersmith, London, where she received her
author's copies of _Drift of Pinions_.  The _Oxford Book of English
Verse_ appeared in 1913.  Her own copy is heavily marked, and indicates
her almost morbid concentration upon death: Praed's "Mater Desiderata";
Browning's "Prospice" (in which she corrects the editor's "Then a joy,"
restoring the proper "out of pain"); George MacDonald's "Sonnet" on
death; Christina Rossetti's "Cold it is, my beloved, since your funeral
bell was toll'd"; Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine"; Francis Thompson's
"An Ode after Easter"; "Weep not Today," by Robert Bridges; and others.
She later moved with a friend to Bowerchalk, near Salisbury, and there
wrote _Little Hearts_ (1914), her first novel, set in Jacobean days,
and less a story than a charming and quaint meditation on Mr. Sampson's
philosophy of poverty.  The First World War broke in upon her own
world, and to help in the general call to service she worked for a time
on the land, which proved much too heavy for her.  Next she worked in
the South Kensington Meteorological Office, and the close confinement
threatened her eyesight.  In between times she began a novel, _Fox
Cover_, never completed, wrote _The Bridge_ (1921), a novel located at
Toronto, and published her second book of poems, _Lamp of Poor Souls_
(1916), which contained most of _Drift of Pinions_ together with many
new poems.  In 1920 she returned to Canada, and took up residence in
Vancouver.  In the same year her one-act play, _The Wood Carver's
Wife_, was produced in Montreal, and she began what was to have been
her greatest work in prose, _The Beaten Man_, a novel based upon
contemporary life in the new world.  She died suddenly, in 1922, and
was buried beside her mother in St. James' Cemetery, Toronto, April 26.
_The Wood Carver's Wife and Other Poems_ appeared the same year in a
memorial edition.*


* See _Marjorie Pickthall: a Book of Remembrance_, by Lorne Pierce.
The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1925.



II

With Marjorie Pickthall the old poetic tradition in Canada may be said
to have come to its foreordained end.  It came to its end at Victoria
College.  With a young student, E. J. Pratt, who borrowed books from
the Library where Marjorie Pickthall was assistant, the new tradition
began.  She who helped move the books from the old stacks to the new
building, and was not a little lost amid it all, was shortly to enter
the chaos of the First World War, and would scarcely survive it.  The
new day demanded other gifts than hers.  Like Bliss Carman, she found
the firmament dissolving beneath her feet.  What she had to say, and
the lyric way she said it, were fast going out of style.  She hoped to
find herself in war work, with a body that scarcely sustained the
demands of a cloistered life in times of peace.  "Even if I fail, it
will be a satisfaction to know I've had a thorough good try at
something useful."  Her multiplying stories were full of perilous
quests and hazardous journeys, of undertakings that required incredible
resources to withstand fatigue, hunger, and despair.  She wrote of men
who could take the world in their strong hands and rebuild it alone
according to their will, but she was no consort for these.  Her vivid
romanticism invested the incredible with the aura of reality, but
whatever of reality her people and places ever possessed was the
product of her soaring imagination.

In her poetry she carried the old tradition as far as it could
reasonably be expected to go, and certainly as far as the transplanted
Celtic motif was desirable in the new world.  There seems to be no
place now for the historic sorrows of Deirdre, dim and inconsolable, or
for the luxurious grief of a Celtic Sappho regretting absent love.
There is not a little of this in the poetry of Marjorie Pickthall, as
well as her own variations on the theme of _The Song of Songs_, a
blending of passion and reverence, always rather wistful, and very
beautiful at its best.  Her poems based upon the Mass reveal her
imperfect understanding of both doctrine and symbol, and reflect,
instead of a deep religious experience, her prevailing attitudes,
sincere enough but emotional, toward death, love, and separation, a
passionate longing for fulfilment and peace.  Whatever theology she
possessed was, like her understanding of people--both as individuals
and in their social relationships--almost always intuitive and not
derived from reason or profound personal experience.



III

During her lifetime she had sometimes been called "Pickthall the
Obscure."  She attributed this obscurity, if such it was, to the
mystical quality of her work.  When she sat down to write her last
novel, _The Beaten Man_, she strove to become more objective, simpler,
more direct and practical.  She was led toward this resolve by her
great good sense, by a passionate if detached interest in people, by an
all-pervading humour, and by a sense of the grotesque.  In her early
work she dealt with humanity, but it was man out of the past, remote,
idealized, and legendary.  She faced away from own age.  In her first
novel, _Little Hearts_, she retreated to the Jacobean period, just as
elsewhere she was intrigued by mediaeval Brittany or in love with the
Cavaliers.  Her difficulty, in both prose and poetry, was in not being
able to see mankind as it really was.  When she escaped from various
war services to Bowerchalk, she was immersed in the world of romance.
"Chalke Cottage" was within sight of the old Roman Road.  "From
Brading" reveals the wonder of it all for her, the marching legions,
the pomp and circumstance, the arrogance and swagger of those vanished
legions.  Salisbury Plain, dominated by the cathedral, held under its
barrows a long-forgotten civilization.  And there was Stonehenge, the
Druids with their rubric of the sun, Merlin and Vortigern, Lancelot and
Guinivere.  When she wrote, the spell, the imagery, the very rhythms of
far-off times and ways, dominated the cadences of her lines.  When she
returned to Canada she resolved to put all this away and to take real
people, place them over against a real background of the contemporary
and recognizable world, and bring to life a vital Canadian tradition.
She recalled Rupert Brooke's lament, that Canada was unpeopled by
legendary figures.  Her answer to that was: "The material is there,
wherever there is longing, sacrifice, or the sense of fate....  Let no
one, poet or no, think that the material from which such figures are
builded can ever be wanting while man endures...".  Thus she wrote in
the tentative introduction to _The Beaten Man_, the title of which was
borrowed from Masefield's "Pompey the Great":

  And the beaten man becomes a story for ever.


From such mystical stories as "La Blanchisseuse Dorée," "The Worker in
Sandalwood," and "The Bog-Wood Box," and her rousing stories of
adventure, "Luck," "Cheap," "The Stove," and "The Men Who Climbed,"
Marjorie Pickthall moved gradually on to her poetic one-act play, _The
Wood Carver's Wife_.  She was ready at last for the great experiment,
_The Beaten Man_.  Far behind was the adolescent prayer, "O keep the
world forever at the dawn."  In verse she attained the maturity of
"Palome," "Père Lalement," "Resurgam," "The Little Sister of the
Prophet," "A Mother in Egypt," and "The Bridegroom of Cana."  While the
idiom of _The Song of Songs_ remains, there was a growing wisdom of the
heart and unmistakable ripeness.

  Will he come from the byre
  With his head all misty with dreams, and his eyes on fire,
  Shaking us all with the weight of the words of his passion?
  I will give him raisins instead of dates,
  And wreathe young leaves on the little red plates.
  I will put on my new head-tyre,
  And braid my hair in a comelier fashion.
  Will he note?  Will he mind?
  Will he touch my cheek as he used to, and laugh and be kind?


She lived for only a short time, and dwelt all her days in the realm of
the spirit.  In such a world there was no frontier.  Within the same
poem one might expect to meet Armorel or Mary the Mother, Adonis or the
Light of the World.  Her poetry is saturated with religious sentiment
and often reveals swift spiritual insights.  Some have suggested that
the apparent confusion of symbol and creed in her work anticipated the
religious and intellectual fuzziness of our own time.  Certainly she
was not orthodox, either Protestant or Catholic, and her faith had no
consistent theological or philosophical foundations.  But it is also
true that religion was the deepest thing in her experience, and she
spoke about it as naturally as she did the weather.  It was valid and
real for her, and transcended the bewildering divisions of creeds in
the only way she knew, that is, the way of the true artist, and as such
provided a meeting ground for all.


For man is not a Solitary but a Kindly Soul.  Kind kin he needs, and so
hath been provisioned for in the comfortable Reason of God ... (Love)
is the best Thing God gives, and perhaps the one Thing even He may not
take away...


The gates of Heaven are made of pearl, and the redeemed go through
them.  In the considerating justice of God, it is possible that the
poor have the right of that way before all others, as a sign or
recompense of the many gates that have been shut to them on earth; that
even the cohorts of the archangels make room for the sons of Poverty.
There are no back doors to Heaven.  Come, we will look, if we may not
enter in...".  (_Little Hearts_)

  I shall say, Lord, "We will laugh again tomorrow,
  Now we'll be still a little, friend with friend.
  Death was the gate and the long way was sorrow.
  Love is the end."  ("Resurgam")

LORNE PIERCE




_The Selected Poems of_

MARJORIE PICKTHALL




  VISION

  I have not walked on common ground,
  Nor drunk of earthly streams;
  A shining figure, mailed and crowned,
  Moves softly through my dreams.

  He makes the air so keen and strange,
  The stars so fiercely bright;
  The rocks of time, the tides of change,
  Are nothing in his sight.

  Death lays no shadow on his smile;
  Life is a race fore-run;
  Look in his face a little while,
  And life and death are one.




  PEGOWIS

  Just where the ridgepole cleaves the blue
  A star looks down on Pegowis,
  And the star and the iris sky and the dew
  And the kindly trees are his.

  Nothing he does but lie in the sun
  And dream of the deeds he used to do,
  Of the raided herd and the buffalo run
  And the thundering caribou.

  Pegowis thinks no more on sorrow,
  Pegowis neither is glad nor grieves.
  His eyes are turned to the misty morrow,
  His hands are like brown leaves.

  Yet here comes one with a bowl of corn,
  Here come two with a beaver skin.
  Noon and evening, night and morn,
  The folk go out and in.

  None will tell where the wonder is,
  But the children pause with a catch of the breath,
  Murmuring, "It is Pegowis, Pegowis
  The friend of Death."

  Pegowis lies in a land withdrawn.
  Blind is he to the bloodroot pale,
  Deaf to the thrushes that sing at dawn
  "Follow, follow!" along the trail.

  Pegowis neither will know nor tell
  What the little winds say as they touch his face,
  But he hath the look of those that dwell
  In a happy place.




  TWO SOULS

  _A Letter from Père Jogues_

  Most reverend Father, I have borne all wrong,
  Agonies, griefs, revengements.  Yet not I,
  But rather He Who knew and loved us long,
  And came at last to die.
  In my maimed hands ye see Him, in my face
  His poor abiding place,

  "Lo, they will hear My voice and understand;
  Go, seek My wandering sheep," the Shepherd saith,
  So, o'er the world I sought them, hand in hand
  With that dark brother of our Order, Death.
  Under the shadow of his bitterest
  Behold, two souls for God!

  Like the reed-feeding swans that cannot choose
  But hear the voice of summer, in swift flight
  Up from Three Rivers came the long canoes
  Through calm of day and night,
  I in the foremost, Coupil and Couture,
  Whose fiery crowns are sure.

  Sweet shines the summer over Normandy,
  And bright on Aries among her blossoming vines,
  But O, more sweet than any land or sea
  The northern summer shines.
  Each night a silvered dream to cast away,
  Each golden dream a day--

  So we went on, and our dark Hurons smiled,
  Singing the child-songs of the woodpecker,
  Through clear green glooms and amber bars enisled
  Of tamarack and fir.
  Till one cried, "Lo, a shadow and a dread
  Steals from the isles ahead!"

  Death laid a sudden silence on his lips.
  In tumult of torn waters at the side.
  Crashing, he fell, and all our little ships
  Shook on that reddening tide.
  Then the blue noon was torn with steel and flame,
  And the Five Nations came.




  PERE LALEMENT

  I lift the Lord on high,
  Under the murmuring hemlock boughs, and see
  The small birds of the forest lingering by
  And making melody.
  These are mine acolytes and these my choir,
  And this mine altar in the cool green shade,
  Where the wild soft-eyed does draw nigh
  Wondering, as in the byre
  Of Bethlehem the oxen heard Thy cry
  And saw Thee, unafraid.

