Shadows, and other verses

Tregear, Edward, Whitcombe and Tombs, Wellington, N.Z., 1919

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The original publication details are as follows:

Title: Shadows, and other verses

Author: Tregear, Edward

Published: Whitcombe and Tombs, Wellington, N.Z., 1919

“Shadows” and Other Verses

BY EDWARD TREGEAR

Wellington, Auckland. Christchurch. Dunedin, Melbourne. London

WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED 1919

CONTENTS

PAGE

Aceldama 21

A Coffin-verse 35

Always 19

Ave et Vale! 1

A Whisper of God 33

Desire 31

Drifting 19

Hope 3

In Days of Peace 24

Invictus 23

Love 36

Mina Maning 9

New Zealand 14

Progress 12

Service 6

Shadows 2

Sydney Heights 4

Te Whetu Plains 22

The Children 7

The Dardanelles 32

The Desert 20

The Echo of Christ 25

The Golden Wedding 28

The Lady of Flowers 5

The Life-stream 11

The Shield of Gold 24

The Silver Wedding 8

The Social Cain 13

The Veils of Phantasy 30

The White Peril 10

The Winter Sleep 20

Threnos 26

To B.A. 18

To Bessie 29

Worn Out 27

Ave et Vale!

I have been induced to gather and publish some of my verses by the wish to leave behind me some memento of my personal self for those who have given me friendship and affection.

My excuse is contained in the following lines, written by one whose name is (I regret to say) unknown to me:—

“And all their passionate hearts are dust,

And dust the great idea that burned

In various flames of love and lust

Till the world’s brain was turned.

God, moving darkly in men’s brains,

Using their passions as his tool,

Brings freedom with a tyrant’s chains

And wisdom with the fool.

Blindly and bodily we drift,

Our interests clog our hearts with dreams.

God make my brooding soul a rift

Through which a meaning gleams.

—E.

Edward Tregear

Wellington,

January, 1919.

ii

Shadows

Long is the Shadow!

Shadow from sunny curls of the child of morning;

Shadow that seems to sing on the crinkled beaches,

Flitting on fern and bracken and dew-wet roses,

Leaping with joy of youth and the new endeavour.

Stay! A ring in the grass, where the Nameless People

Danced in the moonlight!

Short is the Shadow!

Little dark pools of shade on the feet at noonday;

Breast to the wrestling breast, with gold torques breaking;

Breasts of lovers with torques of white arms wreathing;

Wounds and kisses, and spray from the dripping laurels.

Thrush i’ the woods; and over the salt-toothed skerries

Screaming of eagles!

Long is the Shadow!

Shadow flying away from the red of sunsets;

Knowledge veiled, and darkened by long illusion:

Fog on the tarn, and ever a mist of voices.

Varia sleeps, and Vel is deaf to the calling.

Wings in the darkness hurtle over the hissing rushes;

Sea birds are keening!

Short is the Shadow!

Low the lessening height of a grave that crumbles;

Never a sandal creaks, nor a sob remembers;

Sunlight, yellow as broom, on the empty moorland;

Silence, level as snow on the level heather

Peace, the aching hush after the skylark’s singing.

Rest—and the Vision!

2

10

Hope

A beam of light upon the hills, a rift in cloudy rain,

A fire unquenched by tempest is the love between us twain,

Another year has passed away to bind us closer yet;

Our harvest still ungarnered, but unblighted by regret.

Regret may sob from lives which drift each moment more apart,

Which feel the ebb of Love lay bare the wastes within the heart,

But kinder Love on flowing tides each day hath borne us higher,

Above what shoals of sorrow, dear, what anguish of desire!

Bring near thy kind, brave lips, beloved, the fresh warm lips of youth,

And fill me with the faith that dwells in thy pure heart of truth,

Uplift the soft-curved lashes o’er the deep and tender eyes,

And give me strength from thy bright soul to face the Destinies.

To us there comes one thrill of joy, to us one throb of pain,

The unity of utter trust our perfect marriage-chain,

And, side by side for ever, will our mated footsteps move

Through these dark gates of Hope-Deferred beneath the star of Love.

Sydney Heights

Killara, fair Killara, with its graceful crest of trees,

Where restful shade and silence lull the sleeping form of Peace,

With woodland flow’rets to the knees among the shafted gums,

And roses, roses, roses round the nests of hidden homes,

The thought of thee will sing to me when we are far apart,

0 green woods of Killara!

White moonlight on Killara!

Great roses of Killara bend down above my heart

Princess of subtle magic, 0 Sydney of delight!

Thy crown of living gems is cast upon the waves at night

Where emerald burns to ruby, and a thousand diamonds move

With interlacing rays to form the Diadem of Love.

