Shelley's Skylark

Somewhere afield here something lies

In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust

That moved a poet to prophecies -

A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,

And made immortal through times to be; -

Though it only lived like another bird,

And knew not its immortality.

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell -

A little ball of feather and bone;

And how it perished, when piped farewell,

And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,

Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,

Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find

That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

And bring a casket silver-lined,

And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,

And consecrate it to endless time;

For it inspired a bard to win

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme. 

-o0o-

The Spell of the Rose

"I mean to build a hall anon,

And shape two turrets there,

And a broad newelled stair,

And a cool well for crystal water;

Yes; I will build a hall anon,

Plant roses love shall feed upon,

And apple trees and pear."

He set to build the manor-hall,

And shaped the turrets there,

And the broad newelled stair,

And the cool well for crystal water;

He built for me that manor-hall,

And planted many trees withal,

But no rose anywhere.

And as he planted never a rose

That bears the flower of love,

Though other flowers throve

A frost-wind moved our souls to sever

Since he had planted never a rose;

And misconceits raised horrid shows,

And agonies came thereof.

"I'll mend these miseries," then said I,

And so, at dead of night,

I went and, screened from sight,

That nought should keep our souls in severance,

I set a rose-bush."This," said I,

"May end divisions dire and wry,

And long-drawn days of blight."

But I was called from earth - yea, called

Before my rose-bush grew;

And would that now I knew

What feels he of the tree I planted,

And whether, after I was called

To be a ghost, he, as of old,

Gave me his heart anew!

Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees

I set but saw not grow,

And he, beside its glow -

Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me -

Ay, there beside that queen of trees

He sees me as I was, though sees

Too late to tell me so!

-o0o-

In the British Museum

What do you see in that time-touched stone,

When nothing is there

But ashen blankness, although you give it

A rigid stare?

You look not quite as if you saw,

But as if you heard,

Parting your lips, and treading softly

As mouse or bird.

It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,

That came to us

From a far old hill men used to name

Areopagus."

"I know no art, and I only view

A stone from a wall,

But I am thinking that stone has echoed

The voice of Paul,

"Paul as he stood and preached beside it

Facing the crowd,

A small gaunt figure with wasted features,

Calling out loud

"Words that in all their intimate accents

Pattered upon

That marble front, and were far reflected,

And then were gone.

"I'm a labouring man, and know but little,

Or nothing at all;

But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed

The voice of Paul."

-o0o-

Sitting on the Bridge

Sitting on the bridge

Past the barracks, town and ridge,

At once the spirit seized us

To sing a song that pleased us -

As "The Fifth" were much in rumour;

It was "Whilst I'm in the humour,

Take me, Paddy, will you now?"

And a lancer soon drew nigh,

And his Royal Irish eye

Said, "Willing, faith, am I,

O, to take you anyhow, dears,

To take you anyhow."

But, lo! - dad walking by,

Cried, "What, you lightheels! Fie!

Is this the way you roam

And mock the sunset gleam?"

And he marched us straightway home,

Though we said, "We are only, daddy,

Singing, 'Will you take me, Paddy?'"

- Well, we never saw from then

If we sang there anywhen,

The soldier dear again,

Except at night in dream-time,

Except at night in dream.

Perhaps that soldier's fighting

In a land that's far away,

Or he may be idly plighting

Some foreign hussy gay;

Or perhaps his bones are whiting

In the wind to their decay! . . .

Ah! - does he mind him how

The girls he saw that day

On the bridge, were sitting singing

At the time of curfew-ringing,

"Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?

Paddy, will you now?"

-o0o-

The Self-Unseeing

Here is the ancient floor, 

Footworn and hollowed and thin, 

Here was the former door 

Where the dead feet walked in. 

She sat here in her chair, 

Smiling into the fire; 

He who played stood there, 

Bowing it higher and higher. 

Childlike, I danced in a dream; 

Blessings emblazoned that day; 

Everything glowed with a gleam; 

Yet we were looking away! 

-o0o-

Neutral Tones

We stood by a pond that winter day, 

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, 

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod; 

– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. 

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 

Over tedious riddles of years ago; 

And some words played between us to and fro 

On which lost the more by our love. 

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing 

Alive enough to have strength to die; 

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby 

Like an ominous bird a-wing…. 

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, 

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me 

Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree, 

And a pond edged with grayish leaves. 

-o0o-

A Commonplace Day

The day is turning ghost, 

And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, 

   To join the anonymous host 

Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe, 

   To one of like degree. 

   I part the fire-gnawed logs, 

Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends 

   Upon the shining dogs; 

Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends, 

   And beamless black impends. 

   Nothing of tiniest worth 

Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or 

praise, 

   Since the pale corpse-like birth 

Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays - 

   Dullest of dull-hued Days! 

   Wanly upon the panes 

The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and 

yet 

   Here, while Day's presence wanes, 

And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set, 

   He wakens my regret. 

   Regret--though nothing dear 

That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime, 

   Or bloomed elsewhere than here, 

To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime, 

   Or mark him out in Time . . . 

   --Yet, maybe, in some soul, 

In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose, 

   Or some intent upstole 

Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows 

   The world's amendment flows; 

   But which, benumbed at birth 

By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be 

   Embodied on the earth; 

And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity 

   May wake regret in me. 

-o0o-