  My boatmen sit apart,
  Wolf-eyed, wolf-sinewed, stiller than the trees.
  Help me, O Lord, for very slow of heart
  And hard of faith are these.
  Cruel are they, yet Thy children.  Foul are they,
  Yet wert Thou born to save them utterly.
  Then make me as I pray
  Just to their hates, kind to their sorrows, wise
  After their speech, and strong before their free
  Indomitable eyes.

  Do the French lilies reign
  Over Mont Royal and Stadacona still?
  Up the St. Lawrence comes the spring again,
  Crowning each southward hill
  And blossoming pool with beauty, while I roam
  Far from the perilous folds that are my home,
  There where we built St. Ignace for our needs,
  Shaped the rough roof tree, turned the first sweet sod,
  St. Ignace and St. Louis, little beads
  On the rosary of God.

  Pines shall Thy pillars be,
  Fairer than those Sidonian cedars brought
  By Hiram out of Tyre, and each birch-tree
  Shines like a holy thought.
  But come no worshippers; shall I confess,
  St. Francis-like, the birds of the wilderness?
  O, with Thy love my lonely head uphold.
  A wandering shepherd I, who hath no sheep;
  A wandering soul, who hath no scrip, nor gold,
  Nor anywhere to sleep.

  My hour of rest is done;
  On the smooth ripple lifts the long canoe;
  The hemlocks murmur sadly as the sun
  Slants his dim arrows through.
  Whither I go I know not, nor the way,
  Dark with strange passions, vexed with heathen charms,
  Holding I know not what of life or death;
  Only be Thou beside me day by day,
  Thy rod my guide and comfort, underneath
  Thy everlasting arms.




  WHEN WINTER COMES

  Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke,
  And rain, they say, from Yale to Skeena,
  And the skid-roads blind, and never a look
  Of the Coast Range blue over Malaspina,
  And west winds keener
  Than jack-knife blades,
  And rocks grown greener
  With the long drip-drip from the cedar shades
  On the drenched deep soil where the footsteps suck,
  And the camp half-closed and the pay-roll leaner,--
  Say, little horse, shall we hunt our luck?

  Yet...  I don't know... there's an hour at night
  When the clouds break and the stars are turning
  A thousand points of diamond light
  Through the old snags of the cedar-burning,
  And the west wind's spurning
  A hundred highlands,
  And the frost-moon's learning
  The white fog-ways of the outer islands,
  And the shallows are dark with the sleeping duck,
  And life's a wonder for our discerning,--
  Say, little horse, shall we wait our luck?




  SNOW IN APRIL

  Over the boughs that the wind has shaken,
    Over the sands that are rippled with rain,
  Over the banks where the buds awaken
    Cold cloud shadows are spreading again.
  All the musical world is still,
    When sharp and sudden, a sparrow calls,
  And down on the grass where the violets shiver,
  Through the spruce on the height of the hill,
  Down on the breadths of the shining river
    The faint snow falls.

  Last weak word of a lord that passes--
    Why should the burgeoning woods be mute?
  Spring is abroad in the spiring grasses
    Life is awake in the robin's flute.
  But high in the spruce a wind is wailing,
    And the birds in silence arise and go.
  Is it that winter is still too near
  For the heart of the world to cast out fear,
  When over the sky the rack comes sailing
    And suddenly falls the snow?




  THE GREEN MONTH

  What of all the colours shall I bring you for your fairing,
  Fit to lay your fingers on, fine enough for you?--
  Yellow for the ripened rye, white for ladies' wearing,
  Red for briar-roses, or the skies' own blue?

  Nay, for spring has touched the elm, spring has found the willow,
  Winds that call the swallow home sway the boughs apart;
  Green shall all my curtains be, green shall be my pillow,
  Green I'll wear within my hair, and green upon my heart.




  ON AMARYLLIS

  _A Tortoyse_

  My name was Amaryllis.  I
  From a harde Shell put forthe to fly;
  No Bird, alas; with Beautie prim'd,
  Hath Death th' inconstant Fowler lim'd.
  No antick Moth on Blossoms set
  Hath Judgement taken in a Net.
  So dull, so slowe, so meeke I went
  In my House-Roof that pay'd no Rent,
  E'en my deare Mistresse guess'd no Spark
  Could e'er enlight'n my dustie Dark.
    Judge not, ye Proud.  Each lowlie Thing
    May lack the Voyce, not Heart, to sing.
    The Worme that from the Moulde suspires
    May be attun'd with heavenlie Quires,
    And I, a-crawling in my Straw,
    Was moved by Love, and made by Law.
  So all ye wise, who 'neath your Clod
  Go creeping onwards up to God,
  Take Heart of me, who by His Grace,
  Slough'd off my Pris'n and won my Race.




  BEFORE A SHOWER

  Between the marshes and the lake,
  Upon the long dun dunes of sand,
  All silvery two aspens shake,
  And silver gleamings slant and break
  And fade to gray, above the land.

  Among the poplars, swaying tall,
  Chill lake-born breezes moaning pass;
  And elfin murmurs soft and small
  Æolian sighings lift and fall,
  And die to silence in the grass.

  A ripple rocks the drifted weeds,
  That, trembling, float and sink again,
  And sudden shudders strike the reeds,
  As downwards on the silent meads
  Softly there falls the silver rain.




  THE BREAKING OF THE DROUGHT

  On the strained ear the hush bears heavily,
  And heavily the threatening moments pass.
  The cricket-choirs are mute within the grass
  And clamorous bird cries once and then is still,
  Answered by one more elfin-voiced than he
  From the mist-hidden hill.

  The small soft clouds drop down like drifted smoke,
  And one by one haste earthward on the wind,
  With tempest-torn battalions rolled behind,
  Most merciful in wrath; and in the shade
  Of those slow-heaving folds, the lightning's stroke
  Shears like a golden blade.

  But swift and sweet a warmer breeze leaps forth,
  Bearing the scent of clover drenched in rain
  And as it sighs to silence once again,
  The old Earth-Mother lifts her wearied eyes,
  Beholding in those far-flung signs of wrath
  A late salvation rise.

  But all their wrath weeps down in silver drops,
  And all those dark cloud-banners far unfurl'd
  Droop down in kindlier mist to veil the world.
  And, silver from the silver-shining sea,
  There comes, soft-shrouding all the mountain tops,
  The gray fog silently.

  Wide on their sands the little streams have crept,
  And all the leaves have whispered murmuringly
  Of hope, and show'r and sunnier days to be.
  But still no bird lifts up triumphant voice
  And the old Earth is hushed as if she slept
  Too weary to rejoice.

  Not yet shall come the triumph and the strife!
  Not yet, Earth-Mother, from some woodland bird
  Shall the full-throated psalm of love be heard.
  Not yet the dawns to war and labour call,
  But o'er the re-created tides of life
  Soft easeful languors fall.

  This is the air of which our dreams are bred,
  And softly-blown, sleep-singing winds are these.
  With murmur and more tuneful silences
  The drowsy waves beat on the drowsier shore,
  And vaporous clouds, seen dimly overhead,
  Wheel southward evermore.

  Now o'er the fields serenely falls the night,
  Moonless and still in soft gray hues of rest.
  The rifted rain clears slowly from the west,
  Where lingers one translucent amber bar,
  And a small wandering shred of cloud, so bright
  It seems a star.




  RIDING

  If I should live again,
  Quick of sinew and vein
  O God, let me be young,
  With the honeycomb on my tongue,
  All in a moment flung
  With the dawn on a flowing plain,
  Riding, riding, riding, riding
  Between the sun and the rain.

  If I, having been, must be,
  O God, let it be so,
  Swift and supple and free
  With a long journey to go,
  And the clink of the curb and the blow
  Of hooves, and the wind at my knee,
  Riding, riding, riding, riding
  Between the hills and the sea.




  DAWN

  O keep the world forever at the dawn,
  Ere yet the opals, cobweb-strung, have dried,
  Ere yet too bounteous gifts have marred the morn
  Or fading stars have died.
  O, keep the eastern gold no wider than
  An angel's finger-span,
  And hush the increasing thunder of the sea
  To murmuring melody
  In those fair coves where tempests ne'er should be.

  Hold back the line of shoreward-sweeping surge
  And veil each deep sea-pool in pearlier mist,
  Ere yet the silver ripples on the verge
  Have turned to amethyst.
  Fling back the chariot of encroaching day
  And call the winds away
  Ere yet they sigh, and let the hastening sun
  Along his path in heaven no higher run,
  But show through all the years his golden rim
  With shadows lingering dim
  Forever o'er the world awaiting him.

  Hold every bird with still and drowsy wing,
  That in the breathless hush no clamorous throat
  Shall break the peace that hangs on everything
  With shrill awakening note;
  Keep fast the half-seen beauties of the rose
  In undisturbed repose,
  Check all the iris buds where they unfold
  Impatient from their hold,
  And close the cowslips' cups of honeyed gold.

  Keep all things hushed, so hushed we seem to hear
  The sounds of low-swung clouds that sweep the trees;
  Let now no harsher music reach the ear,
  No earthlier sounds than these,
  When whispering shadows move within the grass,
  And airy tremors pass
  Through all the earth with life awakening thrilled,
  And so forever stilled,
  Too sweet in promise e'er to be fulfilled.

  O keep the world forever at the dawn,
  Yet, keeping so, let nothing lifeless seem,
  But hushed, as if the miracle of morn
  Were trembling in its dream.
  Some shadowy moth may pass with drowsy flight
  And fade before the sight,
  While in the unlightened darkness of the wall
  The chirping crickets call;
  From forest pools where fragrant lilies are
  A breath shall pass afar,
  And o'er the crested pine shall hang one star.




  SERENADE

  Dark is the iris meadow,
  Dark is the ivory tower,
  And lightly the young moth's shadow
  Sleeps on the passion-flower.

  Gone are our day's red roses,
  So lovely and lost and few,
  But the first star uncloses
  A silver bud in the blue.

  Night, and a flame in the embers
  Where the seal of the years was set,--
  When the almond-bough remembers
  How shall my heart forget?





  BIRDS AT EVENING

  When the rooks fly homeward and the gulls are following high,
  And the grey feet of the silence with a silver dream are shod,
  I mind me of the little wings abroad in every sky
  Who seek their sleep of God.

  When the dove is hidden and the dew is white on the corn,
  And the dark bee in the heather, and the shepherd with the sheep,
  I mind me of the little wings in the holm-oak and the thorn
  Who take of Him their sleep.

  When the brier closes and the iris-flower is furled,
  And over the edge of the evening the martin knows her nest,
  I mind me of the little hearts abroad in all the world
  Who find in Him their rest.




  THE SLEEP-SEEKERS

  Lift thou the latch whereon the wild rose clings,
  Touch the green door to which the briar has grown.
  If you seek sleep, she dwells not with these things,--
  The prisoned wood, the voiceless reed, the stone.
  But where the day yields to one star alone,
  Softly Sleep cometh on her brown owl-wings,
  Sliding above the marshes silently
  To the dim beach between the black pines and the sea.

  There; or in one leaf-shaken loveliness
  Of birchen light and shadow, deep she dwells,
  Where the song-sparrow and the thrush are heard,
  And once a wandering flute-voiced mocking-bird,
  Where, when the year was young,
  Grew sweet faint bloodroot, and the adder-tongue
  Lifting aloft her spire of golden bells.

  Here shall we lift our lodge against the rain,
  Walling it deep
  With tamarac branches and the balsam fir,
  Sweet even as sleep,
  And aspen boughs continually astir
  To make a silver-gleaming,--
  Here shall we lift our lodge and find again
  A little space for dreaming.




  EVENING

  When the white iris folds the drowsing bee,
  When the first cricket wakes
  The fairy hosts of his enchanted brakes,
  When the dark moth has sought the lilac tree,
  And the young stars, like jasmine of the skies,
  Are opening on the silence, Lord, there lies
  Dew on Thy rose and dream upon mine eyes.

