Robert Bridges

“ And read sweet poems the whole day long:
Unseen as we lie in our haybuilt home.
O life is delight when June is come.
[Pg 142]
15
The pinks along my garden walks
Have all shot forth their summer stalks,
Thronging their buds ’mong tulips hot,
And blue forget-me-not.
Their dazzling snows forth-bursting soon
Will lade the idle breath of June:
And waken thro’ the fragrant night
To steal the pale moonlight.
The nightingale at end of May
Lingers each year for their display;
Till when he sees their blossoms blown,
He knows the spring is flown. ”

“ JUBILEE-SONG, FOR MUSIC, 1897
Hark! The world is full of thy praise,
England’s Queen of many days;
Who, knowing how to rule the free,
Hast given a crown to monarchy.
Honour, Truth and growing Peace
Follow Britannia’s wide increase,
And Nature yield her strength unknown
To the wisdom born beneath thy throne!
In wisdom and love firm is thy fame:
Enemies bow to revere thy name:
The world shall never tire to tell
Praise of the queen that reignèd well. ”

“ ED. Heavy is the green of the fields, heavy the trees
With foliage hang, drowsy the hum of bees
In the thundrous air: the crowded scents lie low:
Thro’ tangle of weeds the river runneth slow. AUGUST
BA. A reaper with dusty shoon and hat of straw
On the yellow field, his scythe in his armës braw:
Beneath the tall grey trees resting at noon
From sweat and swink with scythe and dusty shoon. SEPTEMBER
ED. Earth’s flaunting flower of passion fadeth fair
To ripening fruit in sunlit veils of the air,
As the art of man makes wisdom to glorify
The beauty and love of life born else to die. ”

“ The farms are all astir,
And every labourer
Has doffed his winter coat;
And how with specks of white
They dot the brown hillside,
Or jaunt and sing outright
As by their teams they stride.
They sing to feel the Sun
Regain his wanton strength;
To know the year at length
Rewards their labour done;
To see the rootless stake
They set bare in the ground,
Burst into leaf, and shake
Its grateful scent around. [Pg 63]
Ah now an evil lot
Is his, who toils for gain,
Where crowded chimneys stain
The heavens his choice forgot ”

“ With the leaping trout and the gleam of the daffodils. APRIL
BA. Then laugheth the year; with flowers the meads are bright;
The bursting branches are tipped with flames of light:
The landscape is light; the dark clouds flee above,
And the shades of the land are a blue that is deep as love. MAY
ED. But if you have seen a village all red and old
In cherry-orchards a-sprinkle with white and gold,
By a hawthorn seated, or a witchelm flowering high,
A gay breeze making riot in the waving rye! JUNE
BA. Then night retires from heaven ”

“ Torn and scattered around:
Far out afield they lie,
In the watery furrows die,
In grassy pools of the flood they sink and drown,
Green-golden, orange, vermilion, golden and brown,
The high year’s flaunting crown
Shattered and trampled down.
The day is done: the tired land looks for night:
She prays to the night to keep
In peace her nerves of delight:
While silver mist upstealeth silently,
And the broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky
Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield, [Pg 156]
And in her tranquil light
Sleep falls on forest and field. ”

“ Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art. [Pg 190]
Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn. ”

“ Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness ”

“ The birds have stayed to sing;
No covert yet their fairy harbour yields.
When cometh Spring?
Ah! in their tiny throats what songs unborn
Are quenched each morn.
The lenten lilies, through the frost that push,
Their yellow heads withhold:
The woodland willow stands a lonely bush
Of nebulous gold;
There the Spring-goddess cowers in faint attire
Of frightened fire.
[Pg 181]
8
ASIAN BIRDS
In this May-month, by grace
of heaven, things shoot apace.
The waiting multitude
of fair boughs in the wood,
How few days have arrayed
their beauty in green shade
What have I seen or heard? ”

