Poems

Project Gutenberg's Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
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Title: Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Now First Published
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Editor: Robert Bridges
Release Date: August 26, 2007 [EBook #22403]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ***
Produced by Lewis Jones
Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1918) "Poems"
_Poems_
of
Gerard Manley Hopkins
now first published
Edited with notes
by
ROBERT BRIDGES
Poet Laureate
LONDON
HUMPHREY MILFORD
_CATHARINAE_
HVNC LIBRVM
QVI FILA EIVS CARISSIMI
POETAE DEBITAM INGENIO LAVDEM EXPECTANTIS
SERVM TAMEN MONVMENTVM ESSET
ANNVM AETATIS XCVIII AGENTI
VETERIS AMICITIAE PIGNVS
D D D
_R B_
Transcriber's notes: The poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins contain
unconventional English, accents and horizontal lines. Facsimile
images of the poems as originally published are freely available
online from the Internet Archive. Please use these images to
check for any errors or inadequacies in this electronic text.
The editor's endnotes refer to the page numbers of the
Author's _Preface_ and to the first page of the _Early Poems_.
I have therefore inserted these page numbers in round brackets:
(1), (2), etc. up to (7). For pages 1 to 7 the line numbers in
this electronic version are the same as those referred to in the
editor's endnotes.
After page 7 this text mainly follows the editor's endnotes
which, apart from the occasional page reference, refer to the
poems by their numbers. For example:
5. PENMAEN POOL.
In poem _26_ I have retained the larger than normal spacing
between the first and second words of the eighth line.
In poem _36_ I have rendered the first word of line 28 as "Óne."
In the original the accent falls on the second letter but I did
not have a text character to record this accurately.
The editor's notes contain one word and, later, one phrase from
the ancient Greek; these are retained but the Greek letters have
been Englished.
CONTENTS
Author's Preface
Early Poems
Poems 1876-1889
Unfinished Poems & Fragments
EDITORIAL
Preface to Notes
Notes
OUR generation already is overpast,
And thy lov'd legacy, Gerard, hath lain
Coy in my home; as once thy heart was fain
Of shelter, when God's terror held thee fast
In life's wild wood at Beauty and Sorrow aghast;
Thy sainted sense tramme'd in ghostly pain,
Thy rare ill-broker'd talent in disdain:
Yet love of Christ will win man's love at last.
Hell wars without; but, dear, the while my hands
Gather'd thy book, I heard, this wintry day,
Thy spirit thank me, in his young delight
Stepping again upon the yellow sands.
Go forth: amidst our chaffinch flock display
Thy plumage of far wonder and heavenward flight!
Chilswell, Jan. 1918.
(1) AUTHOR'S PREFACE
THE poems in this book* (*That is, the MS.
described in Editor's preface as B. This
preface does not apply to the early poems.)
are written some in Running Rhythm, the common
rhythm in English use, some in Sprung Rhythm,
and some in a mixture of the two. And those in
the common rhythm are some counterpointed,
some not.
Common English rhythm, called Running Rhythm
above, is measured by feet of either two or three
syllables and (putting aside the imperfect feet at the
beginning and end of lines and also some unusual
measures, in which feet seem to be paired together and
double or composite feet to arise) never more or less.
Every foot has one principal stress or accent, and
this or the syllable it falls on may be called the Stress
of the foot and the other part, the one or two unaccented
syllables, the Slack. Feet (and the rhythms made out
of them) in which the stress comes first are called
Falling Feet and Falling Rhythms, feet and rhythm
in which the slack comes first are called Rising Feet
and Rhythms, and if the stress is between two slacks
there will be Rocking Feet and Rhythms. These
distinctions are real and true to nature; but for purposes
of scanning it is a great convenience to follow the
(2) example of music and take the stress always first, as
the accent or the chief accent always comes first in
a musical bar. If this is done there will be in common
English verse only two possible feet--the so-called
accentual Trochee and Dactyl, and correspondingly
only two possible uniform rhythms, the so-called
Trochaic and Dactylic. But they may be mixed and then
what the Greeks called a Logaoedic Rhythm arises.
These are the facts and according to these the scanning
of ordinary regularly-written English verse is very
simple indeed and to bring in other principles is here
unnecessary.
But because verse written strictly in these feet and
by these principles will become same and tame the
poets have brought in licences and departures from
rule to give variety, and especially when the natural
rhythm is rising, as in the common ten-syllable or
five-foot verse, rhymed or blank. These irregularities
are chiefly Reversed Feet and Reversed or Counterpoint
Rhythm, which two things are two steps or degrees
of licence in the same kind. By a reversed foot
I mean the putting the stress where, to judge by
the rest of the measure, the slack should be and the
slack where the stress, and this is done freely at the
beginning of a line and, in the course of a line, after
a pause; only scarcely ever in the second foot or
place and never in the last, unless when the poet
designs some extraordinary effect; for these places are
characteristic and sensitive and cannot well be touched.
But the reversal of the first foot and of some middle
(3) foot after a strong pause is a thing so natural that
our poets have generally done it, from Chaucer down,
without remark and it commonly passes unnoticed and
cannot be said to amount to a formal change of rhythm,
but rather is that irregularity which all natural growth
and motion shews. If however the reversal is repeated
in two feet running, especially so as to include the
sensitive second foot, it must be due either to great
want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the super-
inducing or mounting of a new rhythm upon the old;
and since the new or mounted rhythm is actually heard
and at the same time the mind naturally supplies the
natural or standard foregoing rhythm, for we do not
forget what the rhythm is that by rights we should be
hearing, two rhythms are in some manner running at
once and we have something answerable to counter-
point in music, which is two or more strains of tune
going on together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm.
Of this kind of verse Milton is the great master and
the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_ are written throughout
in it--but with the disadvantage that he does not let
the reader clearly know what the ground-rhythm is
meant to be and so they have struck most readers as
merely irregular. And in fact if you counterpoint
throughout, since one only of the counter rhythms is
actually heard, the other is really destroyed or cannot
come to exist, and what is written is one rhythm only
and probably Sprung Rhythm, of which I now speak.
Sprung Rhythm, as used in this book, is measured
by feet of from one to four syllables, regularly, and for
(4) particular effects any number of weak or slack syllables
may be used. It has one stress, which falls on the
only syllable, if there is only one, or, if there are more,
then scanning as above, on the first, and so gives rise to
four sorts of feet, a monosyllable and the so-called
accentual Trochee, Dactyl, and the First Paeon. And
there will be four corresponding natural rhythms; but
nominally the feet are mixed and any one may follow
any other. And hence Sprung Rhythm differs from
Running Rhythm in having or being only one nominal
rhythm, a mixed or 'logaoedic' one, instead of three,
but on the other hand in having twice the flexibility of
foot, so that any two stresses may either follow one
another running or be divided by one, two, or three
slack syllables. But strict Sprung Rhythm cannot be
counterpointed. In Sprung Rhythm, as in logaoedic
rhythm generally, the feet are assumed to be equally
long or strong and their seeming inequality is made up
by pause or stressing.
Remark also that it is natural in Sprung Rhythm for
the lines to be _rove over_, that is for the scanning of
each line immediately to take up that of the one before,
so that if the first has one or more syllables at its end
the other must have so many the less at its beginning;
and in fact the scanning runs on without break from
the beginning, say, of a stanza to the end and all the
stanza is one long strain, though written in lines asunder.
Two licences are natural to Sprung Rhythm. The
one is rests, as in music; but of this an example is
scarcely to be found in this book, unless in the _Echos_,
(5) second line. The other is _hangers_ or _outrides_ that
is one, two, or three slack syllables added to a foot and
not counting in the nominal scanning. They are so
called because they seem to hang below the line or
ride forward or backward from it in another dimension
than the line itself, according to a principle needless to
explain here. These outriding half feet or hangers are
marked by a loop underneath them, and plenty of them
will be found.
The other marks are easily understood, namely
accents, where the reader might be in doubt which
syllable should have the stress; slurs, that is loops
_over_ syllables, to tie them together into the time of
one; little loops at the end of a line to shew that the
rhyme goes on to the first letter of the next line;
what in music are called pauses, to shew that the
syllable should be dwelt on; and twirls, to mark
reversed or counterpointed rhythm.
Note on the nature and history of Sprung Rhythm--
Sprung Rhythm is the most natural of things. For
(1) it is the rhythm of common speech and of written
prose, when rhythm is perceived in them. (2) It is the
rhythm of all but the most monotonously regular music,
so that in the words of choruses and refrains and in
songs written closely to music it arises. (3) It is
found in nursery rhymes, weather saws, and so on;
because, however these may have been once made in
running rhythm, the terminations having dropped off by
the change of language, the stresses come together and
so the rhythm is sprung. (4) It arises in common
(6) verse when reversed or counterpointed, for the same
reason.
But nevertheless in spite of all this and though Greek
and Latin lyric verse, which is well known, and the old
English verse seen in _Pierce Ploughman_ are in sprung
rhythm, it has in fact ceased to be used since the
Elizabethan age, Greene being the last writer who can
be said to have recognised it. For perhaps there was
not, down to our days, a single, even short, poem in
English in which sprung rhythm is employed not for
single effects or in fixed places but as the governing
principle of the scansion. I say this because the
contrary has been asserted: if it is otherwise the poem
should be cited.
Some of the sonnets in this book* (*See previous note.)
are in five-foot, some in six-foot or Alexandrine lines.
Nos. 13 and 22 are Curtal-Sonnets, that is they are
constructed in proportions resembling those of the
sonnet proper, namely 6 + 4 instead of 8 + 6, with
however a halfline tailpiece (so that the equation is
rather 12/8 + 9/2 = 21/2 + 10 1/2).
(7)
_EARLY POEMS_
_1
For a Picture of
St. Dorothea_
I BEAR a basket lined with grass;
I am so light, I am so fair,
That men must wonder as I pass
And at the basket that I bear,
Where in a newly-drawn green litter
Sweet flowers I carry,--sweets for bitter.
Lilies I shew you, lilies none,
None in Caesar's gardens blow,--
And a quince in hand,--not one
Is set upon your boughs below;
Not set, because their buds not spring;
Spring not, 'cause world is wintering.
But these were found in the East and South
Where Winter is the clime forgot.--
The dewdrop on the larkspur's mouth
O should it then be quenchèd not?
In starry water-meads they drew
These drops: which be they? stars or dew?
Had she a quince in hand? Yet gaze:
Rather it is the sizing moon.
Lo, linked heavens with milky ways!
That was her larkspur row.--So soon?
Sphered so fast, sweet soul?--We see
Nor fruit, nor flowers, nor Dorothy.
_2
Heaven--Haven
A nun takes the veil_
I HAVE desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
_3
The Habit of Perfection_
ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.
_POEMS 1876-1889_
_4
THE WRECK
OF THE DEUTSCHLAND_
To the
happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns
exiles by the Falk Laws
drowned between midnight and morning of
Dec. 7th. 1875
PART THE FIRST
1
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World's strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
2
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
3
The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace
to the grace.
4
I am soft sift
In an hourglass--at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,
And it crowds and it combs to the fall;
I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,
But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ's gift.
5
I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:
Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.
6
Not out of his bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt--
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt--
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss),
7
It dates from day
Of his going in Galilee;
Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;
Manger, maiden's knee;
The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;
Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,
Though felt before, though in high flood yet--
What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,
8
Is out with it! Oh,
We lash with the best or worst
Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush!--flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full!--Hither then, last or first,
To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet--
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go.
9
Be adored among men,
God, three-numberèd form;
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man's malice, with wrecking and storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;
Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.
10
With an anvil-ding
And with fire in him forge thy will
Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring
Through him, melt him but master him still:
Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,
Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,
Make mércy in all of us, out of us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.
_PART THE SECOND_
11
'Some find me a sword; some
The flange and the rail; flame,
Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.
But wé dream we are rooted in earth--Dust!
Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,
Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
12
On Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,
Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two hundred souls in the round--
O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing
The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned;
Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing
Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve
even them in?