  Lovely the day, when life is robed in splendour,
  Walking the ways of God and strong with wine,
  But the pale eve is wonderful and tender,
  And night is more divine.
  Fold my faint olives from their shimmering plain,
  O Shadow of sweet darkness fringed with rain.
  Give me to night again.

  Give me to day no more.  I have bethought me
  Silence is more than laughter, sleep than tears.
  Sleep like a lover faithfully hath sought me
  Down the enduring years.
  Where stray the first white fallings of the fold,
  Where the Lent-lily droops her earlier gold
  Sleep waits me as of old.

  Grant me sweet sleep, for light is unavailing
  When patient eyes grow weary of the day.
  Young lambs creep close and tender wings are failing,
  And I grow tired as they.
  Light as the long wave leaves the lonely shore,
  Our boughs have lost the bloom that morning bore.
  Give me to day no more.




  FROST SONG

  Here where the bee slept and the orchis lifted
  Her honeying pipes of pearl, her velvet lip,
  Only the swart leaves of the oak lie drifted
  In sombre fellowship.
  Here where the flame-weed set the lands alight
  Lies the black upland, webbed and crowned with white.

  Build high the logs, O love, and in thine eyes
  Let me believe the summer lingers late.
  We shall not miss her passive pageantries,
  We are not desolate,
  When on the sill, across the window bars,
  Kind winter flings her flowers and her stars.




  THE SHEPHERD BOY

  When the red moon hangs over the fold,
  And the cypress shadow is rimmed with gold,
  O, little sheep, I have laid me low,
  My face against the old earth's face,
  Where one by one the white moths go,
  And the brown bee has his sleeping place.
  And then I have whispered, Mother hear,
  For the owls are awake and the night is near,
  And whether I lay me near or far
  No lips shall kiss me,
  No eye shall miss me,
  Saving the eye of a cold white star.

  And the old brown woman answers mild,
  Rest you safe on my heart, O child.
  Many a shepherd, many a king,
  I fold them safe from their sorrowing.
  Gwenever's heart is bound with dust,
  Tristram dreams of the dappled doe,
  But the bugle moulders, the blade is rust;
  Stilled are the trumpets of Jericho,
  And the tired men sleep by the walls of Troy.
  Little and lonely,
  Knowing me only,
  Shall I not comfort you, shepherd-boy?

  When the wind wakes in the apple-trees,
  And the shy hare feeds on the wild fern stem,
  I say my prayers to the Trinity,--
  The prayers that are three and the charms that are seven
  To the angels guarding the towers of heaven,--
  And I lay my hand on her raiment's hem,
  Where the young grass darkens the strawberry star,
  Where the iris buds and the bellworts are.

  All night I hear her breath go by
  Under the arch of the empty sky.
  All night her heart beats under my head,
  And I lie as still as the ancient dead,
  Warm as the young lambs there with the sheep.
  I and no other.
  Close to my Mother,
  Fold my hands in her hands, and sleep.




  WILTSHIRE

  I died o' cider and taters
  When I wer a-turned four-score.
  Us always were hearty aters,
  My feyther he wer afore.

  And the Laard dun't hold I a sinner,
  The neighbourly angel said,
  Because I wer set on my dinner,
  For a man must goo full-fed.

  But now I be done wi' feedin',
  And a taaste at the market-town.
  This all so idle as Eden
  In the great grey lift o' the down.

  Over the turf and the tillage
  The angels gossip in pairs,
  Most like to folk in the village
  When the pigs was fat for the fairs.

  Over the hill goos Master,
  Wi' a tarrible flock o' sheep,
  Peace is the chosen pastur',
  The Laard He doth us keep.

  Now I be laid in the grasses,
  For I come a gaate of a way,
  And I hear how the Master passes
  The folk wi' the time o' day.

  But I wun't be idle longer,
  Laid here i' the bloom and the seed,
  I'll goo to He when I'm stronger.
  He'll give I lambs to lead.

  I'll ask but six or seven,
  And I'll lay, when the hurdling's done,
  On the great green downs o' heaven,
  And sleep in the livin' Sun.




  THE TRAMPER'S GRAVE

  Above his head the twilight sleeps,
    And slowly drone the vagrant bees;
  But he in narrow housing keeps
    Between two stunted cypress trees.

  No more the long road calls him on,
    No more the wayside fountains sing
  A pleasant tune, when day has gone,
    To cheer him on his journeying.

  The wind-blown sand, the sweeping surf,
    Call him in vain: and yet he lies
  In peace, with but the kindly turf
    To bar him from familiar skies.

  And he is one with leaf and blade,
    As changing seasons dawn again:
  Kith to the far-flung clouds that fade,
    And brother to the silver rain.

  Here, morn and eve, the blackbird sings,
    The strong-winged swallows wheel and dip;
  And here all great and little things
    Go down the days in fellowship.

  Perhaps his eyes in dream have seen
    Those low twin-hills that rise afar,
  With soft blue breadth of sea between
    Reflecting one triumphant star.

  And, waking, he has thought it fair,
    With some diviner spirit blest
  To quiet ends: nor known that there
    He, at the journey's close, should rest.




  DUNA

  When I was a little lad
  With folly on my lips,
  Fain was I for journeying
  All the seas in ships.
  But now across the southern swell,
  Every dawn I hear
  The little streams of Duna
  Running clear.

  When I was a young man,
  Before my beard was grey,
  All to ships and sailormen
  I gave my heart away.
  But I'm weary of the sea-wind,
  I'm weary of the foam,
  And the little stars of Duna
  Call me home.




  PIETER MARINUS

  Lord, I have known all fruits of this Thy world;
  Like Solomon king, I have been fain of all,--
  War, women and wine,--but mine was spirit of Nantes.
  And now, O Lord, I'm old and fain for Thee.

  But, Lord, my soul's so grimed and weather-worn,
  So warped and wrung with all iniquities,
  Piracies, brawls, and cheated revenues,
  There's not a saint but would look twice at it.

  So, when my time comes, send no angels down
  With lutes and harps, and foreign instruments,
  To pipe old Pieter's Spirit up to heaven
  Past his tall namesake sturdy at his post.

  But let me lie awhile in these Thy seas.
  Let the soft Gulf Stream and the long South Drift,
  And the swift tides that rim the Labrador,
  Beat on my soul and wash it clean again.

  And when Thy waves have smoothed me of my sins,
  White as the sea-mew or the wind-spun foam,
  Clean as the clear-cut images of stars
  That swing between the swells,--then, then, O Lord,
  Lean out, lean out from heaven and call me thus,
  "Come up, thou soul of Pieter Marinus,"
  And I'll go home.




  EBB TIDE

  _The Sailors Grave at Clo-oose, V.I._

  Out of the winds' and the waves' riot,
  Out of the loud foam,
  He has put in to a great quiet
  And a still home.

  Here he may lie at ease and wonder
  Why the old ship waits,
  And hark for the surge and the strong thunder
  Of the full Straits,

  And look for the fishing fleet at morning,
  Shadows like lost souls,
  Slide through the fog where the seal's warning
  Betrays the shoals,

  And watch for the deep-sea liner climbing
  Out of the bright West,
  With a salmon-sky and her wake shining
  Like a tern's breast,--

  And never know he is done for ever
  With the old sea's pride,
  Borne from the fight and the full endeavour
  On an ebb tide.




  BEGA

  From the clouded belfry calling,
  Hear my soft ascending swells;
  Hear my notes like swallows falling;
  I am Bega, least of bells.
  When great Turkeful rolls and rings
  All the storm-touched turret swings,
  Echoing battle, loud and long.
  When great Tatwin wakening roars
  To the far-off shining shores,
  All the seamen know his song.
  I am Bega, least of bells:
  In my throat my message swells.
  I with all the winds a-thrill,
  Murmuring softly, murmuring still,
      "God around me, God above me,
      God to guard me, God to love me."

  I am Bega, least of bells,
  Weaving wonder, wind-born spells.
  High above the morning mist,
  Wreathed in rose and amethyst,
  Still the dreams of music float
  Silver from my silver throat,
  Whispering beauty, whispering peace.
  When great Tatwin's golden voice
  Bids the listening land rejoice,
  When great Turkeful rings and rolls
  Thunder down to trembling souls,
  Then my notes like curlews flying,
  Lifting, falling, sinking, sighing,
  Softly answer, softly cease.
  I with all the airs at play
  Murmuring sweetly, murmuring say,
      "God around me, God above me,
      God to guard me, God to love me."




  ST. YVES' POOR

  Jeffik was there, and Matthieu, and brown Bran,
  Warped in old wars and babbling of the sword,
  And Jennedik, a white rose pinched and paled
  With the world's frosts, and many more beside,
  Lamed, rheumed and palsied, aged, impotent
  Of all but hunger and blind lifted hands.
  I set the doors wide at the given hour,
  Took the great baskets piled with bread, the fish
  Yet silvered of the sea, the curds of milk,
  And called them Brethren, brake and blest and gave.

  For O, my Lord, the house dove knows her nest
  Above my window builded from the rain;
  In the brown mere the heron finds her rest,
  But these shall seek in vain.
  And O, my Lord, the thrush may fold her wing,
  The curlew seek the long lift of the seas,
  The wild swan sleep amid his journeying,--
  There is no rest for these.
  Thy dead and sheltered; housed and warmed they wait
  Under the golden fern, the falling foam;
  But these, Thy living, wander desolate
  And have not any home.

  I called them Brethren, brake and blest and gave.
  Old Jeffik had her withered hand to show,
  Young Jannedik had dreamed of death, and Bran
  Would tell me wonders wrought on fields of war,
  When Michael and his warriors rode the storm,
  And all the heavens were thrilled with clanging spears;
  Ah, God! my poor, my poor!--Till there came one
  Wrapped in foul rags, who caught me by the robe,
  And pleaded, "Bread, my father!"

                                          In his hand
  I laid the last loaf of the daily dole,
  Saw on the palm a red wound like a star,
  And bade him, "Let me bind it."

                                   "These my wounds,"
  He answered softly, "daily dost thou bind."
  And I, "My son, I have not seen thy face.
  But thy bruised feet have trodden on my heart.
  I will get water for thee."

                                    "These my hurts,"
  Again he answered, "daily dost thou wash."
  And I once more, "My son, I know thee not,
  But the bleak wind blows bitter from the sea,
  And even the gorse is perished.  Rest thou here."
  And he again, "My rest is in thy heart.
  I take from thee as I have given to thee.
  Dost thou not know Me, Breton?"

                                     I,--"My Lord!"--
  A scent of lilies on the cold sea-wind,
  A thin white blaze of wings, a face of flame
  Over the gateway, and the vision passed,
  Over there were only Matthieu and brown Bran,
  And the young girl, the foam-white Jannedik,
  Wondering to see their father rapt from them,
  And Jeffik weeping o'er her withered hand.




  THE SINGING SHEPHERD

  O saw you our belovéd where the cedars darken over
  The moon-white iris grown beside the stream?
  Or did you meet him walking in the honey-breathing clover,
  The first star flowered before him like a dream?
  O far and very far away from all your quiet fountains,
  From all your solemn valleys rich in sleep,
  I only heard a shepherd singing on the mountains,
  Singing as he folded in the sheep.

  O found you our belovéd ere the winds of morning found him
  In the thickets by still waters where love is?
  Did you know him from his fellows by the thorny bents that crowned him
  Among the lily-gardens that are his?
  O far away and far away from all the hidden meadows,
  From the gardens where the year goes shod in gold,
  I only heard a shepherd singing in the shadows
  As he carried home the younglings to the fold.




  THE BRIDEGROOM OF CANA

  _"There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee ... And both
  Jesus was called, and His disciples, to the marriage."_

  Veil thine eyes, O belovéd, my spouse,
  Turn them away,
  Lest in their light my life withdrawn
  Dies as a star, as a star in the day,
  As a dream in the dawn.

