Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems Read online

  Let bygones be bygones:

  Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:

  I'd rather answer 'No' to fifty Johns

  Than answer 'Yes' to you.

  Let's mar our pleasant days no more,

  Song-birds of passage, days of youth:

  Catch at today, forget the days before:

  I'll wink at your untruth.

  Let us strike hands as hearty friends;

  No more, no less; and friendship's good:

  Only don't keep in view ulterior ends,

  And points not understood

  In open treaty. Rise above

  Quibbles and shuffling off and on:

  Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,—

  No, thank you, John.

  MAY

  I CANNOT tell you how it was;

  But this I know: it came to pass

  Upon a bright and breezy day

  When May was young; ah, pleasant May!

  As yet the poppies were not born

  Between the blades of tender corn;

  The last eggs had not hatched as yet,

  Nor any bird forgone its mate.

  I cannot tell you what it was;

  But this I know: it did but pass.

  It passed away with sunny May,

  With all sweet things it passed away,

  And left me old, and cold, and grey.

  A PAUSE OF THOUGHT

  I LOOKED for that which is not, nor can be,

  And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth:

  But years must pass before a hope of youth

  Is resigned utterly.

  I watched and waited with a steadfast will:

  And though the object seemed to flee away

  That I so longed for, ever day by day

  I watched and waited still.

  Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;

  My expectation wearies and shall cease;

  I will resign it now and be at peace:

  Yet never gave it o'er.

  Sometimes I said: It is an empty name

  I long for; to a name why should I give

  The peace of all the days I have to live?—

  Yet gave it all the same.

  Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit

  For healthy joy and salutary pain:

  Thou knowest the chase useless, and again

  Turnest to follow it.

  TWILIGHT CALM

  OH, pleasant eventide!

  Clouds on the western side

  Grow grey and greyer hiding the warm sun:

  The bees and birds, their happy labours done,

  Seek their close nests and bide.

  Screened in the leafy wood

  The stock-doves sit and brood:

  The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough

  But lazily; pauses; and settles now

  Where once he stored his food.

  One by one the flowers close,

  Lily and dewy rose

  Shutting their tender petals from the moon:

  The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon

  Are still the noisy crows.

  The dormouse squats and eats

  Choice little dainty bits

  Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime;

  Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time

  And listens where he sits.

  From far the lowings come

  Of cattle driven home:

  From farther still the wind brings fitfully

  The vast continual murmur of the sea,

  Now loud, now almost dumb.

  The gnats whirl in the air,

  The evening gnats; and there

  The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail

  For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail

  Comes forth, clammy and bare.

  Hark! that's the nightingale,

  Telling the selfsame tale

  Her song told when this ancient earth was young:

  So echoes answered when her song was sung

  In the first wooded vale.

  We call it love and pain

  The passion of her strain;

  And yet we little understand or know:

  Why should it not be rather joy that so

  Throbs in each throbbing vein?

  In separate herds the deer

  Lie; here the bucks, and here

  The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn:

  Through all the hours of night until the dawn

  They sleep, forgetting fear.

  The hare sleeps where it lies,

  With wary half-closed eyes;

  The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck:

  Only the fox is out, some heedless duck

  Or chicken to surprise.

  Remote, each single star

  Comes out, till there they are

  All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp!

  While close at hand the glow-worm lights her lamp

  Or twinkles from afar.

  But evening now is done

  As much as if the sun

  Day-giving had arisen in the East:

  For night has come; and the great calm has ceased,

  The quiet sands have run.

  WIFE TO HUSBAND

  PARDON the faults in me,

  For the love of years ago:

  Good-bye.

  I must drift across the sea,

  I must sink into the snow,

  I must die.

  You can bask in this sun,

  You can drink wine, and eat:

  Good-bye.

  I must gird myself and run,

  Though with unready feet:

  I must die.

  Blank sea to sail upon,

  Cold bed to sleep in:

  Good-bye.

  While you clasp, I must be gone

  For all your weeping:

  I must die.

  A kiss for one friend,

  And a word for two,—

  Good-bye:—

  A lock that you must send,

  A kindness you must do:

  I must die.

  Not a word for you,

  Not a lock or kiss,

  Good-bye.

  We, one, must part in two;

  Verily death is this:

  I must die.

  THREE SEASONS

  'A CUP for hope!' she said,

  In springtime ere the bloom was old:

  The crimson wine was poor and cold

  By her mouth's richer red.

  'A cup for love!' how low,

  How soft the words; and all the while

  Her blush was rippling with a smile

  Like summer after snow.

  'A cup for memory!'

  Cold cup that one must drain alone:

  While autumn winds are up and moan

  Across the barren sea.

  Hope, memory, love:

  Hope for fair morn, and love for day,

  And memory for the evening grey

  And solitary dove.

  MIRAGE

  THE hope I dreamed of was a dream,

  Was but a dream; and now I wake

  Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,

  For a dream's sake.

  I hang my harp upon a tree,

  A weeping willow in a lake;

  I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt

  For a dream's sake.

  Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;

  My silent heart, lie still and break:

  Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed

  For a dream's sake.

  SHUT OUT

  THE door was shut. I looked between

  Its iron bars; and saw it lie,

  My garden, mine, beneath the sky,

  Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

  From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,

  From flower to flower the moths and bees;

/>   With all its nests and stately trees

  It had been mine, and it was lost.

  A shadowless spirit kept the gate,

  Blank and unchanging like the grave.

  I peering through said: 'Let me have

  Some buds to cheer my outcast state.'

  He answered not. 'Or give me, then,

  But one small twig from shrub or tree;

  And bid my home remember me

  Until I come to it again.'

  The spirit was silent; but he took

  Mortar and stone to build a wall;

  He left no loophole great or small

  Through which my straining eyes might look:

  So now I sit here quite alone

  Blinded with tears; nor grieve for that,

  For nought is left worth looking at

  Since my delightful land is gone.

  A violet bed is budding near,

  Wherein a lark has made her nest:

  And good they are, but not the best;

  And dear they are, but not so dear.

  SOUND SLEEP

  SOME are laughing, some are weeping;

  She is sleeping, only sleeping.

  Round her rest wild flowers are creeping;

  There the wind is heaping, heaping

  Sweetest sweets of Summer's keeping.

  By the corn-fields ripe for reaping.

  There are lilies, and there blushes

  The deep rose, and there the thrushes

  Sing till latest sunlight flushes

  In the west; a fresh wind brushes

  Through the leaves while evening hushes.

  There by day the lark is singing

  And the grass and weeds are springing;

  There by night the bat is winging;

  There forever winds are bringing

  Far-off chimes of church-bells ringing.

  Night and morning, noon and even,

  Their sound fills her dreams with Heaven:

  The long strife at length is striven:

  Till her grave-bands shall be riven

  Such is the good portion given

  To her soul at rest and shriven.

  SONG

  SHE sat and sang alway

  By the green margin of a stream,

  Watching the fishes leap and play

  Beneath the glad sunbeam.

  I sat and wept alway

  Beneath the moon's most shadowy beam,

  Watching the blossoms of the May

  Weep leaves into the stream.

  I wept for memory;

  She sang for hope that is so fair:

  My tears were swallowed by the sea;

  Her songs died on the air.

  SONG

  WHEN I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me;

  Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Nor shady cypress tree:

  Be the green grass above me

  With showers and dewdrops wet;

  And if thou wilt, remember,

  And if thou wilt, forget.

  I shall not see the shadows,

  I shall not feel the rain;

  I shall not hear the nightingale

  Sing on, as if in pain:

  And dreaming through the twilight

  That doth not rise nor set,

  Haply I may remember,

  And haply may forget.

  DEAD BEFORE DEATH

  SONNET

  AH! changed and cold, how changed and very cold,

  With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes:

  Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise;

  This was the promise of the days of old!

  Grown hard and stubborn in the ancient mould,

  Grown rigid in the sham of lifelong lies:

  We hoped for better things as years would rise,

  But it is over as a tale once told.

  All fallen the blossom that no fruitage bore,

  All lost the present and the future time,

  All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before:

  So lost till death shut-to the opened door,

  So lost from chime to everlasting chime,

  So cold and lost forever evermore.

  BITTER FOR SWEET

  SUMMER is gone with all its roses,

  Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,

  Its warm air and refreshing showers:

  And even Autumn closes.

  Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,

  And winter comes which is yet colder;

  Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder

  And the last buds cease blowing.

  SISTER MAUDE

  WHO told my mother of my shame,

  Who told my father of my dear?

  Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,

  Who lurked to spy and peer.

  Cold he lies, as cold as stone,

  With his clotted curls about his face:

  The comeliest corpse in all the world

  And worthy of a queen's embrace.

  You might have spared his soul, sister,

  Have spared my soul, your own soul too:

  Though I had not been born at all,

  He'd never have looked at you.

  My father may sleep in Paradise,

  My mother at Heaven-gate:

  But sister Maude shall get no sleep

  Either early or late.

  My father may wear a golden gown,

  My mother a crown may win;

  If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate

  Perhaps they'd let us in:

  But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,

  Bide you with death and sin.

  REST

  SONNET

  O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;

  Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;

  Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth

  With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.

  She hath no questions, she hath no replies,

  Hushed in and curtained with a blessèd dearth

  Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;

  With stillness that is almost Paradise.

  Darkness more clear than noon-day holdeth her,

  Silence more musical than any song;

  Even her very heart has ceased to stir:

  Until the morning of Eternity

  Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;

  And when she wakes she will not think it long.

  THE FIRST SPRING DAY

  I WONDER if the sap is stirring yet,

  If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,

  If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun

  And crocus fires are kindling one by one:

  Sing, robin, sing;

  I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

  I wonder if the springtide of this year

  Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;

  If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,

  Or if the world alone will bud and sing:

  Sing, hope, to me;

  Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

  The sap will surely quicken soon or late,

  The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;

  So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,