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Title: From a London garden

Author: Arthur St. John Adcock

Release date: November 9, 2025 [eBook #77200]

Language: English

Original publication: London: David Nutt, 1903

Credits: Carol Brown, Tim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM A LONDON GARDEN ***

FROM A LONDON GARDEN

FROM A

LONDON GARDEN

BY

A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK

colophon

LONDON: DAVID NUTT
57–59 LONG ACRE
1903

Note.—These verses have appeared in the ‘Spectator,’ ‘Outlook,’ ‘Chambers’s Journal,’ ‘Literary World,’ ‘Week’s Survey,’ ‘Pilot,’ &c.

CONTENTS

PAGE
TRANSFIGURED 1
THE EARTH-BOND 3
THE PRIDE OF LAZARUS 5
MANHOOD 7
WAGES 9
LIFE AND TIME 11
GROWTH 14
THE DAY BEYOND 16
THE CITY ASLEEP 18
LOVE’S REASON 21
THE FORERUNNER 23
THE SICK MAN’S DREAM 25
CHARLES LAMB AT ENFIELD 28
THE CROWN OF FAILURE 31
AT PARTING 33
THRENOS 36
UNHONOURED WORK 38
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH 40
UNKNOWN KNOWLEDGE 41
THE LAST DAWN 44
A FORLORN HOPE 45
THE CUPBEARER 46
A DEAD FRIENDSHIP 48
THE WIDER VIEW 51
UNTIL THE EVENING 53
AFTER PARTING 55
THE GUEST 57
THE DREAMER 59
ENOUGH 63
LIGHT 65
A SONG OF SHADOWS 66
RECOMPENSE 68
THE HAUNTED CITY 69
RETURNING 71
’TWIXT DAWN AND DAY 73
UNFORGOTTEN 75
A LAST TRIBUTE 76
YOUTH 78

[Pg 1]

TRANSFIGURED

Love took the sordid clay
And pierced its grossness as with lustral fire,
Fashioned a spirit from the common earth,
And crowned him lord and king with tears and mirth:
Love took the sordid clay
And shaped it to the god of her desire.
Then, ere he could resign
His white divinity and fall away
From that ineffable, ideal height
Whereto he had been lifted by Love’s might
Ere he could so resign
His godhead and return again to clay,
[Pg 2]
Death took the god of Love—
The god that was but man ashine with gleams
From inner fires that Love’s own hands supplied—
And made him deathless who might else have died:
Death took the god of Love
And throned him in the heaven of her dreams.

[Pg 3]

THE EARTH-BOND

Surely both earth and heaven are God’s; and so
He will not count it sin if I should love
More than the unknown heaven above
His dear earth that I know.
Meadow and sea and sky, and storm and shine,
Glad voices that from croft and coppice call,
The city loud with life, and all
Of mortal and divine
That make this earth akin to you and me,
Partner in hopes we live by or regret—
Dear are they all, and dearer yet
Some human two or three.
[Pg 4]
So that, as one in sleep may leave his bed
And, blindly drawn to haunts he loved by day,
Walk through an old familiar way
With sure, unconscious tread,
In the last sleep, if I should dream and do
Even as thus some living sleeper might,
I shall stray, ghost-like, in the night
Home to the earth I knew.

[Pg 5]

THE PRIDE OF LAZARUS

Lord, I am poor and desolate!
The beggars at Thy outer gate,
Who cringe to purse-proud passers-by,
Are not more desolate than I.
The rich and proud have passed me there
And gone into Thy House of Prayer,
But I have stretched no pleading palms
To ask their pity or their alms.
And now, before the prayers begin,
I too, O Lord, will enter in
With heart elate, to praise and pray,
As thankful and as blest as they.
[Pg 6]
They praise Thee in communion sweet
For silks they wear and flesh they eat;
They thank Thee that Thou dost not flout
And leave them as the poor without.
I praise Thee that, for all my cares,
I have a pride that laughs at theirs;
I thank Thee that, though frail I be,
My strength has bowed to none but Thee.
Curse me, O Lord, with want and ill,
But make my spirit strong, and still
Give me, whate’er Thy hand denies,
A soul no swine-trough satisfies.

[Pg 7]

MANHOOD

Not till life’s heat has cooled,
The headlong rush slowed to a quiet pace,
And every purblind passion that had ruled
Our noisier years, at last,
Spurs us in vain, and, weary of the race,
We care no more who loses or who wins—
Ah! not till all the best of life seems past
The best of life begins.
To toil for only fame,
Hand-clappings and the fickle gusts of praise,
For place or power or gold to gild a name
Above the grave whereto
[Pg 8]
All paths will bring us, were to lose our days,
We on whose ears youth’s passing bell has tolled,
In blowing bubbles even as children do,
Forgetting we grow old.
But the world widens when
Such hope of trivial gain that ruled us lies
Broken among our childhood’s toys, for then
We win to self-control
And mail ourselves in manhood, and there rise
Upon us from the vast and windless height
Those clearer thoughts that are unto the soul
What stars are to the night.

