Wilfred Campbell

“ And then to me, “You go, for you are young
And strong, and life throbs quickest in your veins,
And you have eyes more strong to see, for ours
Are dimmed by the dread frost-mists of this land;
And creep out there beyond yon gleaming ledge,
And bring me word of what you there may see.
And if you meet no sign of mast or sail,
Or hull or wreck, or mark of living soul,
Then we will turn our faces to the south;
For this great ocean’s vastness hems us in,
And death here nightly creeps from strand to strand,
And binds with girth of black the gleaming world.” ”

“ All essences came to her birth, The dews that drop, the airs that run; She is the offspring of the earth, The daughter of the flaming sun.
She is most kind to everything, The thirsty grasses, buds and flowers, And to the poet’s heart doth bring Thought-blossoms from her skyey bowers.
The spirits of the upper space, The swart, black genies under sea, All for the glamour of her face, Are hers through all eternity.
They love, they hate, they wake, they sleep, Just as she waves her shining hands; Just as she wills, the deepest deep Is stirred to do her heart’s commands. ”

“ Came the far-off neigh of a horse, and a mad joy leaped to my veins,
And a thought curled into my heart as a serpent coils into a flower;
And I turned me, and left them there in their foolish love and their slumber
That my hot heart hissed was their last.
Then hurrying out of the door that flapped in the night-wind I fled,
With a pent-up hunger of hate that maddened to burst from its sluices,
And came to a place on the plain far up and out from the village,
Where tethered in rows of hurdles, champing and restless and neighing,
Half a thousand horses were herded under the night. ”

“ And looked her and death in the face, And knew me unworthy and base, And the shores where the black waters ran;—
They come to the outer shore and look each on each through the mists, and read the ancient curse there,
When we came to that lone, outer shore, Where the world sundered, parting us two; (God and the dread nevermore!) When we came where the thick mists blew, So face could scarce on face, through, Read the woe-rune of earth’s ancient lore;—
and feel the dread agony of parting. Their souls feel for one another as the seas for the land. ”

“ For they are nature’s children, in their faces I see that sweet obedience to the sky That marks these dwellers of the wilding places, Who with the season’s being live and die; Knowing no love but of the wind and sun, Who still are nature’s when their life is done.
They are a part of all the haze-filled hours, The happy, happy world all drenched with light, The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers, And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight, And they to me will ever bring in dreams Far mist-clad heights and brimming rain-fed streams. ”

“ For that dread land began to close us in,
With cold and hunger, bit at our poor limbs,
Till life grew there a feeble, flickering flame,
Amid the snows and ice-floes of that land.
Then ten days crept out shrunk and gray and wan,
With nothing but the lonely, haunted waste.
Then spake the leader, “If in five more days!”
Then parcelled out those five gray, haggard days,
While life to me grew like an ebbing tide,
That surged far out from some dread death-like strand. ”

“ When she withdraws herself from man’s rude peering Into the virgin secrets of her heart, Out from the realms of hate and doubt and fearing, Unto her life of dreams, shut out, apart.
Where no soul reaches save some kindred spirit, Some late-born satyr caged in human form, Some child of that old order who inherit The haunting beauty of the ages’ storm.
Strange children, smitten with the dream of seeing The glory that lies under this mad life; The folds of midnight back of all this being, The majesty of sleep behind the strife. ”

“ I am the cup whose beaded brim The wine of living holds or spills: I stand upon the morning’s rim, When day grows rose and night is dim.
There comes a freshness from the floor Of ocean and the night-bathed land; A spirit swings each roseate door With winnowing wings and odours bland: Rose flames enkindle heaven’s floor, And the grey mists are night no more. [Pg 136]
I stand upon the morning’s verge, And feel the glorious waking world; Afar I hear life’s thundering surge On morning’s beaches maddening hurled, In flame-tinged beauty, where the verge Of ocean sings melodious dirge. ”

“ Not that we hate our brothers to the south,
They are our fellows in the speech of mouth,
They are our wedded kindred, our own blood,
The same world-evils we and they withstood,
Our aims are theirs, one common future good—
Not that we hate them, but that there doth lie
Within our hearts a golden fealty
To Britain, Britain, Britain, till the world doth die.
And him we send thee as our greatest son,
The people’s choice, to whose firm hand is given
[Pg 72] The welfare of our country under heaven;
No truer son hast thou in all thy coasts,
No wiser, kindlier, stronger, Britain boasts ”

“ I reared my trunk and built my tent of green, And spread my boughs to gusty storm and sun, And knew spring’s joy and autumn’s leafy pride; And now the winter of all my days has come, When, leafless, budless, I must lie me low; And be a senseless mound where life will climb, In springs to come, unconscious of my sleep.
“Nor, Augur, am I sad, nor hold desire To lengthen out my days beyond their time; For when the timbers of the house are rotten The roof-tree sinks, and the old walls refuse To keep the winters out; then comes the time When the householder packs his goods to go. ”

