Spirits in Bondage Read online

  Who live beyond our heavy sphere.

  And all at once from far and near,

  They all held out their arms to me,

  Crying in their melody,

  ‘Leap in! Leap in and take thy fill

  Of all the cosmic good and ill,

  Be as the Living ones that know

  Enormous joy, enormous woe,

  Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss:

  For all thy study hunted this,

  On wings of magic to arise,

  And wash from off thy filmed eyes

  The cloud of cold mortality,

  To find the real life and be

  As are the children of the deep!

  Be bold and dare the glorious leap,

  Or to thy shame, go, slink again

  Back to the narrow ways of men.’

  So all these mocked me as I stood

  Striving to wake because I feared the flood.

  XXIII

  ALEXANDRINES

  There is a house that most of all on earth I hate.

  Though I have passed through many sorrows and have been

  In bloody fields, sad seas, and countries desolate,

  Yet most I fear that empty house where the grasses green

  Grow in the silent court the gaping flags between,

  And down the moss-grown paths and terrace no man treads

  Where the old, old weeds rise deep on the waste garden beds.

  Like eyes of one long dead the empty windows stare

  And I fear to cross the garden, I fear to linger there,

  For in that house I know a little, silent room

  Where Someone’s always waiting, waiting in the gloom

  To draw me with an evil eye, and hold me fast—

  Yet thither doom will drive me and He will win at last.

  XXIV

  IN PRAISE OF SOLID PEOPLE

  Thank God that there are solid folk

  Who water flowers and roll the lawn,

  And sit and sew and talk and smoke,

  And snore all through the summer dawn.

  Who pass untroubled nights and days

  Full-fed and sleepily content,

  Rejoicing in each other’s praise,

  Respectable and innocent.

  Who feel the things that all men feel,

  And think in well-worn grooves of thought,

  Whose honest spirits never reel

  Before man’s mystery, overwrought.

  Yet not unfaithful nor unkind,

  with work-day virtues surely staid,

  Theirs is the sane and humble mind,

  And dull affections undismayed.

  O happy people! I have seen

  No verse yet written in your praise,

  And, truth to tell, the time has been

  I would have scorned your easy ways.

  But now thro’ weariness and strife

  I learn your worthiness indeed,

  The world is better for such life

  As stout suburban people lead.

  Too often have I sat alone

  When the wet night falls heavily,

  And fretting winds around me moan,

  And homeless longing vexes me

  For lore that I shall never know,

  And visions none can hope to see,

  Till brooding works upon me so

  A childish fear steals over me.

  I look around the empty room,

  The clock still ticking in its place,

  And all else silent as the tomb,

  Till suddenly, I think, a face

  Grows from the darkness just beside.

  I turn, and lo! it fades away,

  And soon another phantom tide

  Of shifting dreams begins to play,

  And dusky galleys past me sail,

  Full freighted on a faerie sea;

  I hear the silken merchants hail

  Across the ringing waves to me

  —Then suddenly, again, the room,

  Familiar books about me piled,

  And I alone amid the gloom,

  By one more mocking dream beguiled.

  And still no neared to the Light,

  And still no further from myself,

  Alone and lost in clinging night—

  (The clock’s still ticking on the shelf).

  Then do I envy solid folk

  Who sit of evenings by the fire,

  After their work and doze and smoke,

  And are not fretted by desire.

  PART THREE

  THE ESCAPE

  XXV

  SONG OF THE PILGRIMS

  O Dwellers at the back of the North Wind,

  What have we done to you? How have we sinned

  Wandering the earth from Orkney unto Ind?

  With many deaths our fellowship is thinned,

  Our flesh is withered in the parching wind,

  Wandering the earth from Orkney unto Ind.

  We have no rest. We cannot turn again

  Back to the world and all her fruitless pain,

  Having once sought the land where ye remain.

  Some say ye are not. But, ah God! we know

  That somewhere, somewhere past the Northern snow

  Waiting for us the red-rose gardens blow:

  —The red-rose and the white-rose gardens blow

  In the green Northern land to which we go,

  Surely the ways are long and the years are slow.

  We have forsaken all things sweet and fair,

  We have found nothing worth a moment’s care

  Because the real flowers are blowing there.

  Land of the Lotus fallen from the sun,

  Land of the Lake from whence all rivers run,

  Land where the hope of all our dreams is won!

  Shall we not somewhere see at close of day

  The green walls of that country far away,

  And hear the music of her fountains play?

  So long we have been wandering all this while

  By many a perilous sea and drifting isle,

  We scarce shall dare to look thereon and smile.