[Pg 9]

WAGES

I’d have you love me, yet your love should be
A virtue less in you than me;
I would not have folk say, “With what a meek
Most patient strength she bears with all his weak
And childish sins, his follies mean and wild!
She loves him as we love a wayward child,
Loves him for very pity, even, methinks,
As God loves us.”
Ah, stoop not to me thus!
For love so given poisons him that drinks.
If, when you look into my life, you see
No worth that you can love in me;
If, being very human, I am prone
To ways that are less heavenly than your own;
[Pg 10]
If I have fall’n from your ideal height
—Then do not love me in my own despite,
Make me no halting beggar at Love’s gate
Loved, as such are,
For God’s sake; rather far
Think I at least am worthy of your hate.
Love me, dear heart, if thus it may befall,
For my own sake—or not at all.
Love me for what I am; or, if not so,
For what I am hate me and let me go;
Dole me no humbling charity, nor turn
Unjustly from me—pay but what I earn,
That unashamed and man-like I may live
And know, elate,
That be it love or hate,
At least you think me worthy what you give.

[Pg 11]

LIFE AND TIME

Time sits in silence, patient at his loom,
And throws untired his shuttles of moon and sun,
And weaves with flying strands of dark and light,
And weaves again for ever, as it wanes,
His pageant of the living hours that die—
Night treading lonely through a land of sleep;
Dawn that has dreams of Night within her eyes;
Day with the bloom of Morning on her cheeks;
Day flushed from labours in the stress of Noon;
And Eve whose eyes are sad with dreams of Day.
And circling in the dazzle and the dark,
In all the ever fading, growing gloom
And glory, swings the clamorous world of men:
[Pg 12]
Clamour of Peace, who sows her happy fields
Or feasts with all her sons at harvest-home;
Of War, that wields his lightnings like a god
And thunders god-like from his clouds, and swirls
His red rain on the fields that Peace has sown;
Of Joy, who brims his cup and shouts his songs,
Exultant in a bubble-heaven that bursts;
Of Death, who snows his winter where he will,
And walks amid a wailing as of winds;
Of Hope who, blinded by his first sun-rise,
Waits for the slow to-morrow and dies to-day;
Of Love, whose earth and hell and heaven are one;
Of Loss, that whimpers at the heels of Love;
Of Pity, and Hate, of Anguish, and Despair—
Clamour of all the voices of the world
Moan to him like a murmur of his loom,
But heedless whether men may laugh or weep,
And careless ever though they live or die,
Time sits in silence at his spanless web
[Pg 13]
And throws untired his shuttles of moon and sun
And weaves anew his pageant as it wanes—
Dawn that has dreams of Night within her eyes;
Day with the bloom of Morning on her cheeks;
Day flushed from labours in the stress of Noon;
And Eve whose eyes are dim with dreams of Day;
And Night who loiters saddening still for Dawn.

[Pg 14]

GROWTH

Blow, winds, your rage but shakes the tree
And roots it surer in its place!
Scatter your rain, ye clouds, and free
The buds that wait your frowning grace!
Roll down, O river, to the sea,
And widen in your onward race!
Peace through a sunny span may keep
His garden in some quiet glen,
Whilst others sow for him, and reap,
And tend his flocks on moor and fen:
The flowers of Peace are death and sleep;
The strife of living makes us men.
[Pg 15]
Ah, joy it is to win the goal
By tireless work and dauntless will,
Yet may the life rise orbed and whole
From clouded hopes, and loss, and ill:
Our baffled toils upbuild the soul,
And failure so is victory still.

[Pg 16]

THE DAY BEYOND

When youth is with us, all things seem
But lightly to be wished and won;
We snare to-morrow in a dream,
And take our toll for work undone;
“For life is long and time a stream
That sleeps and sparkles in the sun—
What need of any haste?” we say,
“To-morrow’s longer than to-day.”
And when to-morrow shall destroy
The heaven of our dreams, in vain
Our hurrying manhood we employ
To build the vanished bliss again;
[Pg 17]
We have no leisure to enjoy,
“So few the years that yet remain,
So much to do, and ah!” we say,
“To-morrow’s shorter than to-day.”
But when our hands are worn and weak,
And still our labours seem unblest,
And time goes past us like a bleak
Last twilight waning to the west,
“It is not here—the bliss we seek,
Too brief is life for happy rest;
What need of any haste?” we say,
“To-morrow’s longer than to-day.”