’Though tossing seas or lonely plains may hold us far apart,

The dancing lights of Sydney,

The fairy-lamps of Sydney,

The firefly lights of Sydney nights are shining in my heart

4

The Lady of Flowers

Around us in that hour the earth put forth

A passion of deep love in bud and bloom,

Flowers and the breath of flowers were everywhere,

But sadly, ’mid the crimson and the gold,

The Lady of the Garden said, “Dear love,

The evening comes, the shadows deepen, soon

I shall not see the blossom or the leaf,

The petals of my darling ones will fall

Unseen, unmarked; for I in turn must go

Towards the black wastes of the Flowerless Land

Oh, husband! lover! must I go alone?

Thy breast hath been my shield ’gainst want and wrong,

’Gainst burning arrows of the evil tongue,

And wilt thou drop my fingers in the dark,

And let the dust fall slowly on my face,

In blind dumb stillness of the Underworld?”

Faithful, I answered, “Sweet heart, do not fear,

For I, in vision, have beheld thy path

Leading far onward from the Narrow House

I saw thee flit from star to star, and stand

Before the gates of the Celestial Land.

The portals opened, and with singing lips

The Angels of the Flowers greeted thee.

Softly the spirits of the rosebuds sung,

‘This was our mother on the earthly plains,

Our tender mother, full of grace and love,’

And all the fragile lily spirits said,

‘This was our sister, pure and white of soul,

Sweet sister of the lillies, enter in!

Then did they wreathe thee round, and lead thee home,

And hide thee in the radiance.”

iii

5

. . . . Then I,

Sitting awhile in darkness, shall arise

And cast away the atom-robe of earth,

To move, a seeking spirit, in the Vast.

Then will the force, which in this lower world

Attracted me and held me to thy heart,

Still draw me on across the fields of Space

Strewn with the star dust and the stranger-souls,

Till thy dear face, amid the Shining Ones,

Will smile delighted welcome as of old,

And thou, with murmurs of exceeding joy,

Enfold me with thy whiteness into peace.

Service

Oak on the ridge was I!

Tossing my boughs to the sky;

Princes should dwell in my shade;

Weapons from me be made;

Dead, I would flame afar,

A beacon-call to War!

God of my changed desire!

Make me a common fire;

Let my enkindled wood

Comfort the multitude,

G-uiding to warmth and light

Souls a-grope in the night.

6

14

The Children

Mystery, not to be understood,

Law within law, life holding life,

The babe’s heart drawing the father’s blood

Through all the veins of the mother-wife.

Out in the darkness or out in the light

(Yea, who knoweth?) towards our home

The souls of the children are on their flight

To fill the ranks of the days to come.

Innocent faces that yet shall teach

Wiser lore than the childless reach,

Proud young faces that we shall miss

Lured from our sides by fame,

Sad young faces that we shall kiss

Tenderly in their shame.

Dear to us when their wreaths they win,

Dear to us when they fall and sin;

Whether they love us or they forbear,

Our heart’s inheritance each shall share

Till the hour arrives

When the parent-lives

Fade out and hide with the things that were.

The Silver Wedding

Spring, that with flowers went by,

Sleeps where the dead dreams are;

Summer, with fruits piled high,

Drives her receding car;

Fair in a rosy Autumn sky

Rises our Evening Star.

Yet, dearest heart of mine,

We keep the troth of old,

Our hands and hopes entwine

Beneath the sunset gold,

And what we know of the divine

Our clasping fingers hold.

Under Love’s downy wing

We shelter from all harms,

We hear sweet whispering

Of Love’s protecting charms,

And never does he loose the ring

Of his enduring arms.

Time, as our wedding-guest

Comes, but with silver hair,

Leaving within our nest

Awhile our nestling fair,

And we, the Three, are trebly blest

One life and love to share.

8

Mina Maning*

Dusky fingers of warriors’ children, what wreaths do ye weave ?

Tear-wet lashes of English maidens, for whom do ye grieve ?

Weave we wreaths of Hoheria blossoms, chaplets pallid and wan,

Island-flowers for the Island-flower broken to earth and gone.

True was she ? True as sharp Life, and pure as cold Death;

Sweet’ning the air of a tainted world with her virginal breath.

Stainless daughter of “Old New Zealand,” to her was given,

To wear all virtues of both grand races through earth to heaven.

Eyes of kindness, never to dim with the anguish-veil again,

Mouth of kindness, never to thrill and shrink from the kiss of Pain,

Past, our beloved, the kind dark portals of Death where the agonies cease,

Passed through the birth to Beyond, to the infinite rapture of peace.

*Miss Mailing was the daughter of the late Judge Mailing (Author of “Old New Zealand”) and of a Maori lady of high rank.

iv

9

The birth-rate fell from 41 per thousand in 1876 to 27 per thousand in 1906. The average daily attendance at Dunedin schools fell from 4,148 pupils in 1887 to 2,882 in 1907 —Labour Report. 1908.