  Yea, when we are drawing very near to thee,

  And when at last the ivory port we see

  Our hearts will faint with mere felicity:

  But we shall wake again in gardens bright

  Of green and gold for infinite delight,

  Sleeping beneath the solemn mountains white,

  While from the flowery copses still unseen

  Sing out the crooning birds that ne’er have been

  Touched by the hand of winter frore and lean;

  And ever living queens that grow not old

  And poets wise in robes of faerie gold

  Whisper a wild, sweet song that first was told

  Ere God sat down to make the Milky Way.

  And in those gardens we shall sleep and play

  For ever and for ever and a day.

  Ah, Dwellers at the back of the North Wind,

  What have we done to you? How have we sinned,

  That ye should hide beyond the Northern wind?

  Land of the Lotus, fallen from the Sun,

  When shall your hidden, flowery vales be won

  And all the travail of our way be done?

  Very far we have searched; we have even seen

  The Scythian waste that bears no soft nor green,

  And near the Hideous Pass our feet have been.

  We have heard Syrens singing all night long

  Beneath the unknown stars their lonely song

  In friendless seas beyond the Pillars strong.

  Nor by the dragon-daughter of Hypocras

  Nor the vale of the Devil’s head we have feared to pass,

  Yet is our labour lost and vain, alas!

  Scouring the earth from Orkney unto Ind,

  Tossed on the seas and withered in the wind,

  We seek and seek your land. How have we sinned?

  Or is it all a folly of the wise,

  Bidding us walk these ways with blinded eyes

  While all around us real flowers arise?

  But, by the very God, we know, we know

  That somewhere still, beyond the Northern snow

  Waiting for us the red-rose gardens blow.

  XXVI

  SONG

  Faeries must be in the woods

  Or the satyrs’ laughing broods—

  Tritons in the summer sea,

  Else how could the dead things be

  Half so lovely as they are?

  How could wealth of star on star

  Dusted o’er the frosty night

  Fill thy spirit with delight

  And lead thee from this care of thine

  Up among the dreams divine,

  Were it not that each and all

  Of them that walk the heavenly hall

  Is in truth a happy isle,

  Where eternal meadows smile,

  And golden globes of fruit are seen

  Twinkling through the orchards green;

  Were the Other People go

  On the bright sward to and fro?

  Atoms dead could never thus

  Stir the human heart of us

  Unless the beauty that we see

  The veil of endless beauty be,

  Filled full of spirits that have trod

  Far hence along the heavenly sod

  And see the bright footprints of God.

  XXVII

  THE ASS

  I woke and rose and slipt away

  To the heathery hills in the morning grey.

  In a field where the dew lay cold and deep

  I met an ass, new-roused from sleep.

  I stroked his nose and I tickled his ears,

  And spoke soft words to quiet his fears.

  His eyes stared into the eyes of me

  And he kissed my hands of his courtesy.

  ‘O big, brown brother out of the waste,

  How do thistles for breakfast taste?

  ‘And do you rejoice in the dawn divine

  With a heart that is glad no less than mine?

  ‘For, brother, the depth of your gentle eyes

  Is strange and mystic as the skies:

  ‘What are the thoughts that grope behind,

  Down in the mist of a donkey mind?

  ‘Can it be true, as the wise men tell,

  That you are a mask of God as well,

  ‘And, as in us, so in you no less

  Speaks the eternal Loveliness,

  ‘And words of the lips that all things know

  Among the thoughts of a donkey go?

  ‘However it be, O four-foot brother,

  Fair to-day is the earth, our mother.

  ‘God send you peace and delight thereof,

  And all green meat of the waste you love,

  ‘And guard you well from violent men

  Who’d put you back in the shafts again.’

  But the ass had far too wise a head

  To answer one of the things I said,

  So he twitched his fair ears up and down

  And turned to nuzzle his shoulder brown.

  XXVIII

  BALLADE MYSTIQUE

  The big, red-house is bare and lone

  The stony garden waste and sere

  With blight of breezes ocean blown

  To pinch the wakening of the year;

  My kindly friends with busy cheer

  My wretchedness could plainly show.

  They tell me I am lonely here—

  What do they know? What do they know?

  They think that while the gables moan

  And easements creak in winter drear

  I should be piteously alone

  Without the speech of comrades dear;

  And friendly for my sake they fear,

  It grieves them thinking of me so

  While all their happy life is near—

  What do they know? What do they know?

  That I have seen the Dagda’s throne

  In sunny lands without a tear

  And found a forest all my own

  To ward with magic shield and spear,

  Where, through the stately towers I rear

  For my desire, around me go

  Immortal shapes of beauty clear:

  They do not know, they do not know.

