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Title: Escape and fantasy

Poems

Author: G. Rostrevor Hamilton

Release date: January 30, 2026 [eBook #77817]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77817

Credits: Tim Miller, chenzw, 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 ESCAPE AND FANTASY ***

ESCAPE

AND FANTASY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS

ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

ESCAPE

AND FANTASY

Poems

BY

GEORGE ROSTREVOR

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1919

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed from type.  Published February, 1919.

Norwood Press

J.S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO

MARION

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE CHANGE

9

ORPHEUS

11

THE RIVER

16

MOMENTS

17

THOUGHTS

19

TIDAL, KING OF NATIONS

20

THE VOICE (AN ECSTASY)

23

SPRING RAIN IN LONDON

35

LOTUS EATERS

36

THE GREY BIRD

37

ELYSIUM

40

ETERNITY

41

THE SEA-MAID

43

THE CELL

47

THE ASCETICS

48

CONSPIRACIES

50

A RHYME OF FAITH

52

THE SHINING POND

53

THE HAUNTED STREET

56

THE CHANGE

ALL the daytime I belong

To the solemn-coated throng

Who with grave, stupendous looks

Study cash and ledger books,

Or who go,

Staid and slow,

On sad business to and fro.

But when twilight comes, I range

Over topics new and strange,

Wasting all my leisure hours

On fay birds and phantom flowers,

Or I sing

Some mad fling

Through the impish evening.

Yes, and when the moon goes by

Rocking in a foamy sky,

Then I swear I’m more akin

To the laughing Cherubin

Than to those grave men who go,

To and fro, to and fro,

On sad business to and fro.

ORPHEUS

HUSH, thou noisy nightingale,

Let thy sorrowful song be mute.

Orpheus, with his lute,

Sings to the vale.

Weather-smitten, travel-worn,

Fever-eyed and frail is he,

Orpheus, Orpheus, the forlorn

Of Eurydice.

Trembling like a crazy shadow

When a gust is in the trees,

Phantom-like he flees

Over mere and meadow.

Twinkle on the lute his fingers.

Hark! a ghostly music swings,

Echoes, falls, echoes, lingers,

Orpheus sings:—

To-day, to-morrow,

There is sorrow,

But when Night,

Holy Night,

Putteth on

Her sober gown,

Then is there delight.

Take thy fill

Of rest, rest,

O separate will,—

Wayward, wayward, wayward will

Of each wild creature, take thy rest

Lulled on the breast

Of the cool dark hill.

Very deep,

O baffled will,

Be thy sleep

On the sombre hill.

But heart of the world, awake, awake,

For Orpheus’ sake!

Hungry lion, do not howl!

Supple tiger tawny-barred,

Chattering monkey, chequered snake,

Privy wolf and spotted pard,

Creatures that do use to prowl

Through the forest, let you lie,—

Not a sound, not a cry,—

Soothèd by my lullaby.

Cease, unquiet owl, to moan,

Folded keep thy stealthy wings;

Nightjar, stay thy monotone,

Listen, listen, Orpheus sings.

Shut you every wakeful eye

Soothèd by my lullaby.

Very deep

Be thy sleep,

Cruel, cruel, cruel will,

Very deep

Be thy sleep

On the sombre hill.

But, O heart, awake, awake,

Wake and leap for Orpheus’ sake!

Heart of all the world, awake

For Orpheus’ sake!

Cloudy waters of the sky

Flow no longer; listening stars

Stop their silver-wheelèd cars,

Conquered by my lullaby.

Each one, smitten by my spell,

Holds him like a sentinel.

Beauty on the brow of Night

So complete is that despair,

Gazing like a statue there,

Changes to a grave delight.

Never hath the swart Night been

So unparalleled a queen.

Very deep

Is thy sleep,

Wayward, wayward, wayward will,

Very deep

Is thy sleep

On the sombre hill.

But the heart, the heart is awake,

Beating high for Orpheus’ sake,

Everywhere awake, awake,

For Orpheus’ sake.

THE RIVER

WHY, O River, on thy breast,

Why do the trees so sweetly rest?

Why so royal does the black barge sail

On thy water smooth and pale?

Why does the rough-tongued river-man sing

Like a minstrel to a king?