There are few children between five and fifteen years of age to take the places of their elders as vacancies occur .—Labour Report. 1909.

In spite of wide demand and of considerable immigration there are this year U,->8 fewer young people (under 21 years of age) engaged in New Zealand industries than were so occupied the preceding year —Labour Report. 1910.

The White Peril

Tip from the Nethermost Sea;

Pallid; with poisonous breath,

Creeps God’s terrible mystery

Death!

Menace of battle ? To us ? To children of war-worn men!

Sons of the grey-wolf Briton, cubs from the sea-wolf’s den!

War would they have? Then we answer where seaward the battery flames;

Shake out the rags of the fighting-flags and into the Game of Games!

Menace of Germany? Nay. Come they as foes or as kin,

Grip o’ the hand or grip o’ the throat shall welcome the strangers in;

Latin or Slav or Teuton, not to the beat of the Drum,

Not from the men of the Failing Broods will utter destruction come.

Menace of Asia? Nay. Over the Orient Sea

Rank upon rank of pitiless eyes watch us unceasingly;

Patient, stolid, immutable; quiet as passionless Pate,

Why should they leap at our rifles’ mouths who have only to crouch and wait?

10

Peril is here! is here! Here in the Childless Land

Life sits high in the Chair of Fools, twisting her ropes of sand;

Here the lisping of babies and cooing of mothers cease;

Here the Man and the Woman fail, and only the flocks increase.

Axes may bite in the forest, Science harness the streams,

Railway and dock bo budded—all in a Land of Dreams!

Sunk in spiritual torpor ye flout these words of the wise,

"Only to music of children’s songs shall the walls of a Nation rise.”

Sleep, my brothers, and dream that ye gather the gold and the corn;

Alien hands will hold your lands and scatter your graves in scorn;

Blind to the Open Vision, ye see not in coming years

Dogs of the Tartar gnaw to dust the bones of the Pioneers.

Up from the Nethermost Sea;

Pallid: with poisonous breath.

Creeps God’s terrible mystery

Death!

The Life-Stream

Up from its silent source my life-stream leapt

Gathered its forces as it onward swept,

Deep’ning and wide’ning like a thought set free!

Now that the sand-dunes mark my distant banks,

Now that my frenzied prayers have turned to thanks,

I greet the foaming welcomes of the Sea

11

“Progress!”

Unrest! Unrest! On weary wings the bird of life flies o ’er

A sea of mire, whose waves are noise and babble and uproar;

The deluge from an Under-world where false is fair as true,

No soul-bath of the Silences whence thought may spring anew.

Our world grows grey too soon;

The tender things of old are lost in lust for gold,

And the Singer of Earth’s morning is the Dotard of Earth’s noon.

For as no swinging hero-swords strike fire from giant’s mail,

From out the dragon’s loathly den we lead no captives pale;

No Dryad parts the forest boughs, no Naiad stirs the stream,

The goddess leaves the crescent; and fades to faintest dream

The love-chant of the Syren.

Still toils the man along, through lands bereft of song,

’Neath skies of burnished brass, on hills of triple iron.

We fight and bleed and trample; we “live by bread alone,”

The soul, a starveling dies, while the body’s shade moves on;

We hear the roar of whirring wheels, the clink of silver dimes,

The news-boys’ strident voices shouting lists of vulgar crimes,

Our century’s evangels

But our ears are dull to hear the spirit-voices clear,

The singing of Earth’s fairies, and the weeping of God’s angels.

12

The Social Cain

“And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not; am I my brother’s keeper?’’

Where is thy brother, Cain f

There in the drenching rain and biting wind,

Workless and ragged, shivering in the slime;

Fearful of “home,” for there lurks God’s last curse,

Fever of famine in his children’s eyes.

Where is thy brother, Cain?

There in the poisoned mirk of pit and mine;

There in the murd’rous dust of grinding blades;

There, in the sickening heat from molten steel;

There, in the frozen spindrift of the sea.

There is thy brother, Cain!

Where is thy sister, Cain?

With wetted hollow cheeks she stands and wails

Her children sacrificed to evil gods;

Child-victims of the sleepless vampire-farm,

Child-martyrs to the droning factory-wheels.

Where is thy sister, Cain?

Painted for death, thy younger sister moves;

Barters for bread her innocent lost soul;

Bares her sweet bosom to the spitting mouths

Of those who have despoiled her heritage.

There is thy sister, Cain!

“Thy brother’s Keeper”? Nay, thou art in truth

The Keeper of the gates of Death and Hell.

Thou leadest Anguish into highest Heaven;

Great waves of pain submerge the golden thrones;

But, God awakes! to grasp the levin-bolt,

To blast with living fire our social Cain,

And seal eternal darkness on his eyes.

V

13

New Zealand

(A.D. 1899)

Landward the snow-peaks pierce the vivid blue,

Shoreward the forests hang above the main,

Bright with the light of waters leaping through

The spray-bows and the tree-ferns to the plain.