  L’Envoi

  The friends I have without a peer

  Beyond the western ocean’s glow,

  Whither the faerie galleys steer,

  They do not know: how should they know?

  XXIX

  NIGHT

  I know a little Druid wood

  Where I would slumber if I could

  And have the murmuring of the stream

  To mingle with a midnight dream,

  And have the holy hazel trees

  To play above me in the breeze,

  And smell the thorny eglantine;

  For there the white owls all night long

  In the scented gloom divine

  Hear the wild, strange, tuneless song

  Of faerie voices, thin and high

  As the bat’s unearthly cry,

  And the measure of their shoon

  Dancing, dancing, under the moon,

  Until, amid the pale of dawn

  The wandering stars begin to swoon. . . .

  Ah, leave the world and come away!

  The windy folk are in the glade,

  And men have seen their revels, laid

  In secret on some flowery lawn

  Underneath the beechen covers,

  Kings of old, I’ve heard them say,

  Here have found them faerie lovers

  That charmed them out of life and kissed

  Their lips with cold lips unafraid,

  And such a spell around them made

  That they have passed beyond the mist

  And found the Country-under-wave. . . .

  Kings of old, whom none could save!

  XXX

  OXFORD

  It is well that there are palaces of peace

  And discipline and dreaming and desire,

  Lest we forget our heritage and cease

  The Spirit’s work—to hunger and aspire:

  Lest we forget that we were born divine,

  Now tangled in red battle’s animal net,

  Murder the work and lust the anodyne,

  Pains of the beast ’gainst bestial solace set.

  But this shall never be: to us remains

  One city that has nothing of the beast,

  That was not built for gross, material gains,

  Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast.

  We are not wholly brute. To us remains

  A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams,

  A place of visions and of loosening chains,

  A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.

  She was not builded out of common stone

  But out of all men’s yearning and all prayer

  That she might live, eternally our own,

  The Spirit’s stronghold—barred against despair.

  XXXI

  HYMN

  (FOR BOYS’ VOICES)

  All the things magicians do

  Could be done by me and you

  Freely, if we only knew.

  Human children every day

  Could play at games the faeries play

  If they were but shown the way.

  Every man a God would be

  Laughing through eternity

  If as God’s his eyes could see.

  All the wizardries of God—

  Slaying matter with a nod,

  Charming spirits with his rod,

  With the singing of his voice

  Making lonely lands rejoice,

  Leaving us no will nor choice,

  Drawing headlong me and you

  As the piping Orpheus drew

  Man and beast the mountains through,

  By the sweetness of his horn

  Calling us from lands forlorn

  Nearer to the widening morn—

  All that loveliness of power

  Could be man’s peculiar dower,

  Even mine, this very hour;

  We should reach the Hidden Land

  And grow immortal out of hand,

  If we could but understand!

  We could revel day and night

  In all power and all delight

  If we learn to think aright.

  XXXII

  ‘OUR DAILY BREAD’

  We need no barbarous words nor solemn spell

  To raise the unknown. It lies before our feet;

  There have been men who sank down into Hell

  In some suburban street,

  And some there are that in their daily walks

  Have met archangels fresh from sight of God,

  Or watched how in their beans and cabbage-stalks

  Long files of faerie trod.

  Often me too the Living voices call

  In many a vulgar and habitual place,

  I catch a sight of lands beyond the wall,

  I see a strange god’s face.

  And some day this work will work upon me so

  I shall arise and leave both friends and home

  And over many lands a pilgrim go

  Through alien woods and foam,

  Seeking the last steep edges of the earth

  Whence I may leap into that gulf of light

  Wherein, before my narrowing Self had birth,

  Part of me lived aright.

  XXXIII

  HOW HE SAW ANGUS THE GOD

  I heard the swallow sing in the eaves and rose

  All in a strange delight while others slept,

  And down the creaking stair, alone, tip-toes,

  So carefully I crept.

  The house was dark with silly blinds yet drawn,

  But outside the clean air was filled with light,

  And underneath my feet the cold, wet lawn

  With dew was twinkling bright.

  The cobwebs hung from every branch and spray

  Gleaming with pearly strands of laden thread,

  And long and still the morning shadows lay

  Across the meadows spread.

  At that pure hour when yet no sound of man,

  Stirs in the whiteness of the wakening earth,

  Alone through innocent solitudes I ran

  Singing aloud for mirth.

  Till I had found the open mountain heath

  Yellow with gorse, and rested there and stood