Why, O quiet River, do I

See in thee so clear a sky?

MOMENTS

I’VE seen the rich dark earth fling up

Cuckoo-flower and buttercup,

I’ve heard the meadows burst with song

Of thrush and blackbird all day long,

I’ve seen the burning sun go by

With a pomp of cloud in the roofless sky,

I’ve heard the wind whistle and shout

And toss the tallest oaks about,

I’ve seen, I’ve heard the flash and the call

Of the distant thundering waterfall ...

My soul turns back to me again

At twilight. All the day like rain

It has scattered itself in drops and flashes

And moments of colour, and sudden splashes,

Has flown and mixed with the single notes

Quick-pouring from the song-birds’ throats,

Losing itself and multiplying,

Living a thousand lives and dying.

My busy eyes at the fall of day

I close: I shut the world away.

Now no star may pierce the gloom

Of my fragile-curtained room,

But flowers more wonderful and trees more tall

Bloom in the dark there; sweet dews fall;

Silence cries with the ghost of sound;

Flashes of colour and tune are found

Linked in one. I hear, I hear

The voice of Spring cry out to me there,

And the voice of Spring is the voice of Love

Crying below, around, above,

While—in the dark of my body—his eyes

Burn more deep than star-flushed skies.

THOUGHTS

IF in a giant brain

The thoughts of the world could lie,

How darkly would each cell be lit,

What phantoms pale would people it,

Flocking, flocking by:

Thoughts of things that jerk or leap,

Things that flit in the sky or creep

In the atomy dust, or swarm in the deep,

Leviathan or fly!

Fugitive, feeble, vain—

The giant would fall asleep,

And they in millions would be gone

For ever to oblivion,

Far down deep:

Thought of toad and thought of lark,

Crab and crocodile and shark,

Armadillo, aard-vark,

Terrapin and sheep.

TIDAL, KING OF NATIONS

... and Tidal, king of nations—

GENESIS xiv

TIDAL, King of Nations,

Sent a proclamation forth

To the tribes of the South

And the clans of the North;

His word flew and travelled

Quick as a gathering flame,

The far-off people shook

At the rumour of his name.

Tidal, King of Nations,

Thy name is for thee,

Shadowy and vast,

An immortality.

Tidal, King of Nations—

Lo, at the sound

Terrible armies leap

Crying from the ground.

High in the midst, on

A white throne is He,

Set as a firm rock

In the surge of the sea.

Clear as the moon his brow is,

But in his secret eyes

Shadow within shadow dark

The future lies.

In his hand glitters

The phantom of a sword;

The warring peoples cry

And hail him for lord:

But within his dark eyes

Where future time grows

Are gentleness, mercy,

Peace and repose.

The nations bow and tremble,

They do not understand,

They only see the gleam

Of the wrath in his hand.

Tidal, King of Nations,

Thy name is for thee,—

Oh, far-off brotherhood!—

An immortality.

THE VOICE

(AN ECSTASY)

I

The Prelude

I SAW the regal sun look down

And crown the earth with a golden crown:

I saw his bright embraces fill

The valley and assail the hill;

I saw him kiss the hill I knew

Where matted gorse and heather grew.

I heard a child go whistling by

To school—I heard the ploughmen cry

To their horses—in the yard

A bantam-cock was crowing hard—

A pensive and complacent hen

Began to drawl .. drawl ... drawl .... and then

A puppy yapping with delight

Chased and hustled her in flight.

I took me to a tangled lane

Hoping for quietness—in vain;

I only in the world was mute.

The blackbird laughed upon his flute,

And starlings talked in wayward wise

On creaking boughs, and up the skies

The trembling, quick, delirious lark

Sang until my soul was dark.

So morning, noon and all day long

The world was multiplied with song

And I, distracted, could not sing;

At length, toward the evening,

I climbed the little hill I knew

Where matted gorse and heather grew.

Slowly,

Slowly,

Slowly at last the evening fell;

Slowly beneath her drowsy spell

The teeming brain of the world was quieted:

The noise of day was dead.

Now might a single human thought

Flying out, keen-wrought,

Usurp dominion of the sky, and fill

The void of the world with a chant of love, and move it to one will.