13
Into the snows she sweeps,
Hurling the haven behind,
The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow,
Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;
Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow
Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
14
She drove in the dark to leeward,
She struck--not a reef or a rock
But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her
Dead to the Kentish Knock;
And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of
her keel:
The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock;
And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel
Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.
15
Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,
Hope was twelve hours gone;
And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day
Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,
And lives at last were washing away:
To the shrouds they took,--they shook in the hurling and
horrible airs.
16
One stirred from the rigging to save
The wild woman-kind below,
With a rope's end round the man, handy and brave--
He was pitched to his death at a blow,
For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew:
They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro
Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do
With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?
17
They fought with God's cold--
And they could not and fell to the deck
(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled
With the sea-romp over the wreck.
Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble,
The woman's wailing, the crying of child without check--
Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,
A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.
18
Ah, touched in your bower of bone
Are you! turned for an exquisite smart,
Have you! make words break from me here all alone,
Do you!--mother of being in me, heart.
O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth,
Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start!
Never-eldering revel and river of youth,
What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?
19
Sister, a sister calling
A master, her master and mine!--
And the inboard seas run swirling and bawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine
Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;
Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine
Ears, and the call of the tall nun
To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm's brawling.
20
She was first of a five and came
Of a coifèd sisterhood.
(O Deutschland, double a desperate name!
O world wide of its good!
But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town,
Christ's lily and beast of the waste wood:
From life's dawn it is drawn down,
Abel is Cain's brother and breasts they have sucked the same.)
21
Loathed for a love men knew in them,
Banned by the land of their birth,
Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them;
Surf, snow, river and earth
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light;
Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,
Thou martyr-master: in thy sight
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers--sweet
heaven was astrew in them.
22
Five! the finding and sake
And cipher of suffering Christ.
Mark, the mark is of man's make
And the word of it Sacrificed.
But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken,
Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced--
Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token
For lettering of the lamb's fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.
23
Joy fall to thee, father Francis,
Drawn to the Life that died;
With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his
Lovescape crucified
And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters
And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride,
Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,
To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.
24
Away in the loveable west,
On a pastoral forehead of Wales,
I was under a roof here, I was at rest,
And they the prey of the gales;
She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails,
Was calling 'O Christ, Christ come quickly':
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worn Best.
25
The majesty! what did she mean?
Breathe, arch and original Breath.
Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been?
Breathe, body of lovely Death.
They were else-minded then, altogether, the men
Woke thee with a _we are perishlng_ in the weather of Gennesareth.
Or is it that she cried for the crown then,
The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen?
26
For how to the heart's cheering
The down-dogged ground-hugged grey
Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing
Of pied and peeled May!
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,
With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,
What by your measure is the heaven of desire,
The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for
the hearing?
27
No, but it was not these.
The jading and jar of the cart,
Time's tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease
Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart,
Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds
The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart:
Other, I gather, in measure her mind's
Burden, in wind's burly and beat of endragonèd seas.
28
But how shall I ... make me room there;
Reach me a ... Fancy, come faster--
Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there,
Thing that she ... there then! the Master,
_Ipse_, the only one, Christ, King, Head:
He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her;
Do, deal, lord it with living and dead;
Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and have done
with his doom there.
29
Ah! there was a heart right!
There was single eye!
Read the unshapeable shock night
And knew the who and the why;
Wording it how but by him that present and past,
Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?--
The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast
Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light.
30
Jesu, heart's light,
Jesu, maid's son,
What was the feast followed the night
Thou hadst glory of this nun?
Feast of the one woman without stain.
For so conceived, so to conceive thee is done;
But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain,
Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee outright.
31
Well, she has thee for the pain, for the
Patience; but pity of the rest of them!
Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the
Comfortless unconfessed of them--
No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence
Finger of a tender of, O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the
Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and
Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest; does
tempest carry the grain for thee?
32
I admire thce, master of the tides,
Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall;
The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs sides,
The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall;
Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind;
Ground of being, and granite of it: past all
Grasp God, throned behind
Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides;
33
With a mercy that outrides
The all of water, an ark
For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides
Lower than death and the dark;
A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison,
The-last-breath penitent spirits--the uttermost mark
Our passion-plungèd giant risen,
The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of
his strides.
34
Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire
hard-hurled.
35
Dame, at our door
Drowned, and among our shoals,
Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the
Reward:
Our King back, oh, upon English souls!
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,
be a crimson-cresseted east,
More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls,
Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,
Our hearts' charity's hearth's fire, our thoughts' chivalry's throng's
Lord.
_5
Penmaen Pool_
_For the Visitors' Book at the Inn_
WHO long for rest, who look for pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school
O where live well your lease of leisure
But here at, here at Penmaen Pool?
You'll dare the Alp? you'll dart the skiff?--
Each sport has here its tackle and tool:
Come, plant the staff by Cadair cliff;
Come, swing the sculls on Penmaen Pool.
What's yonder?--Grizzled Dyphwys dim:
The triple-hummocked Giant's stool,
Hoar messmate, hobs and nobs with him
To halve the bowl of Penmaen Pool.
And all the landscape under survey,
At tranquil turns, by nature's rule,
Rides repeated topsyturvy
In frank, in fairy Penmaen Pool.
And Charles's Wain, the wondrous seven,
And sheep-flock clouds like worlds of wool.
For all they shine so, high in heaven,
Shew brighter shaken in Penmaen Pool.
The Mawddach, how she trips! though throttled
If floodtide teeming thrills her full,
And mazy sands all water-wattled
Waylay her at ebb, past Penmaen Pool.
But what 's to see in stormy weather,
When grey showers gather and gusts are cool?--
Why, raindrop-roundels looped together
That lace the face of Penmaen Pool.
Then even in weariest wintry hour
Of New Year's month or surly Yule
Furred snows, charged tuft above tuft, tower
From darksome darksome Penmaen Pool.
And ever, if bound here hardest home,
You've parlour-pastime left and (who'll
Not honour it?) ale like goldy foam
That frocks an oar in Penmaen Pool.
Then come who pine for peace or pleasure
Away from counter, court, or school,
Spend here your measure of time and treasure
And taste the treats of Penmaen Pool.
_6
The Silver Jubilee:
To James First Bishop of Shrewsbury on the 25th Year
of his Episcopate July 28. 1876_
1
THOUGH no high-hung bells or din
Of braggart bugles cry it in--
What is sound? Nature's round
Makes the Silver Jubilee.
2
Five and twenty years have run
Since sacred fountains to the sun
Sprang, that but now were shut,
Showering Silver Jubilee.
3
Feasts, when we shall fall asleep,
Shrewsbury may see others keep;
None but you this her true,
This her Silver Jubilee.
4
Not today we need lament
Your wealth of life is some way spent:
Toil has shed round your head
Silver but for Jubilee.
5
Then for her whose velvet vales
Should have pealed with welcome, Wales,
Let the chime of a rhyme
Utter Silver Jubilee.
_7
God's Grandeur_
THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with
toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:
the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah!
bright wings.
_8
The Starlight Night_
LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!--
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!--What?--Prayer, patience, alms,
vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow
sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
_9
Spring_
NOTHING is so beautiful as spring--
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the
winning.
_10
The Lantern out of Doors_
SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ's interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot
fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
_11
The Sea and the Skylark_
ON ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench--right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.
Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.
How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,
Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.
_12
The Windhover:
To Christ our Lord_
I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Fal-
con, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and
striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstacy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend:
the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the
thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a
billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down
sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
_13
Pied Beauty_
GLORY be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and
plough;
And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
_14
Hurrahing in Harvest_
SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the
stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely
behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our
Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding
shoulder
Majestic--as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!--
These things, these things were here and but the
beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off
under his feet.
_15
Caged Skylark_
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house,
dwells--
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest--
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
_16
In the Valley of the Elwy_
I REMEMBER a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:
Comforting smell breathed at very entering,
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.
That cordial air made those kind people a hood
All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:
Why, it seemed of course; seemed of right it should.
Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,
All the air things wear that build this world of Wales;
Only the inmate does not correspond:
God, lover of souls, swaying considerate scales,
Complete thy creature dear O where it fails,
Being mighty a master, being a father and fond.
_17
The Loss of the Eurydice
Foundered March 24. 1878_
1
THE Eurydice--it concerned thee, O Lord:
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
Some asleep unawakened, all un-
warned, eleven fathoms fallen
2
Where she foundered! One stroke
Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
And flockbells off the aerial
Downs' forefalls beat to the burial.
3
For did she pride her, freighted fully, on
Bounden bales or a hoard of bullion?--
Precious passing measure,
Lads and men her lade and treasure.
4
She had come from a cruise, training seamen--
Men, boldboys soon to be men:
Must it, worst weather,
Blast bole and bloom together?
5
No Atlantic squall overwrought her
Or rearing billow of the Biscay water:
Home was hard at hand
And the blow bore from land.
6
And you were a liar, O blue March day.
Bright sun lanced fire in the heavenly bay;
But what black Boreas wrecked her? he
Came equipped, deadly-electric,
7
A beetling baldbright cloud thorough England
Riding: there did storms not mingle? and
Hailropes hustle and grind their
Heavengravel? wolfsnow, worlds of it, wind there?
8
Now Carisbrook keep goes under in gloom;
Now it overvaults Appledurcombe;
Now near by Ventnor town
It hurls, hurls off Boniface Down.
9
Too proud, too proud, what a press she bore!
Royal, and all her royals wore.
Sharp with her, shorten sail!
Too late; lost; gone with the gale.
10
This was that fell capsize,
As half she had righted and hoped to rise
Death teeming in by her portholes
Raced down decks, round messes of mortals.
11
Then a lurch forward, frigate and men;
'All hands for themselves' the cry ran then;
But she who had housed them thither
Was around them, bound them or wound them with her.
12
Marcus Hare, high her captain,
Kept to her--care-drowned and wrapped in
Cheer's death, would follow
His charge through the champ-white water-in-a-wallow.
13
All under Channel to bury in a beach her
Cheeks: Right, rude of feature,
He thought he heard say
'Her commander! and thou too, and thou this way.'
14
It is even seen, time's something server,
In mankind's medley a duty-swerver,
At downright 'No or yes?'
Doffs all, drives full for righteousness.
15
Sydney Fletcher, Bristol-bred,
(Low lie his mates now on watery bed)
Takes to the seas and snows
As sheer down the ship goes.
16
Now her afterdraught gullies him too down;
Now he wrings for breath with the deathgush brown;
Till a lifebelt and God's will
Lend him a lift from the sea-swill.
17
Now he shoots short up to the round air;
Now he gasps, now he gazes everywhere;
But his eye no cliff, no coast or
Mark makes in the rivelling snowstorm.
18
Him, after an hour of wintry waves,
A schooner sights, with another, and saves,
And he boards her in Oh! such joy
He has lost count what came next, poor boy.--
19
They say who saw one sea-corpse cold
He was all of lovely manly mould,
Every inch a tar,
Of the best we boast our sailors are.
20
Look, foot to forelock, how all things suit! he
Is strung by duty, is strained to beauty,
And brown-as-dawning-skinned
With brine and shine and whirling wind.
21
O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!
Leagues, leagues of seamanship
Slumber in these forsaken
Bones, this sinew, and will not waken.
22
He was but one like thousands more,
Day and night I deplore
My people and born own nation,
Fast foundering own generation,
23
I might let bygones be--our curse
Of ruinous shrine no hand or, worse,
Robbery's hand is busy to
Dress, hoar-hallowèd shrines unvisited;
24
Only the breathing temple and fleet
Life, this wildworth blown so sweet,
These daredeaths, ay this crew, in
Unchrist, all rolled in ruin--
25
Deeply surely I need to deplore it,
Wondering why my master bore it,
The riving off that race
So at home, time was, to his truth and grace
26
That a starlight-wender of ours would say
The marvellous Milk was Walsingham Way
And one--but let be, let be:
More, more than was will yet be.--
27
O well wept, mother have lost son;
Wept, wife; wept, sweetheart would be one:
Though grief yield them no good
Yet shed what tears sad truelove should.
28
But to Christ lord of thunder
Crouch; lay knee by earth low under:
'Holiest, loveliest, bravest,
Save my hero, O Hero savest.