Few sounds are heard within the lonely land,

Only at intervals the war-cry ringing,

The sea’s wing’d children crying by the sand,

The earth’s wing’d children in the forest singing.

No story has she save some legend wild,

No ruined city hides from human ken,

Unlearned, save in knowledge of the child,

Maiden to science and the arts of men.

What fairy-wand, what magic spell shall waken

This Virgin slumbering in the Southern foam?

Lo, from her eyes the veil of sleep is shaken;

Breaking the near horizon, hither roam

The ships which bear the Victors of the Sea.

Swift comes the foremost bark on western gales,

The bark, *Dawn-named in happy augury,

The day-break of a nation in her sails!

Mournful and sad the exile’s heart had been

To hear “farewell!” upon dear lips expire;

To see each fading and beloved scene

Sink with the setting sun through gates of fire.

Now their feet rested on an alien shore,

The fathers of a people. Year by year,

The wreaths of Toil their sun-burned foreheads wore.

Beneath the shakings of the savage spear,

By the dark mountain pass they forced a way,

Through gloomy forests, by the sunny strand,

No force of Nature had the power to stay

The dauntless courage and the skilful hand

14

They laboured on, with oar and axe and spade,

With giant effort urged unceasingly,

They broke the untilled fallow-lands, and laid

The seed of promise for the days To Be;

Sowing a future from whose lowly birth

Shall spring a splendour such as no man knows,

Wonderful, perfect as the dark moist earth,

Contains the fragrant secret of the rose.

Half the great circle of the century

Hath swung upon its centre. Fifty Springs,

Like birds of passage from eternity,

Have flitted past us on unresting wings.

How fares the lonely land ? The blue smoke curls

Up from ten thousand hearth-fires. On the hills

And ranges where the hawk his shadow hurls

Across the uplands, by the lake which fills

The valley’s hollow, by the shelly sand

Where the green breaker drags itself along,

In forest-clearings, everywhere, there stand

Homes bright with flowers and musical with song.

Fleck’d are the pastures with the sheep as snow,

Vibrant the air with lowing of the herds,

And voices of the herdsmen! light-waves flow

Across the golden belts of grain which gird

The bosom of the farm-lands. ’Neath the wire

Along which flow unseen the thoughts of men,

The iron slave with breath of steam and fire

Flies o’er the fairy bridge (whose trellised span

Arches above the stream) till lost to sight

Within the caverned hills. Beneath the soil

In sullen darkness of the mine’s deep night,

The swarthy workers ply their ceaseless toil,

And win from reef and seam the stubborn ore,

The treasures of the Elf-King. From the stream

15

Rises the battery’s incessant roar,

Stamping to dust the precious quartz whose gleam

Is gold and crystal. Far away we hear

The woodman’s axe in leafy solitude

Beneath the twilight of the pines chime clear;

The task is his to turn the waste to food,

To make the desert jungle-growth give way ;

To fields of harvest where the sunset smiles;

Bite deep, keen axes, letting in the day,

Ye ring God’s music through the forest aisles.

The fair ships thread the pathway of the winds,

Crossing, recrossing, weaving evermore

The subtle meshes of the web which binds

Our isolation to the distant shore

Within their iron hulls they bear afar

The flocks once nourished ’neath New Zealand suns

To feed the famished of the Northern Star,

To clothe the shivering and forsaken ones,

Paying the sacred debt of birth at length,

As once the fair young t Roman bent above

Her failing parent, yielding youth and strength

Prom founts of tenderness and filial love.

Are these things all, oh, sunny land? Are these,

The gold and wool and corn poured freely forth

From Horns of Plenty, these thy deities?

Not these the standard of a people’s worth,

The riches of a nation, though the storm

Of steam roars through the forest of the masts,

As incense to the god whose gilded form

Shuts half the light from modern eyes, and casts

A deeper shade than darkenss. Truest wealth

Lies in the upright life, the thinking brain,

The warm heart beating in the breast of health;

And these thy sons possess. Not few are they

23

Who, having dared the keen and icy wind

Among the peaks of Truth, behold the day

With eyes of calm. Their unseen influence flows

To lower levels, slow, resistlessly,

As moves the glacier from its home of snows,

To “countless laughters’’! of the rippling sea.

The warm heart beating? Yea, each mournful cry

Of pain from older lands finds echo here,

Pulsing spiritual waves of sympathy

To hearts that break in misery and fear.

But Love, the Teacher, teaches bitter hate

Of War’s most ghastly foolishness and shame,

When sinks the city to its bloody fate,

And Death leaps shrieking up the spires of flam.:

Loathe we the most the war of caste and creed,

The crushing poverty, the steaming sin:

How smiles the old-world city ? Fair, indeed,

Her bulwarks and her pinnacles; within,

Her children perish of a strong disease.