So from my ingathered soul

Softly sang I to my Love—

Softly, yet I heard the whole

Shining world, beneath, above,

Echo me and ring and ring

Through the quiet evening.

First I sang how she doth dwell

Carven so within my mind

That her tokens I do spell

And her vital beauty find

Paining me, oh everywhere

Phantom-bright upon the air.

Morning winds with liquid tune

Her abounding joy express;

Azure-folded deeps of June

Tell me of her tenderness;

Laughingly the waterbrooks

Mirror her untainted looks.

Trembling shadows wake in me

Sense of the outflowing tide

Of her hidden rarity,

Till I dream her at my side,—

And her prayed-for kisses rain

Through and through me, sharp with pain.

Hushed the melody I sang,

Earth around me rang and rang.

II

The Ecstasy

Quick a current of delight

Through my body laughed and leapt,

Took the dazzle from my sight,

From the earth my senses swept;

Through the ringing air I sped,

Loosened as from bars of lead.

And my singing soul became

Infinite; the sea, the sky,

Were my flesh, the mighty frame

Of the Universe was I;

Mystic voices in me stirred,

And I cried, and I heard.

Crying how my Lady shone

Fairer than the dawn upon

Snowy-crested Himalay;

How she fed with golden fire

Red lamps of the Earth’s desire,

White lamps of the Milky Way.

Crying how, if she must die,

Sudden from the naked sky

Star and sun must fade and fall,

And from every naked tree

Foliage drop, and her death be

Earth’s and Heaven’s funeral.

So did I her glory sing

Through the quiet evening.

Every note and echo fell

Crystal as a chiming bell,

Strong and singular of beat,

Gay and simple, clear and sweet,

Gentle, yet with even sound

Calling to the southern bound

Of the world, and crying forth

Undiminished to the north.

And in those harmonious skies

All tempestuous energies

To such equipoise were wrought

Never a jarring atom fought.

There was neither jolt nor strain,

Shock, nor weight, nor clash, nor pain,

But I saw great Saturn float

Buoyant as a wandering mote

On a sunbeam, or like down

Of thistle indolently blown.

And I felt the deepening night

Saturated so with light

That the very darkness seemed

Light that more intensely dreamed;

And the light was filled with sense

Of Being and Omnipotence,—

Gathered now at instant will

To a single point, until

I was conscious of each bird,

Beast or creeping thing that stirred

In a lane or covert. Then

Consciousness would flow again

Evenly, and life would be

From all separation free:

Only my Belovèd shone,—

She and I, complete, alone.

And looking down with happy eyes

From my kingdom of the skies,

I saw my lady stoop and give

Glorious life for the world to live.

I saw how from the lullèd earth

Meeting her gaze the darkness fell

And light celestial sprang to birth,

And flowers changed the path of hell;

And to her lips she lifted up

Th’ essential world, created new,

And drank and drained the sacred cup

As sunfire drinks the morning dew.

From meadows of the noble dead,

From fields where baffled and forlorn

The conqueror lays his uncrowned head,

The very life of peace was born:

And in my lady’s heart of love

So soft, so dim that peace was felt

As when dusk enters a deep grove

Where, all day long, shadows have dwelt.

From lives of sick men, clean with pain,

She drew a virtue like the rare

Odour of windflowers washed with rain

Afloat upon the sensitive air;

And sick men felt in their hot room

The cooling garden-breezes blow,

And heaven pierce the fading gloom

With javelins of silver snow.

I saw the sere ungarnished tree

A treasury of green unlock,

And pastures crown the foaming sea,

And flame enliven the dull rock;

And frozen rivers were unsealed,

And waters through the desert ran,

And like a meteor shone revealed

The mystic in the common man;

Whose soul enchanted, winged with dream

And eyed with splendour, thrust her course

Rapid upon the darkling stream,

Sped by her own unconscious force,—

Content at last, content to ride

Free from the well-loved daily bond

Of time and place, on the full tide

Of Oceans unexplored beyond.

And there was song from every land,

In every tongue, in every key,

And every tiny lyric spanned

The chasms of infinity:

Yet I the Lover sang alone

To my Belovèd: all the throng

Of praising voices made but one

Hushed undercurrent of my song:

“O thou Belovèd of the Lover, thou,

Health-giver, Purifier, Strengthener,

Fountain, and spring, and river of the Sun.

