Lionel Johnson

“ Past moonlit fields of white bean-flowers! nor less
To wander beside falling waves, beguiled
By soft winds into still dreams! Yet confess,
You chivalries of air, unreconciled
To the warm, breathing world! what ghostly stress
Compels your visit unto sorrow's child?
What would you here? For here you have no part:
Only the sad voices of wind and sea
Are prophets here to any wistful heart:
Or white flowers found upon a glimmering lea.
What would you here? Sweep onward, and depart
Over the ocean into Brittany,
Where old faith is, and older mystery! ”

“ And streaming strength, and kindling confluences:
The hearth glows, and the cavernous chimney thrills,
Pale with great heat, panting to crimson gloom,
Quiver the deeps of the rich fire: see there!
Was not that your fair face, in burning bloom
Wrought by the art of fire? O happy art!
That sets in living flames a face so fair:
The face, whose changes dominate mine heart,
And with a look speak my delight or doom:
Nay, now not doom, for I am only thine,
And one in thee and me the fire divine!
The fire, that wants the whole vast world for room:
Yet dwells in us contented and apart. ”

“ With melody about us: heart and feet
Responding to one mighty measure;
Glad with the splendour of an holy pleasure;
Swayed, one and all, as wind sways wheat:
Answering the sunlight with our eyes aglow;
Serene, and proud, and passionate, we go
Through airs of morning sweet.
Let no man dare to be disheartened now!
We challenge death beyond denial.
Against the host of death we make our trial:
Lord God of Hosts! do thou,
Who gavest us the fulness of thy sun
On fields of peace, perfect war's work begun:
Warriors, to thee we bow. ”

“ She bared her spirit to her sorrow:
On the circling hills the morrow
Trembled, but it broke not forth:
Winds blew from the snowy North.
My soul! my sorrow! What wind bloweth,
Knows the wayless way, it goeth?
But before all else, we know
Death's way is the way to go.
She knew no more than that: she only
Knew, that she was left and lonely.
Left? But she had loved! And lone?
She had loved! But love had gone.
So out into the wintry weather
Soul and sorrow fled together:
On the moor day found her dead:
Snow on hands, and heart, and head. ”

“ From Rama childless: the world wails in thee.
The sadness of all beauty at the heart,
The appealing of all souls unto the skies,
The longing locked in each man's breast apart,
Weep in the melody of thine old cries.
Mother of tears! sweet Mother of sad sighs!
All mourners of the world weep Irish, weep
Ever with thee: while burdened time still runs,
Sorrows reach God through thee, and ask for sleep.
And though thine own unsleeping sorrow yet
Live to the end of burdened time, in pain:
Still sing the song of sorrow! and forget
The sorrow, in the solace, of the strain. ”

“ Thine, a like heart? Thy very soul, the same?
Thou pleadest an eternal sorrow: we
Praise the still changing beauty of this earth.
Passionate good and evil, thou dost see:
Our eyes behold the dreams of death and birth.
We love the joys of men: we love the dawn,
Red with the sun, and with the pure dew pearled
Thy stern soul feels, after the sun withdrawn,
How much pain goes to perfecting the world.
Canst thou be right? Is thine the very truth? ”

“ Who never reachest me too late!
When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.
Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.
Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.
When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me. ”

“ Unjust! unkind! while you despise
Our lonely years, our mournful cries:
You are the happier for our prayer;
The guerdon of our souls, you share.
Not in such feebleness of heart,
We play our solitary part;
Not fugitives of battle, we
Hide from the world, and let things be:
But rather, looking over earth,
Between the bounds of death and birth;
And sad at heart, for sorrow and sin,
We wondered, where might help begin. ”

“ Thy children of the mist, the moor, the mountain side,
These change not from thine heart, these to thine heart allied:
These, that rely on thee, as blossoms on the blue.
O passionate, dark faces, melancholy's hue!
O deep, gray eyes, so tragic with the fires they hide!
Sweet Mother, in whose light these live! thou dost abide,
Star of the West, pale to the world: these know thee true.
No alien hearts may know that magic, which acquaints
Thy soul with splendid passion, a great fire of dreams;
Thine heart with lovelier sorrow, than the wistful sea. ”