  Slenderly hang the olive leaves
  Sighing apart;
  The rose-and-silver doves in the eaves
  With a murmur of music bind our house.
  Honey and wine in thy words are stored,
  Thy lips are bright as the edge of a sword
  That hath found my heart,
  That hath found my heart.

  Sweet, I have waked from a dream of thee,--
  And of Him:
  He who came when the songs were done.
  From the net of thy smiles my heart went free
  And the golden lure of thy love grew dim.
  I turned to them asking, "Who is He,
  Royal and sad, who comes to the feast
  And sits Him down in the place of the least?"
  And they said, "He is Jesus, the carpenter's son."

  Hear how my harp on a single string
  Murmurs of love.
  Down in the fields the thrushes sing
  And the lark is lost in the light above,
  Lost in the infinite, glowing whole,
  As I in thy soul,
  As I in thy soul.

  Love, I am fain for thy glowing grace
  As the pool for the star, as the rain for the rill.
  Turn to me, trust to me, mirror me
  As the star in the pool, as the cloud in the sea.
  Love, I looked awhile in His face
  And was still.

  The shaft of the dawn strikes clear and sharp;
  Hush, my harp.
  Hush, my harp, for the day is begun,
  And the lifting, shimmering flight of the swallow
  Breaks in a curve on the brink of morn,
  Over the sycamores, over the corn.
  Cling to me, cleave to me, prison me
  As the mote in the flame, as the shell in the sea,
  For the winds of the dawn say, "Follow, follow
  Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter's son."




  THE YOUNG BAPTIST

  A sleeked mimosa hid him from the rain.
  He saw the quickened valleys gleam and go
  And the clouds break upon a hundred hills,
  Till all the happy silence had a sound,
  Voice upon voice, small as the voice of God
  In Sinai, but the earth shook under them.
  He saw the moonlit rafters of the world,
  Hollowed in thunder, walled with exquisite air,
  Most beautiful.  The leaves were laced with showers.
  And motionless beneath them couched the flies,
  Bright as small seraphs lately loosed from heaven
  Upon the river'd garden beautiful,
  Beautiful they, and beautiful the bird
  That flashed on him a sudden breast and fled.
  Over a fire of twisted camel-thorn
  He saw the vast recessional of day
  And shivered against the dark, and knew no rest;
  Yet even the dark was lovely.  Only he
  Was worn with hungering after righteousness,
  Fouled with strange suffering, dim with many dreams.
  The foxes barked against him all night long.

  Dawn rose in silver, shepherding few stars.
  He watched it, all one hunger, body and soul.
  "There is a painted house in Nazareth,"
  He said, "once held a little friend, clear-eyed.
  There all day long the whining plane moves over
  The curded length of olive wood, and light
  Bright shavings make the footfall cedar-sweet.
  A woman sits there in the shadow of leaves,
  Watching her men at work, two carpenters,
  While mirrored angels move in her still eyes.

  Yea, is it time?  Shall one lay down His tools
  And turn away?  To-night the fly shall sleep
  In lily or white cyclamen, the bird
  Shall find the shittim tree that held her brood.
  Shall I be homeless?  Lily of Israel, bloom.
  O Tree of Life, make ready my soul's nest.
  Yea, is He come?"
                   But only morning came,
  Clear-footed from the frontiers of the world,
  And beat his little fire out as with spears.
  Beautiful on the mountains were her feet.




  THE LITTLE SISTER OF THE PROPHET

  "_If there arise among you a prophet or dreamer..._"

  I have left a basket of dates
  In the cool dark room that is under the vine,
  Some curds set out in two little crimson plates
  And a flask of the amber wine,
  And cakes most cunningly beaten
  Of savoury herbs, and spice, and the delicate wheaten
  Flour that is best,
  And all to lighten his spirit and sweeten his rest.

  This morning he cried, "Awake,
  And see what the wonderful grace of the Lord hath revealed!"
  And we ran for his sake,
  But 'twas only the dawn outspread o'er our father's field,
  And the house of the potter white in the valley below.
  But his hands were upraised to the east and he cried to us, "So
  Ye may ponder and read
  The strength and the beauty of God outrolled in a fiery screed!"

  Then the little brown mother smiled,
  As one does on the words of a well-loved child,
  And, "Son," she replied, "have the oxen been watered and fed?
  For work is to do, though the skies be never so red,
  And already the first sweet hours of the day are spent."
  And he sighed and went.

  Will he come from the byre
  With his head all misty with dreams, and his eyes on fire,
  Shaking us all with the weight of the word of his passion?
  I will give him raisins instead of dates,
  And wreathe young leaves on the little red plates.
  I will put on my new head-tyre,
  And braid my hair in a comelier fashion.
  Will he note?  Will he mind?
  Will he touch my cheek as he used to, and laugh and be kind?




  A MOTHER IN EGYPT

"_About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh
that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the firstborn of the
maid-servant that is behind the mill._"--Exodus xi: 4, 5.

  Is the noise of grief in the palace over the river
  For this silent one at my side?
  There came a hush in the night, and he rose with his hands a-quiver
  Like lotus petals adrift on the swing of the tide.
  O small soft hands, the day groweth old for sleeping!
  O small still feet, rise up, for the hour is late!
  Rise up, my son, for I hear them mourning and weeping
  In the temple down by the gate.

  Hushed is the face that was wont to brighten with laughter
  When I sang at the mill,
  And silence unbroken shall greet the sorrowful dawns hereafter,
  The house shall be still.
  Voice after voice takes up the burden of wailing,--
  Do you heed, do you hear?--in the high-priest's house by the wall;
  But mine is the grief, and their sorrow is all unavailing.
  Will he wake at their call?

  Something I saw of the broad, dim wings half folding
  The passionless brow.
  Something I saw of the sword the shadowy hands were holding,--
  What matters it now?
  I held you close, dear face, as I knelt and harkened
  To the wind that cried last night like a soul in sin,
  When the broad, bright stars dropped down and the soft sky darkened,
  And the Presence moved therein.

  I have heard men speak in the market-place of the city,
  Low voiced, in a breath,
  Of a god who is stronger than ours, and who knows not changing nor pity,
  Whose anger is death.
  Nothing I know of the lords of the outland races,
  But Amun is gentle and Hathor the Mother is mild,
  And who would descend from the light of the peaceful places
  To war on a child?

  Yet here he lies, with a scarlet pomegranate petal
  Blown down on his cheek.
  The slow sun sinks to the sand like a shield of some burnished metal,
  But he does not speak.
  I have called, I have sung, but he neither will hear nor waken;
  So lightly, so whitely he lies in the curve of my arm,
  Like a feather let fall from the bird that the arrow hath taken.
  Who could see him, and harm?

  "The swallow flies home to her sleep in the eaves of the altar,
  And the crane to her nest,"--
  So do we sing o'er the mill, and why, ah, why should I falter,
  Since he goes to his rest?
  Does he play in their flowers as he played among these with his mother?
  Do the gods smile downward and love him and give him their care?
  Guard him well, O ye gods, till I come; lest the wrath of that Other
  Should reach to him there!




  ECCLESIASTES

  Under the fluent folds of needlework,
  Where Balkis prick'd the histories of kings
  Once great as he, that were as greatly loved,
  Solomon stooped, and saw the dusk unfold
  Over the apple orchards like a flower.
  "O bloom of eve," he said, "diviner loss
  Of all light gave us, dove of the whole world,
  Bearing the branch of peace, the dark, sweet bough.--
  Endure a little longer, ere full night
  Comes stark from God and terrible with stars,
  Eternal as He or love.

                                 Now no one wakes,
  But a lean gardener by my apricots,
  Sweeping the withered leaves, the yellowing leaves
  Down the wind's road.  Perish our years with them,
  Our griefs, our little hungers, our poor sins,
  Leaves that the Lord hath scattered.  He shall quench
  The fierce, impetuous torches of the sun,--
  Yea, from our dead dust He shall quicken kings,
  Unleash new battles, sharpen spears unborn,
  Shadow on shadow; but His stars remain
  Immortal, and love immortal crowned with them."

  Night came, and all the hosts thereof.  He saw
  Arcturus clear the doorways of the cloud,
  And One that followed with his shining sons,
  In the likeness of a gardener that strode
  Over the windy hollows of the sky,
  And with a great broom drave the stars in heaps,--
  The yellow stars, the little withering stars,
  Faint drifts along the darkness.  New stars came,
  Budded, and flowered, and fell.  These too He swept,
  And all the heavens were changed.

                                 Then Solomon stood
  Silent, nor ever turned to the Queen's kiss.




  THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

  I was happier up in the room
  At the head of the long blue stair
  Than here in the garden's gloom
  With roses to wear.

  When stars my window were riming
  I would lean out over the snow
  And hear him climbing, climbing
  A long way below.

  But I was happy and lonely
  As the heart of a mountain pool,
  With stars and shadows only
  Made beautiful.

  Then he came.  He said, "How chill is
  This height I have won!
  I will love you among the lilies,
  And ride ere the sun."

  So I followed him into the night
  A long way down.
  I would I were back on the height,
  With dawn for a crown.




  TWO LYRICS

  I

  All in a rainy hazel wood
  I watched the hyacinth break
  Her lucent sheath, as if she could
  Make summer for your sake.

  And year by year the hyacinth-tide
  Breaks in a foam of flowers
  For other loves than we denied
  And other griefs than ours.

  Long wed, long dead, so I've been told,
  But still when Spring's set free,
  All in a drift of rainy gold
  You walk the wood with me.


  II

  How looked she when she breathed good-bye?
  Most like a bird, whose breast
  Across a thousand wastes of sky
  Is constant to her nest.

  How looked she when she turned away?
  Most as a spirit might,
  Who shared our sorrow for a day
  Yet kept her home in sight.

  O, looked she sad or seemed she glad?
  Most like a star, that knows
  Only the loveliness it had,
  The light to which it goes.




  GOING HOME

  Under the young moon's slender shield
  With the wind's cool lips on mine,
  I went home from the Rabitty Field
  As the clocks were striking nine.

  The yews were dark in the level light,
  The thorn-trees dropped with gold,
  And a partridge called where the dew was white
  In the grass on the edge of the fold.

  O, had your hand been in my hand
  As the long chalk-road I trod,
  The green hills of the lovely land
  Had seemed the hills of God.




  MARIAN'S EASTER

  Jesus, Saviour, once a lad,
  Mothered by a maid,
  Take the bitter dreams we had
  Ere the frosts were laid.
  Wake, O wake the tenderer rose
  Where the thorn has been...
          Robin, Robin!
  Spring is on the Forest and the beech growing green!

  Mary, Mother, when He bore
  Scourge and crown and cross,
  All that hurt the world before
  Lightened in your loss.
  Now your Sorrow's high enthroned
  Where the candles burn...
          Robin, Robin!
  The dew along the bracken and the fawns in the fern!

  Love that found His favour sweet--
  Love that could not save--
  Love that fled to kiss His feet
  First beyond the grave,
  Death of death, the living Flower
  Rends the stones apart...
          Robin, Robin!
  The moon above the hazels and your breath against my heart!




  THE LOVERS OF MARCHAID

  Dominic came riding down, sworded, straight and splendid,
  Drave his hilt against her floor, flung a golden chain.
  Said "I'll teach your lips a song sweet as his that's ended,
  Ere the white rose call the bee, the almond flower again."

  But he only saw her head bent within the gloom
  Over heaps of bridal thread bright as apple-bloom,
  Silver-silk like rain that spread across the driving loom.

  Dreaming Fanch, the cobbler's son, took his tools and laces,
  Wrought her shoes of scarlet dye, shoes as pale as snow;
  "They shall lead her wildrose feet all the fairy paces
  Danced along the road of love, the road such feet should go"----

  But he only saw her eyes turning from his gift
  Out toward the silver skies where the white clouds drift,
  Where the wild gerfalcon flies, where the last sails lift.

