Walter Crane

“ There good and ill, brothers and bitter foes,
Do strike the balance of man’s joys and woes;
And in the traffic of the world’s exchange
Oft ill as good, and good as evil goes: XCVII
Two knights that battle for Truth’s painted targe,
With flashing spears upon time’s river marge,
Where, like the rushing waters, rise their steeds,
And crash together in tremendous charge. XCVIII
Their broken harness lies upon time’s plain,
Their wars’ receding tide doth cast the slain,
As shifts the battle ground from age to age,
And earth its grim memorials retain. ”

“ My soul lay; watching for the eyes of morn;
As from a dying universe adrift,
A naked life—to what dim world new born? VIII
All former things had passed, the sea’s salt tears
From Youths’ frail ship had washed false hopes and fears,
And relics, treasured once, bestrewed the sand,
Wrapped in the clinging weed the seamaid wears. IX
The bodies of lost Faith and Love, outcast,
Spurned by the waves, and clinging to the mast,
Were flung upon the shore, mid drift and wreck,—
Time’s fragile shells, which frailer lives outlast. ”

“ With worth of life and love gone by,
What makes the world?
[144]
RONDEAU—SEED-TIME
THE field is wide, broadcast the seed
Of human hope and human need,
As, to and fro, from end to end,
The furrows of the world ye wend
Its legioned hungry mouths to feed.
Though lowering o’er the landscape bend
The brows of winter, rains descend,
And tempest sowings whirlwinds breed,
The field is wide.
Sowing, ye shall reap indeed
Golden grain, or grisly weed,
Or dragon’s teeth, that in the end,
Perchance, in golden ears depend,
Sunward, as our path doth lead,
The field is wide. ”

“ Thine image up upon a rock to greet
All comers, shaking from their wandering feet
The dust of old world bondage, to forget
The tyrannies of fraud and force, nor fret,
Where men are equal, slavish chain unmeet,
Nor bitter bread of discontent to eat,
Here, where all races of the earth are met?
America, beneath thy banded flag
Of old it was thy boast that men were free
To think, to speak, to meet, to come and go.
What meaneth then the gibbet and the gag
Held up to Labour’s sons who would not see
Fair Freedom but a mask—a hollow show? ”

“ From these, and other tyrants, free
To win its bread—to win, I wot,
Vine, and fig, and breathing plot,
Joy in work, and joy in leisure,
Love and art to fill life’s measure,
Force and fraud might vainly rage
To see, new born, the golden age.
Sailing thus, as thought doth steer,
[85] With the moon through cloud and clear,
Fancy flutt’ring at the prow,
Sirens singing soft and low,
From the opal shores and streams,
Where they dye the cloth of dreams—
From the present and the past
Have I touched the land at last!
Voyaging the world around
Yet anchored still to English ground. ”

“ Robed in the kindling splendour of the sun,
Renascent from the sea of crystal air, CXXVI
That limpid broke on her rejoicing shore,
Where life’s reviving stream welled evermore
From Nature’s fount, through teeming veins that bred
Man’s countless kin from one redundant core. CXXVII
I saw the dragons slain of lust and greed,
Of gold and power, that waste to serve their need
Poor human lives; and till earth’s fruitful fields
With fire and sword, and bloody vengeance breed. ”

“ Who pain, and bliss, and passion, hope, despair,
Casts in life’s cup, she, cunning, mixes fair,
And gives, as to a babe, man’s helpless lips,
Drawing delicious poison unaware. CVIII
Then what is life? Well might we ask again—
A spirit from the cup that fills the brain
With teeming images of love and power,
And high desires ’tis impotent to gain? CIX
Protean life which man doth vain pursue
From youth’s green meads to age’s mountains blue—
The painted fly a breathless child doth chase—
Through all its changing shapes to change but true: CX ”

“ The cup of life for love to sip,
A glass of dreams in Hope’s blue eye.
So let the days and hours still fly,
Let Fortune flout, and Fame deny,
With feathered heel shall fancy trip—
What makes the world? ”

“ Trod by the feet of Time, as he doth go,
A labourer night and morn to reap and sow—
Who counts the glittering drops—the spheres that fall,
Or marvels they should hold such weight of woe?
[95]
XIX
Each drop a desert, or a battle-ground
Of life in its arena ringed around,
Where without quarter wears the endless war,
Till Death the hunter slips his famished hound. XX
Here, circling with the horses of the sun,
Man’s fateful race from day to day is run;
Bound in this narrow ring—his crown, his grave
Still as the world for each is lost or won. ”