[Pg 18]

THE CITY ASLEEP

Darkly, under a drifting moon,
The streets lie empty of sound and life;
Dawn of to-morrow come not soon!
Silent afar is yesterday’s noon,
And the city forgets its sorrow and strife:
Oh, weary eyes and hearts that ache,
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Here, where all day the air was loud
With a rattle of carts and jingle of cars
And the murmur and laughter and tread of the crowd,
Are only the ruts that the wheels have ploughed,
And rails that gleam with a glint of the stars,
[Pg 19]
And dreaming streets that the crowd forsake:
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Toil and care to the day belong;
To-morrow their tears shall fall again,
But now for a little the weak are strong;
Sleep knows nothing of right or wrong,
To-night feels naught of to-morrow’s pain.
Sleep has a cup all thirst to slake:
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Bare little feet grown hard on the stones,
Gaunt little hands that work has worn—
Oh, children, whom man enslaves or disowns,
Christ in His heaven has heard your moans
And touched you with happy death till morn.
Children, to-morrow your hearts shall ache:
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Sorrow and sin crouch side by side,
Stived in their slum as swine in their pen;
[Pg 20]
Sin?—is it sorrow too sorely tried?
A birth of the ashes where hope has died?
Weary and outcast women and men,
Is it God that mars what His own hands make?
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Wealth that dwells on the heights serene,
Virtue a-dream in your blissful bower,
With the blood of the poor are your walls unclean,
Your pleasures are dredged from their woes obscene;
Could ye smell the filth of the root in the flower,
What joy in the scent thereof would ye take?
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Palace and hovel, the prince and the throng,
Are one in sleep ’neath the drifting moon;
Now for a little the weak are strong,
Sleep knows nothing of right or wrong:
Dawn of to-morrow, come not soon!
Eyes that are tearless and hearts that break,
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.

[Pg 21]

LOVE’S REASON

What makes me love you?—Well,
In truth, I cannot tell!
I love, but know not why—
I only know I do,
And shall while I am I
And you are you.
It is your voice, maybe,
That draws the heart from me
And makes it yours alone:
Your voice it is—yet, nay,
’Tis not so much your tone
As what you say.
[Pg 22]
Perhaps it is your rare
And winsome, happy air,
Your eyes of sunny blue,
Your silvery laughter glad—
And yet, I love you too
When you are sad.
Though sweet your voice, and sweet
Your words be, when we meet,
And sweet the changeful light
Your heaven-deep eyes disclose—
I do not love you quite
For these or those.
I love you—yet I try
In vain to tell you why!
I love you by no laws
Men know or ever knew,
But just, I think, because
You’re simply—you!

[Pg 23]

THE FORERUNNER

A wind out of heaven o’er holt and lea
Blows the dead ashes of life to a blaze,
And little green flames on hedge and tree
Flicker and shine through the lengthening days.
Summer is coming! The sound of her name
Gives sight to the blind and a voice to the dumb;
Spring is setting the green little buds aflame
To light the way she will come.
And down through the city, by shop and mart,
An Angel passes with hushed footfall—
His coming gladdens the wistful heart
Of a caged thrush hung on an outer wall,
[Pg 24]
And it sings till the spell of its rapturous song
Brings the field to its bars, and below in the street
Hearing, and mocked with remembrance, the throng
Feel the grass under their feet.
To a touch of the sunlight Death unlocks
His doors, and with laughter Life returns;
In high-walled garden, and window-box,
In square and byway glimmers and burns
Blossom and leaf, as a happier thought
Lights eyes that were sad, for each dull city place
Thrilled as the Angel went past it, and caught
The look that flashed from his face.

[Pg 25]

THE SICK MAN’S DREAM

And there before me flashed a morning gleam
(It was not like a dream),
A dazzle of light that overflowed the sky
And filled the sea; and I,
A city-toiler fallen in the strife
That I could wage no more,
I seemed the wreck and remnant of a life
The sea had cast ashore.
Oh but to lie upon those sun-kissed sands
With idle, restful hands,
To feel the freshening wind, to hear the sea
Whisper and call to me,
[Pg 26]
Was as though heaven had dawned on earth at last,
Or I to heaven were brought;
The city here, my life of all the past,
Dwindled to but a thought.
There in the streets, I thought, the dull day long
The busy workers throng,
Whilst I.... The waves broke nearer and more near,
And still I had no fear;
I yearned to feel the cool bright waters sweep
Above me, hushed and high,
For when I gazed I saw in all the deep
Only another sky.
... Then something stirred; or was it you that spoke?
I started, and awoke,
And lo! my hands lay white and wasted yet
On the white coverlet;
[Pg 27]
And here, about me still, this silent room,
The shaded lamp, the red
Quick fire-flame darting lightnings through the gloom—
And you beside my bed.
As stars at dawn, the dreams that fill the dark
Wane when we waken.... Hark!
Is it the wind among the garden trees,
That voice so like the sea’s?—
Listen!... I have not dreamed. Oh restful bliss!
The great sea calls me now....
These are its winds that cool my lips, and this
Its spray upon my brow.