  Bran has built his homestead high where the hills may shield her,
  Where the young bird waits the spring, where the dawns are fair,
  Said: "I'll name my trees for her, since I may not yield her
  Stars of morning for her feet, of evening for her hair."

  But he did not see them ride, seven dim sail and more,
  All along the harbour-side, white from shore to shore,
  Nor heard the voices of the tide crying at her door.

  Jean-Marie has touched his pipe down beside the river
  When the young fox bends the fern, when the folds are still,
  Said: "I send her all the gifts that my love may give her,----
  Golden notes like golden birds to seek her at my will."

  But he only found the waves, heard the sea-gull's cry,
  In and out the ocean caves, underneath the sky,
  All above the wind-washed graves where dead seamen lie.




  PALOME'S BOOK*

* This poem was published in an abbreviated form in _The University
Magazine_, February, 1920, under the title "Adagio."

_Preface to this very private edition_.

_My dearest Daddy,_

_I am sending for you, and you only, to see, some of the little poems
left by Palome, and found long after by Adam Laurent and Jenny Hurst,
in the room painted with doves that had been hers at Paracuando._

_Their place in the story I cannot yet show, but they will stand alone.
And as in these times one does not quite know when or how any story
will be told or any work finished, I am sending them to you, a little
foretaste of "The Mountain."_

_I hope you will be pleased with them._

_Your very loving
    Daughter._


  All days were night before this day's dear prime,
  Dust in Time's hand or strewn about his feet,
  Ashes of morning, suns and moons outworn.
  Now we have back our heritage of Time.
  Heaven rounds us like a shell, and very sweet
  Sea-voices breathe, Belovéd, it is morn.

        *      *      *

  The little doves go up and down in showers,
  Over the spice bud, underneath the bough,
  Till I grow weary, counting little doves
  Swift as our thoughts and feathered like our flowers.
  Dearest of all, lean nearer, kiss me now.
  God has no need of pity on their loves.

        *      *      *

  The loveliest ladies ever felt the wind
  Blow on them from the doorsills of delight
  Should stoop to me and give me sisterhood,--
  She that was Star of Egypt out of mind,
  And one world's rose, and one who led her knight
  Weeping about the hollows of the wood.





  There was an altar builded in the sun
  By shipmen out of Argos, long ago,
  Bound in bleak bronze and every stone engraven
  With wings and faces, and each face was one,
  Helen's.  And there they fed a flame, to show
  Poor mariners the sea-ways of the haven.

        *      *      *

  O Love, be very silent.  Death will hear.
  Helen was proud, she laughed her love and glory
  When Paris leaned and kissed her on the lips.
  She had another lover that was near.
  He kissed her, and she changed into a story,
  A half-heard song blown out to wandering ships.

        *      *      *

  I am Love's weakest, worthless, lost, unwise.
  Cities were taken, kings uncrowned for her,
  A thousand blades had blossom on her mouth,
  A thousand spears were hid in her great eyes.
  Over me too the little grasshopper
  Shall chirr against the honey-breathing south.

        *      *      *

  Love, that has raised you higher, casts me down
  From my proud places and remembered praise,
  Though still a half-hushed worshipper you sit,
  Though still you kneel as if I wore a crown;
  O Love, I love you most for these great ways
  Of worship, while I am unworthy it.

        *      *      *

  Yea, could I grieve you, could I make you weep,
  I have crowned you, wronged you, cast aside
  Most cruelly for your sake my griefs and fears?
  If you leaned closer on the kiss of sleep
  And saw that in some silence I had died
  Dreaming of you, O would you give me tears?

        *      *      *

  "Rise up, my love, my fair one, come away,
  My love, my dove, my sister, undefiled."
  I rose, I followed, but my friend was fled,
  Though once I saw him through the morning's gray
  And the last starshine, where he turned and smiled,
  With amaranth newly bound upon his head.

        *      *      *

  "Woman, behold thy child, for it is Grief,
  Sword-slender grief, the world within her hold.
  Give her thy heart, be true to one another."
  The voice endured the dropping of a leaf.
  Then for so long I heard as when a gold
  Ripe apple falls, "O Grief, behold your mother."

        *      *      *

  O Love, forgive.  They know not what they do,
  Dealing their little coin of scorn or shame.
  I have seen into heaven, and all the floor
  White with our thoughts, as fields are white with dew,
  Light as young linnets, in a laughing flame,
  They beat forever round God's open door.

        *      *      *

  My Love, my Love, hast Thou forsaken me?
  Hyssop I gave you not, nor scourge, nor scars,
  While any rose was left of summer's loss,
  While any sail flowered white along the sea.
  Now the sea darkens, and the angry stars
  Born of that bitter water, are a cross.

        *      *      *

  I thirst, I thirst, though many waters hide me
  Drowning in depths where Love will never seek.
  There were three waves that broke on me.  The first
  Was salt as tears, the second rose beside me
  In foam of fire, the third against my cheek
  Touched like a kiss.  My heart aches, and I thirst.

        *      *      *

  Today we were with Love in Paradise
  A little while, and for that while the shade
  Stood waiting, and a-wing the swallow slept.
  But angels came with anger of bright eyes
  And thrust us from the garden where Love laid
  His homeless head.  He followed us, and wept.

        *      *      *

  Yea, it is finished, yea, it is enough.
  Time hastens, and the tide is gone so far
  The faint horizon scarcely gleams in foam.
  The gate is narrow and the path is rough,
  But through the cloud one silver shepherd-star
  Lingers to lead us.  Love, we will go home.

        *      *      *

  Into thy hands, immortal Love.  Not ours
  The noonday's triumph, the diviner close,
  Or the full flood across Time's whispering sands.
  We bring you withered sheaves and broken flowers,--
  Rue and wild poppy, thorns, one fading rose.
  Love, we are sorry.  All is in thy hands.




  THOUGHTS

  I gave my thoughts a golden peach,
  A silver citron tree;
  They clustered dumbly out of reach
  And would not sing for me.

  I built my thoughts a roof of rush,
  A little byre beside;
  They left my music to the thrush
  And flew at eveningtide.

  I went my way and would not care
  If they should come or go;
  A thousand birds seemed up in air,
  My thoughts were singing so.




  THE CHOSEN

  Called to a way too high for me, I lean
  Out from my narrow window o'er the street,
  And know the fields I cannot see are green,
  And guess the songs I cannot hear are sweet.

  Break up the vision round me, Lord, and thrust
  Me from Thy side, unhoused without the bars,
  For all my heart is hungry for the dust
  And all my soul is weary of the stars.

  I would seek out a little roof instead,
  A little lamp to make my darkness brave.
  "For though she heal a multitude," Love said,
  "Herself she cannot save."




  THE IMMORTAL

  Beauty is still immortal in our eyes;
  When sways no more of spirit-haunted reed,
  When the wild grape shall build
  No more her canopies,
  When blows no more the moon-gray thistle seed,
  When the last bell has lulled the white flocks home,
  When the last eve has stilled
  The wandering wing and touched the dying foam,
  When the last moon burns low, and, spark by spark,
  The little worlds die out along the dark,--

  Beauty that rosed the moth-wing, touched the land
  With clover-horns and delicate faint flowers,
  Beauty that bade the showers
  Beat on the violet's face,
  Shall hold the eternal heavens within their place,
  And hear new stars come singing from God's hand.




  IMPERFECTION

  Not the returning spell
  Of summer on the thousand-blossomed tree
  Lessons me half so well
  What heaven may be
  As the nipped bud along the Autumn croft,
  Spent in a time too rare,
  And far aloft
  The late lark singing in the year's despair.

  Not the full splendour-roll
  Of music echoing where the saints have trod
  Summons me, O my soul,
  So quick to God,
  As the weak voices with their psalm unspoken,
  Lost vision, stammering prayer,
  And hearts long broken
  That lift from earth to heaven His mercy's stair.




  COMFORT

  When man, being yet a child,
  Stumbled in dream-born anguish of the night,
  He found, in some strange star above the wild,
  Dim comfort, nameless light.

  Now, being come full-grown
  To a bleak vision, a mature despair,
  He only knows he is not all alone.
  Comfort and help are there.

  Seek, seek through all the dark!
  We are not fallen from the height we planned,
  If in the cloud we see one beckoning spark,
  Touch once the unseen Hand.




  SALUTARIS HOSTIA

  When the moon is last awake,
  Silver-thin above the fields,
  Crushed, like roses, for Thy sake,
  All my soul its fragrance yields.
  All my hungry heart is fed
  Sundering sweetness like a sword,
  O my Lord,
  Hidden within Thy broken bread.

  Hands of morning, take the cup
  Whence the Life of Love is drained;
  Hold it, raise it, lift it up
  Till the lucent heavens be stained.
  Joy and sorrow, lip to lip,
  Lost in likeness at the end,
  O my Friend,
  Taste Thy wine of fellowship.

  All life's splendour, all life's pride,
  Dust are they.  I lay them down.
  They were thorns that when You died
  Wove for You a wounding crown.
  But the brier of death's in bud,
  All its loveliness he knows,
  Sharon's Rose,
  That has shared Thy flesh and blood.




  LOVE

  I

  Love said to the wind, Be still;
  To Time, Be merciful;
  To Life, Be sufficient.
  But these answered,
  Shall breath command breath,
  Or the relentless the relentless,
  Or the shadow the shadow?


  II

  Love, in whom all things are,
  Shadow and light,
  Make of my grief a star
  Crowning his night.

  Love, in whom all things nest,
  Tired of the way,
  Make of my pains a rest
  Healing his day.

  Love, in whom all things hide,
  Far though they roam,
  Make my life's loss the tide
  Bearing him home.




  MADE IN HIS IMAGE

  Between the archangels and the old eclipse
  Of glory on perfect glory, does He feel
  A vision, thin as frost at midnight, steal
  And lay a nameless shadow on His lips?
  Does He, Who gave the power, endure the pain?--
  Look down the hollow'd universe, and see
  His works, His worlds, choiring Him endlessly,--
  His worlds, His works, all made, and made in vain?
  Then does He bid all heaven beneath His hand,
  In blossom of worship, flame on flame of praise,
  And taste their thunders, and grow sick, and gaze
  At some gray silence that He had not planned,
  And shiver among His stars, and nurse each spark
  That wards Him from the uncreated dark?




  VITA BREVIS

  I

  Soul, if indeed the dead do not arise
  Drink and lie down.  There's nought required of thee.
  If Shelley is but ash beside the sea,
  And Homer bide forever with blind eyes,
  If for tall Hector not a sea-breath sighs
  On the gray plain, if Shakespeare's laugh be broken
  In a little dust, and all his sweet words spoken,
  If Beatrix look no more from Paradise,--

  If this be so, O Soul, cast out thy fears,
  Worship of women and high pride of men,
  The sad, the brave, the pure, the sacrificed.
  They are one with death and thee, not worth thy tears.
  Yea, even thy grief is vain if Magdalen
  Kisses no more the silver feet of Christ.


  II

  Once more our halcyon by the watercress
  Flashes his sapphired sheathing, and once more
  The partridge suns along the little shore;
  Each silvered morning sees one rose the less,
  One gold flake filch'd from out the poplar's dress,
  All fall'n, all passing, making room for those,
  Bird unbegotten and unbudded rose,
  New wings, new leaves, new-risen loveliness.

  All the earth gave, again the earth shall take:
  Blessed is she.  Life falls to her like snow.
  Grave is she, grave and mother, slayer and spouse.
  But suns were built in heaven for thy sake.
  Thou also shalt go home; perhaps shalt know
  Great laughters greet thee from thy Father's House.




  MIRANDA'S TOMB

  Miranda?  She died soon, and sick for home.
  And dark Ilario the Milanese
  Carved her in garments 'scutcheoned to the knees,
  Holding one orchard-spray as fresh as foam.
  One heart broke, many grieved.  Ilario said:
  "The summer is gone after her.  Who knows
  If any season shall renew his rose?
  But this rose lives till Beauty's self be dead."
  So wrought he, days and years, and half aware
  Of a small, striving, sorrowing quick thing,
  Wrapped in a furred sea-cloak, and deft to bring
  Tools to his hand or light to the dull air.
  Ghost, spirit, flame, he knew not,--could but tell
  It had loved her, and its name was Ariel.