“ Dispute for the roosts; and from the unseen nation
A babel of tongues, like running water unceasing,
Makes live the wood, the flocking cries increasing, [Pg 253]
Wrangling discordantly, incessantly,
While falls the night on them self-occupied;
The long dark night, that lengthens slow,
Deepening with Winter to starve grass and tree,
And soon to bury in snow
The Earth, that, sleeping ’neath her frozen stole,
Shall dream a dream crept from the sunless pole
Of how her end shall be. ”

“ Above the willows, gurgling thro’ the piles:
Nothing is changed, and yet how changed are we!
—What can bring Godfrey to the Muses’ bower? GODFREY
What but brings you? The festal day of the year; [Pg 224]
To live in boyish memories for an hour;
See and be seen: tho’ you come seldom here. RICHARD
Dread of the pang it was, fear to behold
What once was all myself, that kept me away. GODFREY
You miss new pleasures coveting the old. RICHARD
They need have prudence, who in courage lack ”

“ Thy firm, pale hands across thy chest disposing.
So quiet! doth the change content thee?—Death, whither hath he taken thee?
To a world, do I think, that rights the disaster of this?
The vision of which I miss,
Who weep for the body, and wish but to warm thee and awaken thee?
Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us
To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,
Unwilling, alone we embark,
And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us. ”

“ That runs out thro’ the hawse, the clank of the wind
Winding the rusty cable inch by inch,
Till half I wonder if they have no care,
Those sailors, that my glass is brought to bear
On all their doings, if I vex them not
On every petty task of their rough lot
Prying and spying, searching every craft
From painted truck to gunnel, fore and aft,—
Thro’ idle Sundays as I have watch’d them lean
Long hours upon the rail, or neath its screen
Prone on the deck to lie outstretch’d at length,
Sunk in renewal of their wearied strength. ”

“ In the dawning of the day.
[Pg 243]
10
SEPTUAGESIMA
Now all the windows with frost are blinded,
As punctual day with greedy smile
Lifts like a Cyclops evil-minded
His ruddy eyeball over the isle.
In an hour ’tis paled, in an hour ascended
A dazzling light in the cloudless grey.
Steel is the ice; the snow unblended
Is trod to dust on the white highway.
The lambkins frisk; the shepherd is melting
Drink for the ewes with a fire of straw:
The red flames leap at the wild air pelting
Bitterly thro’ the leafless shaw. ”

“ Cold is the winter day, misty and dark:
The sunless sky with faded gleams is rent;
And patches of thin snow outlying, mark
The landscape with a drear disfigurement.
The trees their mournful branches lift aloft:
The oak with knotty twigs is full of trust,
With bud-thronged bough the cherry in the croft ”

“ I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents:
A honeymoon delight,—
A joy of love at sight,
That ages in an hour:—
My song be like a flower! ”

“ The soil, the smutch, the toil and ache and wear,
The grinding enginry of blood and breath,
Pain’s random darts, the heartless spade of death;
All is but grief, and heavily we call
On the last terror for the end of all. ”

“ What is richer than thoughts that stray
From reading of poems that smoothly flow?
What is solemn like the delay
Of concords linked in a music slow
Dying thro’ vaulted aisles away?
—If it should be what best I know!
What gives faith to me when I pray,
Setteth my heart with joy aglow,
Filleth my song with fancies gay, [Pg 148]
Maketh the heaven to which I go,
The gladness of earth that lasteth for aye? ”

“ Drip heavy tears upon her downcast head;
And bleed unseen wounds that no sun staunches,
For the year’s sun is dead.
And dead leaves wrap the fruits that summer planted:
And birds that love the South have taken wing. ”

“ Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie
Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out
The small wrens glide
With a happy note of cheer,
And yellow amorets flutter above and about,
Gay, familiar in fear. ”

“ The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:
The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,
Is fallen back in the west
To couch with the sinking sun. ”