[Pg 28]

CHARLES LAMB AT ENFIELD

(“Yet in this self-condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite killed, rise prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake, and cry to sleep again.”—Lamb to Wordsworth, 1830.)

Though yet no blossom stars the hedge, nor light
Of daisies twinkles from the barren lawn,
Here is no death, for, like the sun by night,
Spring waits below the earth her hour of dawn.
But cold to this mute life that never dies,
This dull, indifferent Nature old and dread,
Under these leafless boughs and alien skies
I wander ghost-like from a life that’s dead:
[Pg 29]
That’s dead to me, self-banished from the ways
Whose walls hold all of heaven I have known,
Whose phantoms haunt me through my nights and days
With unforgotten touch, and look, and tone.
I tread no more the city that I love,
And though its far-off streets be peopled yet
And roofed with their grey slips of sky above,
For me they only live in my regret—
Those roaring streets that glared in sunny noons,
And gloomed in lamp-lit eves of plashy rain,
Or slept enchanted under dreamful moons—
Their life goes on without me; and in vain
I strive elsewhere to gather aught of good,
To quite forget them dwelling here apart,
I cannot make them strangers if I would,
Nor close my ears against them, nor my heart:
[Pg 30]
Old echoes from the very stones I trod
Call to me with a human voice, and then
I sadden in these lonely fields of God,
Grown home-sick for the crowded world of men.

[Pg 31]

THE CROWN OF FAILURE

When you have lived your life,
When you have fought your last good fight and won,
And the day’s work is finished, and the sun
Sets on your darkening world and all its strife—
Ere the worn hands are tired with all they’ve done,
Ere the mind’s strength begins to droop and wane,
Ere the first touch of sleep has dulled the brain,
Ere the heart’s springs are slow and running dry—
When you have lived your life,
’Twere good to die.
If it may not be so,
If you but fight a fight you may not win,
See the far goal but may not enter in,
’Twere better then to die and not to know
[Pg 32]
Defeat—to die amid the rush and din,
Still striving, while the heart beats high and fast
With glorious life: if you must fail, at last,
Such end were best, with all your hope and all
Your spirit in its youth,
Then, when you fall.
Far better so to die,
Still toiling upwards through the mists obscure,
With all things possible and nothing sure,
Than to be touched by glory and passed by,
To win, by chance, fame that may not endure,
That dies and leaves you living, while you strive
With wasted breath to keep its flame alive,
And fan, with empty boasts and proud regrets,
Remembrance of a name
The world forgets.

[Pg 33]

AT PARTING

So, with a last good-bye,
In this grey hour you die
To us, as we to you;
Parting is dying too,
And distance, heart to heart despairing saith
Is but a name for Death.
To-morrow we shall say,
“Our thoughts reflect, to-day,
His quiet room upstairs,
The lonely look it wears
For all the house is desolate and dim
With want of only him.”
[Pg 34]
What household things shall stand,
Hallowed, because your hand
Has touched them! We shall miss
Your help in that or this,
And treasure even trivial words you said
As memories of the dead.
You will bear with you thus
Remembrances of us;
And, writing now and then
Of stranger lands and men,
Your tidings from afar shall reach us here
As from another sphere:
Just as if you, at last,
That greater sea had passed
Whose winds and waters yearn
Outwards, and never turn,
And, looking through the waste of silence lone
You called from the Unknown.
[Pg 35]
Even Death is nothing more
Than opening of a door
Through which men pass away
As stars into the day,
And we, who see not, blinded by the light
Cry, “They are lost in Night!”
Thus ever, near or far,
Life seems but where we are;
Yet those we bid Good-bye
Find Death is not to die,
As you, departing from our daily strife,
Go hence from Life to Life.
Clasp hands, and now Farewell!
The word’s a passing knell,
But ripening year by year
Life triumphs there as here,
Nor dark nor silent would the distance be
Could we but hear and see.

