Read Ebook: The Five Books of Youth by Hillyer Robert

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Ebook has 321 lines and 14409 words, and 7 pages

Beyond the garden I could see The glimmer of uncertain meadows, Framed by the open doorway, wreathing Sarabands of ghostly shadows, Slowly turning, slowly breathing, Largely and unhastily,-- But the garden held its breath.

Peace as profound as death, if death Be visited by stealthy dreams; A vagrant note from soundless themes That ring the comet-paths of space, Seemed vibrant in the windless air That trembled with its presence there. Out beyond the nameless place Where neither fields nor clouds exist, Grey from the background of the mist, I saw three vague forms drawing near. My sense recoiled acute with fear; I could not stir. As from a cage I watched that spectral dim cortege Moving inexorable and slow Against the ashen afterglow. Now caught the moon their robes in white, Now strode they sable through the night, Across the grass they came and grew Whiter, statelier, as they drew Beneath the shadow of the wall; Then one by one the three stepped through The garden door, and stood a while Beside the pool, their image spread Sombre, and menacing, and tall. Sombre as Priam's dreadful daughter, Menacing as a murderer's smile, Tall as the fingers of the dead, Stood they beside the quiet water.

The moon went out in a golden blur, And the small stars followed after her, But when the fireflies cleft the air I saw those three forms standing there, Until the night cooled, and the trees Shook in the strong hands of the breeze, And then I heard their footsteps press The muffled grass beyond the door, And so went forth for ever more, My three Fates to the wilderness.

Pomfret, 1919

I have worked too long and my hands are tired, Said the maker; From the earliest dawn unto deepest nightfall Have I laboured.

From the earliest dawn before any spirit Stirred from sleeping, When no single note from the frozen forest Wakened music,

Unto nightfall and the new moon rising When the silence From the valleys rose in a faint blue spiral, Have I laboured.

I created dawn and the new moon rising Out of silence; I have worked too long and my hands are tired, Said the maker.

I shall fold my hands; I shall rest till sunrise, Said the maker; In the shade of hills and the calm of starlight Shall I slumber.

O my night is sweet with a distant music! I shall hear The responding waves and the wind's slight murmur While I slumber.

O my night is fair with amazing colour! I shall dream Of the blue-white stars and the glimmering forest While I slumber.

O my night is rich with unfolding flowers! I shall breathe All the scattered smells of the field and garden While I slumber...

I will rise, O Night, I will make new beauty, Said the maker, I will make more songs, more stars, more flowers, Said the Lord.

Cambridge, 1920

Beside a deep and mossy well In the dark starless night I lay; And dropping water like a bell, Like a bell ringing far away, Struck liquid notes in monotone,-- An echo of a distant bell Tolling the knell of yesterday. Deep down beneath the mossy ground The liquid notes in monotone Kept dropping, dropping endlessly, And as I listened, over me Crept like a mist a filmy spell; My spirit's waving wings were bound, And dreams came that were not my own. Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard The drowsy chirp of a forest bird, And the wind came up and the grasses stirred And the curtaining woods that cluster round That resonantly-echoing well Shook all their leaves with silver sound Like voices murmuring in a shell. Was it the past that lived again In that nocturnal murmuring, Waking a hidden voice to sing Deep in my heart of other times Whose memory long entombed had lain Covered with all the dust of the years?... Falling in splashing tears The wet notes drop in liquid chimes, And the white fingers of the breeze Gather a song from the melodious trees....

There is a hand whiter than pearl That plucks a lute's monotonous strings; O starlight phantom of a girl What lyric soul around thee sings, And what divine companionship Taught that entwining music to thy fingers, And that unearthly music to thy lips? She pauses, and the echo lingers Hovering like wings upon the air. I see more clearly now, her hair Ripples like a black water-fall About the pallor of her face. She sits beside a mossy well Amid some dim marmoreal place, Some fragrant Moorish hall Set all about with arabesques of stone And intricate mosaics of gem and shell. She sings again, she plays a monotone, Perpetual rhythm like a far-off bell, And someone dances, in a dancing river The white ecstatic limbs flutter and quiver Against the shadow. In the odorous flowers That grow about the well, still forms are lying, A group of statues, an eternal throng, Watching the dance and listening to the song; So shall they lie, innumerable hours, Silent and motionless for ever. The wind comes up, the flowers shiver, The dancer vanishes, the songs are dying; Night sickens into day. The wind comes up and blows the dust away....

Between two clouds a sullen flame Expands, and lo, the crescent moon Rides like a warrior through the sky. Thus long ago the warning came When midnight towns lay all in swoon, That the great gods were coming nigh To crush the rebellious earth. Now beneath the crescent moon No spirits stir, no wind makes mirth, Only a rhythmic monotone Of waters dropping in a well....

But who is this so broken with distress That steals like mist into my loneliness? Why art thou weeping there, disconsolate child? Thy tears fall like the waters of a well, And drip in silver notes upon the sands. What is thy sorrow? Ah, what man can tell The shapeless fancies that unwelcome dwell Within thy brain, the spectres, dark and wild That haunt the spirit of a child? Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands, The bloody ruin of decaying realms That a war overwhelms And buries deep in the dust of history? He raises his wet eyes and looks at me, His boyish face full of a yearning, An ancient pain, As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again, And answers, "In myself, thy thoughts returning To other times shall slumber in the past, And be a child again, and die at last In the protecting arms of our great Mother Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother. Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief, Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears, Thy sorrow rich with the repining years, My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief." Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf? "I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself." Then falls a darkness on that starless shore. Afar I hear the closing of a door....

