The Song of the Sword, and Other Verses

Andante con mote

Forth from the dust and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, The wrangle and jangle of unrests, Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and win-- As from swart August to the green lap of May-- To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn Forward and up, in wider and wider way Shall float the sands and brim the shores On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars And spins into the outlook of the Sun (The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge) With light, with living light, from marge to marge, Until the course He set and staked be run.

Through street and square, through square and street, Each with his home-grown quality of dark And violated silence, loud and fleet, Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O hark, Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain Ring back a rough refrain Upon the marked and cheerful tramp Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, And O the languid midsummer wafts adust, The tired midsummer blooms! O the mysterious distances, the glooms Romantic, the august And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees Tunis to a tryst of vague and strange And monstrous Majesties, Let loose from some dim underworld to range These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hour Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep: But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat--how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance-- Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! And lo! a little wind and shy, The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), A sense of space and water, and thereby A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky. And look, O look! a tangle of silver gleams And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, His dreams of a dead past that cannot die!

What miracle is happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire On the formal little church is not yet green Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys--look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And those are barges that were goblin floats, Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! And in the piles the water frolics clear, The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, And we--we can behold that could but hear The ancient River singing as he goes New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take His hobnailed way to work! Let us too pass: Through these long blindfold rows Of casements staring blind to right and left, Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece Of life in death's own likeness--Life bereft Of living looks as by the Great Release (Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows), Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows.

Reach upon reach of burial--so they feel, These colonies of dreams! And as we steal Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze That frolics at our heel, Greeting the town with news of the summer seas, We might--thus awed, thus lonely that we are-- Be wandering some depopulated star, Some world of memories and unbroken graves, So broods the abounding Silence near and far: Till even your footfall craves Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.

Scherzando

Down through the ancient Strand The Spirit of October, mild and boon And sauntering, takes his way This golden end of afternoon, As though the corn stood yellow in all the land And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.

Lo! the round sun, half down the western slope-- Seen as along an unglazed telescope-- Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day: Gifting the long, lean, lanky street And its abounding confluences of being With aspects generous and bland: Making a thousand harnesses to shine As with new ore from some enchanted mine, And every horse's coat so full of sheen He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean, And never a hansom but is worth the feeing; And every jeweller within the pale Offers a real Arabian Night for sale; And even the roar Of the strong streams of toil that pause and pour Eastward and westward sounds suffused-- Seems as it were bemused And blurred, and like the speech Of lazy seas upon a lotus-eating beach-- With this enchanted lustrousness, This mellow magic, that (as a man's caress Brings back to some faded face beloved before A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech) Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more; Till the sedate and mannered elegance Of Clement's is all tinctured with romance; The while the fanciful, formal, finicking charm Of Bride's, that madrigal in stone, Glows flushed and warm And beauteous with a beauty not its own; And the high majesty of Paul's Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls-- Calls to his millions to behold and see How goodly this his London Town can be!

For earth and sky and air Are golden everywhere, And golden with a gold so suave and fine The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square (The fountains volleying golden glaze) Gleams like an angel-market. High aloft Over his couchant Lions in a haze Shimmering and bland and soft, A dust of chrysoprase, Our Sailor takes the golden gaze Of the saluting sun, and flames superb As once he flamed it on his ocean round. The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, Turned very nearly bright, Takes on a certain dismal grace, And shows not all a scandal to the ground. The very blind man pottering on the kerb, Among the posies and the ostrich feathers And the rude voices touched with all the weathers Of all the varying year, Shares in the universal alms of light. The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires-- 'Tis El Dorado--El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear! Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, The day not dies but seems Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed Upon a past of golden song and story And memories of gold and golden dreams.