Louise Imogen Guiney

“ Up, up! to our lot
Where warfare and time and the body are not."
IX. STERN APHRODITE "Iole is coy with me,
Goddess! for a month I suffer
Knowing not how far I be:
Teach me softer arts, or rougher,
Well to sail that sea."-45-
"Fie: how long could Love divine
Venturing, abstain from answer,
Nor look landward for a sign!
Niggard, take of thine entrancer
Shipwreck in the brine."
X. THE JUBILEE "Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure!
We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure,
All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure." ”

“ The Light of the House Beyond the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;
You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive;
You linger on the stair: Love's lonely pulses leap!
The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep.
Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still;
The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will,
Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored ”

“ Tameless, slant in the wind, the bare and beautiful iris,
Stop short, full of delight, and cry out: "See, it is Cnopus
Runs, with white throat forward, over the sands to Chalcis!"
VIII Ere the Ferryman from the coast of spirits
Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither,
Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it
For thy desolate father, for thy sister,
Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter.
IX Jaffa ended, Cos begun
Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one
Fit to trample out the sun:
Who shall think thine ardours are
But a cinder in a jar? ”

“ All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud!
'Tis the time o' the year, in early light and glad,
The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;
The rocks are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise,
Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling's golden eyes,
And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep
Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep.
'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height
To watch from my harrow the dance of going light ”

“ Horologion The frost may form apace,
The roses pine away:
Nomæa! if I see thy face,
Then is the summer day.
A word of thine, a breath,
And lo! my joy shall seem
To peer far down where life and death
Stir like a forded stream;
Or else shall misery sound
And travel in that hour
All utmost things in their shut round,
As a bee feels his flower.
Thought lags and cries Alas,
Love ranges quick and free. ”

“ Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;
Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful;
But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer,
Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.
Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit,
Safe also on our earth, begetting ever
Some one love worth the ages and the nations! ”

“ Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide,
Away, and far away, his barque is borne
Riding the noisy morn,
Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know
The helm and tightening halyards still
Follow the urging of his will,
And scoff at sullen earth a league below.
Alas! Fate bars him from his heirdom high,
And shackles him with many an inland tie,
And of his only wisdom makes a jibe
Amid an alien tribe:-140-
No wave abroad but moans his fallen state.
The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! ”

“ A Song of Far Travel Many a time some drowsy oar from the nearer bank invited,
Crossed a narrow stream, and bore in among the reeds moon-lighted,
There to leave me on a shore no ferryman hath sighted.
Many a time a mountain stile, dark and bright with sudden wetting,
Lured my vagrant foot the while 'twixt uplifting and down-setting,—
Whither? Thousand mile on mile, beyond the last forgetting.
Long by hidden ways I wend (past occasion grown a ranger) ;
Yet enchantment, like a friend, takes from death the tang of danger:
Hardly river or road can end where I need step a stranger. ”

“ As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay,
Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day?-84-
Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain
Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again,
As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light,
How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight!
Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so
From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago. ”

“ Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new.
"From long ago one hope hath in me thriven,
Your hope, mysterious as the scented May:
Not to Himself your titles God hath given
In vain, nor only for our mortal day.
O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven?
O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play."
-83-
An Estray Well we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream:
Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream,
For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave,
For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave. ”

“ And lest the ravening smoke, and enmity,
Corrode thee quite, thy lover sighs, and straight
Desires thee safe afar, too graceful gate;
Throned on a terrace of the Boboli.
Nay, nay, thy use is here. Stand queenly thus
Till the next fury; teach the time and us
Leisure and will to draw a serious breath:
Not wholly where thou art the soul is cowed,
Nor the fooled capital proclaims aloud
Barter is god, while Beauty perisheth. ”

“ To an Ideal That I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height:
All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light!
No pleasure born of time for me,
Who in you touch eternity. ”

“ Be thy bright heart, not ashen Time,
My measure, law, and light.
-21-
His Angel to his Mother What would you do for your fairest one,
Wild as the wind and free as the sun,
Born a fugitive, sure to slip
Soon from secular ownership?
Men in search of the heart's desire,
Wearily trampling flood and fire,
Rove betimes into some abyss
Darker far than eternity's.
(Ah, the hazard! it awes one so!) ”

“ Autumn Magic Soon as divine September, flushing from sea to sea,
Peers from the whole wide upland into eternity,
Soft as an exhalation, ghosts of the thistle start:
Never a poet saw them but ached in his baffled heart.
Gossamer armies rising thicker than snowflakes fall,
Waken in blood and marrow, aware of the unheard call.
Oh, what a nameless urging through avenues laid in air,
Hints of escape, unbodied, intricate, everywhere,
Sense of a feared denial, or access hard to be won ”

“ Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear.
Frost and sad light and windless atmosphere
Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made
Beauty more sweet than summer's builded shade,
Whose green domes fallen, leave this wonder here. ”

“ Till in ourselves who love them dwell
The same sure light ineffable:-56-
Till they who walk with us in after years
Forgetting time and tears
(As we with you) , shall sing all day instead:
"How blessed are the Dead!" ”

“ On Leaving Winchester Winton, my window with a mossy marge,
My lofty oriel, whence the soul hath sight
Of passionate yesterdays, all gold and large,
Arisen to enrich our narrow night:
Though others bless thee, who so blest before
Hath pastured from the violent time apart,
And laved in supersensual light the heart
Alone with thy magnificent No More? ”