[Pg 36]

THRENOS

There is nothing so beautiful now
As it used to be,
Something has gone from the grass,
And the flower, and the tree,
Something, O thou who art gone!
That faded with thee,
And there’s nothing so beautiful now
As it used to be.
Youth, with its faith in the world
And its dreams divine,
Youth, that is filled with delight
As the grape with wine,
[Pg 37]
Youth, like the moon from the night,
Has gone from me,
And there’s nothing so beautiful now
As it used to be.
A glory has passed from the sky,
And a joy from earth;
There are tears in the music that once
Spake only of mirth;
I know there is death in the world
Under all that I see,
And there’s nothing so beautiful now
As it used to be.

[Pg 38]

UNHONOURED WORK

So that no day from dawn to darkness stands,
Then passes from your door with empty hands,
What though the world should grant you no acclaim?
The worth of what is done is still the same.
Men sought of old a wand that would invoke
Desire’s fulfilment by a single stroke,
A magic Sesame, some potent word
That Fortune needs must yield to when she heard.
But never thus are any wonders wrought,
Save in the happy fairy-realm of thought,
Here, where no harvest crowns the field unsown,
Nor word nor wand avails, but work alone.
[Pg 39]
Strength builds in silence. Lo! without a sound,
Or on the heights or in the deeps profound,
All Nature toils with mightier arts than ours,
And only man is clamorous of his powers.
His work fulfils its purpose, high or low,
But he, not great enough to leave it so,
Stoops from his loftiest labour and delays
For some poor guerdon of his fellows’ praise,
Yet sees the little worth of such a prize,
What folly wears the honours of the wise,
What tinsel passes current for pure gold,
What juggling for a marvel, while, behold!—
The shining worlds of heaven, the growth of earth
Through every mystic change of death and birth—
Coming and going with a noiseless pace,
The miracles of God seem commonplace.

[Pg 40]

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

I passed without, what time the organ pealed
The last high rapture of a stately hymn,
And lingering where upon the twilight dim
The storied windows, rich with warmth, revealed
A pitying Christ ’mid humble shapes that kneeled,
Heard the punctilious Priest intone a grim
Creed-curse of some dead, earthly sanhedrim,
As if it opened all that God has sealed.
Not mine that perfect faith which strangely soothes
The world’s disquiet where it enters in,
And yet I bear, through every night of doubt,
A heart of hope made glad by simple truths:
No door, O Priest! shuts all God’s light within,
His stars are with me in the dark without.

[Pg 41]

UNKNOWN KNOWLEDGE

O, soul that seest far off the light
That is not seen of human sight,
That knowest truths of God begot
And how thou knowest knowest not!
We know not what to hope or fear:
Thou speakest, but we do not hear,
Or hearing some low-whispered word,
But half believe that we have heard.
For while to us the old is new,
And youth has all its work to do,
And o’er us rear the heights sublime
That we have set ourselves to climb,
[Pg 42]
While the quick brain has thronging dreams
And spins its airy-threaded schemes
To catch the great world’s tardy praise
And glorify inglorious days—
Through all the hurrying toil and strife,
The uproar of this sordid life
In which we sorrow and rejoice,
O soul, how can we hear thy voice?
But when the heat of strife is past
And quiet folds us round at last,
And all our unaccomplished schemes
Are dimmer than remembered dreams,
When deaf ambition’s restless will
Is either satisfied or still,
And tides that rose in stormy rage
Ebb calmly from the shores of age—
[Pg 43]
O soul! in some such quiet lain
We’ll listen for thy voice again,
Our hearts by time made wise and meek,
And in the silence hear thee speak.
And listening thus and hearing thee
The light thou seest we shall see,
Shall know what thou for many a year
Wert saying when we could not hear,
And find the truth for which we yearn,
Which seems so dark and hard to learn,
A clear and simple thing that, lo!
We always knew, and did not know.

[Pg 44]

THE LAST DAWN

From my window fades, like a blur of the breath,
The passing shadow of Night,
And Dawn looks in with the face of Death,
Silent, and cold, and white:
As at last, when the last night’s silence shall break
And the darkness rolls away,
The eyes that were sleeping shall see when they wake
Death with the face of Day.

[Pg 45]

A FORLORN HOPE

Lest you should feel
That I am all unworthy of your grace,
I set me in your presence to reveal
Whate’er of good within my heart hath place.
Lest you should then
Love me too well at first, and then despise—
Finding I am but weak as other men—
I do not hide my folly from your eyes.
Mask’d with no sham,
When thus my strivings and my sins you see,
Although you cannot love the man I am,
You yet may love the man I strive to be.

