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I

SONNETS

Table of Contents

I

Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald

And you my mother the Valley of Arun sing.

Here am I homeward from my wandering

Here am I homeward and my heart is healed.

You my companions whom the World has tired

Come out to greet me. I have found a face

More beautiful than Gardens; more desired

Than boys in exile love their native place.

Lift up your hearts in Gumber, laugh the Weald

And you most ancient Valley of Arun sing.

Here am I homeward from my wandering,

Here am I homeward and my heart is healed.

If I was thirsty, I have heard a spring.

If I was dusty, I have found a field.

II

I was like one that keeps the deck by night

Bearing the tiller up against his breast;

I was like one whose soul is centred quite

In holding course although so hardly prest,

And veers with veering shock now left now right,

And strains his foothold still and still makes play

Of bending beams until the sacred light

Shows him high lands and heralds up the day.

But now such busy work of battle past

I am like one whose barque at bar at last

Comes hardly heeling down the adventurous breeze;

And entering calmer seas,

I am like one that brings his merchandise

To Californian skies.

III

Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning;

The Summer dark is but the dawn of day.

The last of sunset fades into the morning;

The morning calls you from the dark away.

The holy mist, the white mist of the morning

Was wreathing upward on my lonely way.

The way was waiting for your own adorning

That should complete the broad adornéd day.

Rise up and do begin the day’s adorning;

The little eastern clouds are dapple grey:

There will be wind among the leaves to-day;

It is the very promise of the morning.

Lux Tua Via Mea: your light’s my way— Then do rise up and make it perfect day.

IV

The Winter Moon has such a quiet car

That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.

She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest

And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star

Because the nights are silent do not wake

But there shall tremble through the general earth,

And over you, a quickening and a birth.

The Sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

The latest born of all the days shall creep

To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;

And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,

And smile at the new world and make it dear

With living murmurs more than dreams are deep;

Silence is dead, my dawn, the morning’s here.

V

Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose

The Rose of the World in laughter’s garden-bed

Where Souls of men on faith secure are fed

And spirits immortal keep their pleasure-close.

Whatever moisture nourishes the Rose,

The burning Rose of the world, for me the same

To-day for me the spring without a name

Content or Grace or Laughter overflows.

This is that water from the Fount of Gold

Water of Youth and washer out of cares

Which Raymond of Saragossa sought of old

And finding in the mountain, unawares,

Returned to hear an ancient story told

To Bramimond, his love, beside the marble stairs.

VI

Youth gave you to me, but I’ll not believe

That Youth will, taking his quick self, take you.

Youth’s all our Truth: he cannot so deceive.

He has our graces, not our ownselves too.

He still compares with time when he’ll be spent,

By human doom enhancing what we are;

Enriches us with rare experiment,

Lends arms to leagured Age in Time’s rough war.

Look! This Youth in us is an Old Man taking

A Boy to make him wiser than his days.

So is our old Youth our young Age’s making:

So rich in time our final debt he pays.

Then with your quite young arms do you me hold

And I will still be young when all the World’s grown old.

VII

Mortality is but the Stuff you wear

To show the better on the imperfect sight.

Your home is surely with the changeless light

Of which you are the daughter and the heir.

For as you pass, the natural life of things

Proclaims the Resurrection: as you pass

Remembered summer shines across the grass

And somewhat in me of the immortal sings.

You were not made for memory, you are not

Youth’s accident I think but heavenly more;

Moulding to meaning slips my pen’s poor blot

And opening wide that long forbidden door

Where stands the Mother of God, your exemplar.

How beautiful, how beautiful you are!

VIII

Not for the luckless buds our roots may bear

Now all in bloom, now seared and cankered lying

Will I entreat you, lest they should compare

Foredoomed humanity with the fall of flowers.

Hold thou with me the chaste communion rare

And touch with life this mortal case of ours:

You’re lifted up beyond the power of dying:

I die, as bounded things die everywhere.

You’re voiced companionship, I’m silence lonely;

You’re stuff, I’m void; you’re living, I’m decay.

I fall, I think, to-night and ending only;

You rise, I know, through still advancing day.

And knowing living gift were life for me

In narrow room of rhyme I fixed it certainly.

IX

That which is one they shear and make it twain

Who would Love’s light and dark discriminate:

His pleasure is one essence with his pain,

Even his desire twin brother to his hate.

With him the foiled attempt is half achieving;

And being mastered, to be armed a lord;

And doubting every chance is still believing;

And losing all one’s own is all reward.

I am acquainted with misfortune’s fortune,

And better than herself her dowry know:

For she that is my fortune and misfortune,

Making me hapless, makes me happier so:

In which conceit, as older men may prove,

Lies manifest the very core of Love.

X

Shall any man for whose strong love another

Has thrown away his wealth and name in one,

Shall he turn mocker of a more than brother

To slight his need when his adventure’s done?