O thou Belovèd of the Lover, strong

As morning or the full inflowing tide,

Calm as the evening sky above a lake.

Thou who art one and changeless, O Belovèd,

O thou Belovèd who art calm and strong.

O calm Belovèd, where all passion lies

Too deep to stir, and strong, O thou Belovèd

In frailty that shatters force. O Love!

Belovèd of the Lover, everlasting,

Beyond all Death, all Change, O Love Belovèd,

Be with the Lover always, calm and strong.”

III

The Return

So did I in Heaven sing,

And the lilac evening

Deeper, deeper, deeper shone.

Fairer yet and yet more fair

Burned my kingdom of the air.

So I sang—or did I sing?

I, who still was listening.

So I sang—yet was it mine,

The Song, the Singing Voice divine?

Sudden, in a fit of mirth,

I that was so mighty grown

Bent me low to see the Earth

And the little hill I knew

Where the gorse and heather grew.

Then I cried and Heaven cried

Loud with laughter, for I spied

How my puny body lay

In a coat of sombre grey

Six foot long amid the heather

With its two arms locked together,

With its pinpoint eyes that burned

Motionless and solemn turned

In a brave unconscious stare

On the diamonded air.

Still I looked, and in a while

Saw the growing of a smile

On the lips and then a yawn,

Then a difficult breath long-drawn—

One deep breath, and then an arm

Stretched out, and, as if alarm

Seized it, the whole body shook.

Then could I no longer look,

For I felt my limbs and knew

I was narrowed down again

To my body, and I grew

Quiet, fearing the disdain

Of the stars who looked on me

Fallen from their company.

But I heard no sound of scorn,

Only a far echo borne

Of the Voice whose singing moves

And quickens every thing that loves.

SPRING RAIN IN LONDON

HARDLY awake, I saw in the street

The shining raindrops pelt;

And lulled by their quick monotonous beat

I let my languid eyes half close. I felt

The tinkle of a rivulet

Bubbling lazily down a hill,

Where the turf was a couch for dark violet

And flame-eyed tormentil.

I saw the sun leaping through a cloud—

Apollo shooting at the bladed corn—

And the lark, a dizzy fanatic, hailing loud

The golden god reborn.

LOTUS EATERS

I GREW so quiet as I walked along,

My mind so much a mirror to the wood,

So passively open to the colour and song

And the whole company of solitude

That past time fell from me, and time to come

No longer drew me with its magnet power:

My whole self lazily to a bee’s low hum

Listened, and watched him fumble at a flower.

The present held me. I was just aware

Of the ripple and stir of muscles where my hand

Lay slack against my side. I sucked live air,

And drew sweet moisture from the clayey sand.

Now do I know how horses live, and cows,

Minute to minute of the shining day,

Solemn with gaze contented as they browse

Finding their lotus in the fields of May.

THE GREY BIRD

THE wind blows

Heavy with spice.

Among macaws and birds of paradise

With plumage grey he goes.

Silence hangs like a cloud;

Yet lives innumerable teem.

The wild eyes of the crowd

Of watching creatures with a sullen gleam

The forest haunt.

The birds flaunt

Their vivid hues, and scream,

Yet leave the smothering silence still supreme.

And the bird with the grey wing

Unnoticed flies. No finery or glow

Has he to show,

Nor in this land unhallowed will he sing.

But in the tropic heat,

When March is ablaze,

Strange instincts beat

In his breast.

He is full of amaze,

He suffers a sweet unrest,

And though

Unheeded still he flutter to and fro,

Yet in foreknowledge of a gentle Spring

He turns and fondles oft in his warm throat

The pure, the lovely note

He soon shall sing—

When, in a land of the West,

In England, over the foam,

After long voyage his tired wings come to rest

And his glad heart finds home.

Then hark how he shall spill

His liquid miracle,

Hark to the thrill

Of the secret song,

The gay tune hid so long!

See on a twig scarce bent,

Mid leafage cool

Of oak or birch

Or willow-fringe about a reedy pool,

How he shall choose his perch

And make wild music out of souls content.

How he shall love!

How he shall sing!

How he shall rove

With a careless wing!

How in this Isle

Of Splendid Voice,

Home from exile

He shall rejoice!

