The Magic House and Other Poems 4

The Magic House and Other Poems 4

TO WINTER

 

 

Come, O thou season of intense repose;

Come with thy lidded eyes and crystal breath;

Come gently with thy soft release of snows;

And bring thy few short months of tender death.

 

Build a huge tomb within the desert frore,

With green clear chambers in the icy rift,

Carve the sleep rune above the crystal door,

And trench a legend in the pallid drift.

 

Let the large stars about the horizon lie,

Watching the confines of the world’s great sleep;

Spread the vast province of the purple sky,

With thy wan curtains dropped from deep to deep.

 

Then hush the stir and bid the movement cease;

Pass gently, leave the tired world in peace.

 

 

 

 

THE IDEAL

 

 

Let your soul grow a thing apart,

Untroubled by the restless day,

Sublimed by some unconscious art,

Controlled by some divine delay.

 

For life is greater than they think,

Who fret along its shallow bars:

Swing out the boom to float or sink

And front the ocean and the stars.

 

 

 

 

A SUMMER STORM

 

 

Last night a storm fell on the world

From heights of drouth and heat,

The surly clouds for weeks were furled,

The air could only sway and beat,

 

The beetles clattered at the blind,

The hawks fell twanging from the sky,

The west unrolled a feathery wind,

And the night fell sullenly.

 

The storm leaped roaring from its lair,

Like the shadow of doom,

The poignard lightning searched the air,

The thunder ripped the shattered gloom,

 

The rain came down with a roar like fire,

Full-voiced and clamorous and deep,

The weary world had its heart’s desire,

And fell asleep.

 

And now in the morning early,

The clouds are sailing by

Clearly, oh! so clearly,

The distant mountains lie.

 

The wind is very mild and slow,

The clouds obey his will,

They part and part and onward go,

Travelling together still.

 

’Tis very sweet to be alive,

On a morning that’s so fair,

For nothing seems to stir or strive,

In the unconscious air.

 

A tawny thrush is in the wood,

Ringing so wild and free;

Only one bird has a blither mood,

The white-throat on the tree.

 

 

 

 

LIFE AND DEATH

 

 

I thought of death beside the lonely sea,

That went beyond the limit of my sight,

Seeming the image of his mastery,

The semblance of his huge and gloomy might.

 

But firm beneath the sea went the great earth,

With sober bulk and adamantine hold,

The water but a mantle for her girth,

That played about her splendour fold on fold.

 

And life seemed like this dear familiar shore,

That stretched from the wet sands’ last wavy crease,

Beneath the sea’s remote and sombre roar,

To inland stillness and the wilds of peace.

 

Death seems triumphant only here and there;

Life is the sovereign presence everywhere.

 

 

 

 

IN THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

 

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

 

 

This is the acre of unfathomed rest,

These stones, with weed and lichen bound, enclose

No active grief, no uncompleted woes,

But only finished work and harboured quest,

And balm for ills;

And the last gold that smote the ashen west

Lies garnered here between the harvest hills.

 

This spot has never known the heat of toil,

Save when the angel with the mighty spade

Has turned the sod and built the house of shade;

But here old chance is guardian of the soil;

Green leaf and grey,

The barrows blossom with the tangled spoil,

And God’s own weeds are fair in God’s own way.

 

Sweet flowers may gather in the ferny wood:

Hepaticas, the morning stars of spring;

The bloodroots with their milder ministering,

Like planets in the lonelier solitude;

And that white throng,

Which shakes the dingles with a starry brood,

And tells the robin his forgotten song.

 

These flowers may rise amid the dewy fern,

They may not root within this antique wall,

The dead have chosen for their coronal,

No buds that flaunt of life and flare and burn;

They have agreed,

To choose a beauty puritan and stern,

The universal grass, the homely weed.

 

This is the paradise of common things,

The scourged and trampled here find peace to grow,

The frost to furrow and the wind to sow,

The mighty sun to time their blossomings;

And now they keep

A crown reflowering on the tombs of kings,

Who earned their triumph and have claimed their sleep.

 

Yea, each is here a prince in his own right,

Who dwelt disguised amid the multitude,

And when his time was come, in haughty mood,

Shook off his motley and reclaimed his might;

His sombre throne

In the vast province of perpetual night,

He holds secure, inviolate, alone.

 

The poor forgets that ever he was poor,

The priest has lost his science of the truth,

The maid her beauty, and the youth his youth,

The statesman has forgot his subtle lure,

The old his age,

The sick his suffering, and the leech his cure,

The poet his perplexed and vacant page.

 

These swains that tilled the uplands in the sun

Have all forgot the field’s familiar face,

And lie content within this ancient place,

Whereto when hands were tired their thought would run

To dream of rest,

When the last furrow was turned down, and won

The last harsh harvest from the earth’s patient breast.

 

O dwellers in the val