29
And the prayer thou hearst me making
Have, at the awful overtaking,
Heard; have heard and granted
Grace that day grace was wanted.'
30
Not that hell knows redeeming,
But for souls sunk in seeming
Fresh, till doomfire burn all,
Prayer shall fetch pity eternal.
_18
The May Magnificat_
MAY is Mary's month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season--
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?--
Growth in every thing--
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and green world all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature's motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring's universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all--
This ecstacy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.
_19
Binsey Poplars
felled 1879_
MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding
bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew--
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
_20
Duns Scotus's Oxford_
TOWERY city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-
racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and
town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;
Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping--folk, flocks, and flowers.
Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;
Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.
_21
Henry Purcell_
_The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell
and praises him that, whereas other musicians have given
utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, beyond
that, uttered in notes the very make and species of man as
created both in him and in all men generally._
HAVE fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear
To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,
An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal
Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy,
here.
Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,
Or love or pity or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:
It is the forgèd feature finds me; it is the rehearsal
Of own, of abrupt self there so thrusts on, so throngs
the ear.
Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me!
only I'll
Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to
his pelted plumage under
Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked
his while
The thunder-purple seabeach plumè purple-of-thunder,
If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a
colossal smile
Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with
wonder.
_22
Peace_
WHEN will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peacè, will you, Peace? I'll not play
hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace
allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here
does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
_23
The Bugler's First Communion
A BUGLER boy from barrack (it is over the hill
There)--boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish
Mother to an English sire (he
Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will),
This very very day came down to us after a boon he on
My late being there begged of me, overflowing
Boon in my bestowing,
Came, I say, this day to it--to a First Communion.
Here he knelt then ín regimental red.
Forth Christ from cupboard fetched, how fain I of feet
To his youngster take his treat!
Low-latched in leaf-light housel his too huge godhead.
There! and your sweetest sendings, ah divine,
By it, heavens, befall him! as a heart Christ's darling,
dauntless;
Tongue true, vaunt- and tauntless;
Breathing bloom of a chastity in mansex fine.
Frowning and forefending angel-warder
Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;
March, kind comrade, abreast him;
Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.
How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill,
When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach
Yields tender as a pushed peach,
Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will!
Then though I should tread tufts of consolation
Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to
And do serve God to serve to
Just such slips of soldiery Christ's royal ration.
Nothing élse is like it, no, not all so strains
Us: fresh youth fretted in a bloomfall all portending
That sweet's sweeter ending;
Realm both Christ is heir to and thére réigns.
O now well work that sealing sacred ointment!
O for now charms, arms, what bans off bad
And locks love ever in a lad!
Let mé though see no more of him, and not disappointment
Those sweet hopes quell whose least me quickenings lift.
In scarlet or somewhere of some day seeing
That brow and bead of being,
An our day's God's own Galahad. Though this child's
drift
Seems by a divíne doom chánnelled, nor do I cry
Disaster there; but may he not rankle and roam
In backwheels though bound home?--
That left to the Lord of the Eucharist, I here lie by;
Recorded only, I have put my lips on pleas
Would brandle adamantine heaven with ride and jar, did
Prayer go disregarded:
Forward-like, but however, and like favourable heaven
heard these.
_24
Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice_
THE dappled die-away
Cheek and wimpled lip,
The gold-wisp, the airy-grey
Eye, all in fellowship--
This, all this beauty blooming,
This, all this freshness fuming,
Give God while worth consuming.
Both thought and thew now bolder
And told by Nature: Tower;
Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder
That beat and breathe in power--
This pride of prime's enjoyment
Take as for tool, not toy meant
And hold at Christ's employment.
The vault and scope and schooling
And mastery in the mind,
In silk-ash kept from cooling,
And ripest under rind--
What life half lifts the latch of,
What hell stalks towards the snatch of,
Your offering, with despatch, of!
_25
Andromeda_
Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.
Her Perseus linger and leave her tó her extremes?--
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs.
_26
The Candle Indoors_
SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.--
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart's vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?
_27
The Handsome Heart:
at a Gracious Answer_
'BUT tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy
You?'--'Father, what you buy me I like best.'
With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,
He swung to his first poised purport of reply.
What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly--
Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest--
To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed,
Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.
Mannerly-hearted! more than handsome face--
Beauty's bearing or muse of mounting vein,
All, in this case, bathed in high hallowing grace . . .
Of heaven what boon to buy you, boy, or gain
Not granted?--Only ... O on that path you pace
Run all your race, O brace sterner that strain!
_28
At the Wedding March_
GOD with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.
Each be other's comfort kind:
Déep, déeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.
Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Déals tríumph and immortal years.
_29
Felix Randal_
FELIX RANDAL the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-
handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he
offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering
sandal!
_30
Brothers_
How lovely the elder brother's
Life all laced in the other's,
Lóve-laced! what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
When Shrovetide, two years gone, 5
Our boys' plays brought on
Part was picked for John,
Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy
Ran revel in the elder boy.
Their night was come now; all 10
Our company thronged the hall;
Henry, by the wall,
Beckoned me beside him:
I came where called, and eyed him
By meanwhiles; making mý play 15
Turn most on tender byplay.
For, wrung all on love's rack,
My lad, and lost in Jack,
Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip;
Or drove, with a diver's dip, 20
Clutched hands down through clasped knees--
Truth's tokens tricks like these,
Old telltales, with what stress
He hung on the imp's success.
Now the other was bráss-bóld: 25
Hé had no work to hold
His heart up at the strain;
Nay, roguish ran the vein.
Two tedious acts were past;
Jack's call and cue at last; 30
When Henry, heart-forsook,
Dropped eyes and dared not look.
Eh, how áll rúng!
Young dog, he did give tongue!
But Harry--in his hands he has flung 35
His tear-tricked cheeks of flame
For fond love and for shame.
Ah Nature, framed in fault,
There 's comfort then, there 's salt;
Nature, bad, base, and blind, 40
Dearly thou canst be kind;
There dearly thén, deárly,
I'll cry thou canst be kind.
_31
Spring and Fall:
to a young child_
MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
_32
Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves_
EARNEST, earthless, equal, attuneable, | vaulty, voluminous, . .
stupendous
Evening strains to be tíme's vást, | womb-of-all, home-of-all,
hearse-of-all night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, | her wild hollow
hoarlight hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, | stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth | her being has unbound, her
dapple is at an end, as-
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; | self ín self steepèd
and pashed--qúite
Disremembering, dísmembering | àll now. Heart, you round me
right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night | whélms, whélms, ánd
will end us.
Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth
bleak light; black,
Ever so black on it. Óur tale, óur oracle! | Lét life, wáned,
ah lét life wind
Off hér once skéined stained véined varíety | upon, áll on twó
spools; párt, pen, páck
Now her áll in twó flocks, twó folds--black, white; | right,
wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind
But thése two; wáre of a wórld where bút these | twó tell, each
off the óther; of a rack
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless, | thóughts
agaínst thoughts ín groans grínd.
_33
Inversnaid_
THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fáawn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
_34
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves--goes itself; _myself_ it speaks and spells,
Crying _Whát I do is me: for that I came._
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is--
Chríst--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
_35
Ribblesdale_
EARTH, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavès throng
And louchèd low grass, heaven that dost appeal
To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;
That canst but only be, but dost that long--
Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong
Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,
Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel
Thy river, and o'er gives all to rack or wrong.
And what is Earth's eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dear and dogged man?--Ah, the heir
To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn,
To thriftless reave both our rich round world bare
And none reck of world after, this bids wear
Earth brows of such care, care and dear concern.
_36
The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo
(Maidens' song from St. Winefred's Well)_
THE LEADEN ECHO
How to keep--is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere
known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch
or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing
away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding
sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there's none; no no no there's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.
THE GOLDEN ECHO
Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air.
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Óne. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's
fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and
dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-
lastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,
loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant,
girlgrace--
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them
with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before
death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's
self and beauty's giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind
what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so
haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged,
so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.--
Yonder.--What high as that! We follow, now we follow.--
Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.
_37
The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we
Breathe_
WILD air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element; 10
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God's infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast, 20
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race--
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess's
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do--
Let all God's glory through, 30
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.
I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense 40
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms' self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.
If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man's beating heart, 50
Laying, like air's fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us, 60
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one 70
More makes, when all is done,
Both God's and Mary's Son.
Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not 80
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft, 90
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal, 100
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.
So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man's mind.
Through her we may see him 110
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
Be thou then, thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky; 120
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God's love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.
_38
To what serves Mortal Beauty?_
To what serves mortal beauty | dangerous; does set danc-
ing blood the O-seal-that-so | feature, flung prouder form
Than Purcell tune lets tread to? | See: it does this: keeps warm
Men's wits to the things that are; | what good means--where a glance
Master more may than gaze, | gaze out of countenance.
Those lovely lads once, wet-fresh | windfalls of war's storm,
How then should Gregory, a father, | have gleanèd else from swarm-
ed Rome? But God to a nation | dealt that day's dear chance.
To man, that needs would worship | block or barren stone,
Our law says: Love what are | love's worthiest, were all known;
World's loveliest--men's selves. Self | flashes off frame and face.
What do then? how meet beauty? | Merely meet it; own,
Home at heart, heaven's sweet gift; | then leave, let that alone.
Yea, wish that though, wish all, | God's better beauty, grace.
_39
(The Soldier)_
YES. Whý do we áll, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless
Our redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,
But frail clay, nay but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,
Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guess
That, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less;
It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;
And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,
And scarlet wear the spirit of wár thére express.
Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering
through;
He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss
Now, and séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry 'O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o'er again' cries Christ 'it should be this'.
_40
(Carrion Comfort)_
NOT, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist--slack they may be--these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry _I can no more_. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against
me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to
avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer
and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy,
would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling
flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each
one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my
God!) my God.
_41_
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing--
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
_42
Tom's Garland;
upon the Unemployed_
TOM--garlanded with squat and surly steel
Tom; then Tom's fallowbootfellow piles pick
By him and rips out rockfire homeforth--sturdy Dick;
Tom Heart-at-ease, Tom Navvy: he is all for his meal
Sure, 's bed now. Low be it: lustily he his low lot (feel
That ne'er need hunger, Tom; Tom seldom sick,
Seldomer heartsore; that treads through, prickproof,
thick
Thousands of thorns, thoughts) swings though. Common-
weal
Little I reck ho! lacklevel in, if all had bread:
What! Country is honour enough in all us--lordly head,
With heaven's lights high hung round, or, mother-ground
That mammocks, mighty foot. But no way sped,
Nor mind nor mainstrength; gold go garlanded
With, perilous, O nó; nor yet plod safe shod sound;
Undenizened, beyond bound
Of earth's glory, earth's ease, all; no one, nowhere,
In wide the world's weal; rare gold, bold steel, bare
In both; care, but share care--
This, by Despair, bred Hangdog dull; by Rage,
Manwolf, worse; and their packs infest the age.
_43
Harry Ploughman_
HARD as hurdle arms, with a broth of goldish flue
Breathed round; the rack of ribs; the scooped flank; lank
Rope-over thigh; knee-nave; and barrelled shank--
Head and foot, shoulder and shank--
By a grey eye's heed steered well, one crew, fall to;
Stand at stress. Each limb's barrowy brawn, his thew
That onewhere curded, onewhere sucked or sank--
Soared or sank--,
Though as a beechbole firm, finds his, as at a roll-
call, rank
And features, in flesh, what deed he each must do--
His sinew-service where do.
He leans to it, Harry bends, look. Back, elbow, and
liquid waist
In him, all quail to the wallowing o' the plough:
's cheek crimsons; curls
Wag or crossbridle, in a wind lifted, windlaced--
See his wind- lilylocks -laced;
Churlsgrace, too, child of Amansstrength, how it hangs
or hurls
Them--broad in bluff hide his frowning feet lashed! raced
With, along them, cragiron under and cold furls--
With-a-fountain's shining-shot furls.
_44_
To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life
Among strangèrs. Father and mother dear,
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
And he my peace my parting, sword and strife.