Or shall a breedless boy whose mother won him

In great men’s great concerns his little place

Turn when his farthing honours come upon him

To mock her yeoman air and conscious grace?

Then mock me as you do my narrow scope,

For you it was put out this light of mine:

Wrongfully wrecked my new adventured hope,

Wasted my wordy wealth, spilt my rich wine,

Made my square ship within a league of shore

Alas! To be entombed in seas and seen no more.

XI

They that have taken wages of things done

When sense abused has blocked the doors of sense,

They that have lost their heritage of the sun,

Their laughter and their holy innocence;

They turn them now to this thing, now to t’other,

For anchor hold against swift-eddying time,

Some to that square of earth which was their mother,

And some to noisy fame, and some to rhyme.

But I to that far morning where you stood

In fullness of the body, with your hands

Reposing on your walls, before your lands,

And all, together, making one great good:

Then did I cry “For this my birth was meant.

These are my use, and this my sacrament!”

XII

Beauty that Parent is to deathless Rhyme

Was Manhood’s maker: you shall bear a Son,

Till Daughters linked adown admiring time

Fulfil the mother, handing Beauty on.

You shall by breeding make Life answer yet,

In Time’s despite, Time’s jeer that men go void;

Your stamp of heaven shall be more largely set

Than my one joy, ten thousand times enjoyed.

The glories of our state and its achievement,

Which wait their passing, shall not pass away.

I will extend our term beyond bereavement,

And launch our date into a dateless day.

For you shall make recórd, and when that’s sealed

In Beauty made immortal, all is healed.

XIII

What are the names for Beauty? Who shall praise

God’s pledge he can fulfil His creatures’ eyes?

Or what strong words of what creative phrase

Determine Beauty’s title in the skies?

But I will call you Beauty Personate,

Ambassadorial Beauty, and again

Beauty triumphant, Beauty in the Gate,

Beauty salvation of the souls of men.

For Beauty was not Beauty till you came

And now shall Beauty mean the sign you are;

A Beacon burnt above the Dawn, a flame

Like holy Lucifer the Morning Star,

Who latest hangs in Heaven and is the gem

On all the widowéd Night’s expectant Diadem.

XIV

Love wooing Honour, Honour’s love did win

And had his pleasure all a summer’s day.

Not understanding how the dooms begin,

Love wooing Honour, wooed her life away.

Then wandered he a full five years unrest

Until, one night, this Honour that had died

Came as he slept, in youth grown glorified

And smiling like the Saints whom God has blest.

But when he saw her on the clear night shine

Serene with more than mortal light upon her,

The boy that careless was of things divine,

Small Love, turned penitent to worship Honour.

So Love can conquer Honour: when that’s past

Dead Honour risen outdoes Love at last.

XV

Your life is like a little winter’s day

Whose sad sun rises late to set too soon;

You have just come—why will you go away,

Making an evening of what should be noon.

Your life is like a little flute complaining

A long way off, beyond the willow trees:

A long way off, and nothing left remaining

But memory of a music on the breeze.

Your life is like a pitiful leave-taking

Wept in a dream before a man’s awaking,

A Call with only shadows to attend:

A Benediction whispered and belated

Which has no fruit beyond a consecrated,

A consecrated silence at the end.

XVI

Now shall the certain purpose of my soul

By blind and empty things controlled be,

And mine audacious course to that far goal

Fall short, confessing mere mortality.

Limbs shall have movement and ignore their living,

Brain wit, that he his quickness may deny.

My promised hope forswears in act of giving,

Time eats me up and makes my words a lie.

And mine unbounded dream has found a bar,

And I must worst deceit of best things bear.

Now dawn’s but daybreak, seas but waters are,

Night darkness only, all wide heaven just air:

And you to whom these fourteen lines I tell,

My beauty, my desire: but not my love as well.

XVII

Because my faltering feet may fail to dare

The first descendant of the steps of Hell

Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.

I too must pass into the misty hollow

Where all our living laughter stops: and hark!

The tiny stuffless voices of the dark

Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:

Give me the Word and I’ll attempt it well.

Say it’s the little winking of an eye

Which in that issue is uncurtained quite;

A little sleep that helps a moment by

Between the thin dawn and the large daylight.

Ah! tell me more than yet was hoped of men;

Swear that’s true now, and I’ll believe it then.

XVIII

When you to Acheron’s ugly water come

Where darkness is and formless mourners brood

And down the shelves of that distasteful flood

Survey the human rank in order dumb.

When the pale dead go forward, tortured more

By nothingness and longing than by fire,

Which bear their hands in suppliance with desire,

With stretched desire for the ulterior shore.

Then go before them like a royal ghost

And tread like Egypt or like Carthage crowned;

Because in your Mortality the most

Of all we may inherit has been found—

Children for memory: the Faith for pride.

Good land to leave: and young Love satisfied.

XIX