[Pg 46]

THE CUPBEARER

The beauty of the world but runs to waste,
For sunrise after sunrise comes and goes
And leaves no trace of all its splendour gone,
And sunset after sunset, like the sea
We cross in dreams to reach the gates of God,
Ebbs far and farther, and is seen no more;
Night through her billowy clouds upswings the moon
And blurs the dark with flying mists of light,
Or bares her fathomless deeps of slumbrous calm
And silent hollows pebbled thick with stars,
But fades and is forgotten of the day;
And love and hope and joy and youth, and all
The bloom of life and sweetness of the year
[Pg 47]
Flows past us ever to its bourne of death,
Sings like a stream adown its sunny hill
And sighs through sunless places of the vale,
Its depths and shallows glimmering strangely flecked
With shadowed gloom and glory of earth and heaven,
Slips from our touch and flashes out of sight.
And even as it passes and is lost—
Ere yet it spills into the sunset sea
That far-off murmurs by the gates of God—
The immortal Hebe captive among men,
Art dips her golden cup into the stream
And lifts the living water to our lips
That we may taste how sweet is all we lose.

[Pg 48]

A DEAD FRIENDSHIP

There is no more to say;
Some bitterness of thought is left unsaid
And broods within the heart and will not go,
But leave it thus untold to fade away,
And give no life to what is better dead:
Each knows the other knows it; leave it so.
Henceforward we may meet
With knowledge of each other, but not love;
Here for the last time we shake hands and part;
Our love has waned, our faith grown incomplete;
Which is at fault we may not hope to prove,
For each acquits himself to his own heart.
[Pg 49]
Ah! friendship has its spring
Like all things else, its growth and its decay:
It may not last, its summer is not long;
When it is dead and ended, shall we bring
But bitter words unto its grave, and say:
Thus did thou wrong me! Thus thou did’st me wrong!
Nay, hush! let us forget.
What profit is it to remember all?
Let us remember only what was best.
Things that are bitter, things that pain and fret,
Ill-thoughts we may regret but not recall,
Let them be all forgotten unexpressed.
And I will think that you
Died with your hand in mine, one summer when
No shadow of this sadder time to be
Clouded those sunny days our friendship knew,
That thus, ere life grew sad, and even then,
You died.—I ask you to think thus of me.
[Pg 50]
So each, perhaps, may keep
Remembrance as of one he used to know,
A dear, dead friend he ne’er again shall meet,
And ne’er forget; forgetfulness shall heap
Its dust on all but that, and we may grow
To find in such remembrance something sweet.

[Pg 51]

THE WIDER VIEW

Nay, if your friend should prove
A secret foe,
And where you sowed your love
No love should grow;
If when your hope had end,
One smiled thereat,
One promised to befriend
And then forgat—
You may not judge the world by this man or by that.
What though to-day the ways
Are chill with sleet?
The year has many days,
And some are sweet;
[Pg 52]
And while the world no less
Within its span
Hath still one heart to bless
For two that ban,
You need but lose your faith in men, and not in man.

[Pg 53]

UNTIL THE EVENING

Tired with the daily toil for daily bread,
The spirit slaving for the body’s needs,
The brain and nerve are dulled, and the heart bleeds
And breaks with grief of brooding thought unsaid:
Were we but born to labour and be fed?
To spend our souls in lowly, trivial deeds,
Mere sordid coin the guerdon God concedes?
Ah, yet press on though with a fainting tread—
Till evening ends our work and stills our cries:
Then we may find our lowness is our height,
[Pg 54]
Our crown the tasks we wrought with sobbing breath;
As common things a sunset glorifies,
This life, at last, may robe itself in light
And stand transfigured at the touch of Death.

[Pg 55]

AFTER PARTING

When the sun sets,
And I am tired of work and fall asleep,
And may no longer weep
For any old regrets,
Haply I still shall dream of what was best
On earth, and so have heaven in happy rest.
And surely then
My wistful feet shall often find a way,
Unlit of any day,
Back to this world of men—
Back through the shadowy land of dreams, afar
To this dear world where you that love me are.
[Pg 56]
Until, at last,
Your day is ended also, and you pace
That same dim land, and trace
My footprints where I passed,
And follow them and meet me dreaming through
The heavenward way once more to earth and you.

[Pg 57]

THE GUEST

Time runs so swiftly when the heart is glad,
Let me be sometimes sad,
Lest the all-happy noon
Flash into eve and fade, and I grow old too soon.
Let me be sometimes sad that life may gain
Sweetness from sorrow’s rain,
Nor bask till day be done,
A scentless blossom, shrivelling in a cloudless sun.
For broken hearts to riper wisdom wake
Than hearts that never break,
And from their anguish flows
The joy that tearless laughter seeks but never knows.
[Pg 58]
Since sorrows are life’s winters, in our primes
If we be sad sometimes,
At last, one winter more,
Age comes but as a guest that stayed with us before.
The heart renews its youth when griefs are past,
And age so comes, at last,
Like some remembered pain
That shall but come and go, and leave us young again.