How his golden song shall be spent

Forgetting the foul, fierce continent!

ELYSIUM

HUSHED their feet fall

On the dewy grass:

In robe rhythmical

Shining they pass:

Lovers who for bliss

Grave and rare and deep

Need no clasp, or kiss,

Or lovers’ sleep.

ETERNITY

MEN who are wise in secret lore

Well argue and avow

That fugitive Time shall be no more—

No change, no after, no before,

But one eternal Now.

Yet I will dream Eternity

Only a nobler Time,

Where all the past shall gathered be

And hours all of memory

In each new hour chime:

Triumphing easily over Death;

Showing the sign of power

Of one who goes with even breath,

Who hurrieth not nor lingereth,

Harmonious with his hour:

A march, full-speed, from thought to thought,

A music more sublime

Than holy poet ever caught

From magic choirs, and tuned and wrought

In miracle of rhyme.

THE SEA-MAID

I HEARD an immortal, under the sea,

Singing the beauty of change and death.

Oh lovelier than light was she,

And Araby was in her breath.

She lay in a hollow of stainless air

Roofed and walled with a crystal gleam;

No light wind stirred to quiver her hair

Or loose from her eyes the banded dream.

Her voice was the piping voice of a child,

Shrill, pathetic. I do not know

Whether I wept or whether I smiled

To hear her chant of curious woe.

The sea-maid sang,

“Never shall I die.

The evil eye,

The spine, the fang

Have not any power,—

No spell, no charm

May wither or harm

My beauty’s flower.

For, I suppose,

I am fair, more fair

Than any rose

Or earth-bloom rare,

Or maid of the earth,

Or, faint and far,

Heaven’s dark birth

Of a radiant star.

And yet they are crowned

With a joy not mine,

With a light divine

Who have found, have found

The secret of change,—

They are born, they grow,

They are dark, they glow,

They are new, wild, strange.

But I remain

Immortal, I

Who am fain, oh fain

To change or die.

Once was a time

I found the wreck

Of a ship sublime

With a masted deck:

I peeped through the hull

And what should it hold

But shimmering gold

And a shining skull

And broken glass

And twisted steel,

And a steering-wheel

Of oak and brass.

I loved them and watched them day by day,

I watched their beautiful slow decay.

I watched them soften and break and rust,

And thicken with weeds and fall to dust.

But when they were crumbled quite, there came

The fish that are centuries-through the same,

Their lifted lids that ought to be wise

Arching high over vacant eyes.

With gaping mouth and sloping chin,

And face fixed hard in a solemn grin,

They softly murmured, The passing hour

Over our beauty has no power.

I turned. I looked in my crystal glass.

My splendour was bright as ever it was.

And I wept, and I weep, that I should remain

Immortal, unchanging, without a stain.”

THE CELL

WHEN from the hush of this cool wood

I go, Lord, to the noisy mart,

Give me among the multitude,

I pray, a lonely heart.

Yea, build in me a secret cell

Where quietness shall be a song:

In that green solitude I’ll dwell.

And praise Thee all day long.

THE ASCETICS

AGES long the hills have stood

A solitary brotherhood,

Ages long with sinews bare

They have shouldered the keen air,

They have wrestled with the skies

Hiddenly for a dark prize.

Merry Spring with her wanton train

Tiptoes, tiptoes by in vain;

Ye, O hills, never behold

Her brave dust of green and gold

Flashing by, the pride, the mirth,

The myriad fluttering of the earth.

This wild magic ye have lost—

Tell me, at so bitter cost,

What the guerdon ye have won?

“Speech with the moon, speech with the sun;

Valiancy to meet unbowed

The challenge of the thundercloud,

And, to quicken us for fresh wars,

Gay communion with the stars.”

CONSPIRACIES

THE valley seemed a single throat

Singing when the blackbird sang,

So true complete and pure his note,

And through so clean an air it rang:

Trees in a golden rapture stood

Unshaken; their dark shadows fell

And lay locked by the river-flood

In level quiet: blackbird’s bell

And hollow-shining air and tree

And river made conspiracy

And cast on me a spell.