  TO TIMARION

  Had I the thrush's throat, I could not sing you
  Songs sweeter than his own.  And I'm too poor
  To lay the gifts that other lovers bring you
  Low at your silver door.

  Such as I have, I give.  See, for your taking
  Tired hands are here, and feet grown dark with dust.
  Here's a lost hope, and here a heart whose aching
  Grows greater than its trust.

  Sleep on, you will not hear me.  But tomorrow
  You will remember in your fragrant ways,
  Finding the voice of twilight and my sorrow
  Lovelier than all men's praise.




  PERSEPHONE RETURNING TO HADES

  Last night I made my pillow of the leaves
  Frostily sweet, and lay throughout the hours
  Close to the woven roots of the earth; O earth,
  Great mother, did the dread foreknowledge run
  Through all thy veins and trouble thee in thy sleep?
  No sleep was mine.  Where my faint hands had fallen
  Wide on thy grass, pale violets, ere the day,
  Grew like to sorrow's self made visible,
  Each with a tear at heart.  I watched the stars
  Wheeling athwart the heavens, and knew thy trees,
  Olive and aspen, oak and sycamore,
  And all the small dumb brethren of thy woods
  Awake and sorrowing with me.  And so staid
  Until the shepherds' song awoke the morn.

  Then I arose with tears.  Yet, ere I turned
  From these dim meadows to the doors of hell,
  Gathered these sad untimely flowers, and found
  Long beautiful berries ripening on the thorn,
  With one wide rose that had forgot to die.
  These I bore softly hence.  But herewithin
  This gathering-place of shadows where I wait
  For the slow change, there cometh a sullen wind
  Blown from the memoried fields of asphodel
  Or Lethe's level stream; and these my flowers
  Slip from my hands and are but shadows too.

  Why should I grieve when grief is overpast?
  Why should I sorrow when I may forget?
  The shepherds' horns are crying about the folds,
  The east is clear and yellow as daffodils,
  Dread daffodils--
               The brightest flower o' the fields.
  I gathered them in Enna, O, my lord.
  Do the doors yawn and their dim warders wait?

  What was this earth-born memory I would hold?
  Almost I have forgotten.  Lord, I see
  Before, the vast gray suburbs of the dead;
  Behind, the golden loneliness of the woods,
  A stir of wandering birds, and in the brake
  A small brown faun who follows me and weeps.




  TO ALCITHOË

  In your dim Greece of old, Alcithoë,
  Death like a lover sought and crowned you young,
  Between the olive orchards and the sea.

  When they had twined your myrtle buds and hung
  The stately cypress at your door, they said,
  "Alcithoë is dead,
  Before whose feet the flaming crocus sprung,
  For whom the red rose opened ere the prime;
  Those the gods love are taken before their time--"

  Ah! why did no one, watching you alone,
  Snare your dead beauty in undying stone,--
  The gold hair bound beneath its golden band,
  The milk-white poppies closed within your hand;
  That the harsh world a little space might keep
  The last, still, exquisite vision of your sleep?




  IN AVILION

  The trumpets rang for Arthur in Avilion
  A piercing point of war.
  But he was asleep in a green silk pavilion
  Watched by the elf-queen's star.
  Great ships thundered to death along the billows,
  Cities were tumbled to the stones,
  But his helm had fallen to dust among the pillows,
  And his mail was dust on his bones.

  Under the apple boughs the horns blew out to him
  A merry point of chase.
  But he was asleep with a strange cloak about him
  And the dew was sweet on his face.
  All through the brown broom the stag went running
  To the wild Welsh border where he died,
  But the tall king's spear had rusted in its cunning,
  And his blade was rust at his side.

  From the dust of the nunnery Guinever sighed up to him
  A little song and faint,
  As the ghost of a dancer might raise a gold cup to him,
  As a prayer might climb to a saint.
  "For a thousand years I have wearied of my sinning
  In the houses of heaven and of hell.
  Say, do you love me as once in the beginning?"
  And he answered to her, "Love, sleep well."




  HANNO

  "_And Hanno from the stately booth glittering with Punic wares._"

  Beyond the ivory altars changed and sold,
  The silver lavers carved with vine and wheat,
  The warps of silk made rough with Tyrian gold,
  The desert lances and the hastening feet,
  Down by the mean booths where they sell at whiles
  Strange birds, and bracelets from the northern isles,
  I saw half-buried, ruined and red with rust,
  A great ship's anchor fallen in the dust.

  Gods!  I was blind a little while, nor knew
  The amorous songs about the watering-places,
  The emeralds and the soft Egyptian faces,
  The white blood-horses and the gilded cars.
  Gods! how the keel cut seaward through the blue
  When the long galley raced the roving stars!

  (Bel from his heaven hath touched thy conquering sword,
  Ashtar hath lent thee favour, O my lord.
  Taste the sweet wine and turn again and choose
  This golden ewer, this delicate ivory dove,
  This hunting knife, these little silken shoes,
  Or jewels to hold a very light-of-love?)

  Yes, I am old, and bent beneath my yoke,--
  Dealer in spices, pearls, embroideries,
  Pale linked amber, coral and chrysoprase,
  Rubies to set the very world ablaze,--
  Gods! how they call, the happy sailor-folk
  Who swing asleep in those unfathomed seas!




  KWANNON

_Kwannon, the Japanese goddess of mercy, is represented with many
hands, typifying generosity and kindness.  In one of these hands she is
supposed to hold an axe, wherewith she severs the threads of human
lives._

  I am the ancient one, the many-handed,
  The merciful am I.
  Here where the black pine bends above the sea
  They bring their gifts to me--
  Spoil of the foreshore where the corals lie,
  Fishes of ivory, and amber stranded,
  And carven beads
  Green as the fretted fringes of the weeds.

  Age after age, I watch the long sails pass.
  Age after age, I see them come once more
  Home, as the grey-winged pigeon to the grass,
  The white crane to the shore.
  Goddess am I of heaven and this small town
  Above the beaches brown.
  And here the children bring me cakes, and flowers,
  And all the strange sea-treasures that they find,
  For "She," they say, "the Merciful, is ours,
  And She," they say, "is kind."

  Camphor and wave-worn sandalwood for burning
  They bring to me alone,
  Shells that are veined like irises, and those
  Curved like the clear bright petals of a rose.
  Wherefore an hundredfold again returning
  I render them their own--

  Full-freighted nets that flash among the foam,
  Laughter and love, and gentle eyes at home,
  Cool of the night, and the soft air that swells
  My silver temple bells.

  Winds of the spring, the little flowers that shine
  Where the young barley slopes to meet the pine,
  Gold of the charlock, guerdon of the rain,
  I give to them again.

  Yet though the fishing boats return full-laden
  Out of the broad blue east,
  Under the brown roofs pain is their hand-maiden,
  And mourning is their feast.
  Yea, though my many hands are raised to bless,
  I am not strong to give them happiness.

  Sorrow comes swiftly as the swallow flying,
  O, little lives, that are so quickly done!
  Peace is my raiment, mercy is my breath,
  I am the gentle one.
  When they are tired of sorrow and of sighing
  I give them death.




  MARCHING MEN

  Under the level winter sky
  I saw a thousand Christs go by.
  They sang an idle song and free
  As they went up to calvary.

  Careless of eye and coarse of lip,
  They marched in holiest fellowship.
  That heaven might heal the world, they gave
  Their earth-born dreams to deck the grave.

  With souls unpurged and steadfast breath
  They supped the sacrament of death.
  And for each one, far off, apart,
  Seven swords have rent a woman's heart.




  WHEN IT IS FINISHED

  When it is finished, Father, and we set
  The war-stained buckler and the bright blade by,
  Bid us remember then what bloody sweat,
  What thorns, what agony
  Purchased our wreaths of harvest and ripe ears,
  Whose empty hands, whose empty hearts, whose tears
  Ransomed the days to be.

  We leave them to Thee, Father, we've no price,
  No utmost treasure of the seas and lands,
  No words, no deeds, to pay their sacrifice.
  Only while England stands,
  Their pearl, their pride, their altar, not their grave,
  Bid us remember in what days they gave
  All that mankind may give
  That we might live.




  A VIOLET LEAF FROM KEATS' GRAVE

  _Sent by H. C._, 1914.

  Out of the sharp salt kiss,
      Blossom and thorn of grief,
  Time has no more than this,--
      A leaf.

  Out of the battled years,
      The glory and the wrong,
  Time gives for all our tears
      A song.

  Is it of fragrance made,
      Woven and rhymed of light,
  The voice that from some shade
      Silvers the night?

  When the last shadows slope
      And day's own rose is pale,--
  O love, immortal hope,--
      His nightingale.




  A SAXON EPITAPH

  _The earth builds on the earth
  Castles and towers.
  The earth saith of the earth:
  All shall be ours._

      Yea, though they plant and reap
      The rye and the corn,
      Lo, they were bond to Sleep
      Ere they were born.

      Yea, though the blind earth sows
      For the fruit and the sheaf,
      They shall harvest the leaf of the rose
      And the dust of the leaf.

      Pride of the sword and power
      Are theirs at their need,
      Who shall rule but the root of the flower,
      The fall of the seed.

      They who follow the flesh
      In splendour and tears,
      They shall rest and clothe them afresh
      In the fulness of years.

      From the dream of the dust they came
      As the dawn set free.
      They shall pass as the flower of the flame
      Or the foam of the sea.

          _The earth builds on the earth
          Cities and towers.
          The earth saith of the earth:
          All shall be ours._




  AN EPITAPH

  Friend, pass softly.  Here is one
  Morning spent her gold upon;
  Suns enriched her, and the beat
  Of April's tide flowed at her feet.
  With each blossom, lovelier she;
  Lovelier she with every leaf.
  Spring forgets her now, and we
  Count her summers by our grief.




  GIFTS

  I would have given you other gifts than this--
  Songs and clear days and little prayers fulfilled,--
  But rest is His,
  And rest is all He willed.

  I would have reared you up with little joys,
  Sheathed you with love as linnets from the sun,
  But all my toys
  Are poorer than His one.

  I would have laid life's harvest in your arms,
  Not these small windflowers silvering on the stem,
  Their baby charms
  Bidding you match with them.

  I would have led you where the meadows waken,
  Flung you the summer's treasure that they keep;--
  But you have taken
  God's early rose of sleep.




  RESURGAM

  I shall say, Lord, "Is it music, is it morning,
  Song that is fresh as sunrise, light that sings?"
  When on some hill there breaks the immortal warning
  Of half-forgotten springs.

  I shall say, Lord, "I have loved you, not another,
  Heard in all quiet your footsteps on my road,
  Felt your strong shoulder near me, O my brother,
  Lightening the load."

  I shall say, Lord, "I remembered, working, sleeping,
  One face I looked for, one denied and dear.
  Now that you come my eyes are blind with weeping,
  But you will kiss them clear."

  I shall say, Lord, "Touch my lips, and so unseal them;
  I have learned silence since I lived and died."
  I shall say, Lord, "Lift my hands, and so reveal them,
  Full, satisfied."

  I shall say, Lord, "We will laugh again tomorrow,
  Now we'll be still a little, friend with friend.
  Death was the gate and the long way was sorrow.
  Love is the end."




THE WOOD CARVER'S WIFE


(A one-act play, abridged)

JEAN MARCHANT, the wood-carver.

DORETTE, his wife.

Louis DE LOTBINIERE, a cousin of the Intendant of New France.

SHAGONAS, an Indian lad.