[Pg 59]

THE DREAMER

Night is the lord of our birth, and lord of our death he shall be:
We are visions born of a sleep, as mists are born of the sea.
And the hand we press, the face we know, and the voice that replies,
The folly and sin of the fool, the wisdom and work of the wise,
The world that echoes about us with ripple of laughter and song,
With music and shoutings of triumph, with wailing of sorrow and wrong,
[Pg 60]
And all that the happy enjoy and the wretched have toiled for in vain,
All the good that we lose and the little good that we gain—
Are nothing, or will be nothing when, sighing farewells, we embark
And return to the void, or are blown to some isle of new life in the dark.
Here, we are only the dreams of a slumber disturbed by our tears;
The sounds of our lives are as noises the Dreamer but dreams that he hears—
Unreal, confused and fantastic, they touch his compassion at most
As the weariful cries of the wind when it wanders all night like a ghost—
[Pg 61]
And all that is sweetest and dearest, and all that is fairest and best
Seems but more fancied and fabled and more of a dream than the rest.
Ah! let us live, let us die—all’s one when the night shall have flown!
We, who can wrangle and reason and dream we have dreams of our own,
We—with our pride and our meanness, with self the crowned king in our courts,
And Mammon our god in the highest—are less than the least of our thoughts:
For the world of the Dreamer remains, and even the things that we seem
By the might and the magic of labour to fashion and build in his dream
[Pg 62]
Will remain, when ourselves shall have gone and the dream-lives now lying dumb
And dim in the brain of the Sleeper—his dreams of the years to come—
Are here to inherit the work of our hands and to struggle and fret
For the pleasures and honours that we have forgotten, and they shall forget.
And the Dreamer?—Oh, heart, if our knowledge were knowing, our seeing but sight,
We might know the Unknown that is dreaming and dreams us here out of the night,
And if there shall yet be an end of his sleep and the visions he makes,
And whether he then will recall us, remembering his dreams when he wakes.

[Pg 63]

ENOUGH

Men there be who lose their days
Toiling after empty praise,
All they do they count as vain
Should the world their work disdain;
If I hear but praise from thee,
That is praise enough for me.
Shall I flatter high or low
Fearful lest I make a foe?
Shall I sorrow without end
For the falseness of a friend?—
If I win but love from thee,
That is love enough for me.
[Pg 64]
Other worlds afar may rise
Somewhere under other skies,
Other worlds and fairer still—
Sail and seek them they that will!
Wheresoe’er I walk with thee
There is world enough for me.
Wiser men than I may say
Heaven is high and far away,
Or may prove with reasonings rare
Heaven is neither here nor there;
Here where thou art, I with thee,
This is heaven enough for me.

[Pg 65]

LIGHT

When we have sought Him vainly otherwhere—
Have closed our books and hushed our idle prayer,
Too weary and heart-sore
To seek Him any more—
And, loving yet our human kindred, go,
Forgetting self, to work with them, nor know
By lonely paths benign
We reach the height divine:
Then, mid the living world where He hath wrought,
In some chance word, or thought, or glimpse of thought,
When all our search is past,
We may see God at last.

[Pg 66]

A SONG OF SHADOWS

The city is weird with shadows,
In the shine of a sunny day
You may see them darken the pavements—
Furtive, and hushed, and grey,
They crouch by the brooding houses,
They flit through the streets below:
Every man has his shadow
That follows him to and fro.
And still when the day is sunless
They haunt the heart of the din,
They dance at the heels of pleasure,
They run before folly and sin,
Love, and honour, and beauty
They follow without a sound—If
[Pg 67]
the sun shine out but a moment
You may see them darken the ground.
The city is weird with shadows,
And fear or thought of them lies
On pallid and weary faces,
In hungry and wistful eyes,
In brains that madden with sorrow,
In hearts that sadden and break—
Shadows of day and darkness
Nor sun nor moon ever make.
Heedless each of the other,
We people the crowded way,
We are shadows born of the daylight
And pass and fade with the day,
And the glory and gold we garner,
What is it when all is done?—
Every man has his shadow,
Though he walk in the shade or the sun.