Deep in my heart the holy stream,

The stream of quietude, was born,

Whose waters wandering clouds of dream

And marvellous idle shapes adorn;

My breath was like the breath of a child

Asleep,—yet rooted in repose,

Multitudinous swift and wild

My branching, flowering thoughts arose.

So heart, breath, mind, while I spoke no word,

Conspired. Suddenly I heard

My song with the blackbird’s close.

A RHYME OF FAITH

SAY ye “Lo the heavens frown,

Soon the thundercloud shall burst,

Towering faith shall be flung down.

We—thank God—expect the worst.”

Cowardly blasphemers, hark!

Credo shall my motto be,

Credo—all the sky is dark—

Quia Impossibile.

THE SHINING POND

AGAINST the sky’s pale rim

The cottage and the trees stood dim.

But in the glow,

More tense,

Of the little shining pond that lay below,

The darkened outlines were drawn clear,

Sharp to my sense.

And gazing there

My vision became

Empty and passive, no more than a frame

For the silver water that burned and burned ....

At last, when I turned,

My soul was a mirror, on whose surface lay

Without a flaw

Each momentary thing I saw,—

Then slipped away.

And I heard

Each faint noise,

Hardly listening.

I heard

The noise of the cockchafers around me,—

Not only the sound

As they boomed in their flight,

Above, in the dim light,

But as they busily stirred

Loosening

Heavy body and horny wing,

Blundering free

Out of the thicket of the may-tree.

I saw the flower look up pale-eyed

From the tangled grass,

And the pale moth climb up, half awake, with quivering wing,

And still to the side

Of the sedges cling,—

Then like a ghost through the brown air pass.

And nowhere,

Everywhere,

The fall,

Hollow and clear,

Of the cuckoo’s sounding call.

And yet so quiet ... every tree

(But most the poplar tree,

Shooting up

Confidently

To the sky’s white cup)

Appeared eternal.

Suddenly, out beyond

The dark, I heard a chime.

It told of eternity, not of time,

It told that the quiet hour was one

With the quiet ages gone,

With the quiet hours to be

Eternally.

Shadow crept over the shining pond.

I fell into a deep

Trance, an illumined sleep.

THE HAUNTED STREET

ONLY the faint-echoing fall of my feet

Sounded in the empty street,

Where noisily an hour or so ago

The townpeople wandered—men, all sorts and types,

Swinging leisurely to and fro,

Laughing and lounging, pulling at their pipes;

Big-featured women; boys with caps aslant

To hint them men of the world; slim girls with scant

White summer dresses that in dubious light

Fluttered and gleamed to the sight

Like pallid moth-wings.

Now the populous street

Was empty: not a phantom lingered there,

Not a ghost of sound on the air

Save, as I passed, for my echoing feet.

The moon was hidden; hardly a candle shone

At any upper window, and the stars

Were dim as candles: from the shops and bars

The glimmer of light was gone.

A few arc-lamps at intervals threw

Mock moonlight on the mimic waterway

Of the wheel-burnished road;

And the road lay

Cool and rejoicing, lightened of its load

Of travelling life—as a tired face may lie

Smooth of its furrows, the unquiet day

Forgotten, the importunity

Of thought and emotion folded away

And shuttered off by Sleep.

Only my footsteps sounded in the road.

Suddenly I stopped. For I felt a faint light creep

Up to me and touch me, and lo, behind a cloud-veil

The harvest Moon gradually climbing the ascent

To the open firmament!

The vapours like lit foam

Dripped and glittered, as I watched her battle against the tide,

Then huddled again more close and strove to hide

Her scattering silver with dull monochrome;

Yet with a final stroke did she prevail,

Unflinching out of the stormy water sail,

Astonish the dark night, and roam

Splendid in triumph on her ocean-home.

And, as I watched, it seemed

My eyes were nothing but hollows filled to the brim with light,

And my body was unsubstantial, and the flood unearthly streamed

Through and through me, body and soul, immovable, absorbed in sight.

Along the sombre rank

Of ordinary houses the lustre spread

Until their level surfaces showed blank

And staring-white, and dead.

No longer now as images of Sleep

Could I feel them, folding away

In recesses deep

The voices and the passing feet of day:

Rather I felt them solid, cold, intense,

Shining on the glass of my moonlit sense

Like naked tombstones. They seemed to me

The only reality:

My conscious being

Was from its centre all

Diverted to its outward wall,

From the thinking and willing soul to the touching, seeing,

Receptive surface. I lost

All sense of separation. I was one

With the tomblike stone.