_The scene is a log-built room.  There is a door; and a narrow window,
both open.  Outside can be seen fields of ripe corn, a palisade, and
the corner of a loop-holed blockhouse; beyond is the forest; all is
silent and deserted in the sun._

_The walls of the room are hung with skins, and here and there with
things Jean has carved,--masks, two crucifixes, pipes, a panel showing
a faun dancing to the pipes of an Indian girl; there are guns also,
rods and nets, a long French spade, and a shelf with a few books._

_The bare floor is strewn with fine wood-shavings.  Jean is carving a
Pieta for the new church, in high relief on panels of red cedar wood.
Opposite him, facing the door, is Dorette, in a rough chair covered
with a fur rug; she is sitting to him for the face of the Madonna._

_In the doorway sits Shagonas, mending a snare.  As Jean carves the
Pieta he sings:_

  _Hard in the frost and the snow,
  The cedar must have known
  In his red, deep fibred heart,
  A hundred winters ago
  I should love and carve you so..._

_The song is heavy with unhappy foreboding.  Jean and Dorette talk
while he carves, and there develops a dark and ominous mood compounded
of Dorette's grief and fear and Jean's bitter, taunting hate._

  _Lean but a little lower that fair head,
  The head of Mary o'er her murdered Christ..._

_He heaps insult upon her; he would have her old, haggard, the very
Mother of Sorrows, filled with "the grief that cannot weep."_

_Finally Jean kisses her, takes his sword and broad hat, and goes out,
followed by Shagonas.  They visit the shrine prepared for his Pieta,
"between the candle flames."  When they are out of sight Dorette kneels
before the Pieta, her face hidden in her hands.  As she prays there is
a soft knocking at the door, but she remains motionless before the
Virgin._

_The door opens, Louis de Lotbiniere enters and shuts it behind him.
Seeing Dorette, he uncovers, and kneels beside her.  Presently she
lifts her head and looks him in the face.  Once again they passionately
declare their love for each other, then Dorette, sensing the return of
Jean and Shagonas, tearfully begs Louis to flee.  He slips from the
door, which he leaves open, and hides in the thicket that has thrown
leaf shadows upon it through the afternoon.  Dorette again kneels
before the Pieta._

_Dorette._  Keep open door,
            O Saviour, of your mercy.  Blot him out
            In soft leaf-shadows like a little death.
            Shut thou his eyes with webs, his breath with buds,
            Prison his hands with branches.
                Strew Thou me
            Dust on the wind to blind them so they see not,
            Nor hear.....Ah!

_Jean is heard singing as he approaches the house._

_Jean._ (_singing_)  Three kings rode to Bethlehem
                     By the sand and the foam.
                     Three kings rode to Bethlehem,
                     Only two rode home.

                     O, he hath stayed to watch her face
                     And make his prayer thereto,
                     And to lay down for his soul's grace
                     The straw beneath her shoe.

                     O, he hath sold the golden rings
                     That linked his camel-reins,
                     And the low song a mother sings
                     Is all his sorrow gains.

                     Two rode home by the foam and the sand,
                     Between the night and the day,
                     But one has stayed in Holy Land
                     And cast his crown away.

_As his song ends, Jean reaches the door and stands within it, gazing
at Dorette, who remains before the Pieta.  Presently he enters the
room, his gaze still upon her._

_Jean._                   Do you pray there to yourself?

_Dorette._  Rather to God.

_Jean._            Why, that's a better prayer.
            You should not pray to yourself.  You are too tender,
            You irised bubble of the clay, to bear
            The weight of worship.  Prayer must not be made
            To the weak dust the wind cards presently
            About the world.  Why, even your shadow, she,
            Madonna of the reddening cedar wood,
            Hath but a troubled momentary power,
            A doubtful consolation, and a look
            As though the wind would rend her and the fire
            Eat to swift ash.  No comfort there for sinners.
            But you're no sinner, need no comforting
            Other than mine,--as this, and this, and this.

_Dorette._  You hurt me.

_Jean._              I?  What, hurt you with a kiss?
            Shall I go kiss her so?

_Dorette._  It were a sin.

_Jean._     Here is too much of sin and sin and sin.
            Go, get you to that chair.

_Dorette._           Why do you look
            So strangely on me?

_Jean._     Is my look so strange?

_Dorette._  Yea, sure, as if you found me dead but now
            And saw my face.

_Jean._              I see a kind of death there.
            Go, sit you in your chair.

_Dorette._           Where is Shagonas?

_Jean._     Lingering to shoot at crows with his great bow
            More fit for war.  He has fledged an arrow thrice
            In carrion hearts, until the feather dripped
            Blood, blood, and blood again.  You shrink?
                   By blood
            Was the world saved, and what's as red as it
            Only by blood is turned wool-white again.
            What's that to you, white rose?  Go, sit you there.
            I would make you more Madonna.

_Dorette._           Jean, not now.
            I am sick.  I am weary.

_Jean._              Do you pray to me?
            You should not.  You're Our Lady.  You will taste
            The year-long incense and the holy heat
            Of candles.  They will hail you mystic rose,
            The tower of ivory, the golden house,
            Sea-star and vase of honour.
                                    Sit you there.

_Dorette._  I cannot.

_Jean._     Go.

_Dorette._           You are very harsh with me.

_Jean._     'Tis you are hard to please.  I kiss; you tremble,
            I speak; you are in tears.

_Dorette._           Where is Shagonas?

_Jean._     Without, without.

_Dorette._           I have an errand for him.

_Jean._     He will come soon ... Fie, what a withered look,
            How your heart beats.  You are fevered.  Sit, Dorette.
            Lift your face to the light,--a little forward,--
            So, now,--and dream you hold across your knees
            What's dearest of your world, and slain for you
            That blood may wash out sin.

_Dorette._  O, Christ!

_Jean._              Of course.
            Who else but Christ?  That suits me.
                                  Hold your peace.

_While they were speaking, Dorette has seated herself again in the
chair facing towards the door, upon which the lightly-stirred shadows
of elder leaves come and go.  Jean takes up his tools._

_Jean._     'Tis a fine blade, this one.  Do you remember?
            I sold its fellow when we were in France
            To buy you a ring.

_Dorette._           I had forgotten.

_Jean._              Turn
            Your face this way.  Look toward me, not the door.
            What see you?  There is only sun outside,
            Harsh elder drops, ripe fields and ripening hours,
            Soft birth of wings among the woven shadows,
            And a Southward-crying thrush.  Do you remember?
            They built and sang what time we built this house.
            I left the elder thicket for their sake,
            Who also built for love.

_Dorette._           Shagonas ... where?

_Jean._     What do you say?  Are you sick?  You speak so low.

_Dorette._  O, sick of heart!  Jean, Jean, I cannot bear it.

_Jean._     If you move more, I will bind you to the chair
            As the Indians bind a prisoner to the stake
            Lest they miss one shuddering nerve, one eyelid's droop
            Before the lifting fires....  Your pardon, wife.
            Was I so fierce?  There's fire in me to-day.
            Would close a burning grip on the whole earth
            And break it into ash...  Your face, your face.
            That's beautiful.  Why, almost here's the look
            I crave to lend Our Lady, yet too quick
            With life and dread.  Will you not mend your eyes
            That yet lay hold on Love, and teach your lips
            Too eager for that cup, and school your heart
            That yet strains after him the way he went
            That he returns no more?  O, two rode home,--

              "Two rode home by the foam and the sand
              Between the night and the day,
              But one has stayed in Holy Land,--"

            One always stays, one always stays behind
            Where the heart made Holy Land.
                This king of song
            Was worshipful, just, and mighty,
                His great place
            Knew him no more.  He cast it all away,--
            The pity of it!--so he might serve till death
            God's Mother.  But she did not wear your face.

_Dorette._  This heat ... I am dying.

_Jean._              What is it you say?
            If I should gash this sacred brow I smoothe
            Would you break blood?  If I should pierce your heart
            Would she of the sevenfold sorrows leap and cry?
            I cannot part you.  O the grief of it,
            That Mary should sit there with you, and you
            Climb heaven with her.  I am grown old with grief
            In a short hour.  To work, to work,--your face.

_Dorette._  Call, call Shagonas.

_Jean._              Has he the art to heal you?
            What do you fear?  I would not have you fear.
            I would have you like poor Mary here, who passed
            Beyond it, of a Friday.

_Dorette._           O my heart.

_Jean._     Broken like mine?  And so you had a heart,
            As well as those round limbs, those prosperous lips.
            The bloom of bosom and hair?  O, he hath stayed,--

                "O, he hath stayed to watch her face
                And make his prayer thereto,
                And to lay down for her soul's grace
                His life beneath her shoe,--"

            Why, I have changed the song.
                What's come to it?
            An ill song for the Mother o' God to hear.
            Well, well, your pardon.  Keep your face to me.

_Dorette._  Pity, O Saviour.

_Jean._              I am saving you,
            Your soul alive, a brand in a great burning
            Here in my breast.  I saw where you will sit
            Years in the little forest-scented church,
            And lives like peaceful waves will break in foam
            Of praise before you.  Then I turned me home.
            I saw--I saw--O, God, the chisel slipt
            And I have scarred you!  I will heal the wound,
            Thus, thus.  Be still.  I am saving you.  Now, Shagonas.

_Jean has crossed the room, caught her to her feet, and stands holding
her and her face to the door.  Suddenly the note of a drawn bowstring
is heard outside, something flashes past, there is a silence.  Then
among the shaken shadows of elder leaves on the door is seen for one
moment the shadow of a man, erect, with tossed arms, and pierced
through with a long arrow._

_Comes the sound of a fall, or broken branches.  Then again silence,
and the shadows of the leaves are still.  Jean seats Dorette again in
the chair, where she remains quite motionless; he returns to the Pieta
and takes his tools._

_Jean._     Your face again.  Why, now you are fulfilled.
            You will make my Mary perfect yet, your eyes
            Now, now the barren houses of despair,
            Of the passion that is none, of dread that feels
            No dread for ever, of love that has no love,
            Of death in all but death.  O beautiful,
            Stretched, stamped and imaged in the mask of death,
            The crown of such sweet life!  Your looks, your ways,
            Your touches, your slow smiles, your delicate mirth,
            All leading up to this!  And his, the high
            Clear laughter on the threshold of renown,
            Stilled!  I could almost weep for him and you,
            Weep all my wrong away.  My queen, my rose
            Rent with strange swords, my woman of light worth,
            Behold, you have brought forth death.

_Shagonas enters, carrying De Lotbiniere's sword, which, obeying a
gesture of Jean's, he lays across the knees of Dorette.  She looks down
upon it as though blind._

                     Your only fruit
            Destruction and the severing steel, the heat
            Of tears unshed, the ache of day and day
            Monotonous in want, inevitable,
            The dry-rot of the soul.  Have you no words?

_Dorette._  He said--he said there were flowers in the forest,
            White flowers by a blue pool, Our Lady's colours.
            May I go for them?  All white, he said,
            White as the Virgin's hands.  But you have made her
            Out of red wood with a light of fire upon it.
            Perhaps the flowers turned red.

_Shagonas._ There is no fear
            In the forest shadows now for the fair lady.

_Jean._     Fear's slain with that it fed on.  To your wilds,
            You wolf that watched the flock.  I will wait here with her,--
            Stay, hearing a certain crying from the ground,
            The faint innumerable mouthing leaves,
            The clamour of the grass, the expectant thunder
            Of a berry's fall.  Go you, go you.  But first
            Turn me her head a little to the shoulder
            So the light takes the cheek, raise the calm hand
            Clasping the sword, set the door wide, and go.
            Now, now my Virgin's perfect.
                     Quick, my tools!
            O Mater Dolorosa!  O Dorette!

_All is silent save for the tinkle of a little church bell ringing for
vespers, and a faint sound of chanting._

                Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae,
                Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
            O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

                Will the light hold until they come for me?

(_Curtain_)




  THE SILENT SHEPHERDS

  I met the shepherds going home
  When all the earth was still,
  They trod a pathway pale as foam,
  That led by Ebbesbourne Hill.

  They had no songs at end of day,
  No laughter in their eyes,
  Hushed as the cool hushed hills were they
  And quiet as the skies.