England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
To my creating thought, would neither hear
Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.
I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thírd
Remove. Not but in all removes I can
Kind love both give and get. Only what word
Wisest my heart breeds dark heaven's baffling ban
Bars or hell's spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,
Heard unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.
_45_
I WAKE and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
_46_
PATIENCE, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?--He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.
_47_
MY own heart let me have more pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather--as skies
Betweenpie mountains--lights a lovely mile.
_48
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of
the comfort of the Resurrection_
CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then
chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng;
they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm
arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats
earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches,
starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resur-
rection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal
diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
_49
In honour of
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus_
HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
_50_
_Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verum-
tamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prospera-
tur? &c._
THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
_51
To R. B._
THE fine delight that fathers thought; the strong
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.
Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.
UNFINISHED POEMS
& FRAGMENTS
_52
Summa_
THE best ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribèd to
The holy Three in One.
_53_
WHAT being in rank-old nature should earlier have that
breath been
That hére pérsonal tells off these heart-song powerful
peals?--
A bush-browed, beetle-brówed bíllow is it?
With a soúth-wésterly wínd blústering, with a tide rolls
reels
Of crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seas
in; seen
Únderneath, their glassy barrel, of a fairy green.
. . . . . . . .
Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling
_54
On the Portrait of Two Beautiful
Young People
A Brother and Sister_
O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.
Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest
In one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast,
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.
And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreams
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.
She leans on him with such contentment fond
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;
His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.
But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you are
Of favoured make and mind and health and youth,
Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star?
There's none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.
There's none but good can bé good, both for you
And what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid;
None good but God--a warning wavèd to
One once that was found wanting when Good weighed.
Man lives that list, that leaning in the will
No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,
The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,
Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.
Your feast of; that most in you earnest eye
May but call on your banes to more carouse.
Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry,
To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward
boughs?
Enough: corruption was the world's first woe.
What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?
O but I bear my burning witness though
Against the wild and wanton work of men.
. . . . . . .
_55_
THE sea took pity: it interposed with doom:
'I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand:
Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb,
And she shall child them on the New-world strand.'
. . . . . . . .
_56
(Ash-boughs)_
a.
NOT of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,
Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep
Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.
Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and
furled
Fast ór they in clammyish lashtender combs creep
Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.
They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May
Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray
Of greenery: it is old earth's groping towards the steep
Heaven whom she childs us by.
(Variant from line 7.) b.
They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there
hurled],
With talons sweep
The smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye,
But more cheer is when] May
Mells blue with snowwhite through their fringe and fray
Of greenery and old earth gropes for, grasps at steep
Heaven with it whom she childs things by.
_57_
. . . . . . . .
HOPE holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out
To take His lovely likeness more and more.
It will not well, so she would bring about
An ever brighter burnish than before
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.
Her glass is blest but she as good as blind
Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there;
Her glass drinks light, she darkles down behind,
All of her glorious gainings unaware.
. . . . . . . .
I told you that she turned her mirror dim
Betweenwhiles, but she sees herself not Him.
. . . . . . . .
_53
St. Winefred's Well
ACT I. Sc. I
_Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following._
T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me?
W. You came by Caerwys, sir?
T. I came by Caerwys.
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle.
T. Your uncle met the messenger--met me; and this the
message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night.
W. To-night, sir!
T. Soon, now: therefore
Have all things ready in his room.
W. There needs but little doing.
T. Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one com-
panion,
His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be,
But both will share one cell. This was good news,
Gwenvrewi.
W. Ah yes!
T. Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her.
_Exit Winefred._
No man has such a daughter. The fathers of the world
Call no such maiden 'mine'. The deeper grows her
dearness
And more and more times laces round and round my heart,
The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers
there,
Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains
them, strains them;
Meantime some tongue cries 'What, Teryth! what, thou
poor fond father!
How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air
so rich about thee,
Is all, all sheared away, thus!' Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet 'tis not a funeral,
Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot with
feeling that
Alive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlessly
Goes marching thro' my mind. What sense is this? It
has none.
This is too much the father; nay the mother. Fanciful!
I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.
_Enter Gwenlo._
. . . . . . . . . . .
Act II.--_Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene,
Winefred having been murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc
with a bloody sword._
C. My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my
mind?
What stroke has Caradoc's right arm dealt? what done?
Head of a rebel
Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,
In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;
Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,
On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her--
Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.
What work? what harm 's done? There is no harm done,
none yet;
Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was--mock. I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day's task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy
dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, the woeful word! Then what,
What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders,
fall,
And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank's edge; then
Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,
It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes!
In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,
Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,
In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,
No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down
But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;
Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven:
O there,
There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances
Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what
first lightning
Any instant falls means me. And I do not repent;
I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent
I have like a lion done, lionlike done,
Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,
Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth
In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,
Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor
Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!
What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering
Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home,
nature's business,
Despatches with no flinching. But will flesh, O can flesh
Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!
We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary
And in this darksome world what comfort can I find?
Down this darksome world cómfort whére can I find
When 'ts light I quenched; its rose, time's one rich rose,
my hand,
By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleecèd bloom,
Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering
With no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her most
That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,
To hunger and not have, yét hope ón for, to storm and
strive and
Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper dis-
appointed,
The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,
Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,
Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;
I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,
Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,
Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,
Life's quick, this kínd, this kéen self-feeling,
With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,
Must all day long taste murder. What do nów then?
Do? Nay,
Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps
all doing. What do? Not yield,
Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out,
Brave all, and take what comes--as here this rabble is come,
Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers
Than sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes.
Come!
_Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno._
. . . . . . . . . . .
_After Winefred's raising from the dead and the breaking
out of the fountain._
BEUNO. O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from
fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing.
While blind men's eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts
of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that's lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-
dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief, in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist
and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night
delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, every-
where,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
. . . . . . . . . . .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on
crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome cáme
hither!
Not now to náme even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
. . . . . . . . . . .
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,
Amongst come-back-again things, thíngs with a revival,
things with a recovery,
Thy name . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
_59_
WHAT shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?--
Be under her banner and live for her honour:
Under her banner I'll live for her honour.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,
But country and flag, the flag I am under--
There is the shilling that finds me willing
To follow a banner and fight for honour.
CH. We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.
Call me England's fame's fond lover,
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,
But under her banner I live for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we march for her honour.
Where is the field I must play the man on?
O welcome there their steel or cannon.
Immortal beauty is death with duty,
If under her banner I fall for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we fall for her honour.
_60_
THE times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man's distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one--
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.
Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal . . .
_61
Cheery Beggar_
BEYOND Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called
there the Plain,
In Summer, in a burst of summertime
Following falls and falls of rain,
When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of
Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime;
. . . . . . . .
The motion of that man's heart is fine
Whom want could not make píne, píne
That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer
him
Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine.
. . . . . . . .
_62_
DENIS, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit
Caps occasion with an intellectual fit.
Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber'll hit
The bald and bóld blínking gold when áll's dóne
Right rooting in the bare butt's wincing navel in the sight
of the sun.
. . . . . . . .
_63_
THE furl of fresh-leaved dogrose down
His cheeks the forth-and-flaunting sun
Had swarthed about with lion-brown
Before the Spring was done.
His locks like all a ravel-rope's-end,
With hempen strands in spray--
Fallow, foam-fallow, hanks--fall'n off their ranks,
Swung down at a disarray.
Or like a juicy and jostling shock
Of bluebells sheaved in May
Or wind-long fleeces on the flock
A day off shearing day.
Then over his turnèd temples--here--
Was a rose, or, failing that,
Rough-Robin or five-lipped campion clear
For a beauty-bow to his hat,
And the sunlight sidled, like dewdrops, like dandled
diamonds
Through the sieve of the straw of the plait.
. . . . . . . .
_64
The Woodlark_
_TEEVO cheetio cheevio chee:_
O where, what can thát be?
_Weedio-weedio:_ there again!
So tiny a trickle of sóng-strain;
And all round not to be found
For brier, bough, furrow, or gréen ground
Before or behind or far or at hand
Either left either right
Anywhere in the súnlight.
Well, after all! Ah but hark--
'I am the little woodlark.
. . . . . . .
To-day the sky is two and two
With white strokes and strains of the blue
. . . . . . .
Round a ring, around a ring
And while I sail (must listen) I sing
. . . . . . .
The skylark is my cousin and he
Is known to men more than me
. . . . . . .
. . . when the cry within
Says Go on then I go on
Till the longing is less and the good gone
But down drop, if it says Stop,
To the all-a-leaf of the tréetop
And after that off the bough
. . . . . . .
I ám so véry, O só very glad
That I dó thínk there is not to be had . . .
. . . . . . .
The blue wheat-acre is underneath
And the braided ear breaks out of the sheath,
The ear in milk, lush the sash,
And crush-silk poppies aflash,
The blood-gush blade-gash
Flame-rash rudred
Bud shelling or broad-shed
Tatter-tassel-tangled and dingle-a-dangled
Dandy-hung dainty head.
. . . . . . .
And down ... the furrow dry
Sunspurge and oxeye
And laced-leaved lovely
Foam-tuft fumitory
. . . . . . .
Through the velvety wind V-winged
To the nest's nook I balance and buoy
With a sweet joy of a sweet joy,
Sweet, of a sweet, of a sweet joy
Of a sweet--a sweet--sweet--joy.'
_65
Moonrise_
I AWOKE in the Midsummer not to call night, |in the
white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe | of a
finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit, | lovely in waning but
lustreless,
Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, | of
dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, | en-
tangled him, not quit utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight, | unsought, pre-
sented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, | eyelid and eyelid of
slumber.
_66_
REPEAT that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delight-
fully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground,
hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
_67
On a piece of music_
How all's to one thing wrought!
_See facsimile, after p. 92_.
(Transcriber's note: The facsimile of the handwritten poem
is omitted from this text version. It is freely available
online from the Internet Archive.)
_68_
'The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
'The child is father to the man.'
No; what the poet did write ran,
'The man is father to the child.'
'The child is father to the man!'
How _can_ he be? The words are wild.
_69_
THE shepherd's brow fronting forked lightning, owns
The horror and the havoc and the glory
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven--a story
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.
But man--we, scaffold of score brittle bones;
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary
Age gasp; whose breath is our _memento mori_--
What bass is _our_ viol for tragic tones?
He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;
And, blazoned in however bold the name,
Man Jack the man is, just; his mate a hussy.
And I that die these deaths, that feed this flame,
That ... in smooth spoons spy life's masque mirrored:
tame
My tempests there, my fire and fever fussy.
_70
To his Watch_
MORTAL my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time's some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die--
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort's carol of all or woe's worst smart.
Field-flown the departed day no morning brings
Saying 'This was yours' with her, but new one, worse.
And then that last and shortest . . .
_71_
STRIKE, churl; hurl, cheerless wind, then; heltering hail
May's beauty massacre and wispèd wild clouds grow
Out on the giant air; tell Summer No,
Bid joy back, have at the harvest, keep Hope pale.
_72
Epithalamion_
HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood,
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured, where
a gluegold-brown
Marbled river, boisterously beautiful, between
Roots and rocks is danced and dandled, all in froth and water-
blowballs, down.
We are there, when we hear a shout
That the hanging honeysuck, the dogeared hazels in the cover
Makes dither, makes hover
And the riot of a rout
Of, it must be, boys from the town
Bathing: it is summer's sovereign good.
By there comes a listless stranger: beckoned by the noise
He drops towards the river: unseen
Sees the bevy of them, how the boys
With dare and with downdolphinry and bellbright bodies hud-
dling out,
Are earthworld, airworld, waterworld thorough hurled, all by
turn and turn about.