“ Fasting I keep Love’s Lenten-tide so long.
[68]
VI
LOVE’S GARDEN
IN my heart’s garden, winter dark and bare,
Love sought for flowers to make a wreath for thee,
Which, since the sun was gone, he scarce might see
In all the waste, and Time was gardener there,
Who yet a little bloom will hardly spare,
But with remorseless hand still prunes away,
And still his scythe he sharpeneth every day;
So Love was left with empty hands to fare. ”

“ Or pride of rule, or curse of gold,
[136] With wasting care that makes youth old,
Do blind men’s eyes to all save gain,
And beauty pleads with them in vain?
Though greed would all the earth degrade
And see the world a market made,
And drive the peasant from his soil,
And lay the yoke of hopeless toil
Upon the millions seeking bread,
To art and love and beauty dead;
Not all has gone while these have hold
In some true hearts not bought and sold.
Though fallen, Aphrodité’s shrines
Still through the opal wave she shines,
Or, veiled in light doth sail the blue
Where breaks the foam in iris hue ”

“ The twisted net that holds all gain and loss
The birth-clothes cover, or the shroud doth fold. LXXXIX
The moving tapestry of human date,
Where lives for threads are crossed in love or hate,
Between the narrow beams of dark and day—
Time’s shifting loom, the toil of threefold fate. XC
At their eternal task the sisters dread,
Who spin and weave and shear the slender thread
With all its dyes, that doth sustain and fill
This tangled web from pole to pole outspread. ”

“ His grave a garden ’neath the cypress wood,
Stirred with the tongues his spirit understood,
And spake in deathless song that vivifies
Men’s souls made heavy with the sad world’s cries,
Still where the darkness hides the dragon brood
Of evil, and while yet innocent blood
Is shed, and truth and falsehood change their dyes. ”

“ And priestly nightmare that the soul doth fold.
There Giant Labour in his strength new-found,
Rejoicing, shall go forth to break new ground,
One brotherhood with Art and Knowledge clear;
To bridge the gulf of space and bring men near;
[7] With fruitful brain and hand to bring new birth
Of Titan forces to subdue the earth,
And from the willing hands of nature draw
New benefits, and, owning but her law,
Out of her treasury things tried and true,
In human faith and hope to build anew
Man’s shattered house, and paint his storied wall
For Life and Love, a heritage for all. ”

“ Where Life is Love, and blooms sweet Liberty.
O Bride of Light! Like Aphrodite rise
From rosy waves of morn that crystallize
Thy sacred image in their mirror, smooth
As sculpture of the shining limbs they soothe ”

“ America! shrink not from thy new guest;
For liberty was thine for best and worst:
How should her seed upon thy land be curst
Till her false friends as traitors stand confest?
Doth Freedom dwell where ruthless Kings of gain,
Like stealthy vampires, still on Labour feed,
Still free—to toil or starve on plenty’s plain?
Then what of Labour’s hope—the will to be
Equal, fraternal, knowing want nor greed,
Shrined in a peoples’ heart when states are free?
June, 1886.
[157]
FREEDOM IN AMERICA
WHERE is thy home, O Freedom? ”

“ And give us to the world’s annoy.
“Let Love be king in hour and place,
And give thy garden for his chase,
Set all with lilies fair and white,
And roses for his heart’s delight,
Both red, and crimson dark, and pale
Like snow that hidden fire doth veil:
Yea, give them on their thorny stem,
Before thy breath shalt shatter them,
That chaplets Love may bind for those
Who wander in his tangled close.”
Time, ceasing not his toil, far heard,
Gave back to Love this answering word:—
“Love, to Time dost thou come sueing? ”

“ And dayspring of new knowledge touched mine eyes,
That erst were sealed—as other books to me,
Until upon thy hills new light should rise: XI
Until my soul, new born, within this vale
Should learn of Nature in her age-worn book,
And strive, beyond the starry void, to scale
The dim unknown, or in truth’s glass to look
[48]
XII
On life, and life’s dark mystery which broods
And clings, a shadow, to the sad-eyed world ”

“ A holiest of holies—Love’s sweet home,
On whose white altar lies life’s bread and wine.
There oft, in saddened times and weary hours,
To secret sanctuary do I flee,
Where one sweet presence soothes, like breath of flowers,
To whom their incense rises ceaselessly ”

“ Hath risen on the world!
This hour a new age is begun—
A stainless scroll unfurled.
[59]
VIII
Old things have passed away—
The curse of gold, and gore;
The Law of Love all peoples sway,
And war shall be no more. IX
No more to joyless toil
Shall Labour’s hands be chained;
No more shall Fraud have power to spoil
Man’s equal rights regained. ”

“ Not all unmeet the brows of her to wreath,
Who with me bore the burden of the morn.
If yet the scarlet please not, on the corn,
Love’s blue is stedfast, and thy name in gold
Is writ by love’s wing-feather underneath. ”

“ Man is, but who can count his being’s cost?
Who metes the water from the pitcher lost?
The squandered corn upon the sower’s path?
Cast in time’s scale hath good or ill the most? CII
Each out of Babel answers for himself,
As justice he doth love, or gilded pelf:
Who in the school of ignorance should read
Truth’s tattered book on thriftless nature’s shelf?
[117]
CIII
Unlettered children, hopeless to the task,
And dumb before life’s riddles, still we ask;
But labour, sole, is answered—patient thought,
And science still doth nature make unmask. CIV
Ah! ”

“ A fountain in the forecourt sullen slept,
One wintry tree beside it, wind beswept,
And shorn of its last leaves, which strewed the stone,
Like one above the water, drooped and wept. XXXV
And at the threshold, on the shattered stair,
In raiment sad one sate as cloaked in care;
There, too, her sister shape in vernal green,
The lintel old did hang with garlands fair. XXXVI
“Who,” then I would have cried, “art thou that weep?
And why with mourning festal garlands heap?
Why thus, though kindred, are your hearts in twain! ”

“ The blue-breast bird of space his fan outspread,
And shook the starry splendour o’er my head—
A wood of eyes that wonder at the world,
Glassed in the world’s eyes’ wonder, scanned and read: XIII
Each burning orb that did the sky emblaze
Upon my spirit lone cast piercing gaze;
World beyond world enringed, and suns aflame
Shot from night’s spangled cloud their storm of rays. XIV
As doth the glass to one bright point intense
Draw the sun’s fervour to our shrinking sense ”

“ Love, with all thy debt accrueing?
[34] Time can give thee no renewing.
“Ask the hearts thy sceptre schooleth,
Seek the kings thy kingship ruleth,
Who is he that Time befooleth?
“Rest thee, Love, in thine own city,
But of my dominion quit ye,
Time is hard, and hath no pity.
“Erst for king didst thou disown me,
Wouldst thou o’er thy kingdom crown me? ”

“ That, erst its tenants, forth in triumph fare?
Bondsmen for Freedom, and the right denied
By fraud and force, in legal mask that bide,
Alike on Irish ground, or London’s square,
With violent hands on those, henceforth to bear
The crest of battle on the people’s side.
What! must ye learn the lesson still so late
That they who suffer for the common good
Stone walls confine not, and no chain doth hold,
Blind Tyranny? Whom these, like men, withstood:
Whose tenfold force flings back the iron gate,
Whose names upon the reddening morn are scrolled. ”

“ Where lies were coined in gold, and Craft was king. XXVIII
And still she flies from sacred fount, and school,
When man defiles, or doth his kind befool;
And still they wait, the halt, the lame, the blind,
Though Truth, the angel, troubleth not the pool. ”

“ Hark! in the wood thy voice, a lion, roars!
Beneath thy breath upon the parchèd hill,
Shudders the wasted grass, and shrieketh shrill,
[54] As though it feared thee: but thy spirit soars
To lash the fossil waves of hill and dale
Ye may not move, yet melted make appear
Their solid sides, enrobed in rains ye bear
Across the valley like a falling veil.
But, night or day, thy ceaseless song to me
Makes melody, and music wild and free,
And I rejoice to drink thy breath for ye
Do bring the sound and savour of the sea.
[55]
·THE·NEW·LIGHT·
AWAKE, O world! ”

“ He sought for Truth, and cried, “Where dost thou dwell?”
Ten thousand tongues replied, but none could tell:
They held their peace, and then the stones did cry—
“Lo! Truth sits naked by the wayside well.” ”

“ Who yet amid fair corn his sickle wields,
Though harvest’s done, and summer groweth old:
Well-storèd barns, and orchards he doth hold
Whose wealth against the steely winter shields.
Unto my feet the days, like full-eared sheaves,
Have fallen, one by one, time-bound and borne
To be the bread of Love through barren days;
E’en such dear heritage the sweet year leaves,
And life to live again Love’s night and morn
Whose light thou art, whose glory is their praise.
[75]
·PART·II·LATER·POEMS·
[76]
[77]
·A·HERALD·OF·SPRING
SWEET bird, what makes thee glad? ”