Richard Le Gallienne

“ To the wide sea of air a green and welcome coast.
I seek a god, old tree: accept my worship, thou!
All other gods have failed me always in my need;
I hang my votive song beneath thy temple bough,
Unto thy strength I cry—Old monster, be my creed!
Give me to clasp this earth with feeding roots like thine,
To mount yon heaven with such star-aspiring head,
Fill full with sap and buds this shrunken life of mine,
And from my boughs oh! might such stalwart sons be shed.
With loving cheek pressed close against thy horny breast,
I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins ”

“ Fame blows his silver trumpet o'er thy sleep,
And Love stands broken by thy lonely lyre;
So pure the fire God gave this clay to keep,
The clay must still seem holy for the fire.
Poor dupes of sense, we deem the close-shut eye,
So faithful servant of his golden tongue,
Still holds the hoarded lights of earth and sky,
We deem the mouth still full of sleeping song.
We mourn as though the great good song he gave
Passed with the singer's own informing breath:
Ah, golden book, for thee there is no grave,
Thine is a rhyme that shall not taste of death. ”

“ These nerves I fain would shatter, and this heart
I fain would break—this heart that, traitor-like,
Beats on with foolish and elastic beat:
If, after all, this life I waste and kill
Should still be thine, may still be lived for thee!
And this the dreadful trial of my love,
This silence and this blank that makes me mad,
That I be man to-day of all the days
My one poor hope of meeting thee again—
If Death be Love, and God's great purpose kind! ”

“ Nor rind so hard but that a touch so soft can part,
And Spring's first baby-bud an easy passage cleaves.
I picture thee within with dainty satin sides,
Where all the long day through the sleeping dryad dreams,
But when the moon bends low and taps thee thrice she glides,
Knowing the fairy knock, to bask within her beams.
And all the long night through, for him with eyes and ears,
She sways within thine arms and sings a fairy tune,
Till, startled with the dawn, she softly disappears,
And sleeps and dreams again until the rising moon. ”

“ To seek thy friendly shade and doze about thy roots—
Till with the setting sun they turn them once more home;
And, ere the moon dawns, for a brief enchanted space,
Weary with million miles, the sore-spent star-beams come,
And moths and bats hold witches' sabbath in the place.
And then I picture thee some bloodstained Holyrood,
Dread haunted palace of the bat and owl, whence steal,
Shrouded all day, lost murdered spirits of the wood,
And fright young happy nests with homeless hoot and squeal. ”

“ Fame shrilled his song, Love carolled it, and Grief
Blessed it with tears within her lonely house.
Fame loved him well, because he loved not Fame,
But Peace and Love, all other things before,
A man was he ere yet he was a name,
His song was much because his love was more.
PROFESSOR MINTO Nature, that makes Professors all day long,
And, filling idle souls with idle song,
Turns out small Poets every other minute,
Made earth for men—but seldom puts men in it. ”

“ ON MR. GLADSTONE'S RETIREMENT The world grows Lilliput, the great men go;
If greatness be, it wears no outer sign;
No more the signet of the mighty line
Stamps the great brow for all the world to know.
Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo!
Fragments and fractions of the old divine,
Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design,
Dapper and undistinguished—such we grow.
No more the leonine heroic head,
The ruling arm, great heart, and kingly eye ”

“ As some grim fortress with a princess-pearl inside,
Where savage guardian faces beard the bastioned keep:
So hard a rind, old tree, shielding so soft a heart—
A woman's heart of tender little nestling leaves ”

“ Then, maybe, dangling from thy gloomy gallows boughs,
A human corpse swings, mournful, rattling bones and chains—
His eighteenth century flesh hath fattened nineteenth century cows—
Ghastly Aeolian harp fingered of winds and rains.
Poor Rizpah comes to reap each newly-fallen bone
That once thrilled soft, a little limb, within her womb;
And mark yon alchemist, with zodiac-spangled zone,
Wrenching the mandrake root that fattens in the gloom. ”

“ And giving, in sweet exchange, its hawthorn and daisy breath:
And the man awoke with a sob—
But the woman dreamed.
NATURAL RELIGION Up through the mystic deeps of sunny air
I cried to God—'O Father, art Thou there?'
Sudden the answer, like a flute, I heard:
It was an angel, though it seemed a bird.
FAITH REBORN 'The old gods pass,' the cry goes round;
'Lo! how their temples strew the ground';
Nor mark we where, on new-fledged wings,
Faith, like the phoenix, soars and sings. ”

“ Great is advertisement! 'tis almost fate,
But, little mushroom-men, of puff-ball fame,
Ah, do you dream to be mistaken great
And to be really great are just the same? ”

“ She calls me in the wind's soft song,
And with the flowers she comes again. ”

“ To-day, to-morrow, and ever from of old,
Th' Almighty God, and King of every land.
Man 'neath his foot, and woman 'neath his hand,
Kneel prostrate: he, 'tis meant to symbolise,
Steals our strong men and our sweet women buys. ”