“ The birds that sing on autumn eves
Among the golden-tinted leaves,
Are but the few that true remain
Of budding May’s rejoicing train.
Like autumn flowers that brave the frost,
And make their show when hope is lost,
These ’mong the fruits and mellow scent
Mourn not the high-sunned summer spent.
Their notes thro’ all the jocund spring
Were mixed in merry musicking:
They sang for love the whole day long,
But now their love is all for song.
Now each hath perfected his lay
To praise the year that hastes away:
They sit on boughs apart, and vie
In single songs and rich reply: [Pg 151] ”

“ Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art; ”

“ My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:
My desire and thy desire ”

“ POEMS
[Pg 210]
[Pg 211]
NEW POEMS
ECLOGUE I
THE MONTHS
BASIL AND EDWARD
Man hath with man on earth no holier bond
Than that the Muse weaves with her dreamy thread:
Nor e’er was such transcendent love more fond
Than that which Edward unto Basil led,
Wandering alone across the woody shires
To hear the living voice of that wide heart,
To see the eyes that read the world’s desires,
And touch the hand that wrote the roving rhyme. ”

“ What music is like this,
where each note is a kiss?
The golden willows lift
their boughs the sun to sift:
Their sprays they droop to screen
the sky with veils of green,
A floating cage of song,
where feathered lovers throng. ”

“ When first we met we did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master; ”

“ She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee;
Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee,
Already they watch the path thy feet shall take:
Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
And if thou tarry her,—if this could be,—
She cometh herself, O heart, to be loved, to thee;
For thee would unashamèd herself forsake:
Awake to be loved, my heart, awake, awake!
Awake, the land is scattered with light, and see,
Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree: [Pg 114]
And blossoming boughs of April in laughter shake ”

“ But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow’s line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding. ”

“ When Death to either shall come,—
I pray it be first to me,—
Be happy as ever at home,
If so, as I wish, it be. ”

“ When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town; ”

“ The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled
Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun
Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;
The short days pass unwelcomed one by one. ”

“ Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,
It leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake
The o’ertaken moon. ”

“ Raking the boughs and the leaves rending,
And whistleth to the descending
Blows of his icy flail.
Gold and snow he mixeth in spite,
And whirleth afar; as away on his winnowing flight
He passeth, and all again for awhile is bright.
[Pg 203]
17
FIRST SPRING MORNING A CHILD’S POEM
Look! Look! the spring is come:
O feel the gentle air,
That wanders thro’ the boughs to burst
The thick buds everywhere!
The birds are glad to see
The high unclouded sun:
Winter is fled away, they sing,
The gay time is begun. ”

“ There is a hill beside the silver Thames,
Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine:
And brilliant underfoot with thousand gems
Steeply the thickets to his floods decline. ”

“ Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristen’d smile, [Pg 261]
That shadows neither love nor guile,
But shameless will and power immense,
In secret sensuous innocence. ”

“ Altho’ to-morrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking. ”

“ So sweet love seemed that April morn,
When first we kissed beside the thorn,
So strangely sweet, it was not strange
We thought that love could never change. ”

“ In his fair house of mirth and dream:
Whose labour irks his ageing heart,
His heart that wearies of desire,
Being so fugitive a part
Of what so slowly must expire.
She in her agelong toil and care
Persistent, wearies not nor stays,
Mocking alike hope and despair.
—Ah, but she too can mock our praise,
Enchanted on her brighter days,
Days, that the thought of grief refuse,
Days that are one with human art,
Worthy of the Virgilian muse,
Fit for the gaiety of Mozart.
[Pg 247]
12
Riding adown the country lanes
One day in spring,
Heavy at heart with all the pains
Of man’s imagining ”

“ And see for centuries the boys at play: [Pg 226]
And ’neath its boughs, on some fine holiday,
Old men shall prate as these.’ Come see the game. GODFREY
Yes, if you will. ’Tis all one picture fair. RICHARD
Made in a mirror, and who looketh there
Must see himself. Is not a dream the same? GODFREY
Life is a dream. ”