Maurice Baring

“ Quickens our need.{20}
All is reborn, but never any Spring
Can bring back this;
Nor any fullness of midsummer bring
The voice we miss.
The smiling eyes shall smile on us no more;
The laughter clear,
Too far away on the forbidden shore,
We shall not hear.
Bereft of these until the day we die,
We both must dwell;
Alone, alone, and haunted by the cry:
“Hail and farewell!”
Yet when the scythe of Death shall near us hiss
Through the cold air,
Then on the shuddering marge of the abyss
They will be there.
They will be there to lift us from sheer space
And empty night ”

“ You met there face to face
Those you had never known, but whom you knew;
Knights of the Table Round,
And all the very brave, the very true,
With chivalry crowned;
The captains rare,
Courteous and brave beyond our human air;
Those who had loved and suffered overmuch,
Now free from the world’s touch. ”

“ And all that bears the signature of ease,
The plunge of ships that dance before the breeze
The flight across the twilight of the crane:
And all that joyous is, and young, and free,
That tastes of morning and the laughing surf;
The dawn, the dew, the newly turned-up turf,
The sudden smile, the unexpressive prayer,
The artless art, the untaught dignity,—
You speak them in the passage of an air.
{40}
WAGNER
O strange awakening to a world of gloom,
And baffled moonbeams and delirious stars,
Of souls that moan behind forbidden bars,
And waving forests swept by wings of doom ”

“ Without them the awakening world is dark
With dust and mire;
Yet as they went they flung to us a spark,
A thread of fire.
To guide us while beneath the sombre skies
Faltering we tread,
Until for us like morning stars shall rise
The deathless dead. ”

“ Like the soft sun that shines through April showers,
Leans from a fairyland of twinkling towers,
And beckons me to an enchanted stair.
Your eyes, your eyes, divide me from my sleep;
The echo of your laughter makes me weep,
You fill the measureless world, you frailest thing! ”

“ The fire-flies, and the downy owl’s too-whoo,
Thy Aziola, Shelley, plaintive still.
The lisp of Baiæ’s phosphorescent foam;
And Venice like a bubble made of dew,
A shell transfigured with the rainbow’s hue;
The Appian Way beneath a sullen sky,
(The shepherd’s pipe is like a seagull’s cry)
And in a silver rift, eternal Rome.
{32}
SEVILLE
The orange blossoms in the Alcazar,
Where roses and syringas are in flower;
The blinding glory of the morning hour;
The eyes that gleam behind a twisted bar;
The women on the balconies,—a smile ”

“ We turn to speak and find a vacant chair.
Something is broken which we cannot mend.
God has done more than take away a friend
In taking you; for all that we have left
Is bruised and irremediably bereft.
There is none like you. ”

“ Of busy markets; alien to the toys
That dazzle others, firing them with greed;
And, like a seagull, lost upon the land,
You long for the large breakers and the sand,
The strong salt air, the surf, the drifting weed.
{50}
IV
The world was waiting for the thunder’s birth,
To-day, and cloud was piled on sullen cloud:
Then strong, and straight, and clean, and cool, and loud
The rain came down, and drenched the stifling earth.
The heavy clouds have lifted and rolled by ”

“ I saw that light, I heard those starry sounds.
{42}
PHÈDRE
Her gesture is the soaring of a hymn,
Her voice has robbed the spoil of Hybla’s bees;
And like the frozen music of a frieze,
Calm, as she moves majestic, every limb. ”

“ They sing the joy of love that lasts a day:
The sorrow of love that lasts a whole life long.
{36}
HARVEST IN RUSSIA
The breeze has come at last. The day was long;
And in the lustrous air the dark bats fly ”