The purple and fine linen veil from view

The cancer of her social miseries.

The wild loud laughters faint, shot through and through

Witu wailings of sad mothers; all the songs

Find plaintive minors pierce their melodies;

Her splendid brightness of cruel life belongs

To light withdrawn from fading children’s eyes.

We shudder, but we learn, and trust the years

To come, with faith and faithful hearts that glow

Bleached with the sun of thought, the dew of tears,

The human robe grows whiter as we grow

24

Then men shall see a nation strong for Good,

Whose sons, industrious, scorn the bribes of Greed,

Whose flag is stainless of one stripe of blood.

Where none will listen when the tyrants plead

In lust of sway the argument of pain

Red rust shall eat the battle-idol’s car,

And never shall Earth’s ear be vext again

With thunderings and trumpetings of War.

We serve loyal Freedom only and no other,

Our land is new with life, not old with graves,

The Island-daughter of an Island-mother,

Girdled with safety as with breaking waves.

May each prophetic wish awake to birth

As utter Truth, and this fair land be given

Deep love from every fount of Love on earth,

And light from every source of Light in heaven.

(1) The pioneer ship “Aurora.”

(2) Pero, the daughter of Cimon.

(3) KvfiaTMl' avrjpLOfiov ykXaxrpa, — Aesrh. Pr. 90.

To B.A.

Thy name within my verse and heart I wrought,

Ah, love, dear love, when all my song is done,

My face grown strange, my steps in the Unknown,

Give me, I pray thee, then, a kindly thought.

“Inconstant” men have called the poet-mood

Which sought the beautiful where’er I rov’d,

But ever constant since I found and lov’d

In thee perfection of true womanhood

18

Drifting

IA SoniSl

Rosebud, full of summer beauty, draw thy leaves apart;

Breathe for me the fragrance nestling in thy folded heart.

Let the olden sadness wither and the thought that grieves,

Only bring the olden sweetness drifting through the leaves.

Winds that flow o’er summer pastures, gath’ring many a tone

From the echoes and the voices former days have known,

Let the olden discords perish and the old despair

Only bring the olden music drifting through the air.

Waves of limpid summer softness, throbbing on the shore,

Calm me with your murmurs of the treasures seen no more,

Bring no olden wreck of wasted longings back to me,

Only bring the olden freshness drifting from the sea.

Always

Day and night, dear, by day and night,

Over and over, and through and through,

The blue lake gleams in our flower-world white,

Enfolding the vision of Love-in-You,

My gentle lady of Lost Delight,

Day and night.

Night and day, dear, by night and day

My music calls and the love-notes hover

To guide my swimmer upon her way,

But never floats hither the maiden lover,

Too wild the waters, too fierce the spray,

Night and day.

19

The Winter-Sleep

Heedless of outer frost and icy sleet,

Warm in his leaf-lined nest the dormouse rests,

Curled in the hollow tree-trunk sleeps the bear,

Till all the anguish of the Winter dies.

Wasted with fasting, keen with life renewed,

Forth to the fresh effulgence of the Spring

Emerge the furry darlings of the snow.

Thou that am I! perchance thou too wilt wake,

Gaunt with old slumber, hungry from the grave,

Wilt upward heave the poppied churchyard mould,

Wilt lift the eyelids dark with ancient dust

To greet the splendour of essential day,

Where life, made perfect, blossoms into light,

Where, vivid with unutterable joy,

Spring sings for ever through the fields of God

The Desert

“The Shadow of a Great Bock in a weary land. .

Endless drifting of human sands,

Blown for ever through weary lands,

Whore never the waters flow.

Bock of the Wilderness! cast Thy shade

Over the desert which Man has made,

Temper the burning glow;

Bring cool rest from the boundless spaces,

Velvet sleep for the tortured faces,

Slumber of soul in the green oases,

Peace where Thy palm-trees grow.

27

Aceldama

Thirty pieces of silver, the price of the innocent blood,

What shall we do with the reeking coin, too vile for the gutter-mud ?

We will take and add to it daily the wages of woman’s shame,

The profit from children’s labour, the fee for a tainted name.

We will buy “the Field of the Potter,” will subdivide it, and then

Will blossom and burgeon as landlords—Lords of the land—and men.

“The Field of Blood”? Not at all, too much would the name reveal.

It will flaunt upon placard and poster as “The Township of Judasville.”

We will gather from slum and from hovel the wages of sorrow and sin,

With lease and rack-rent and mortgage—“to bury the strangers in.”

28

Te Whetu Plains

A lonely rock above a midnight plain,

A sky across whose moonlit darkness flies

No shadow from the “Children of the Rain,”

A stream whose double crescent far-off lies,

And seems to glitter back the silver of the skies.