This garland of their gambols flashes in his breast
Into such a sudden zest
Of summertime joys
That he hies to a pool neighbouring; sees it is the best
There; sweetest, freshest, shadowiest;
Fairyland; silk-beech, scrolled ash, packed sycamore, wild
wychelm, hornbeam fretty overstood
By. Rafts and rafts of flake-leaves light, dealt so, painted on the air,
Hang as still as hawk or hawkmoth, as the stars or as the angels
there,
Like the thing that never knew the earth, never off roots
Rose. Here he feasts: lovely all is! No more: off with--
down he dings
His bleachèd both and woolwoven wear:
Careless these in coloured wisp
All lie tumbled-to; then with loop-locks
Forward falling, forehead frowning, lips crisp
Over finger-teasing task, his twiny boots
Fast he opens, last he offwrings
Till walk the world he can with bare his feet
And come where lies a coffer, burly all of blocks
Built of chancequarrièd, selfquainèd rocks
And the water warbles over into, filleted with glassy grassy
quicksilvery shivès and shoots
And with heavenfallen freshness down from moorland still brims,
Dark or daylight on and on. Here he will then, here he will
the fleet
Flinty kindcold element let break across his limbs
Long. Where we leave him, froliclavish while he looks about
him, laughs, swims.
Enough now; since the sacred matter that I mean
I should be wronging longer leaving it to float
Upon this only gambolling and echoing-of-earth note--
What is ... the delightful dene?
Wedlock. What the water? Spousal love.
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends
Into fairy trees, wild flowers, wood ferns
Rankèd round the bower
. . . . . . . . . .
EDITOR'S NOTES
PREFACE TO NOTES
AN editor of posthumous work is bounden to give some account
of the authority for his text; and it is the purpose of the follow-
ing notes to satisfy inquiry concerning matters whereof the
present editor has the advantage of first-hand or particular
knowledge.
_Sources_ The sources are four, and will be distinguished as
A, B, D, and H, as here described.
_A_ is my own collection, a MS. book made up of
Autographs--by which word I denote poems in the author's hand-
Writing--pasted into it as they were received from him, and also
of contemporary copies of other poems. These autographs and
copies date from '67 to '89, the year of his death. Additions
made by copying after that date are not reckoned or used. The
first two items of the facsimiles at page 70 are cuttings from A.
_B_ is a MS. book, into which, in '83, I copied from _A_ certain
poems of which the author had kept no copy. He was remiss in
making fair copies of his work, and his autograph of The Deutsch-
land having been (seemingly) lost, I copied that poem and others
from _A_ at his request. After that date he entered more poems
in this book as he completed them, and he also made both
corrections of copy and emendations of the poems which had
been copied into it by me. Thus, if a poem occur in both _A_ and
_B_, then _B_ is the later and, except for overlooked errors of
copyist, the better authority. The last entry written by G. M. H.
into this book is of the date 1887.
_D_ is a collection of the author's letters to Canon Dixon, the
only other friend who ever read his poems, with but few exceptions
whether of persons or of poems. These letters are in my keep-
ing; they contain autographs of a few poems with late corrections.
_H_ is the bundle of posthumous papers that came into my
hands at the author's death. These were at the time examined,
sorted, and indexed; and the more important pieces of which
copies were taken were inserted into a scrap-book. That col-
lection is the source of a series of his most mature sonnets, and
of almost all the unfinished poems and fragments. Among these
papers were also some early drafts. The facsimile after p. 92 is
from _H_.
_Method_ The latest autographs and autographic corrections have
Been preferred. In the very few instances in which this
principle was overruled, as in Nos. _1_ and _27_, the justi-
fication will be found in the note to the poem. The finished
poems from _1_ to _51_ are ranged chronologically by the years, but
in the section _52_-_74_ a fanciful grouping of the fragments was
preferred to the inevitable misrepresentations of conjectural
dating. G. M. H. dated his poems from their inception, and
however much he revised a poem he would date his recast as his
first draft. Thus _Handsome Heart_ was written and sent to me
in '79; and the recast, which I reject, was not made before '83,
while the final corrections may be some years later; and yet his
last autograph is dated as the first 'Oxford '79'.
_Selection_ This edition purports to convey all the author's serious
Mature poems; and he would probably not have wished any
of his earlier poems nor so many or his fragments to
have been included. Of the former class three specimens only
are admitted--and these, which may be considered of exceptional
merit or interest, had already been given to the public--but of
the latter almost everything; because these scraps being of mature
date, generally contain some special beauty of thought or diction,
and are invariably of metrical or rhythmical interest: some of
them are in this respect as remarkable as anything in the volume.
As for exclusion, no translations of any kind are published here,
whether into Greek or Latin from the English of which there
are autographs and copies in _A_ or the Englishing of Latin
hymns occurring in _H_: these last are not in my opinion of
special merit; and with them I class a few religious pieces which
will be noticed later.
_Author's Prosody_ Of the peculiar scheme of prosody invented and
developed by the author a full account is out of the question. His
own preface together with his description of the metrical scheme of
each poem--which is always, wherever it exists, transcribed in the
notes--may be a sufficient guide for practical purposes. Moreover,
the intention of the rhythm, in places where it might seem doubtful,
has been indicated by accents printed over the determining
syllables: in the later poems these accents correspond generally
with the author's own marks: in the earlier poems they do not, but
are trustworthy translations.
_Marks_ It was at one time the author's practice to use a very
elaborate system of marks, all indicating the speech-movement: the
autograph (in _A_) of _Harry Ploughman_ carries seven different
marks, each one defined at the foot. When reading through his
letters for the purpose of determining dates, I noted a few
sentences on this subject which will justify the method that I
have followed in the text. In 1883 he wrote: 'You were right to
leave out the marks: they were not consistent for one thing, and
are always offensive. Stilt there must be some. Either I must
invent a notation applied throughout as in music or else I must
only mark where the reader is likely to mistake, and for the
present this is what I shall do.' And again in '85: 'This is my
difficulty, what marks to use and when to use them: they are so
much needed and yet so objectionable. (_Punctuation_) About
punctuation my mind is clear: I can give a rule for everything I
write myself, and even for other people, though they might
not agree with me perhaps.' In this last matter the autographs
are rigidly respected, the rare intentional aberration being
scrupulously noted. And so I have respected his indentation of
the verse; but in the sonnets, while my indentation corresponds,
as a rule, with some autograph, I have felt free to consider
conveniences, following, however, his growing practice to eschew
it altogether.
Apart from questions of taste--and if these poems were to be
arraigned for errors of what may be called taste,
they might be convicted of occasional affectation in
metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal-
wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling,
as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary
side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings', these and a few such examples are mostly efforts to force
emotion into theological or sectarian channels, as in 'the com-
fortless unconfessed' and the unpoetic line 'His mystery must be
instressed stressed', or, again, the exaggerated Marianism of
some pieces, or the naked encounter of sensualism and asceticism
which hurts the 'Golden Echo'.--
_Style_ Apart, I say, from such faults of taste, which few as they
numerically are yet affect my liking and more repel my sympathy
than do all the rude shocks of his purely artistic wantonness--
apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader
must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before
he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the
poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him even
a hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum and
are grown to be intolerant of its absence. And it is well to be
clear that there is no pretence to reverse the condemnation of
those faults, for which the poet has duly suffered. The extravagances
are and will remain what they were. Nor can credit be gained from
pointing them out: yet, to put readers at their ease, I will here
define them: they may be called Oddity and Obscurity; (_Oddity_)
and since the first may provoke laughter when a writer serious (and
this poet is always serious), while the latter must prevent him from
being understood (and this poet has always something to say), it
may be assumed that they were not a part of his intention. Something
of what he thought on this subject may be seen in the following
extracts from his letters. In Feb. 1879, he wrote: 'All therefore
that I think of doing is to keep my verses together in one place--
at present I have not even correct copies--, that, if anyone should
like, they might be published after my death. And that again is
unlikely, as well as remote. . . . No doubt my poetry errs on the
side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic
style. But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music
and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the
habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now
it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive
and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I
cannot have escaped.' And again two months later: 'Moreover
the oddness may make them repulsive at first and yet Lang
might have liked them on a second reading. Indeed when, on
somebody returning me the _Eurydice_, I opened and read some
lines, as one commonly reads whether prose or verse, with the
eyes, so to say, only, it struck me aghast with a kind of raw
nakedness and unmitigated violence I was unprepared for: but
take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be
read, and my verse becomes all right.'
_Obscurity_ As regards Oddity then, it is plain that the poet was
Himself fully alive to it, but he was not sufficiently aware of
obscurity, and he could not understand why his friends found his
sentences so difficult: he would never have believed that, among
all the ellipses and liberties of his grammar, the one chief cause
is his habitual omission of the relative pronoun; and yet this is
so, and the examination of a simple example or two may serve a
general purpose:
_Omission of relative pronoun_ This grammatical liberty, though it
is a common convenience in conversation and has therefore its
proper place in good writing, is apt to confuse the parts of speech,
and to reduce a normal sequence of words to mere jargon. Writers
who carelessly rely on their elliptical speech-forms to govern the
elaborate sentences of their literary composition little know what
a conscious effort of interpretation they often impose on their
readers. But it was not carelessness in Gerard Hopkins: he had full
skill and practice and scholarship in conventional forms, and it is
easy to see that he banished these purely constructional syllables
from his verse because they took up room which he thought he could
not afford them: he needed in his scheme all his space for his
poetical words, and he wished those to crowd out every merely gram-
matical colourless or toneless element; and so when he had got
into the habit of doing without these relative pronouns--though
he must, I suppose, have supplied them in his thought,--he
abuses the licence beyond precedent, as when he writes (no. _17_)
'O Hero savest!' for 'O Hero that savest!'.
_Identical Forms_ Another example of this (from the 5th stanza of
no. _23_) will discover another cause of obscurity; the line
'Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him'
means 'Scatter the ranks that sally to molest him':
but since the words _squander_ and _sally_ occupy similar positions
in the two sections of the verse, and are enforced by a similar
accentuation, the second verb deprived of its pronoun will follow
the first and appear as an imperative; and there is nothing to
prevent its being so taken but the contradiction that it makes in
the meaning; whereas the grammar should expose and enforce
the meaning, not have to be determined by the meaning. More-
over, there is no way of enunciating this line which will avoid the
confusion; because if, knowing that _sally_ should not have
the same intonation as _squander_, the reader mitigates the accent,
and in doing so lessens or obliterates the caesural pause which
exposes its accent, then _ranks_ becomes a genitive and _sally_
a substantive.
Here, then, is another source of the poet's obscurity; that in
aiming at condensation he neglects the need that there is for care
in the placing of words that are grammatically ambiguous.
English swarms with words that have one identical form for
substantive, adjective, and verb; and such a word should never
be so placed as to allow of any doubt as to what part of speech
it is used for; because such ambiguity or momentary uncertainty
destroys the force of the sentence. Now our author not only
neglects this essential propriety but he would seem even to
welcome and seek artistic effect in the consequent confusion;
and he will sometimes so arrange such words that a reader
looking for a verb may find that he has two or three ambiguous
monosyllables from which to select, and must be in doubt as to
which promises best to give any meaning that he can welcome;
and then, after his choice is made, he may be left
with some homeless monosyllable still on his hands. (_Homophones_)
Nor is our author apparently sensitive to the irrelevant
suggestions that our numerous homophones cause; and he
will provoke further ambiguities or obscurities by straining the
meaning of these unfortunate words.
_Rhymes_ Finally, the rhymes where they are peculiar are often
repellent, and so far from adding charm to the verse that they
appear as obstacles. This must not blind one from recognizing
that Gerard Hopkins, where he is simple and straightforward
in his rhyme is a master of it--there are many instances,--but
when he indulges in freaks, his childishness is incredible. His
intention in such places is that the verses should be recited
as running on without pause, and the rhyme occurring in their
midst should be like a phonetic accident, merely satisfying the
prescribed form. But his phonetic rhymes are often indefensible
on his own principle. The rhyme to _communion_ in 'The Bugler'
is hideous, and the suspicion that the poet thought it ingenious is
appalling: _eternal_, in 'The Eurydice', does not correspond with
_burn all_, and in 'Felix Randal' _and some_ and _handsome_ is as
truly an eye-rhyme as the _love_ and _prove_ which he despised and
abjured; and it is more distressing, because the old-fashioned
conventional eye-rhymes are accepted as such without speech-
adaptation, and to many ears are a pleasant relief from the fixed
jingle of the perfect rhyme; whereas his false ear-rhymes ask to
have their slight but indispensable differences obliterated in the
reading, and thus they expose their defect, which is of a disagree-
able and vulgar or even comic quality. He did not escape full
criticism and ample ridicule for such things in his lifetime; and
in '83 he wrote: 'Some of my rhymes I regret, but they are past
changing, grubs in amber: there are only a few of these; others
are unassailable; some others again there are which malignity
may munch at but the Muses love.'
