A Poet To His Beloved: A Gallery of Poems

THE YEATS ROOM

"Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above"
W. B. Yeats

A POET TO HIS BELOVED

I bring you with reverent hands
The books of my numberless dreams,
White woman that passion has worn
As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:
White woman with numberless dreams,
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

HE TELLS OF THE PERFECT BEAUTY

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.


MAID QUIET

Where has Maid Quiet gone to,
Nodding her russet hood?
The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
O how could I be so calm
When she rose up to depart?
Now words that called up the lightning
Are hurtling through my heart.


THE MASK

"Put off that mask of burning gold
With emerald eyes."
"O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold."
"I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit."
"It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind."
"But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire."
"O no, my dear, let all that be;
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?"


THE HEART OF THE WOMAN

O what to me the little room
That was brimmed up with prayer and rest;
He bade me out into the gloom,
And my breast lies upon his breast.
O what to me my mother's care,
The house where I was safe and warm;
The shadowy blossom of my hair
Will hide us from the bitter storm.
O hiding hair and dewy eyes,
I am no more with life and death,
My heart upon his warm heart lies,
My breath is mixed into his breath.


HE GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN RHYMES

Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.

THE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ROOM

"In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is:"
William Wordsworth

WHAT HEAVENLY SMILES! O LADY MINE

WHAT heavenly smiles! O Lady mine
Through my very heart they shine;
And, if my brow gives back their light,
Do thou look gladly on the sight;
As the clear Moon with modest pride
Beholds her own bright beams
Reflected from the mountain's side
And from the headlong streams.


TO S. H.

Excuse is needless when with love sincere
Of occupation, not by fashion led,
Thou turn'st the Wheel that slept with dust o'erspread;
'My' nerves from no such murmur shrink,--tho' near,
Soft as the Dorhawk's to a distant ear,
When twilight shades darken the mountain's head.
Even She who toils to spin our vital thread
Might smile on work, O Lady, once so dear
To household virtues. Venerable Art,
Torn from the Poor! yet shall kind Heaven protect 10
Its own; though Rulers, with undue respect,
Trusting to crowded factory and mart
And proud discoveries of the intellect,
Heed not the pillage of man's ancient heart.

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS, 1842

I

'A Poet'!--He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff
Which Art hath lodged within his hand--must laugh
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.
Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool
Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph.
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold;
And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree
Comes not by casting in a formal mould,
But from its 'own' divine vitality.

THE THOMAS HARDY ROOM

"As 'twere to-night, in the brief space
Of a far eventime,
My spirit rang achime
At vision of a girl of grace"
Thomas Hardy

A MAIDEN'S PLEDGE

I do not wish to win your vow
To take me soon or late as bride,
And lift me from the nook where now
I tarry your fairings to my side.
I am blissful ever to abide
In this green labyrinth - let all be,
If but, whatever may betide,
You do not leave off loving me!

Your comet-comings I will wait
With patience time shall not wear through;
The yellowing years will not abate
My largened love and truth to you,
Nor drive me to complaint undue
Of absence, much as I may pine,
If never another 'twixt us two
Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.


HOW SHE WENT TO IRELAND

Dora's gone to Ireland
Through the sleet and snow:
Promptly she has gone there
In a ship, although
Why she's gone to Ireland
Dora does not know.

That was where, yea, Ireland,
Dora wished to be:
When she felt, in lone times,
Shoots of misery,
Often there in Ireland,
Dora wished to be.

Hence she's gone to Ireland,
Since she meant to go,
Through the drift and darkness
Onward labouring, though
That she's gone to Ireland
Dora does not know.


A WINSOME WOMAN

There's no winsome woman so winsome as she;
Some are are flower-like in mouth,
Some have fire in the eyes,
Some feed a soul's drouth
Trilling words music-wise;
But where are these gifts all in one found to be
Save in her known to me?

What her thoughts are I read not, but this much I know,
That she too will pass
From the sun and the air
To her cave under grass;
And the world will declare,
"No such woman as his passioned utterances show
Walked this planet, we trow!"


AT THE PIANO

A woman was playing,
A man looking on;
And the mould of her face,
And her neck and her hair,
Which the rays fell upon
Of the two candles there,
Sent him mentally straying
In some fancy-place
Where pain had no trace.


WHY BE AT PAINS?
(Wooer's Song)

Why be at pains that I should know
You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track to uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands?
I am alone,
You would enrich me more than lands
By being my own.
Yet, though this facile moment flies,
Close is your tone,
And ere tomorrow's dewfall dries
I plough the unknown.

OPENING SOON:
THE LORD BYRON ROOM