The table-lands stretch step by step below

In giant terraces, their deeper ledges

Banded by blackened swamps (that, near, I know

Convolvulus-entwined) whose whitened edges

Are ghostly silken flags of seeding water-sedges.

All still, all silent, ’tis a songless land,

That hears no music of the nightingale,

No sound of waters falling lone and grand

Through sighing forests to the lower vale,

No whisper in the grass, so wan, and grey, and pale.

When Earth was tottering in its infancy,

This rock, a drop of molten stone, was hurled

And tost on waves of flames like those we see

(Distinctly though afar) evolved and whirled

A photosphere of fire around the Solar World.

Swift from the central deeps the lightning flew

Piercing the heart of Darkness like a spear,

Hot blasts of steam and vapour thunder’d through

The lurid blackness of the atmosphere.

A million years have passed, and left strange quiet here.

Peace, the deep peace of universal death

Enshrouds the kindly mother-earth of old,

The air is dead, and stirs no living breath

To break these awful Silences that hold

The heart within their clutch, and numb the veins with cold.

29

M3’ soul hath wept for Rest with longing tears,

Called it “the perfect crown of human life’’—

But now I shudder lest the coming years

Should be with these most gloomy terrors rife;

When palsied arms drop down outwearied with the strife

Ma3 r Age conduct me by a gentle hand

Beneath the shadows ever brooding o’er

The solemn twilight of the Evening Land

Where man’s discordant voices pierce no more,

But sleeping waters dream along a sleeping shore.

Where I, when Youth has spent its fiery strength

And flickers low, may rest in quietness

Till on my waiting brow there falls at length

The deeper calm of the Death-Angel’s kiss—

But not, oh God, such peace, such ghastly peace as this.

Invictus

0 eyes of innocence that once were mine,

0 clear voice pealing to the Morning Star,

Loves of pure loveliness, and hopes divine,

Gather from days that were to days that are,

And plead for me when I with gasping breath

Stand naked, shivering, in the Gates of Death.

Poor momentary weakness of the man!

Away! false memories of callow youth;

He needs no pleader who has dared the ban,

Has raised the veil of Isis and seen Truth;

Facing the lightning shafts, but undismayed,

Fronting the Infinite—and unafraid

23

In Days of Peace

The stalwart troopers rode at ease,

In scarlet, gold and steel

Within the park the worker crept

To eat his scanty meal

Alas! the workers’ meals have paid

For sword and horse and golden braid.

The glittering troopers charge along

The crowded city lanes.

No medicine like steel to soothe

The gnawing hunger-pains!

Oh! toilers for the Lords of Trade,

These arc the gods your hands have made!

The Shield of Gold

Hearts of Eden—and both so young,

Fingers claspt in a close embrace,

He with love on his poet-tongue,

She with light on her happy face.

Under the sunset’s gold, dear lass,

Under the Shield of Gold.

Poet and Singer? When years have flown,

See he lies on the slopes of Fame;

Rotted with riches, his soul has grown

Wingless, lost in the swollen frame.

Under the burden of gold, poor ass,

Under the Shield of Gold.

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The Echo of Christ

Adown the centuries there peals a voice

From One Who taught to those who will not hear:

“Curst are the rich, although the world is theirs!

Curst are the hypocrites of flaunting prayers!

Curst are the proud oppressors of the weak!

Put up the sword, or with the sword be slain!

Feed ye my lambs, oh, shepherds of My fold! ’ ’

Then came the tragedy on Calvary;

Eclipse and darkness and the quaking earth;

While Pilate ‘ ‘ washed his hands in innocence ’’;

Barabbas shook on high his robber-sword;

And Roman captains boasted of “the Law.’’

There yet survive a few who teach that creed:

“Curst are the men who steal the people’s food!

Vain are the prayers of mouths that choke with gold!

Be just, or all your laws are filthy rags!

Draw not the sword on men who cry for bread !

Scorn not the poor whom ye yourselves make poor! ’ ’

And lo! the age-worn tragedy repeats!

The preachers of that creed, in prison-bonds

Look thro ’ their wild-beast bars with souls set free;

While gross Barabbas of the Trust and Mart

Feasts at the table of the false High Priest;

And Pilate, crouching on the judgment-seat,

Shudders at tremblings of the Under-world,

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Threnos

“For the first Heaven and first earth were passed away, and there was no mare sea. ,y —Rev. xxi., 1.

There shall be no more sea,

No more the seas of life will beat and flow

Within the breast of the dear friend we know

Resting eternally

His earth and heaven are new,

The world’s poor beauty ’neath the darkness lies;

The Veil above the Greater Mysteries

Death pierces through and through

No longer shall the foam

Of pain and sin by earthly storms be driven

Across that swimmer’s lips. The courts of heaven

Hold calm as deep as Home.

The moons of change no more

The tides of feeling in his heart will sway,

Nor passion hide with its tumultuous spray

The safe and quiet shore.