_Euphony and emphasis_ Now these are bad faults, and, as I said, a
reader, if he is to get any enjoyment from the author's genius,
must be somewhat tolerant of them; and they have a real relation
to the means whereby the very forcible and original effects of
beauty are produced. There is nothing stranger in these poems than
the mixture of passages of extreme delicacy and exquisite diction
with passages where, in a jungle of rough root-words, emphasis
seems to oust euphony; and both these qualities, emphasis and
euphony, appear in their extreme forms. It was an idiosyncrasy
of this student's mind to push everything to its logical extreme,
and take pleasure in a paradoxical result; as may be seen in his
prosody where a simple theory seems to be used only as a basis for
unexampled liberty. He was flattered when I called him
_perittutatos_, and saw the humour of it--and one would expect
to find in his work the force of emphatic condensation and the
magic of melodious expression, both in their extreme forms. Now
since those who study style in itself must allow a proper place
to the emphatic expression, this experiment, which supplies as
novel examples of success as of failure, should be full of
interest; and such interest will promote tolerance.
The fragment, of which a facsimile is given after page 92, is
the draft of what appears to be an attempt to explain how an
artist has not free-will in his creation. He works out his own
nature instinctively as he happens to be made, and is irresponsible
for the result. It is lamentable that Gerard Hopkins died when,
to judge by his latest work, he was beginning to concentrate the
force of all his luxuriant experiments in rhythm and diction, and
castigate his art into a more reserved style. Few will read the
terrible posthumous sonnets without such high admiration and
respect for his poetical power as must lead them to search out the
rare masterly beauties that distinguish his work.
NOTES
PAGE 1. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. This is from B, and must have
been written in '83 or not much later. The punctuation
has been exactly followed, except that I have added
a comma after the word _language_ in the last line but one
of page 5, where the omission seemed an oversight.
p.4, l. 21. _rove over_. This expression is used here to denote
the running on of the sense and sound of the end of
a verse into the beginning of the next; but this meaning
is not easily to be found in the word.
The two words _reeve_ (pf. _rove_, which is also a pf. of
_rive_) and _reave_ (pf. _reft_) are both used several times by
G.M.H., but they are both spelt _reave_. In the present
context _rove_ and _reaving_ occur in his letters, and the
spelling _reeve_ in 'The Deutschland', xii. 8, is probably due
to the copyists.
There is no doubt that G. M. H. had a wrong notion of
the meaning of the nautical term _reeve_. No. 39 line 10 (the
third passage where _reeve_, spelt _reave_, occurs, and a
nautical meaning is required--see the note there--) would
be satisfied by _splice_ (nautical); and if this notion were
influenced by _weave_, _wove_, that would describe the inter-
weaving of the verses. In the passage referred to in 'The
Deutschland' _reeve_ is probably intended in its dialectal or
common speech significance: see Wright's 'English Dialect
Dictionary', where the first sense of the verb given is to
bring together the 'gathers' of a dress: and in this sense
_reeve_ is in common use.
p. 7. EARLY POEMS. Two school prize-poems exist; the date of
the first, 'The Escorial', is Easter '60, which is before
Poems G.M.H. was sixteen years old. It is in Spenserian
stanza: the imperfect copy in another hand has the first
15 stanzas omitting the 9th, and the author has written
on it his motto, _Batraxos de pot akridas os tis erisda_,
with an accompanying gloss to explain his allusions.
Though wholly lacking the Byronic flush it looks as if in-
fluenced by the historical descriptions in 'Childe Harold',
and might provide a quotation for a tourist's guide to
Spain. The history seems competent, and the artistic
knowledge precocious.
Here for a sample is the seventh stanza:
This was no classic temple order'd round
With massy pillars of the Doric mood
Broad-fluted, nor with shafts acanthus-crown'd,
Pourtray'd along the frieze with Titan's brood
That battled Gods for heaven; brilliant-hued,
With golden fillets and rich blazonry,
Wherein beneath the cornice, horsemen rode
With form divine, a fiery chivalry--
Triumph of airy grace and perfect harmony.
The second prize-poem, 'A Vision of Mermaids', is dated
Xmas '62. The autograph of this, which is preserved, is
headed by a very elaborate circular pen-and-ink drawing,
6 inches in diameter,--a sunset sea-piece with rocks and
formal groups of mermaidens, five or six together, singing
as they stand (apparently) half-immersed in the shallows
as described
'But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun,' &c.
This poem is in 143 lines of heroics. It betrays the in-
fluence of Keats, and when I introduced the author to the
public in Miles's book, I quoted from it, thinking it useful
to show that his difficult later style was not due to in-
ability to excel in established forms. The poem is alto-
gether above the standard of school-prizes. I reprint the
extract here:
Soon--as when Summer of his sister Spring
Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling,
And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these'
Plashes amidst the billowy apple-trees
His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind
Swirling out bloom till all the air is blind
With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists
Of driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists,
The dainty onyx-coronals deflowers,
A glorious wanton;--all the wrecks in showers
Crowd down upon a stream, and jostling thick
With bubbles bugle-eyed, struggle and stick
On.tangled shoals that bar the brook a crowd
Of filmy globes and rosy floating cloud:
So those Mermaidens crowded to my rock.
* * * * *
But most in a half-circle watch'd the sun;
And a sweet sadness dwelt on every one;
I knew not why,--but know that sadness dwells
On Mermaids--whether that they ring the knells
Of seamen whelm'd in chasms of the mid-main,
As poets sing; or that it is a pain
To know the dusk depths of the ponderous sea,
The miles profound of solid green, and be
With loath'd cold fishes, far from man--or what;--
I know the sadness but the cause know not.
Then they, thus ranged, gan make full plaintively
A piteous Siren sweetness on the sea,
Withouten instrument, or conch, or bell,
Or stretch'd chords tuneable on turtle's shell;
Only with utterance of sweet breath they sung
An antique chaunt and in an unknown tongue.
Now melting upward through the sloping scale
Swell'd the sweet strain to a melodious wail;
Now ringing clarion-clear to whence it rose
Slumber'd at last in one sweet, deep, heart-broken close.
_1862-1868_ After the relics of his school-poems follow the
poems written when an undergraduate at Oxford, of which
there are four in this book--Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 52, all
dating about 1866. Of this period some ten or twelve
autograph poems exist, the most successful being religious
verses worked in Geo. Herbert's manner, and these, I think,
have been printed: there are two sonnets in Italian form and
Shakespearian mood (refused by 'Cornhill Magazine'); the
rest are attempts at lyrical poems, mostly sentimental
aspects of death: one of them 'Winter with the Gulf-stream'
was published in 'Once a Week', and reprinted at least in
part in some magazine: the autograph copy is dated Aug. 1871,
but G. M. H. told me that he wrote it when he was at school;
whence I guess that he altered it too much to allow of its
early dating. The following is a specimen of his signature
at this date.
Gerard M. Hopkins.
July 24, 1866.
Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a
handwritten image in the original.
_1868-1875_ After these last-mentioned poems there is a gap of
Silence which may be accounted for in his own words from a
letter to R. W. D. Oct. 5, '78: 'What (verses) I had written
I burnt before I became a Jesuit (i.e. 1868) and re-
solved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession,
unless it were by the wish of my superiors; so for seven
years I wrote nothing but two or three little presentation
pieces which occasion called for. But when in the winter
of '75 the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the
Thames and five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany
by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned I was
affected by the account and happening to say so to my
rector he said that he wished some one would write a poem
on the subject. On this hint I set to work and, though
my hand was out at first, produced one. I had long had
haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now
I realised on paper. ... I do not say the idea is altogether
new . . . but no one has professedly used it and made it
the principle throughout, that I know of. ... However
I had to mark the stresses . . . and a great many more
oddnesses could not but dismay an editor's eye, so that
when I offered it to our magazine _The Month_ . . . they
dared not print it.'
Of the _two or three presentation pieces_ here mentioned
one is certainly the Marian verses 'Rosa mystica', published
in the 'The Irish Monthly', May '98, and again in Orby
Shipley's 'Carmina Mariana', 2nd series, p. 183: the
autograph exists.
Another is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in
the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94. This is in five
stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of
Swinburne: no autograph has been found; and, unless
Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been provisionally
deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed
to him without some impeachment of his sincerity; and
that being altogether above suspicion, I would not yield to
the rather strong presumption which their technical skill
supplies in favour of his authorship. It is true that the
'Rosa mystica' is somewhat in the same light lilting man-
ner; but that was probably common to most of these
festal verses, and 'Rosa mystica' is not open to the
positive objections of verbal criticism which would reject
the 'Ad Mariam'. He never sent me any copy of either
of these pieces, as he did of his severer Marian poems
(Nos. 18 and 37), nor mentioned them as productions of
his serious Muse. I do not find that in either class of
these attempts he met with any appreciation at the time;
it was after the publication of Miles's book in 1894 that
his co-religionists began to recognize his possible merits,
and their enthusiasm has not perhaps been always wise.
It is natural that they should, as some of them openly
state they do, prefer the poems that I am rejecting to
those which I print; but this edition was undertaken in
response to a demand that, both in England and America,
has gradually grown up from the genuinely poetic interest
felt in the poems which I have gradually introduced to the
public:--that interest has been no doubt welcomed and
accompanied by the applause of his particular religious
associates, but since their purpose is alien to mine I regret
that I am unable to indulge it; nor can I put aside the
overruling objection that G. M. H. would not have wished
these 'little presentation pieces' to be set among his more
serious artistic work. I do not think that they would
please any one who is likely to be pleased with this book.
1. ST. DOROTHEA. Written when an exhibitioner at Balliol
College. Contemporary autograph in A, and another
almost identical in H, both undated. Text from A. This
poem was afterwards expanded, shedding its relative pro-
nouns, to 48 lines divided among three speakers, 'an
Angel, the protonotary Theophilus, (and) a Catechumen':
the grace and charm of original lost:--there is an auto-
graph in A and other copies exist. This was the first of
the poems that I saw, and G. M. H. wrote it out for me
(in 1866?).
2. HEAVEN HAVEN. Contemporary autograph, on same page
with last, in H. Text is from a slightly later autograph
undated in A. The different copies vary.
3. HABIT OF PERFECTION. Two autographs in A; the earlier
dated Jan. 18, 19, 1866. The second, which is a good
deal altered, is apparently of same date as text of No. 2.
Text follows this later version. Published in Miles.
4. WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND. Text from B, title from A
(see description of B on p. 94). In 'The Spirit of Man'
the original first stanza is given from A, and varies;
otherwise B was not much corrected. Another transcript,
now at St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow, was made by
Rev. F. Bacon after A but before the correction of B.
This was collated for me by the Rev. Father Geoffrey Bliss,
S.J., and gave one true reading. Its variants are distin-
guished by G in the notes to the poem.
The labour spent on this great metrical experiment must
have served to establish the poet's prosody and perhaps
his diction: therefore the poem stands logically as well as
chronologically in the front of his book, like a great dragon
folded in the gate to forbid all entrance, and confident in
his strength from past success. This editor advises the
reader to circumvent him and attack him later in the rear;
for he was himself shamefully worsted in a brave frontal
assault, the more easily perhaps because both subject and
treatment were distasteful to him. A good method of
approach is to read stanza 16 aloud to a chance company.
To the metrist and rhythmist the poem will be of interest
from the first, and throughout.
Stanza iv. 1. 7. Father Bliss tells me that the Voel is a
mountain not far from St. Beuno's College in N. Wales,
where the poem was written: and Dr. Henry Bradley that
_moel_ is primarily an adj. meaning _bald_: it becomes
a fem, subst. meaning _bare hill_, and preceded by the
article _y_ becomes _voel_, in modern Welsh spelt _foel_. This
accounts for its being written without initial capital, the
word being used genetically; and the meaning, obscured
by _roped_, is that the well is fed by the trickles of water
within the flanks of the mountains.--Both A and B read
_planks_ for _flanks_; G gives the correction.