I see on a sharp hill above the Styx, The bruised Christ upon his crucifix, And racked in anguish on his either side Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified. Their heavy blood falls in a monotone Like deep well-water dropping on a stone. None moves, none breaks the silence; on those roods Eternal suffering triumphant broods. Prometheus from his cliff of wild unrest Mocks them and draws the vulture to his breast. Each year upon a darker Calvary Are hung the pallid victims of the tree, And none will watch with them, for none can see As I once saw, unending agony, Save where Prometheus from his dizzy place Regards those sufferers with scornful face, And his loud laughter rings through empty Space....

I can see nothing now, and only hear Through the thick atmosphere A deep perpetual well, that sad and slow, Intones the knell of ages long ago, And ages that no man can tell or know, Whose shadows roll before them on the sky, Black with forebodings of futurity.

Sweet sounds through midnight, liquid interlude, Voice of the lonely souls that yearn and brood, Voice of the unseen Life, the unsubdued, What wonder that He draweth nigh to taste Of your cool waters. Hail thou nameless One, Fair stranger from a realm beyond the Sun, Knowing that thou art God I do not fear,-- Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream. "The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry. Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide. Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside Into the frozen ocean of the Vast, Nor see thy world absorbed at last Into a nothingness, an airless void, Nor see the thoughts that Man has glorified Swept from the world, and with the world destroyed. This have I seen a thousand times repeated, Unhappy as I am, unhappy God! As many times as thou hast greeted The rising sun against the broad And tranquil clouds, so many times have I Greeted the dawn of a new Universe, And seen the molten stars rehearse The lives and passions of the stars gone by. When worlds are growing old, and there draw nigh The shadows that shall cover them for ever, Then to the well that feeds the sacred river I come, and as the liquid music drips Far in the ground, I plunge my lips Deep in forgetfulness, and wash away All the stains of the old griefs and joys, That with His lips as smiling as a boy's, God may rejoice in His created day." He stoops and drinks; a moment the cool bell Pauses its ringing in the well: A mist flies up against the dawn; the young winds weep; Is it too late? I too would drink, drink deep, But weariness is on me and I sleep.

Cambridge, 1915

Dawn has come. Faint hazes quiver with the faltering light; Some airy skein draws in the shadows from The broken forest where the war has passed, The Forest Terrible, the grey despair, The forest broken in the withering blight Of the lean years,--the blight, the years, have passed, Leaving a solitary watcher there, Silence at last.

She watches by the dead, Her deep white shadow overspreads their faces. Here in the outland places, She watches by the dead.

How many dawns have driven her afar With the loosed thunder of tempestuous wrong! Today she will remain.

Silence familiar to the morning star, Standing, her finger to her lips, Hushing the battle-cry, the victor's song, Standing inviolate above the slain.

The fugitive sunlight slips Over the fragment of a cloud, And the sky opens wide, Behold the dawn!

Where is the nightmare now? the angry-browed? The lowering imminence--the bloody eyed? Fled, as the threat of midnight, fled away, Gone, after four dark timeless ages, gone. Hail the day!

Silence, robed in the morning's golden fleece, Folding the world's torn wings to stillness, giving Peace to the dead, and to the living, Peace.

Tours, 1918

Men lied to them and so they went to die. Some fell, unknowing that they were deceived, And some escaped, and bitterly bereaved, Beheld the truth they loved shrink to a lie. And those there were that never had believed, But from afar had read the gathering sky, And darkly wrapt in that dread prophecy, Died trusting that their truth might be retrieved.

It matters not. For life deals thus with Man; To die alone deceived or with the mass, Or disillusioned to complete his span. Thermopylae or Golgotha, all one, The young dead legions in the narrow pass; The stark black cross against the setting sun.

Pomfret, 1919

BOOK II DAYS AND SEASONS

Winds blowing over the white-capped bay, Winds wet with the eager breath of spray, Warm and sweet from the oceans we have dreamed of; From gardens of Cathay.

The empty factory windows, row on row, Warm sullenly beneath the afterglow, Burn topaz out of dust and dim the flare Of the street-lamps below.

In the smoky park the dingy plane-trees stir, Green branches in the twilight fade and blur; A lonely girl walks slowly through the square And the wind speaks to her.

Speaks of the sunset scattered on the sea, And the spring blowing northward radiantly; Flaming in lightning from cyclonic dark, Dreams of delights to be.

Tomorrow there will be orchards filled with fruit, And song of meadow lark and song of flute; Far from the city there are lover's fields, Lips eloquent and mute.

Warm are the winds out of the ebbing day, Blowing the ships and the spring into the bay, I smell the cherry blossoms falling gaily In gardens of Cathay.

Paris, 1919

Like children on a sunny shore The rhododendrons thrive Which never any spring before Have been so much alive.

Each metal bough benignly lit With yellow candle flames; The tree is holy, hallow it With sacramental names.

Paris, 1919

Against my wall the summer weaves Profundities of dusky leaves, And many-petaled stars full-blown In constellated whiteness sown; I contemplate with lazy eyes My small estate in Paradise, And very comforting to me Is this familiarity.

Paris, 1919

Into the trembling air, Calm on the sunset mist, Sweetness of gardens where The yellow slave boy kissed The Sultan's daughter....

Shadow of tumbled hair Shadow of hanging vine Fountains of gold that twine In singing water.

A secret I have heard From the scarlet beak of the bird That sings at the close of day, Fills me with cold unrest Under the open doors of the fiery west.

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