The bar of my humanity I crossed,

Drawn outward as the houses drew more near,

Till they and I for body had only a gleaming wall,

For spirit a vague fear.

The pulse of Time stopped.

There was no sound

Anywhere,

No motion in the street around,

In my soul’s eclipse I could not stir.

Yet some hidden impulse suddenly broke the spell,

For inward, inward, struggling through the barrier

Of my dumb sense I drove. I smote the silent bell

At the door of my heart angrily, bidding it answer me

With a semblance of actual sound. Driven by the tyranny

Of tangible outward horror into my soul I fought,

Striving to win the images that dwell

In the quiet inmost rooms of intricate-carven thought.

There I conjured a vision of summer’s ripe content,

Gold corn in the valley, gold gorse on the hill,

The gold sun shining, the air full of scent,

The common turf paved with gold tormentil;

The air basking lazily, full of the sound of bees,

And a slow stream washing the boughs of trailing willow-trees.

There I found a garden where tall hollyhocks

And double-flowered larkspurs towered side by side,

Groups of slender columbine and crimson-hearted phlox,

Old-fashioned lavender and pink and London pride:

And in that close and quiet garden did I find

The faces of my dearest friends, intimate and kind.

But a hurry of other faces like a shadow-show,

Faces remote and strange, crowded unbidden before me,

Faces at first I did not know ...

Yet some of them bore me

Manifest hate or love,—gazing on me

As a familiar friend or enemy.

Gradually I felt the answering passions stir

And days forgotten from a buried past rise;

Gradually

Like objects with pale outlines whitening the gloom

Of a dark room,

Out of a misty blurr

The faces grew familiar to my eyes.

And yet, as I dimly knew

With a dazed, half-conscious knowing,

These images coming and going,—

These faces old and young

That grew

In a moment, unfolded

And faded,—out of a past that never was mine were sprung:

Not mine, although they so remoulded me

Under their strong control

That memory seemed to be slowly drawn up out of my soul

To join them and make them a part

Of my own years,

Linking them to the passions of my heart,

Old hopes and old fears.

In a while shone out

Distinct among them all, beneath a rout

Of dusky hair, one face

Of quick eager impulsive grace;

And memory arose in me till I burned

With a full-kindled fire

Of worship and love, seeing no failure, no flaw

In her loveliness....

then memory turned,

Memory and the strength of desire,

To hate, fierce hate, hate fiercer for a memory of shame,

Of a wrong that I had done to her. I saw

With different eyes her beauty and I hated it.

Darkness and agony were in me: I shook: I bit on my lip; there was dew

Of sweat on my hand, on my forehead; I knew

My soul no longer was mine but lit with the flame

Of alien passions, possessing me, driving me ...

Emptily,

Emptily on either side the motionless line

Of tomblike houses gaped upon me—

Their emptiness spoke, they gave me an answer, they told

That only the cold

Bodies of those who slept

Lay in their hold:

The hot unsleeping passions were abroad

Thronging the white road,

Pressing around me, into me. They had crept

Deep into me more subtle than sleep;

My soul was strangled: I could not shake them off: I struggled in vain ...

But with a saving throb of pain

The power of motion came to me again,

And down the length of that echoing street of dread,

While the beautiful mockery of the white moon still looked down

On the sleeping town,

Quick in the stillness I fled.

Printed in the United States of America.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The Sea-Maid: quote marks in the poem have been left as-is.

The use of ellipsis has been edited to match the original book.

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Table of Contents

ESCAPE AND FANTASY

CONTENTS

THE CHANGE

ORPHEUS

THE RIVER

MOMENTS

THOUGHTS

TIDAL, KING OF NATIONS

THE VOICE (An Ecstasy)

I

II

III

SPRING RAIN IN LONDON

LOTUS EATERS

THE GREY BIRD

ELYSIUM

ETERNITY

THE SEA-MAID

THE CELL

THE ASCETICS

CONSPIRACIES

A RHYME OF FAITH

THE SHINING POND

THE HAUNTED STREET

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE