A thousand years
In a mummy's hand
A seed may lie.
Then, planted, spring
Into life again
Under sun and sky.

A thousand days
In a soul's dark ways
A word may wait.
But a touch at length
May arouse its strength
And the word proves – Fate.

WORLD-SORROW

(The Cry of the Modern)

World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.
Nothing there is of pain but echoes down
My breast with wan reverberance and pang,
And peaceless passes thro it evermore.
The struck bird's cry wounds my all-feeling blood
To pity that will not be solacèd,
Sounds on me like far pleas of the unborn
Against predestined days. A withering bud
Brews barrenness thro all the verdancy
Of Spring. And in a tear – tho anguish shape it
On the warm lid of joy – earth's Tragedy,
Whose curtain falls not for it has no end,
Comes mirrored to me as infinite Ill.

How shall I 'scape it! How, O how escape
The trooping of prayers lost upon the void,
Of hopes misborn and fading not to rest!
How shall I burn not with all vain-lit loves
That alway billow thro me their slow fire
Fed by the agony of new-broke hearts!
How loose me from too long commisery
For those whom unrequiting Time has given
To the altar of the aching world's unrest!
A grief immitigable to the Hand
Whose mystery of returning sun can heal
Winter away, seems here; a grief but calm
Of immortality can make forgiven!

For even as all the gleaming girth of stars
That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously
Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys
Life strews along her passing to the grave
Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death.
And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp
Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall His skill
Flung thus forever o'er thy fragile rest
Build but these harmonies that seem sometimes
Unworth the misery of the trampled worm?
Would, would I were not vibrant with all strains
He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned!
World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.

THE SOUL'S RETURN

Let me lie here —
I care not for the distant hills today,
And the blue sphere
Of far infinity that draws away
All to its deep,
Would only sweep
Soothing the farther from me with its sway.

Let me lie here —
Gazing with vacant sadness on this weed.
The cricket near
Will utter all my heart can bear to heed.
Another voice
Would swell the noise
And surge, that ever sound in human need.

Let me lie here:
For now, so long my wasted soul has tossed
On the wide Mere
Of Mystery Hope's wing alone has crossed,
I ask no more
Than to restore
To simple things the wonder they have lost.

BIRTHRIGHT

(To A. H. R.)

My own, among the unnumbered years
God casts from that full Garner which
Is His Eternity one shall
Be ours, beyond all fate or fears.

For, ranging lone amid its thorns.
Seeking the buds that grew between,
We met and made its morning seem
New in a world grown old to morns.

And so tho He may scatter still
Many a fadeless other round,
In none, for us shall there be found
That first awakening and thrill.

But as in peace we tread Love's Land,
To which it gave us right of birth,
We shall remember that New Earth
Came when we first walked hand in hand.

ROMANCE

(To A. H. R. on North Cliff, Lynton, Devon)

White-caps hurry to meet the shore
An hundred fathoms down.
Gray sails are shimmering on the wind
Far out from Lynmouth town.

High crags above us are whispering keen,
The heather and the ling
Laugh to the sky as driven by
The wild gulls cry or cling.

And, where the far sun like a god
Scatters the mist, lies Shore.
Is it Romance's magic realm
Spring reigns forever o'er?

Romance that our morning hearts could see
Across the darkest foam?
Then do we know it well, my love,
Because it is our Home.

ON THE ATLANTIC

(To A. H. R.)

Who stood upon that schooner's driven deck
Last night as reefed and shuddering she hove
Into the twilight and all desperate drove
From wave to angrier wave that sought her wreck?
Who labored at her helm and watched the wind
Stagger the sea with all his stunning might,
Until in dimness dwindling from our sight
She vanished in the wrack that rode behind?
We know not, you and I, but our two souls
That followed as storm-petrels o'er the waves
Felt all the might of Him who sinks or saves,
And all the pity of earth's unreached goals.
Felt all – then swift returning to our love
Dwelt in its peace, uplifted safe above.

BY A SILENT STREAM

To sit by a silent stream,
Watching water-lilies dream:
While breezes winnow
The floating seeds,
And the aery minnow
Weaves his wavy web among the reeds.

Where a fallen sycamore
Whitely arches a pathway o'er,
And shadows darkle
The lambent cool,
As, softly a-sparkle.
Sunbeams arrow lightnings thro the pool.

Where the everlasting's breath
Odors mysteries of death.
Where iron-weeds, rusted
Leaf and pod,
By insects dusted,
Rustle – then in autumn sadness nod.

To sit … till every sense
Lose thought of whither and whence;
Till earth and heaven
And faith and fate
No longer leaven
Life, with hope or fear, or love or hate.

THE GREAT BUDDHA OF KAMAKURA TO THE SPHINX

Grave brother of the burning sands,
Whose eyes enshrine forever
The desert's soul, are you not worn
Of gazing outward to dim strands
Of stars that weary never?

Infinity no answer has
For Time's untold distresses.
Its deepest maze of mystery
Is but Illusion built up as
The blind build skies – with guesses.

Nor has Eternity a place
On any starry summit.
The winds of Death are wide as Life,
And leave no world untouched – but race,
And soon with Night benumb it.

And Karma is the law of soul
And star – yea, of all Being.
And from it but one way there is.
Retreat into that trancèd Whole —
Which is not Sight nor Seeing;

Which is not Mind nor Mindlessness,
Nor Deed nor driven Doer,
Nor Want nor Wasting of Desire;
But only that which won can bless;
And of all else is pure.

Turn then your eyes from the far track
Of worlds, and gazing inward,
O brother, fare where Life has come,
Yea, into its far Whence fare back.
All other ways are sinward.

NECROMANCE

Can heedless gazing teach me more than toil?
Can swaying of sere sedge along the slope,
Or the dull lisp of oaken limbs that foil
The sun's ensheathing fervor, interfuse
My vacant being with far meanings whose
Soft airs blow from the hidden seas of Hope?
Or can the wintry sumac sably stooping
So charm and lift my heart from heartless drooping
When other healings all were asked in vain?
Yes – there are witcheries in the things of earth
That breathe with an illimitable voice
Wisdom and calm to us, and lure to birth
Dim intimations bidding us rejoice
Even in the great mystery of Pain.

LOOK NOT TO THE WEST

Look not to the west where the sun is dying
On fields of darkening clouds!
Look not to the west where the wild birds nest
And the winds are hieing
To sweep away sleep from the forest,
And tatter the shrouds of sable silence
Lit by the fire-fly's morris-dance.
Look not to the west —
'Tis best for the heart to hear not the chants
Of Evening over day's death!

Look not to the west where the sun is dying —
The sun that rose with song!
Look not to the west where the closèd quest
Of thy soul seems lying;
Where every sorrow that ever
Was wed with wrong in human breast,
From the sea of its radiance never fades!
Look not to the west —
'Tis best for the heart to see not the shades
That rise – the wrecks of the Past!

A NIKKO SHRINE

Under the sway, in old Japan,
Of silent cryptic trees,
There is a shrine the worldliest
Would near with bended knees.

Green, thro a torii, the way
Leads to it, worn, across
A rivulet whose voice intones
With mystery of moss.

A mystery that is everywhere:
The god beneath his shrine
Seems but a mossy shape – yet so
Ensheathed is more divine.

For tho Nature has muffled him
And sealed him there away,
The meaning of all faith remains —
That men will ever pray.

Aye will, as long as soul has need,
As long as earth is sod
With tombs, bow down the knee to all
That wakens in them God.

THE QUESTION

I shall lie so one day,
With lips of Silence set;
Eyes that no tear can wet
Again: a thing of Clay.

I shall lie so, and Earth
Will seize again her dust —
Though she must gnaw and rust
The coffin's iron girth.

I shall lie so – and they
Who still the Day bestride,
Will stand so by my side
And with sad yearning say:

"What is he now, this man,
Shut in a pallor there,
His spirit that could dare,
What – what now is its span?

"A withered atom's space
Within a withered brain?
Or can it from the Wain
To far Orion race?"

And, like all that have died,
I shall but answer – naught.
Yet Time this truth has taught:
The Question – will abide.

I'LL LOOK NO MORE

I'll look no more! thro timeless hours my eyes
Without intent have watched the slowing flight
Of ebon crows across quiescent skies
Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird,
Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd
That flow far eastward to the coming night.
And as I turn again to foiling thought
My spirit leaves me – as faint zephyrs leave
The trees at evening; tho all day they've sought
A place to hide them in and fondly grieve.
And silently the slow oil sinks beneath
The noiseless burning wick of yellow flame.
It is as if God back to him would breathe
All the world's given life, and end its Aim.