  A league, a league of brier in bloom,
  A league of furze alight
  From Ebbesbourne Wake to Marlycombe
  Breathed noon across the night.

  The pilgrim stars went down the dark,
  Their silver roads were long,
  And in the grass each nestled lark
  Was but a sleeping song.

  Like a gray leaf the windless sky,
  About the flowering moon,
  I thought the shepherds passed me by
  Treading a silent tune.




  THE NAIAD

  Dawn have I known, and noon,
  And the dear night with all her foam of stars,
  Here in my hands I hold the hunter's moon
  Nightlong beneath the moving water-grasses,
  With wavering globes of pearl and amber bars.
  And spring is mine, when wake the daffodils,
  To the wind's bugle wound upon the hills,
  And low across my roof the swallow passes.

  Sad smoke of sacred fires along the lands,
  The burdened vine, full gourd and goldening ears.
  The labourer's song among his olive trees.--
  What care have I for these?
  Hath Cypris lovelier than these silver hands,
  These meek immortal eyes untouched of tears?

  Night hath no room for laughter, and by day
  The faint flower dies unripened from the tree.
  Heavy the lives of men, and heavily
  The imperial gods go wearying, crowned in care,
  And I am sick as they
  Of a dim grief, an undesigned despair.

  O, here the oleander leans, and deep
  Lies the gray shell asleep,
  The round bee drowses in the river-bud.
  Here the wild cherry droops her chained fruits,
  Here wind the ivory grasses, and the roots
  Of roses, red as blood.
  And sorrow, sorrow, sings the enchanted flood.

  Break, ye sweet banks, and set my fountains free,
  And I will lead my flocks
  Of fleece-white waters singing down the rocks,
  To lose immortal sadness in the sea,
  Die in dim rains along the welcoming shore,
  And know, ah, know no more.
  Eve's loneliest star above the water-meadows,
  Soft birth of wings among the woven shadows,
  Where almond and the wild azalea throw,
  Across my silver roof their crowns of wreathed snow.




  SLEEPY-HOODS

  There's an old man in the woods,
  Swift as summer, tall as smoke.
  When the last leaf's left the oak
  And the north wind cries and searches
  All among the shivering birches,--
  Wraps him in a tattered cloak,
  Goes a-selling of his goods
  Up and down the long white woods,--
  Selling little sleepy-hoods.

  O, his hoods.
  Laid with fur and lined with feather,
  Very warm for winter weather,
  Hoods for squirrels, hoods for bears,
  Hoods for little lady-hares.
  O, his hoods,
  Sewn with down along the seams,
  Bright with little beaded gleams,
  Woven out of sleep and dreams.

  Hear the old man calling, crying,
  "Come a-trying, come a-buying.
  Here's a little hood shall bring
  To its wearer dreams of spring,
  Woven all of brier dew
  With a thrush-song running through.
  Here's a hood shall send some crow
  Smiling thoughts along the snow.
  Here's a furry hood shall make
  Summer for a rabbit's sake,
  Warm with down of fronds unfurled
  In the daytime of the world."

  O, his hoods.
  Search among his shining goods,
  Quills of scarlet, golden gleams,
  Find the hood that has no dreams.
  Find the white hood, soft and deep,
  Made of sleep,
  Lined with petals of white roses
  Fallen when the moon uncloses,
  Flowerlike stars around her still,
  O'er the hemlocks on some hill,
  Some far hill we shall not find
  Down the highways of the wind.

  Hear the old man wandering, crying,
  "Who's a-seeking?  Who's a-buying?
  Wear it, and you shall not fear
  All the changes of the year--
  Iris-moon and April night
  Hold for you the same delight,
  Cedar-scented rains and clear
  Frost of stars alike be dear.
  Safely, safely shall you lie,
  Idle while the hunt goes by
  Singing through the windy woods.
  Soft as summer it shall hold you,
  Sweet as silence it shall fold you,--
  Sleepiest of sleepy-hoods."




  "HOW LOOK'D SHE?"

  How look'd she when she breathed goodbye?
  Most like a dove, whose breast
  Across a thousand wastes of sky
  Is constant to her nest.

  How look'd she when she turned away?
  Most as a spirit might,
  Who shared our sorrows for a day,
  Yet kept her home in sight.

  O, look'd she sad, or seem'd she glad?
  Most like a star, that knows
  Only the loveliness it had,
  The light to which it goes.




  JEREMY FROST

  Here lies one, old Jeremy Frost.
  Whose soul was saved though his legs was lost.
  A man he was, if any be found,
  Taut as a spar from his head to the ground.
  But the Lord takes pleasure in no man's shape,
  And He shorted 'm up wi' a round o' grape.
  But Jeremy wouldn't be dowsed nor glum
  When the wars was over and he come.
  "Not lost," says Jeremy, "gone afore,
  And awaiting for me on a better shore."
  So when Death loosened his timber pegs,
  Old Jeremy up'd and follered his legs.




  SONGS

  _(From "Little Hearts")_

  When along the road of day,
  Evening comes with stars and wings,
  Bids her children put away,
  Spades and armies, clowns and kings,
  We remember once again,
  Love, how lonely love hath lain.

  Though the blind day build us in
  With her sorrows and her spears,
  Break for us the bread of sin,
  Lift to us the cup of tears,
  Yet our prison-house shall be
  But the door to let love free.




  MALACHI'S SONG

  _(From "Little Hearts")_

  Some has breeches and some has beer,
  And a pipe for to fill their jaw, O.
  But look about and you'll find us here,
  A-sleeping in the straw, O.

  Some has apples and some has cakes,
  And ale for to sup if able,
  But we'll lie hid till the mavish wakes
  A-sleeping in the stable.

  Some has fardens and some has pence,
  And a shillin' to pay the law, O.
  And some they hasn't a grain o' sense,
  A-kissin' in the straw, O.

  Some they takes their 'ysters cooked,
  And some they takes them raw, O.
  And I can't work for the way you looked,
  A-smiling in the straw, O.

  Some they're churched and some they're hung,
  And some says grace at table,
  And some they're nothing but fools and young,
  A-kissing in the stable.




  TINKER'S SONG

  _(From "Foxcover")_

  Did 'e ever hear tell of a pretty young keeper,
  In a green velvet jacket and gaiters so gay?
  He watched the night through in the dark hazel copses,
  And went to his bed at the dawn of the day.

  Then where have you been, O my pretty young keeper,
  That you weep with your face in the bracken so brown?
  I weep for the weasel I shot in the heather,
  And for the wild hawk that my gun has brought down.

  The hares are all safe, O my pretty young keeper,
  The fat deer lie down in the heart o' the wood,
  It must be the hares that have broke the green bushes,
  It must be the deer that have splashed 'em with blood.

  There's a stain on your breast, O my pretty young keeper,
  And your noble green jackets all dirtied about,
  There was two that went in to the dark hazel copses,
  There was two that went in and but one that came out.

  Then it's what is your grief, O my pretty young keeper,
  Since the hares are not snared and the deer are not run?
  It's O, that I lay in the dark hazel copses,
  And my father 'd come home in the stead o' his son.




  FINIS

  Give me a few more hours to pass
  With the mellow flower of the elm-bough falling,
  And then no more than the lonely grass
  And the birds calling.

  Give me a few more days to keep
  With a little love and a little sorrow,
  And then the dawn in the skies of sleep
  And a clear tomorrow.

  Give me a few more years to fill
  With a little work and a little lending,
  And then the night on a starry hill
  And the road's ending.




_Index of First Lines_


_The references are to pages_


  A sleeked mimosa hid him from the rain
  Above his head the twilight sleeps
  All days were night before this day's dear prime
  All in a rainy hazel wood
  Beauty is still immortal in our eyes
  Between the archangels and the old eclipse
  Between the marshes and the lake
  Beyond the ivory altars changed and sold
  Called to a way too high for me, I lean
  Dark is the iris meadow
  Dawn have I known, and noon
  Did 'e ever hear tell of a pretty young keeper
  Dominic came riding down, sworded, straight and splendid
  Friend, pass softly.  Here is one
  From the clouded belfry calling
  Give me a few more hours to pass
  Had I the thrush's throat, I could not sing you
  Here lies one, old Jeremy Frost
  Here where the bee slept and the orchis lifted
  How look'd she when she breathed goodbye?
  I am the ancient one, the many-handed
  I died o' cider and taters
  I gave my thoughts a golden peach
  I have left a basket of dates
  I have not walked on common ground
  I lift the Lord on high
  I met the shepherds going home
  I shall say, Lord, "Is it music, is it morning
  I was happier up in the room
  I would have given you other gifts than this
  If I should live again
  In your dim Greece of old, Alcithoë
  Is the noise of grief in the palace over the river
  Jeffik was there, and Matthieu, and brown Bran
  Jesus, Saviour, once a lad
  Just where the ridgepole cleaves the blue
  Last night I made my pillow of the leaves
  Lift thou the latch whereon the wild rose clings
  Lord, I have known all fruits of this Thy world
  Love said to the wind, Be still
  Miranda?  She died soon, and sick for home
  Most reverend Father, I have borne all wrong
  My name was Amaryllis.  I
  Not the returning spell
  O keep the world forever at the dawn
  O saw you our belovéd where the cedars darken over
  On the strained ear the hush bears heavily
  Out of the sharp salt kiss
  Out of the winds' and the waves' riot
  Over the boughs that the wind has shaken
  Rain at Muchalat, rain at Sooke
  Some has breeches and some has beer
  Soul, if indeed the dead do not arise
  The earth builds on the earth
  There's an old man in the woods
  The trumpets rang for Arthur in Avilion
  Under the fluent folds of needlework
  Under the level winter sky
  Under the young moon's slender shield
  Veil thine eyes, O belovéd, my spouse
  What of all the colours shall I bring you for your fairing
  When along the road of day
  When I was a little lad
  When it is finished, Father, and we set
  When man, being yet a child
  When the moon is last awake
  When the red moon hangs over the fold
  When the rooks fly homeward and the gulls are following high
  When the white iris folds the drowsing bee




_The Books of Marjorie Pickthall_


_Poetry_

THE DRIFT OF PINIONS ................................... London, 1913

THE LAMP OF POOR SOULS AND OTHER POEMS
                                   London, New York and Toronto, 1916

THE WOOD CARVER'S WIFE AND LATER POEMS
    (Foreword by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay)
    Also published in a special Memorial Edition
    limited to 325 copies ............................. Toronto, 1922

MARY TIRED (four-page Christmas Greeting) .............. London, 1922

TWO POEMS ("Vision" and "Ebb Tide")
    Privately printed ................................. Toronto, 1923

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF MARJORIE PICKTHALL .............. Toronto, ----

THE COMPLETE POEMS (Foreword by Arthur C. Pickthall)
    Enlarged edition .................................. Toronto, 1936

THE SELECTED POEMS OF MARJORIE PICKTHALL
    (Edited, and with an introduction by
    Lorne Pierce) ..................................... Toronto, 1957



_Fiction_

DICK'S DESERTION: A BOY'S ADVENTURES IN CANADIAN FORESTS:
    A TALE OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF ONTARIO
    (Illustrated by C. W. Jefferys) ........... London, Toronto, 1905

THE STRAIGHT ROAD
   (Illustrated by C. W. Jefferys) ............ London, Toronto, 1906

BILLY'S HERO, OR THE VALLEY OF GOLD
    (Illustrated by C. W. Jefferys) ........... London, Toronto, 1908

THE WORKER IN SANDAL WOOD (Reprinted at
    various times, and issued for gift purposes) ..... New York, 1915

LITTLE HEARTS (two editions) ........................... London, 1915

THE BRIDGE: A STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES ................. London, 1915
    Reprinted from _The Sphere_ (two
    editions) ................................ London, New York, 1922

ANGELS' SHOES AND OTHER STORIES ........................ London, 1923




[End of The Selected Poems of Marjorie Pickthall,
edited by Lorne Pierce]