Read Ebook: Motley and other poems by De La Mare Walter

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Ebook has 53 lines and 4522 words, and 2 pages

ar eyes do dim at last, And cheeks outlive their rose. Time, heedless of the past, No loving-kindness knows; Chill unto mortal lip Still Lethe flows.

Griefs, too, but brief while stay, And sorrow, being o'er, Its salt tears shed away, Woundeth the heart no more. Stealthily lave those waters That solemn shore.

Ah, then, sweet face burn on, While yet quick memory lives! And Sorrow, ere thou art gone, Know that my heart forgives-- Ere yet, grown cold in peace, It loves not, nor grieves.

DUST TO DUST

Heavenly Archer, bend thy bow; Now the flame of life burns low, Youth is gone; I, too, would go.

Ever Fortune leads to this: Harsh or kind, at last she is Murderess of all ecstasies.

Yet the spirit, dark, alone, Bound in sense, still hearkens on For tidings of a bliss foregone.

Sleep is well for dreamless head, At no breath astonished, From the Gardens of the Dead.

THE THREE STRANGERS

Far are those tranquil hills, Dyed with fair evening's rose; On urgent, secret errand bent, A traveller goes.

Approach him strangers three, Barefooted, cowled; their eyes Scan the lone, hastening solitary With dumb surmise.

One instant in close speech With them he doth confer: God-sped, he hasteneth on, That anxious traveller...

I was that man--in a dream: And each world's night in vain I patient wait on sleep to unveil Those vivid hills again.

Would that they three could know How yet burns on in me Love--from one lost in Paradise-- For their grave courtesy.

ALEXANDER

It was the Great Alexander, Capped with a golden helm, Sate in the ages, in his floating ship, In a dead calm.

Voices of sea-maids singing Wandered across the deep: The sailors labouring on their oars Rowed, as in sleep.

All the high pomp of Asia, Charmed by that siren lay, Out of their weary and dreaming minds, Faded away.

Like a bold boy sate their Captain, His glamour withered and gone, In the souls of his brooding mariners, While the song pined on.

Time, like a falling dew, Life, like the scene of a dream, Laid between slumber and slumber, Only did seem....

O Alexander, then, In all us mortals too, Wax thou not bold--too bold On the wave dark-blue!

Come the calm, infinite night, Who then will hear Aught save the singing Of the sea-maids clear?

THE REAWAKENING

Green in light are the hills, and a calm wind flowing Filleth the void with a flood of the fragrance of Spring; Wings in this mansion of life are coming and going, Voices of unseen loveliness carol and sing.

Coloured with buds of delight the boughs are swaying, Beauty walks in the woods, and wherever she rove Flowers from wintry sleep, her enchantment obeying, Stir in the deep of her dream, reawaken to love.

Oh, now begone sullen care--this light is my seeing; I am the palace, and mine are its windows and walls; Daybreak is come, and life from the darkness of being Springs, like a child from the womb, when the lonely one calls.

THE VACANT DAY

As I did walk in meadows green I heard the summer noon resound With call of myriad things unseen That leapt and crept upon the ground.

High overhead the windless air Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry Of swallows that did everywhere Wake echo in the sky.

Beside me, too, clear waters coursed Which willow branches, lapsing low, Breaking their crystal gliding forced To sing as they did flow.

I listened; and my heart was dumb With praise no language could express; Longing in vain for him to come Who had breathed such blessedness.

On this fair world, wherein we pass So chequered and so brief a stay; And yearned in spirit to learn, alas, What kept him still away.

THE FLIGHT

How do the days press on, and lay Their fallen locks at evening down, Whileas the stars in darkness play And moonbeams weave a crown--

A crown of flower-like light in heaven, Where in the hollow arch of space Morn's mistress dreams, and the Pleiads seven Stand watch about her place.

Stand watch--O days no number keep Of hours when this dark clay is blind. When the world's clocks are dumb in sleep 'Tis then I seek my kind.

THE TWO HOUSES

In the strange city of Life Two houses I know well: One wherein Silence a garden hath, And one where Dark doth dwell.

Roof unto roof they stand, Shadowing the dizzied street, Where Vanity flaunts her gilded booths In the noontide glare and heat.

Green-graped upon their walls An ancient hoary vine Hath clustered their carven, lichenous stones With tendril serpentine.

And ever and anon, Dazed in that clamorous throng, I thirst for the soundless fount that stills Those orchards mute of song.

Knock, knock, nor knock in vain: Heart all thy secrets tell Where Silence a fast-sealed garden hath, Where Dark doth dwell.

FOR ALL THE GRIEF

For all the grief I have given with words May now a few clear flowers blow, In the dust, and the heat, and the silence of birds, Where the lonely go.

For the thing unsaid that heart asked of me Be a dark, cool water calling--calling To the footsore, benighted, solitary, When the shadows are falling.

O, be beauty for all my blindness, A moon in the air where the weary wend, And dews burdened with loving-kindness In the dark of the end.

THE SCRIBE

What lovely things Thy hand hath made: The smooth-plumed bird In its emerald shade, The seed of the grass, The speck of stone Which the wayfaring ant Stirs--and hastes on!

FARE WELL

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes, Nor the rain make lamentation When the wind sighs; How will fare the world whose wonder Was the very proof of me? Memory fades, must the remembered Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders Hand, foot, lip, to dust again, May these loved and loving faces Please other men! May the rusting harvest hedgerow Still the Traveller's Joy entwine, And as happy children gather Posies once mine.

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