St. xi. 5. Two of the required stresses are on _we dream_.
St. xii. 8. _reeve_, see note on Author's Preface, p. 101.
St. xiv. 8. _these_. G has _there_; but the words between
_shock_ and _these_ are probably parenthetical.
St. xvi. 3. Landsmen may not observe the wrongness: see
again No. 17, st. ix, and 39, line 10. I would have cor-
rected this if the euphony had not accidentally forbidden
the simplest correction.
St. xvi. 7. _foam-fleece_ followed by full stop in A and B,
by a comma in G.
St. xix. 3. _hawling_ thus spelt in all three.
St. xxi. 2. G omits _the_.
St. xxvi. 5 and 6. The semicolon is autographic correction in
B; the stop at _Way_ is uncertain in A and B, is a comma
in G.
St. xxix. 3. _night_ (sic).
8. Two of the required stresses are on _Tarpeian_.
St. xxxiv. 8. _shire_. G has _shore_; but _shire_ is doubtless
right; it is the special favoured landscape visited by the
shower.
5. PENMAEN POOL. Early copy in A. Text, title, and punctu-
ation from autograph in B, dated 'Barmouth, Merioneth-
shire. Aug. 1876'. But that autograph writes _leisure_
for _pleasure_ in first line; _skulls_ in stanza 2; and in
stanza 8, _month_ has a capital initial. Several copies exist,
and vary.
St. iii. 2. _Cadair Idris_ is written as a note to _Giant's stool_.
St. viii. 4. Several variants. Two good copies read _dark-
some danksome_; but the early copy in A has _darksome
darksome_, which B returns to.
St. ix. 3. A has _But praise it_, and two good copies _But
honour it_.
6. 'THE SILVER JUBILEE: in honour of the Most Reverend James
first Bishop of Shrewsbury. St. Beuno's, Vale of Clwyd.
1876, I think.' A.--Text and title from autograph in B.
It was published with somebody's sermon on the same
occasion. Another copy in H.
7. 'GOD'S GRANDEUR. Standard rhythm counterpoised.' Two
autographs, Feb. 23, 1877; and March 1877; in A.--
Text is from corrections in B. The second version in A
has _lightning_ for _shining_ in line 2, explained in a letter
of Jan. 4, '83. B returns to original word.
8. 'THE STARLIGHT NIGHT. Feb. 24, '77.' Autograph in A.--
'Standard rhythm opened and counterpointed. March
'77.' A.--Later corrected version 'St. Beuno's, Feb. 77'
in B.--Text follows B. The second version in A was
published in Miles's book 'Poets and Poetry of the Century'.
9. 'SPRING. (Standard rhythm, opening with sprung leadings),
May 1877.' Autograph in A.--Text from corrections in B,
but punctuation from A. Was published in Miles's book
from incomplete correction of A.
10. 'THE LANTERN. (Standard rhythm, with one sprung lead-
ing and one line counterpomted.)' Autograph in A.--
Text, title, and accents in lines 13 and 14, from corrections in
B, where it is called 'companion to No. 26, St. Beuno's '77'.
11. 'WALKING BY THE SEA. Standard rhythm, in parts
sprung and in others counterpomted, Rhyl, May '77.'
A. This version deleted in B, and the revision given in
text written in with new title.--G. M. H. was not pleased
with this sonnet, and wrote the following explanation of it
in a letter '82: '_Rash fresh more_ (it is dreadful to
explain these things in cold blood) means a headlong and
exciting new snatch of singing, resumption by the lark of
his song, which by turns he gives over and takes up again
all day long, and this goes on, the sonnet says, through
all time, without ever losing its first freshness, being
a thing both new and old. _Repair_ means the same thing,
renewal, resumption. The _skein_ and _coil_ are the lark's
song, which from his height gives the impression of some-
thing falling to the earth and not vertically quite but
tricklingly or wavingly, something as a skein of silk ribbed
by having been tightly wound on a narrow card or
a notched holder or as twine or fishing-tackle unwinding
from a _reel_ or _winch_ or as pearls strung on a horsehair:
the laps or folds are the notes or short measures and bars
of them. The same is called a _score_ in the musical sense
of score and this score is "writ upon a liquid sky
trembling to welcome it", only not horizontally. The lark
in wild glee _races the reel round_, paying or dealing out
and down the turns of the skein or _coil_ right to the earth
_floor_, the ground, where it lies in a heap, as it were, or
rather is all wound off on to another winch, reel, bobbin
or spool in Fancy's eye, by the moment the bird touches
earth and so is ready for a fresh unwinding at the next
flight. _Crisp_ means almost _crisped_, namely with notes.'
12 'THE WINDHOVER. (Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung and
outriding.)' Two contemporary autographs in A.--Text
and dedication from corrected B, dated St. Beuno's, May
30, 1877. In a letter June 22, '79: 'I shall shortly send
you an amended copy of The Windhover: the amendment
only touches a single line, I think, but as that is the best
thing I ever wrote I should like you to have it in its
best form.'
13 'PIED BEAUTY. Curtal Sonnet: sprung paeonic rhythm.
St. Beuno's, Tremeirchion. Summer '77.' Autograph in
A.--B agrees.
14 'HURRAHING IN HARVEST: Sonnet (sprung and outriding
rhythm. Take notice that the outriding feet are not to be
confused with dactyls or paeons, though sometimes the
line might be scanned either way. The strong syllable in
an outriding foot has always a great stress and after the
outrider follows a short pause. The paeon is easier and
more flowing). Vale of Clwyd, Sept. 1, 1877.' Auto-
graph in A. Text is from corrected B, punctuation of
original A. In a letter '78 he wrote: 'The Hurrahing
sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme en-
thusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in
the Elwy.' A also notes 'no counterpoint'.
15 'THE CAGED SKYLARK. (Falling paeonic rhythm, sprung
and outriding.)' Autograph in A. Text from corrected
B which dates St. Beuno's, 1877. In line 13 B writes
_úncúmberèd_.
16. 'IN THE VALLEY OF THE ELWY. (Standard rhythm, sprung
and counterpointed.)' Autograph in A. Text is from
corrected B, which dates as contemporary with No. 15,
adding 'for the companion to this see No.' 35.
17. THE LOSS OF THE EURYDICE. A contemporary copy in A
has this note: 'Written in sprung rhythm, the third line
has 3 beats, the rest 4. The scanning runs on without
break to the end of the stanza, so that each stanza is
rather one long line rhymed in passage than four lines
with rhymes at the ends.'--B has an autograph of the
poem as it came to be corrected ('83 or after), without
the above note and dated 'Mount St. Mary, Derbyshire,
Apr. '78'.--Text follows B.--The injurious rhymes are
partly explained in the old note.
St. 9. _Shorten sail_. The seamanship at fault: but this ex-
pression may be glossed by supposing the boatswain to
have sounded that call on his whistle.
St. 12. _Cheer's death_, i.e. despair.
St, 14. _It is even seen_. In a letter May 30, '78, he ex-
plains: 'You mistake the sense of this as I feared it would
be mistaken. I believed Hare to be a brave and con-
scientious man, what I say is that _even_ those who seem
unconscientious will act the right part at a great push. . . .
About _mortholes_ I wince a little.'
St. 26. _A starlight-wender_, i.e. The island was so Marian
that the folk supposed the Milky Way was a fingerpost to
guide pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham.
_And one_, that is Duns Scotus the champion of the Im-
maculate Conception. See Sonnet No. 20.
St. 27. _Well wept_. Grammar is as in 'Well hit! well run!'
&c. The meaning 'You do well to weep'.
St. 28. _O Hero savest_. Omission of relative pronoun at its
worst. = _O Hero that savest_. The prayer is in a mourner's
mouth, who prays that Christ will have saved her hero,
and in stanza 29 the grammar triumphs.
18. 'THE MAY MAGNIFICAT. (Sprung rhythm, four stresses
in each line of the first couplet, three in each of the second.
Stonyhurst, May '78.') Autograph in A.--Text from
later autograph in B. He wrote to me: 'A Maypiece in
which I see little good but the freedom of the rhythm.'
In penult stanza _cuckoo-call_ has its hyphen deleted in B,
leaving the words separate.
19. 'BINSEY POPLARS, felled 1879. Oxford, March 1879.' Auto-
graph in A. Text from B, which alters four places.
l. 8 _weed-winding_: an early draft has _weed-wounden_.
20. 'DUNS SCOTUS'S OXFORD. Oxford, March 1879.' Auto-
graph in A. Copy in B agrees but dates 1878.
21. 'HENRY PURCELL. (Alexandrine: six stresses to the line.
Oxford, April 1879.)' Autograph in A with argument as
printed. Copy in B is uncorrected except that it adds the
word _fresh_ in last line.
'"Have fair fallen." _Have_ is the sing, imperative (or
optative if you like) of the past, a thing possible and
actual both in logic and grammar, but naturally a rare
one. As in the 2nd pers. we say "Have done" or in mak-
ing appointments "Have had your dinner beforehand",
so one can say in the 3rd pers. not only "Fair fall" of
what is present or future but also "Have fair fallen"
of what is past. The same thought (which plays a great
part in my own mind and action) is more clearly expressed
in the last stanza but one of the _Eurydice_, where you
remarked it.' Letter to R. B., Feb. 3, '83.
'The sestet of the Purcell sonnet is not so clearly worked
out as I could wish. The thought is that as the seabird
opening his wings with a whiff of wind in your face means
the whirr of the motion, but also unaware gives you
a whiff of knowledge about his plumage, the marking of
which stamps his species, that he does not mean, so
Purcell, seemingly intent only on the thought or feeling he
is to express or call out, incidentally lets you remark the
individualising marks of his own genius.
'_Sake_ is a word I find it convenient to use ... it is the
_sake_ of "for the sake of ", _forsake_, _namesake_, _keepsake_.
I mean by it the being a thing has outside itself, as a voice
by its echo, a face by its reflection, a body by its shadow,
a man by his name, fame, or memory, _and also_ that in
the thing by virtue of which especially it has this being
abroad, and that is something distinctive, marked, speci-
fically or individually speaking, as for a voice and echo
clearness; for a reflected image light, brightness; for
a shadow-casting body bulk; for a man genius, great
achievements, amiability, and so on. In this case it is, as
the sonnet says, distinctive quality in genius. ... By
_moonmarks_ I mean crescent-shaped markings on the quill-
feathers, either in the colouring of the feather or made by
the overlapping of one on another.' Letter to R. B.,
May 26, '79.
22. 'PEACE: Oxford, 1879.' Autograph in B, where a comma
after _daunting_ is due to following a deletion. _To own
my heart_ = _to my own heart_. _Reaving Peace_, i.e. when
he reaves or takes Peace away, as No. 35, l. 12. An early
draft dated Oct. 2, '79, has _taking_ for _reaving_.
23. 'THE BUGLER'S FIRST COMMUNION. (Sprung rhythm,
overrove, an outride between the 3rd and 4th foot of the
4th line in each stanza.) Oxford, July 27,(?) 1879.' A.--
My copy of this in B shows three emendations. First
draft exists in H. Text is A with the corrections from B.
At nine lines from end, _Though this_, A has _Now this_,
and _Now_ is deliberately preferred in H.--B has some un-
corrected miscopyings of A. _O for, now, charms of_ A is
already a correction in H. I should like a comma at end
of first line of 5th stanza and an interjection-mark at
end of that stanza.