“ Plodding the dreary years that wend their round,
Aping the sleeping sensual life of beasts,
Fearful of all things, dreading mostly death,
Past pain and age and all their miseried end,
Where all must rot, who smile and weep and sleep,
And be a part of all this grim corruption.
Nay, better to me than the long-measured draught,
Trickling out through many anxious years,
Iron-eaten, haggard, to the place of death—
To drain my flagon of life in one glad draught,—
To live, to love, aspire, and dare all things ”

“ Words, words are empty,—were life built on words, How rich the poor would grow, the weak be strong, The hateful loving, and the scornful weak, The king would be a peasant, and the poor A king in his own right; the murderer, red From his foul guilt, would pass to God’s own breast, And all damned things, long damned of earth’s consent, And some dread law, much older far than we, Would blossom righteous under heaven’s face. ”

“ Yea, back of all this muffled dread
Perchance some splendor rifts the dark.
[Pg 119]
Yea, though no magic reach its gleams,
Nor heart of doubting prove it true,
Old house, beloved, of my dead dreams,
While I go forth from love and you.
[Pg 120]
Phaethon
I Phaethon: dwelling in that golden house,
Which Hephaistos did build for my great sire,
Old Helios, king of glowing heaven and day;
Knowing this life but mortal in its span,
Hedged in by puling youth and palsied age,
Where poor men crawl like insects, knowing pain
And mighty sorrow to the gates of death ”

“ There forever and forever, Will no demon-hate dissever Peace and sleep and rest and dream; There is neither fear nor fret there When the tired children get there, Only dews and pallid beam Fall in gentle peace and sadness Over long surcease of madness, From hushed skies that gleam and gleam: In the longed-for, sought-for home Of the children of the foam.
There the streets are hushed and restful, And of dreams is every breast full, With the sleep that tired eyes wear; There the city hath long quiet From the madness and the riot, From the failing hearts of care ”

“ Have ridden them down, ’mid the shriekings and groanings of anguish,
Blotting them out with their loves and their hates into blackness.
Ha! Ha! ride, ride, my beauties, my terrible tramplers!
Pound, pound into dust the mother, the child, and the husband!
Pound, pound to the pulse of my hate that exults in your thunders!
Ha! Over the little ones nestled to suckle the bosom,
Over the man that I loved, we thunder, we thunder!
Over the woman I hate with the flame of her hair on his bosom ”

“ In one dread moment all the sky grew dark, The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout, Where love lost love, and all the world might mark The city overwhelmed, blotted out [Pg 88] Without one cry, so quick oblivion came, And life passed to the black where all forget; But she,—we know not of her house or name,— In love’s sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet.
The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still, And the great city passed to nothingness: The ages went and mankind worked its will. ”

“ Comest thou in with thy rude, kindly bluster, The wintry glow of fagots on pale fires; Thy lonesome woodlands in a ragged cluster About the earth’s shrunk edge, with dreary spires Of tree-tops loomed athwart the chilly sky; Where late the low night-wind went haunting by. [Pg 144]
I love thee, Month, for all thy cold north blowing; I greet thee, friend, for all thy frosty mood; With mantling blood I meet thy slanted snowing, O’er withered field or by the leafless wood, Whose damp earth-floors with rain-bleached leaves are stained, And frosty nuts that rich November rained. ”

“ Mere mocks of human that do play a part, Are but behind the mask a living death, A muffled night that murmurs of the light, A dread despair where lips have muttered hope.
Still fared we north across that frozen waste Of icy horror ringed with awful night, To seek the living in a world of death; And as we fared a terror grew and grew About my heart like madness, till I dreamed A vague desire to flee by night and creep, By steel-blue, windless plain and haunted wood, And wizened shore and headland, once more south. ”

“ Till Arthur, God and all the Table Round, Were but a nebulous mist before his eyes, In which the splendour of her beauty shone.
Henceforth the years would rise and wane and die, And glory come and glory pass away, And battles pass as in a troubled dream, And Arthur be a ghost, and his knights ghosts;— The castles and the lists and the mad fights, Sacking of cities, scourging of country-sides, All dreams before his eyes;—all, save her love. ”

“ You bring to earth a long-lost, olden beauty, When filling summer with your slumb’rous sound; You banish stress and strife and barren duty, Brimming with joyance all the world around.
I gaze upon your shining face at morning, When woods are fresh and dews are on the grass; And light and love, the night and darkness scorning, Fill earth with song from each bush where I pass.
I gaze upon your misty face at even, Athwart the golden chambers of the west, When ever-changing glories of the heaven Build up a broken splendour in thy breast. ”

“ The bearded swamps are breathing A mist from meres afar, And grimly the Great Bear circles Under the pale Pole Star.
There is never a voice in Heaven, Nor ever a sound on earth, Where the spectres of winter are rising Over the night’s wan girth. [Pg 142]
There is slumber and death in the silence, There is hate in the winds so keen; And the flash of the north’s great sword-blade Circles its cruel sheen.
The world grows agèd and wintry, Love’s face peakèd and white; And death is kind to the tired ones Who sleep in the north to-night. ”