The voices of his race

May surge anl thunder through the shifting years

Yet throw no spray from our great Sea of Tears

Upon his sleeping face.

Another blessed dove

Hath floated o’er a deluged world unstain’d,

Hath plucked an olive-leaf for God, and gain’d

The ark of heavenly Love.

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Worn Out

“Ben,” cries the master, ‘‘your hair is grey,

Stand aside for a younger man”—

Bitter in spirit I turn away;

Leper of Labour-—and under the ban.

Old, old, old.

Out to the dark and cold.

Age has come with its creeping curse,

Bending the back and dimming the eye,

Driving me out to the gutter—or worse,

Out from a world where you work or die.

Old, old, old.

Out in the dark and cold.

Sight of my eyes went into the work,

Strength of sinew the toil devoured,

Never was task that my hand would shirk,

Now my weakness has turned me coward

Old, old, old.

Out in the dark and cold.

Good-bye, workshop, and good-bye, mates;

How shall I face the face of my wife?—

Foodless cupboards and empty grates,

These are our prizes at end of life.

Old, old, old.

Out in the dark and cold.

Come, young worker, with nerve and thew,

Ready to labour for half a wage,

Dig a hole at the foot of the yew,

Hide the head that is grey with age

Old, old, old.

Down in the dark and cold

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The Golden Wedding

Days of spring and summer nights, times of fruit and flower,

Moons and tides and swinging stars, storm and sun and shower,

Circling in appointed ways have brought the golden hour.

Strength of man in virile youth, beauty of the maid,

Hand in hand, with love for dower, they ventured unafraid,

Side by side in evening’s glow, they watch the sunset fade.

Sweet the children’s baby tongues babbled at their knees,

Life that wrought maturer life, brought its mysteries,

Tore the wreath of home apart, shed it over seas.

They have watched the years that bind, watch’d the years that rend,

Seen how death has snatch’d apart the heart of friend and friend;

Seen the tempest of the world grow tranquil at the end.

Sighs and tears have worked their will, done their worst in vain,

Light and smiles are round them now, encompassing the twain,

Newer buds and flowers as fair have formed their wreath again.

Full-filled of years and honours, they bring their sheaves of com,

Their golden deeds are golden seeds of blessings to be born,

All hail the hour that brings to these their goulen marriage morn.

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To Bessie

Whiti ana taku poho i to Karanga.

(My heart leaps at thy calling.)

—Maori proverb

My life went on through night and storm and rain

That hung o’er sea and land,

Upon an unknown path I went in pain

With none to grasp my hand,

When through the dark I heard sweet accents fall,

And my glad heart “leapt up to hear thee call.”

No tender thought of Fatherland and home

Thy voice brought back to me,

Across the dreamland of my Past could come

No memory of thee,

A.nd yet I gamed the unknown soul of all

When ray glad heart “leapt up to hear thee call.”

Although Love hid thee for a time away

From Youth’s untested eyes,

He, e’er my spirit leaves its house of clay,

Hath shown my Life’s rich prize,

And Love from heaven let heaven’s password fall

When my glad heart “leapt up to hear thee call.’

Mine, thou art mine, for ever, evermore;

Mine through all smiles and tears,

Through the dark valley, by the shining shore,

In the eternal years.

Yea, I am thine though good or ill befall,

Since my glad heart “leapt up to hear thee call.”

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The Veils of Phantasy

Within my daughter’s nesting arms her little daughter lies;

Beneath the clustering baby curls look forth the shining eyes;

Alike those eyes to hers who brought life’s happiness to me,

Alike those eyes to hers who smiles in young maternity.

How old with age and young with youth this miracle of birth,

This subtle net of threads which bind the multitudes of earth.

The tides of being sweep me back till I am cast once more

Behind the old dead centuries on some primeval shore.

Without is forest-darkness, but within the cave-fire gleams,

Beyond the door of swinging hides the sword-tooth’d tiger screams,

Where She—my mate—’neath cloudy hair uplifts her liquid eyes

Wherein there moves the angel of the love that never dies

The magic of my grandchild’s glance transforms this dusky room

Till flickers of that ancient fire light up the tawny gloom.

The generations draw aside their filmy veils, and lo!

The eyes that pledged eternal love ten thousand years ago

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Desire

“The almond tree shall flourish , . . and desire shall fail.” —Ecclesiastes.

lam Desire! Wounded and old, and frail,

The phantom of thy Spring-time guide and friend;

And hither have I come to say “Farewell,”

Forerunner of the Shadow and the end

Why weepest thou? I led thee far and long,

Filled all thy nights and days with burning dreams,

Wove the Web Beautiful to sounds of song,

Shot through with magic and fantastic gleams

Came I not welcome? I gave subtle tears,

Exquisite stress of flesh and soul at strife,

Quick thrills and tremors of delightful fears,

Till Love lay fluttering in the net of Life.