“ OXFORD AND LONDON XXVI SONNETS
-145-
OXFORD I. The Tow-Path Furrow to furrow, oar to oar succeeds,
Each length away, more bright, more exquisite;
The sister shells that hither, thither, flit
Strew the long stream like scattered maple-seeds.
A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads,
Who with short calls his pace doth intermit:
An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sits,
Auspicious Pan among the river reeds. ”

“ Breathe on me better valour: to subject
My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid
Lest ere her fight's full term, the Architect
See downfall of the stronghold that He made.
-54-
Beati Mortui Blessed the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead
Not passed, but perfected:
Who tower up to mystical full bloom
From self, as from a known alchemic tomb;
Who out of wrong
Run forth with laughter and a broken thong;
Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant
Of peace anticipant ”

“ Will in your sight some penance do for man,
Poor lagging man, content to be
Sick with the impact of eternity,
Who might keep step with you in the low grass,
Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass! ”

“ The Japanese Anemone All summer the breath of the roses around
Exhales with a delicate passionate sound;
And when from a trellis, in holiday places,
They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces,
A lad in the lane must slacken his paces. ”

“ Thrice fairer than their life the life here battling in the van,
The tragic gleam, the mist and grime,
The dread endearing stain of time,
The sullied heart of man.
Mine is the clotted sunshine, a bubble in the sky,
That where it dare not enter steals in shrouded passion by ”

“ And strange, if in Thy mercy's sum,
Excluded man alone decay.
I ask no triumph, ask no joy,
Save leave to live, in law's employ.
As to a weed, to me but give
Thy sap! lest aye inoperative
Here in the Pit my strength shall be:
And still
Help me endure the Pit, until
Thou wilt not have forgotten me. ”

“ Long, long alone she loves to pace,
And find a music in this place
As in a minster choir.
O names of awe and rapture! O deeds of legendry!
Still is it most of joy within your altered pale to be,
Whose very ills I fain would slake
Mine angels are, and help to make
In Hell a Heaven for me.
-79-
Florentin A.D. MDCCCXC
Heart all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright
On wild little waters floating half of an April night,
Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light,
Dear and stainless heart of a boy! ”

“ The College is a century and a half older than the upper part of its chief entrance gate, and the once monastic bell is much older than either. "The Tom Tower [was] finished in November, 1682. In this was hung the bell called Great Tom of Christ Church, which had originally belonged to Osney Abbey.... From that time to this, it has rung its one hundred and one strokes every night at nine, as a signal that all students should be within their College walls. It need hardly be said that the signal is not obeyed!" ”

“ Down the blossomed aisle of April it is dread to walk alone;
For there the intangible is nigh, the lost is ever-during;
And who would suffer again beneath a too divine alluring,
Keen as the ancient drift of sleep on dying faces blown? ”

“ From whose young hands she bears the Grail away.
All glad, all great! Truer because thou wert,
I am and must be; and in thy known light
Go down to dust, content with this my day.
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A Footpath Morality Along the Hills, height unto height
Tosses the dappled light,
Rills in a torrent flow,
And cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow.
Young winds nothing can quell
Scale the wild-chestnut citadel,
Again to make
Its thousand faëry white pagodas shake. ”

“ Writ in my Lord Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion How life hath cheapen'd, and how blank
The Worlde is! like a fen
Where long ago unstainèd sank
The starrie gentlemen:
Since Marston Moor and Newbury drank
King Charles his gentlemen. ”

“ Oxford and its Colleges: Christ Church, pp. 205-206.
The Old Dial of Corpus: P. 153.
The great Dial in the quadrangle of Corpus Christi College was not put up until 1605,—too late to have been contemporary with either Erasmus or Pole. The author discovered the error several years ago, but has never known how to correct it except by this caution. "Osney Bell" is Great Tom (see just above) : Christ Church being next neighbour to Corpus; but Tom may or may not have been in place and condition to ring for curfew in the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. ”

“ London St. Peter-ad-Vincula: P. 161.
St. Peter-ad-Vincula is the ancient and sadly appropriate dedication of the Church near the Beauchamp Tower and the site of the scaffold. The vaults are under the chancel.
York Stairs: P. 169.
Inigo Jones' Water Gate, standing on the Embankment at the foot of Villiers Street, Strand, now a long way from the river, is still called York Stairs. It is the sole surviving appanage of the great town-house of the seventeenth-century Dukes of Buckingham. ”

“ P. 64.
It is perhaps too daring to force into Greek forms any sentiment so dead against the Greek spirit of determinism.
The Acknowledgment: P. 66.
"The Prætor." Brutus in Shakespeare, if not the historical Brutus.
The Cherry Bough: P. 70.
"Si quis adhuc isthic meminit Nasonis adempti,
Et superest sine me nomen in urbe meum."
Tristia, Lib. III, El. X.
"Atque aliquis vestrum, Nasonis nomine dicto,
Deponat lacrymis pocula mista suis."
Idem, Lib. V, El. IV.
A Talisman: P. 87.
Many years after these lines were in print, it was pointed out to the author by a friend, a student of St. ”