[Pg 68]

RECOMPENSE

Through day and dark our years go by,
And youth is sweet with dreams that die;
In winter’s wistful sunset gleams
Like ghosts they haunt us from the dead;
But Time, that took away my dreams,
Has given me you instead.
Though youth must pass and none can say
The hour it left him or the day,
Though Time shall take our joys, in sooth,
Who brings us joy again but He?
And when he took away my youth
He gave your love to me.
[Pg 69]

THE HAUNTED CITY

Some heart’s remembrance and regret
Fill every street with life profound:
This corner where of old we met
To me has since been hallowed ground;
I never pass in sun or rain
Now, but I meet you here again.
We cannot go from where we dwell
And leave behind no lingering trace;
Where in the past our shadow fell
A shadow of us haunts the place;
Returning now, ourselves may there
Disturb some ghost of what we were.
[Pg 70]
The stones are thrilled by many a tread
That leaves no footprint where it strays;
Shades of the living and the dead
In silence throng the noisy ways:
Here where I meet in shower or shine
Your ghost, you haply meet with mine.
The air has sounds we cannot hear,
Is dim with shapes that none can see;
Though dear the living voice, and dear
The sight of living faces be,
With kindlier yearnings yet we greet
The friends we see not when we meet.

[Pg 71]

RETURNING

Spring pipes an airy measure
That only he can play:
I caught its echo on the hill
This morning while the world was still
And the dreamy hollows began to fill
With a laughing rumour of day.
The hours of sleep are over,
The wintry night is past;
Spring pipes his joyance far and near
And hope awakes in hearts that hear,
As the bud and leaf and bloom o’ the year
Shall wake to his calling at last.
[Pg 72]
Adown through greening valleys,
Up over hill and wold—
Oh, youth and joy and love are met
In every note his lips beget!
And the world shall hear and follow him yet,
And forget it is growing old.

[Pg 73]

’TWIXT DAWN AND DAY

If you were gone, and any anodyne
Could drown in deep forgetfulness benign
All thought of all things past,
Until, at last,
I had forgotten too
Even the dearer memory of you—
In some dim hour betwixt the dawn and day,
When I awoke to feel how bleak and grey
My life without you spread,
Then from the dead
Those memories would upstart
And one—the thought of you would break my heart.
[Pg 74]
And passing thus, could lapse of day and year
Keep me still distant from you there as here?
Nay, for remembering so
Were hence to go
Back through the years a space
And where we parted make our meeting place.

[Pg 75]

UNFORGOTTEN

Last night in some dim corner of my brain,
The while I slept, there woke a thought of thee
That lit my sleep; for though no more I see
Or hear thee, and no more may share my pain
And pleasure with thee, in my heart remain
Old words of our lost friendship that to me
Are dear and sacred still, as things must be
That have been and can never be again:
Dear as the boyhood’s hopes to which we cleave
No longer—ah, no longer fancy led!
Dear as the dreams the looms of Memory weave
With many a lost and half-remembered thread;
Sacred as those last kisses that we leave
On the unknowing faces of our dead.
[Pg 76]

A LAST TRIBUTE

(W. T. A. Died 1895)

Bear him away in silence to his rest.
The world knows nothing of the fight he fought,
The patient toil to no fruition brought;
Fold the white hands upon the quiet breast,
Bear him away in silence to his rest:
Rest he at least has won.
No victor’s wreath may deck the turf above,
No crown was his for all his labour done—
Only our love.
Lavish your bays, O world, on lesser brows!
He came to your high places, staunch, elate,
Too proud of soul to stoop to any gate
[Pg 77]
That fool or knave may enter if he bows:
Lavish your bays, O world, on lesser brows
That bend to your commands!
Better, than thus to cringe and crawl above,
To fail and pass, no guerdon in his hands—
Only our love.
Greater is work than wage, and love than fame.
The world to many idols still shall turn
And worship those that take, not those that earn,
The while he sleeps and most forget his name:
Greater is work than wage, and love than fame.
So leave him—earth to earth,
The peace of heaven about him and above,
And with him ever all we have of worth—
Only our love.

[Pg 78]

YOUTH

Youth being gone, but not the dreams of youth,
Life has lost nothing of its earlier fire:
The pale star, newly risen, fades not quite
As the dusk deepens round it into night
But shines with gathering light and mounts the higher.
Age is but youth’s husk if it still enfold
Within it that glad heart of hope and truth
Whose youth, outlasting youth,
Can keep us young when years have made us old.
What though our hopes be stronger than our hands
And we have followed many a dream in vain?
[Pg 79]
Dearer is that we never gained than all
We garnered; and with Hope’s clear clarion call
Hushed on the height, our youth begins to wane
And we grow old who else had time defied,
And, growing old, endure no longer then,
But leave our lives, as men
Tired with long travel lay their loads aside.
If we had faith in death we should have faith
In life, and age could touch our hearts no more;
The sorrow-haunted world, whose restless moan
Yearns saddening up to heaven like the lone
Long surge of waters on a barren shore,
Would laugh and labour with a heart at rest
And pass unfaltering, knowing, strangely wise,
Though sweet this life that dies,
It is not all—it is not even best.

[Pg 80]

Printed by
Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
London & Edinburgh

Transcriber’s Note:

One misspelled word was corrected.