Helen Gray Cone

“ And wind-fine voices of the wind-borne birds
Were ever woven in among their words.
Soft-brooding o’er the hamlet where it lay,
The circling hills stood stoled with holy white,
For orchards brake to blossom in the night;
And all the morning was one blown blue flower,
And all the world was at its perfect hour.
So fared he gladly, and his spirit yearned
To do some deed fit for the deep new day.
And on the broad bright way his armour burned, [Pg 46]
And showed him still, a shifting, waning star,
To sight that followed far. ”

“ And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry,
And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a man, or die!
So I crept to my mirrored face, and I looked, and I saw it grown
(By the light in my shaking hand) to the like of the masks of stone; [Pg 22]
And with horror I shrieked aloud as I flung my torch and fled,
And a fire-snake writhed where it fell; and at midnight the sky was red.
And at morn, when the House of Hate was a ruin, despoiled of flame,
I fell at mine enemy’s feet, and besought him to slay my shame ”

“ But sometimes, when the moon is bright,
So bright it almost drowns the stars,
She thinks how some have lost delight
Behind the prison bars.
It makes her sad a little space,
And casts a shadow on her look,
As branches in a woody place
Do flicker on a brook.
Last night she had a dream of men,
Dark faces strange with keen desire;
She heard the blaring trumpet then,
She saw the shields strike fire.
The pomp of plumes, the crack of spears,
Beyond her happy circle lie:
Thank Heaven! she has but eighteen years,
And loves the daisies and the sky. ”

“ Fix on anything to love?
—Sober, silent you remain,
Tiny, stately maid of Spain!
[Pg 59]
LEPAGE’S JOAN OF ARC
Once, it may be, the soft gray skies were dear,
The clouds above in crowds, like sheep below,
The bending of each kindly wrinkled tree;
Or blossoms at the birth-time of the year,
Or lambs unweaned, or water in still flow,
In whose brown glass a girl her face might see.
Such days are gone, and strange things come instead;
For she has looked on other faces white,
Pale bloom of fear, before war’s whirlwind blown ”

“ A falcon, by a prince to be possessed,
Gay-graced with bells that ever chiming are;
In azure of the bright Sicilian water,
A billow that has rapt into its breast
The swayed reflection of a dancing star! ”

“ Whose hand shall snatch, before it sears the sod,
The light thy lessening grasp no more controls:
Truth’s rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide:
This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls
Play on through time beneath the eyes of God. ”

“ But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man,
And the hearth was cold from the day that the House of Hate began. [Pg 21]
And I called at the open door, “Make ye merry, all friends of mine,
In the hall of my House of Hate, where is plentiful store and wine.
We will drink unhealth together unto him I have foiled and fooled!” ”

“ Yet there shall be many a noble soldier,
Many a noble battle worth the winning,
Many a hopeless battle worth the losing.
Life is battle,
Life is battle, even to the sunset. [Pg 5]
Soldiers of the Light shall strive forever,
In the wards of pain, the ways of labour,
In the stony deserts of the city,
In the hives where greed has housed the helpless ”

“ Makes thee brood on War, who dreadest these things?
“Is it but the haunting of the bugles,
Floating memories of the war-time bugles
Blowing over those far fields of childhood,
Pleasant in the foolish ear of childhood,
When the sword-hilt
Seemed but made to shine and hold a jewel?”
Then the inward Voice that gave the mandate,—
Bade me sing of battle,—bade me answer:
Well I know the symbol of the sword-hilt, [Pg 4]
Know the Cross of sacrifice and service;
See the heart’s-blood
Burning where the child beheld the jewel.
I have hated with the perfect hatred
All the work of Hell in all the ages ”

“ Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might a man left-handed,
Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.
While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyes expanded,
Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar. [Pg 7]
For he served aboard the Vanguard, saw the Admiral blind and bleeding
Borne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.
Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs on unheeding,
Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered, flashed, and screamed. ”

“ Trample the red rose on the ground,—
Keats is Beauty while earth spins round!
Bind her, grind her, burn her with fire,
Cast her ashes into the sea,—
She shall escape, she shall aspire,
She shall arise to make men free:
She shall arise in a sacred scorn,
Lighting the lives that are yet unborn;
Spirit supernal, Splendour eternal,
England!
[Pg 3]
SOLDIERS OF THE LIGHT
“Why of War, O thou that lovest rather
Peace of roses in a rain-sweet garden,
Peace of moonlit silver-heaving waters,
All the lovely looks of little children?
What strange mandate
Bids thee sing of War, who lovest these things? ”

“ Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,
Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,
Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?
“Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,
Faces rapt, that one discerns mid the dusky press
Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?
Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!” ”

“ Soared the Orient into darkness with her living and her dying:
“Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls,” the seaman said. [Pg 9]
Long the boy with knit brows wondered o’er that friending of the foeman;
Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the cause
Why the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,
In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate like straws.
While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;
Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the churchyard sod ”

“ This windy sunlit morning after rain,
The wet bright laurel laughs with beckoning gleam
In the blown wood, whence breaks the wild white stream
Rushing and flashing, glorying in its gain;
Nor swerves nor parts, but with a swift disdain
O’erleaps the boulders lying in long dream,
Lapped in cold moss; and in its joy doth seem
A wood-born creature bursting from a chain. ”

“ And I knew for the things eternal the things eye hath not seen;
Yea, the heavens and the earth shall pass; but they never shall pass away.
And the miracle on me wrought, in the streets I would straight make known:
“When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive
Any legend of haloed saint, starting up through the sealèd stone!” ”

“ Of serving years, and past, forever past,
All duties, all delights, of young esquires:
And to the altar and the hour at last,—
The hour, the altar, of his dear desires,—
Clear-shriven and whitely clad the youth was come. ”

“ Us hither; but on earth so weak a part
We chose, that now no part in heavenly things
Is granted us, nor yet will Hell’s deep heart
Receive us, but in this dim borderland
We dwell, and follow here our hollow art
Of weaving tales, and are in semblance gay,
Moved by a might we never may withstand. [Pg 72]
To our own dear delights we turned away;
Forgot the city full of tears, forgot
The tolling bells, abandoned even to pray ”

“ Of man for man in the mean populous streets of To-day!
Hand, with what colour and power thou couldst show, in the ring hot-sanded,
Brown Bestiarius holding the lean tawn tiger at bay,
Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed;
Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing To-day!
[Pg 88]
THE BALLAD OF CALNAN’S CHRISTMAS
When you hear the fire-gongs beat fierce along the startled street,
See the great-limbed horses bound, and the gleaming engine sway,
And the driver in his place, with his fixed, heroic face,
Say a prayer for Calnan’s sake—he that died on Christmas day! ”

“ While the faint bells accord
Like the souls of old days.
In the sweet bed of peace
He shall sleep for a night,
And faith, like a fleece,
Lap him kindly and light;
Then the wind, crooning wild,
Mystic music shall seem,
And the brow of the Child
Be a light through his dream. [Pg 85]
And we, too, follow down
The long slope of the hill:
See, the white little town,
Where it shines, wonder-still!
Be our hopes quenched or bright,
Be our griefs what they are,
We shall sojourn a night
At the Inn of the Star.
[Pg 86]
POSIES
—Is this ... ”

“ We should see the pretty things,
Pretty little sleepy souls!
All their heads beneath their wings,
Blind with sleep as moles!
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
Under the wild, winged winds that fly
All night long across the sky,
Sleep, sweet, sleep!
[Pg 57]
THE PORTRAIT OF THE PRINCESS
Tiny, stately maid of Spain,
With your formal fan and train!
Strange the spell the painter cast,
Strong to make you live and last!
Some one, Sweet, who bore your name,
Changed and grew, as people do ”

“ Bright-browed, majestic, armoured like a knight.
“Great Angel, servant of the Highest, why
Stoop’st thou to me?” although his lips were mute,
His eyes inquired. The Shining One replied:
“Thy Book, thy birth, life of thy life am I,
Son of thy soul, thy youth’s forgotten fruit.
We two go up to judgment side by side.”
[Pg 92]
THE TORCH-RACE
Brave racer, who hast sped the living light
With throat outstretched and every nerve astrain,
Now on thy left hand labours gray-faced Pain,
And Death hangs close behind thee on the right. ”

“ Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,
Here, with childhood’s crude consistence, broke the tale to question “Why?”
For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,
Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes. [Pg 8]
All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal with causes.
Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower the boats?
Quick the man put by the question. “But the Orient, none could save her ”

“ And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest ’em! some were braver;
Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where.”
At the shock, he said, the Vanguard shook through all her timbers oaken ”

“ His breath comes fast, his eyes grow bright,
To think upon that ancient fight.
Oh, leaping from the strainèd string
Against an armoured Wrong to ring,
Brave the songs that arrows sing!
He weighs the finished flight:
“Live and die; by and by
The sun kills dark ”