“ Over thy perfect sleep: and though Christ's birth
Wake other men to melody of heart,
Thou in their happy music hast no part.
Or dost thou wake awhile, to feel thy gloom
Illuminated by the shepherds' light?
To stretch out longing hands from thy still tomb,
And think on days, that were: before that night
Fell on thee, Malise? and the world as well
Was darkened over us, when that night fell!
1888.
VI.
Whenas I knew not clearly, how to think,
Malise! about thee dead: God showed the way.
Thine holy soul among soft fires can drink
The dew of all the prayers, that I can pray. ”

“ Found thy very stones more sweet,
Than the richest fields elsewhere:
Two years, and thy sacred air
Still poured balm upon me, when
Nearer drew the world of men;
When the passions, one by one,
All sprang upward to the sun:
Two years have I lived, still thine;
Lost, thy presence! gone, that shrine,
Where six years, what years! were mine.
Music is the thought of thee;
Fragrance, all thy memory.
Those thy rugged Chambers old,
In their gloom and rudeness, hold
Dear remembrances of gold.
Some first blossoming of flowers
Made delight of all the hours ”

“ Youth, in its perfect blossoming.
The magic of a golden grace
Brings fire and sweetness on each face:
Till, from their passage, every heart
Takes fire, and sweetness in the smart:
Till virtue lives, for all who own
Their majesty, in them alone:
Till careless hearts, and idle, take
Delight in living, for their sake;
Worship their footsteps, and awake.
Beside the tremulous, blue sea,
Clear at sunset, they love to be:
And they are rarely sad, but then.
For sorrow touches them, as men,
Looking upon the calm of things,
That pass, and wake rememberings
Of holy and of ancient awe ”

“ For, came there sorrow, came there splendour,
You still were mine, and I yours only:
Then on my breast lay down your head,
Triumphant in its dear surrender:
One were we then: though one, not lonely.
Oh, is it you are dead,
Both! both dead, since we are asunder:
You, sleeping: I, for ever walking
Through the dark valley, hard and dry.
At times I hear the mourning thunder:
And voices, in the shadows, talking.
Dear, are there dreams among the dead:
Or is it all a perfect slumber?
But I must dream and dream to madness. ”

“ Primroses fill the fields,
And birds' light matin cries:
The lingering darkness yields,
Before the sun's uprise.
Deep meadows, white with dew,
Where faeries well may dance;
Or the quaint fawnskin crew,
Play in a red moon's glance.
Quivering poplar trees,
Silvered upon the wind:
In watermeads and leas,
With silver streams entwined.
Waters in alder shade,
Where green lights break and gleam
Betwixt my fingers, laid
Upon the rippling stream.
In merry prime of June,
Birds sun themselves and sing:
Mine heart beats to the tune;
The world is on the wing. ”

“ Thine haunting voice borne over the waste sea.
Was it thy melancholy spirit moved
Mine, with those gray dreams, that invested thee?
Or was it, that thy beauty first reproved
The imperfect fancies, that looked fair to me?
Thou hast both secrets: for to thee are known
The fatal sorrows binding life and death:
And thou hast found, on winds of passage blown,
That music, which is sorrow's perfect breath:
So, all thy beauty takes a solemn tone,
And art, is all thy melancholy saith. ”

“ To God's proud City, and thine heart's desire,
Lucretius!
1887.
ENTHUSIASTS.
To the Rev. Percy Dearmer.
Let your swords flash, and wound the golden air of God:
Bright steel, to meet and cleave the splendour of His sun!
Now is a war of wars in majesty begun:
Red shall the cornfields ripen, where our horses trod,
Where scythe nor sickle swept, but smote war's iron rod:
Where the stars rose and set, and saw the blood still run.
So shall men tell of us, and dread our deeds, though done:
New annals yet shall praise time's fiercest period. ”