Over grey maidens I threw veils of rose,

Filled lips with sweetness, eyes with fairy-fire,

Brought the allurement and achievement close,

Seen in the cunning mirror of Desire.

I am the anguish of a vast Despair,

A pang of loosened bonds that sets thee free.

Farewell! The outer worlds have Springs more fair—

Wait thou the budding of the almond-tree.

The almond-tree shall blossom! Sweet dead Past,

The promise gladdens and the full word saves.

I see the groves of flowering silver cast

Their drifting scented snow on all my graves;

Hiding—and hiding—

And hiding.

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The Dardanelles

Reddened crags of Dardan, in the darkness sleeping—

Muffled secret footsteps stealing t’ward the shore—

Then a whisper sadder than the wildest weeping,

‘ ‘ Captain, fear you not lest our dear boys who died

(Faces, still unburied, on the mountain side)

Hear the parting feet of comrades backwards creeping,

Leaving Anzac’s priceless dust for ever, evermore?”

“Boy, the heroes lying here trust the heroes going,

Know that we but speed their fame toward a deathless goal;

Know a nation’s might will reap the harvest they are sowing;

See through smoky darkness born of Hell and War

Rising over alien shores the glowing Southern Star!

Know fierce death as travail since One beyond all knowing

Brings to life in stranger-lands the new-born Southern Soul!

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A Whisper of God

“Behold the Lord passed hy, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; hut the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; hut the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; hut the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” —1 Kings, xix. 11, 12.

Over the vibrant floor of the Desert of Stars there ran

A whisper of God to stir the Dream in the soul of man.

Up from the depths of the Evil Space where the worlds in chaos are,

Scythes of fire at his chariot-wheels, drove the lurid demon War!

Smitten with strokes of his hewing the Pride of the Nations fell:

Out of his hand the Flower o’ the Earth was cast to the pits of Hell.

Lover and brother and son they went —went with a tear and a kiss

Over the crags of the Love of Life down to the sheer abyss;

Lit to death by the glare of green through the Lyddite’s smoky veil,

Mowed by Maxims to crimson swathes threshed by the Shrapnel’s flail.

Mouths a-twist in the poison-gas, light in exalted eyes,

Muddy and bloody and rent they climbed the Mountain of Sacrifice.

Heard you God calling His own, old world?

Nay?

Sleep on!

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Famine, darkening half the earth, fell like a vast eclipse,

Drew the milk from the mother’s breast, stifled the children’s lips.

Pestilence, born in the gulfs obscene, slew with her fetid breath,

Gleaning in city and trench and field War’s aftermath of death.

After the famine and pestilence, after the sword and the fire,

Never a whisper of God had changed the Dream of the World’s Desire.

Here, in the Dream, lurks the panther, watching his meat go by;

Here is the Strong Man ruthless, masked in a smiling lie;

Takers of things wax gross, while the maker faints and pales;

Justice, robed as the Law, hides the magnet beneath the Scales;

Knaves and slaves of the market, filching the harvestyield,

Panning gold in the awful stream that flows from the battle-field;

Gold from the straining liners, gold from the clinking tools;

Wine and music, and lust and laughter, and ever the babble of fools;

Workers hived in the reeking slums; drunkards cursing their birth:

Love, alone, with her angel-heart, guarding the life of Earth.

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Now is the hour of “the still small voice”—this the Immutable Word,

“Justice and Mercy and Service!”—or —the edge of Anarchy’s sword!

This is “The Day.” Will ye live? or pass with the sins that are done ?

Hark to the owls that hoot over dust that was Babylon!

Hear you no whisper of God, old world?

Nay?

Sleep on!

A Coffin-verse*

A coffin-verse for me? But, I defy

The powers of Earth and Air to bury ME!

Bury my carrion deep, but I shall be

The lark’s song flooding from the vault on high,

The scent of violets when Spring is nigh,

The fire-cloud flaming in the sunset sky,

The thunder of the breakers of the Sea!

*A “coffin-verse” it a kind of epitaph written by oneself.

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Love

Dear God, that dwells in shadow and in sun,

In darkness as in light,

Make us to know that all thy forms are One,

The Spirit Infinite.

To us, the poor blind children of the night,

Helpless to do Thy will,

Show that Thy endless tenderness and might

Hover around us still.

We see the ruin of all human pride,

Only great Love endures,

Only the magic of His hand throws wide

The Everlasting Doors,

Ay, though we cast away the wealth we prize,

And purge the flesh with pain,

Yet if we have not Love that sanctifies,

The sacrifice is vain.

Dear Lord, Thou hast the mother-love that charms

The World’s tired child to rest.

“Beneath him are the everlasting arms”

That hold him to Thy breast.

So shall we pass the toilsome mountain road,

The beating of the seas,

Until He lead us into Love’s abode

In an exceeding peace.

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