“ Than thine eternity of cares.
Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.
1893.
A FRIEND.
His are the whitenesses of soul,
That Virgil had: he walks the earth
A classic saint, in self-control,
And comeliness, and quiet mirth.
His presence wins me to repose:
When he is with me, I forget
All heaviness: and when he goes,
The comfort of the sun is set.
But in the lonely hours I learn,
How I can serve and thank him best:
God! trouble him: that he may turn
Through sorrow to the only rest. ”

“ Only to feel this night's great heart, only to mark
The splendours and the glooms, brings back the patriarch,
Who on Chaldaean wastes found God through reverence.
Could we but live at will upon this perfect height,
Could we but always keep the passion of this peace,
Could we but face unshamed the look of this pure light,
Could we but win earth's heart, and give desire release:
Then were we all divine, and then were ours by right
These stars, these nightingales, these scents: then shame would cease. ”

“ For thine ancient people keep
Still their march from land to land:
Ever upon earth they sleep,
Woods and fields on either hand.
Not upon the barren sea
Have thy people dandled thee.
Closer they, than other men,
To the heart of earth have come:
First the wilderness, and then
Field and forest, gave them home:
All their days, their hearts, they must
Give to earth: and then their dust. ”

“ Nay, but thou wrongest us: thou wrong'st our youth,
Who dost our happiness compassionate.
And yet! and yet! O royal Calvary!
Whence divine sorrow triumphed through years past:
Could ages bow before mere memory?
Those passion-flowers must blossom, to the last.
Purple they bloom, the splendour of a King:
Crimson they bleed, the sacrament of Death:
About our thrones and pleasaunces they cling,
Where guilty eyes read, what each blossom saith. ”

“ Mine is the sorrow on the sea,
And mine the sigh of places drear.
Some players upon plaintive strings
Publish their wistfulness abroad:
I have not spoken of these things,
Save to one man, and unto God.
1893.
HILL AND VALE. Not on the river plains
Wilt thou breathe loving air,
O mountain spirit fine!
Here the calm soul maintains
Calm: but no joy like thine,
On hill-tops bleak and bare,
Whose breath is fierce and rare.
Were beauty all thy need,
Here were an haunt for thee. ”

“ GWYNEDD.
To Ernest Rhys.
The children of the mingling mists: can they,
Born by the melancholy hills, love thee,
Royal and joyous light? From dawn of day,
We watch the trailing shadows of the waste,
The waste moors, or the ever-mourning sea:
What, though in speedy splendour thou hast raced
Over the heather or wild wave, a ray
Of travelling glory and swift bloom? Still thou
Inhabitest the mighty morning's brow:
And hast thy flaming and celestial way,
Afar from our sad beauties, in thine haste. ”

“ Not cool glades of Fontainebleau
Hold the secret; not French plains,
Crowned with monumental fanes;
Not the Flemish waters' flow:
Light the fair days come, light go:
But the mystery remains.
Here, beneath the carven spires,
We have dreams, revolts, desires:
Here each ancient, haunted Hall
Holds its Brocken carnival;
Where Philosophy attires
All her forms, to suit us all.
In a ring her witches crowd:
Faces passionate and proud,
Luring eyes and voices loud:
Death ends life: And life is death:
Man is dust: The soul a breath:
Who knows aught? Each fair Lie saith. ”

“ Some pity for a woman, who hath wed
With weariness and loneliness, from fall
To fall, from bitter snows to maybloom red:
The hayfields hear, the cornlands hear, my call!
From weariness toward weariness I tread;
And hunger for the end: the end of all.
1888
MYSTIC AND CAVALIER.
To Herbert Percy Horne.
Go from me: I am one of those, who fall.
What! hath no cold wind swept your heart at all,
In my sad company? Before the end,
Go from me, dear my friend!
Yours are the victories of light: your feet
Rest from good toil, where rest is brave and sweet. ”

“ By gloom and by splendour.
High, away, alone, afar,
Mighty wills and workings are:
To them I surrender.
The processions of the night,
Sweeping clouds and battling light,
And wild winds in thunder,
Care not for the world of man,
Passionate on another plan:
O twin worlds of wonder!
Ancients of dark majesty!
Priests of splendid mystery!
The Powers of Night cluster:
In the shadows of the trees,
Dreams, that no man lives and sees,
The dreams! the dreams! muster. ”