24. 'MORNING MIDDAY AND EVENING SACRIFICE. Oxford,
Aug. '79.' Autograph in A. The first stanza reproduced
after p. 70. Copied by me into B, where it received cor-
rection. Text follows B except in lines 19 and 20, where
the correction reads _What Death half lifts the latch of,
What hell hopes soon the snatch of_. And punctuation is
not all followed: original has comma after the second _this_
in lines 5 and 6. On June 30, '86, G. M. H. wrote to
Canon Dixon, who wished to print the first stanza alone
in some anthology, and made _ad hoc_ alterations which
I do not follow. The original 17th line was _Silk-ashed
but core not cooling_, and was altered because of its
obscurity. 'I meant (he wrote) to compare grey hairs to
the flakes of silky ash which may be seen round wood
embers . . . and covering a core of heat. . . .' _Your offer-
ing, with despatch, of_ is said like 'your ticket', 'your
reasons', 'your money or your life . . .' It is: 'Come, your
offer of all this (the matured mind), and without delay
either!'
25. 'ANDROMEDA. Oxford, Aug. 12, '79.' A--which B cor-
rects in two places only. Text rejects the first, in line 4
_dragon_ for _dragon's_: but follows B in line 10, where A
had _Air, pillowy air_. There is no comma at _barebill_ in
any MS., but a gap and sort of caesural mark in A. In
a letter Aug. 14, '79, G. M. H. writes: 'I enclose a sonnet
on which I invite minute criticism. I endeavoured in it at
a more Miltonic plainness and severity than I have any-
where else. I cannot say it has turned out severe, still
less plain, but it seems almost free from quaintness and in
aiming at one excellence I may have hit another.'
26. 'THE CANDLE INDOORS. (Common rhythm, counter-
pointed.) Oxford, '79.' A. Text takes corrections of
B, which adds 'companion to No.' 10. A has in line 2
_With a yellowy_, and 5 _At that_.
27. 'THE HANDSOME HEART. (Common rhythm counter-
pointed.) Oxford, '79.' A1.--In Aug. of the same year
he wrote that he was surprised at my liking it, and in
deference to my criticism sent a revise, A2.--Subsequently
he recast the sonnet mostly in the longer 6-stress lines,
and wrote that into B.--In that final version the charm
and freshness have disappeared: and his emendation in
evading the clash of _ply_ and _reply_ is awkward; also the
fourteen lines now contain seven _whats_. I have therefore
taken A1 for the text, and have ventured, in line 8, to
restore _how to_, in the place of _what_, from the original
version which exists in H. In 'The Spirit of Man' I gave
a mixture of A1 and A2. In line 5 the word _soul_ is in
H and A1: but A2 and B have _heart_. _Father_ in second
line was the Rev. Father Gerard himself. He tells the
whole story in a letter to me.
28. 'AT A WEDDING. (Sprung rhythm.) Bedford, Lancashire,
Oct. 21, '79.' A. Autograph uncorrected in B, but title
changed to that in text.
29. 'FELIX RANDAL. (Sonnet: sprung and outriding rhythm;
six-foot lines.) Liverpool, Apr. 28, '80.' A. Text from
A with the two corrections of B. The comma in line 5
after _impatient_ is omitted in copy in B.
30. 'BROTHERS. (Sprung rhythm; three feet to the line; lines
free-ended and not overrove; and reversed or counter-
pointed rhythm allowed in the first foot.) Hampstead,
Aug. 1880.' Five various drafts exist. A1 and A2 both of
Aug. '80. B was copied by me from A1, and author's
emendations of it overlook those in A2. Text therefore is
from A 2 except that the first seven lines, being rewritten
in margin afresh (and confirmed in letter of Ap. '81 to
Canon Dixon), as also corrections in lines 15-18, these are
taken. But the B corrections of lines 22, 23, almost
certainly imply forgetfulness of A^. In last line B has
correction _Dearly thou canst be kind_; but the intention
of _I'll cry_ was original, and has four MSS. in its favour.
31. 'SPRING AND FALL. (Sprung rhythm.) Lydiate, Lan-
cashire, Sept. 7, 1880.' A. Text and title from B,
which corrects four lines, and misdates '81. There is also
a copy in D, Jan. '81, and see again Apr. 6, '81. In line 2
the last word is _unleafing_ in most of the MSS. An
attempt to amend the second rhyme was unsuccessful.
32. 'SPELT FROM SIBYL'S LEAVES. (Sonnet: sprung rhythm:
a rest of one stress in the first line.)' Autograph in A--
another later in B, which is taken for text. Date unre-
corded, lines 5, 6, _astray_ thus divided to show the
rhyme.--6. _throughther_, an adj., now confined to dialect.
It is the speech form of _through-other_, in which shape it
eludes pursuit in the Oxford dictionary. Dr. Murray
compares Ger. _durch einander_. Mr. Craigie tells me that
the classical quotation for it is from Burns's 'Halloween',
st. 5, _They roar an cry a' throughther_.--line 8. _With_,
i.e. I suppose, _with your warning that_, &c.: the heart
is speaking. 9. _beak-leaved_ is not hyphened in MS.--
11. _part, pen, pack_, imperatives of the verbs, in the
sense of sorting 'the sheep from the goats'.--12. A has
_wrong right_, but the correction to _right wrong_ in B is
intentional. 14.--_sheathe-_ in both MSS., but I can only
make sense of _sheath-_, i.e. 'sheathless and shelterless'.
The accents in this poem are a selection from A and B.
33. 'INVERSNAID. Sept. 28, 1881.' Autograph in H. I have
found no other trace of this poem.
34. _As kingfishers_. Text from undated autograph in H, a draft
with corrections and variants. In lines 3 and 4 _hung_ and
_to fling out broad_ are corrections in same later pencilling
as line 5, which occurs only thus with them. In sestet
the first three lines have alternatives of regular rhythm,
thus:
Then I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace and that keeps all his goings graces;
In God's eye acts, &c.
Of these lines, in 9 and 10 the version given in text is
later than the regular lines just quoted, and probably pre-
ferred: in l. 11 the alternatives apparently of same date.
35. 'RIBBLESDALE. Stonyhurst, 1882.' Autograph in A. Text
from later autograph in B, which adds 'companion to
No. 10' (= 16). There is a third autograph in D, June
'83 with different punctuation which gives the comma
between _to_ and _with_ in line 3. The dash after _man_ is
from A and D, both of which quote 'Nam expectatio
creaturae ', &c. from Romans viii. 19. In the letter to
R. W. D. he writes: '_Louched_ is a coinage of mine, and is
to mean much the same as slouched, slouching, and I mean
_throng_ for an adjective as we use it in Lancashire'.
But _louch_ has ample authority, see the 'English Dialect
Dictionary'.
36. 'THE LEADEN ECHO AND THE GOLDEN ECHO. Stony-
hurst, Oct. 13, '82.' Autograph in A. Copy of this
with autograph corrections dated Hampstead '81 (_sic_) in
B.--Text takes all B's corrections, but respects punctuation
of A, except that I have added the comma after _God_ in
last line of p. 56. For the drama of Winefred, see among
posthumous fragments, No. 58. In Nov. 1882 he wrote
to me: 'I am somewhat dismayed about that piece and
have laid it aside for a while. I cannot satisfy myself
about the first line. You must know that words like
_charm_ and _enchantment_ will not do: the thought is of
beauty as of something that can be physically kept and
lost and by physical things only, like keys; then the
things must come from the _mundus muliebris_; and
thirdly they must not be markedly oldfashioned. You
will sec that this limits the choice of words very much
indeed. However I shall make some changes. _Back_ is
not pretty, but it gives that feeling of physical constraint
which I want.' And in Oct. '86 to R. W. D., 'I never did
anything more musical'.
37. 'MARY MOTHER OF DIVINE GRACE COMPARED TO THE
AIR WE BREATHE. Stonyhurst, May '83.' Autograph
in A.--Text and title from later autograph in B. Taken
by Dean Beeching into 'A Book of Christmas Verse' 1895
and thence, incorrectly, by Orby Shipley in 'Carmina
Mariana'. Stated in a letter to R. W. D. June 25, '83,
to have been written to 'hang up among the verse com-
positions in the tongues. ... I did a piece in the same
metre as _Blue in the mists all day_.' Note Chaucer's
account of the physical properties of the air, 'House of
Fame', ii. 256, seq.
38. 'To WHAT SERVES MORTAL BEAUTY? (Common rhythm
highly stressed: sonnet.) Aug. 23, '85.' Autograph in
A.--Another autograph in B with a few variants from
which A was chosen, the deletion of alternatives incom-
plete. Thirdly a copy sent to R. W. D., apparently later
than A, but with errors of copy. The text given is guided
by this version in D, and _needs_ in line 9 is substituted
there for the _once_ in A and B, probably because of _once_
in line 6.--Original draft exists in H, on same page with
39 and 40. The following is his signature at this date:
Your affectionate friend
Gerard M. Hopkins S.J.
May 29 1885
Transcriber's note: This signature and date is displayed as a
handwritten image in the original.
39. SOLDIER. 'Clongower, Aug. 1885.' Autograph in H,
with a few corrections which I have taken for lines 6 and
7, of which the first draft runs:
It fancies; it deems; dears the artist after his art;
So feigns it finds as, &c.
The MS. marks the caesural place in ten of the lines
in line 2, between _Both_ and _these_. l 3, at the full stop.
l. 6, _fancies_, _feigns_, _deems_, take three stresses. l. 11,
after _man_. In line 7 I have added a comma at _smart_.
In l. 10 I have substituted _handle_ for _reave_ of MS.: see
note on _reave_, p. 101; and in l. 13, have hyphened _God
made flesh_. No title in MS.
40. CARRION COMFORT. Autograph in H, in three versions.
1st, deleted draft. 2nd, a complete version, both on same
page with 38 and 39. 3rd, with 41 on another sheet,
final (?) revision carried only to end of 1. 12 (two detached
lines on reverse). Text is this last with last two lines
from the 2nd version. Date must be 1885, and this is
probably the sonnet 'written in blood', of which he wrote
in May of that year.--I have added the title and the
hyphen in _heaven-handling_.
41. _No worst_. Autograph in H, on same page as third draft of
40. One undated draft with corrections embodied in the
text here.--l. 5, at end are some marks which look like
a hyphen and a comma: no title.
42. 'TOM'S GARLAND. Sonnet: common rhythm, but with
hurried feet: two codas. Dromore, Sept. '87.' With
full title, A.--Another autograph in B is identical. In
line 9 there is a strong accent on _I_.--l. 10, the capital
initial of _country_ is doubtful.--Rhythmical marks omitted.
The author's own explanation of this poem may be read
in a letter written to me from 'Dublin, Feb. 10, '88: ...
I laughed outright and often, but very sardonically, to
think you and the Canon could not construe my last son-
net; that he had to write to you for a crib. It is plain
I must go no further on this road: if you and he cannot
understand me who will? Yet, declaimed, the strange
constructions would be dramatic and effective. Must
I interpret it? It means then that, as St. Paul and Plato
and Hobbes and everybody says, the commonwealth or
well-ordered human society is like one man; a body with
many members and each its function; some higher, some
lower, but all honourable, from the honour which belongs
to the whole. The head is the sovereign, who has no
superior but God and from heaven receives his or her
authority: we must then imagine this head as bare (see
St. Paul much on this) and covered, so to say, only with
the sun and stars, of which the crown is a symbol, which
is an ornament but not a covering; it has an enormous
hat or skullcap, the vault of heaven. The foot is the day-
labourer, and this is armed with hobnail boots, because it
has to wear and be worn by the ground; which again is
symbolical; for it is navvies or day-labourers who, on the
great scale or in gangs and millions, mainly trench, tunnel,
blast, and in other ways disfigure, "mammock" the earth
and, on a small scale, singly, and superficially stamp it
with their footprints. And the "garlands" of nails they
wear are therefore the visible badge of the place they fill,
the lowest in the commonwealth. But this place still
shares the common honour, and if it wants one advantage,
glory or public fame, makes up for it by another, ease of
mind, absence of care; and these things are symbolised
by the gold and the iron garlands. (O, once explained,
how clear it all is!) Therefore the scene of the poem is
laid at evening, when they are giving over work and one
after another pile their picks, with which they earn their
living, and swing off home, knocking sparks out of mother
earth not now by labour and of choice but by the mere
footing, being strong-shod and making no hardship of hard-
ness, taking all easy. And so to supper and bed. Here
comes a violent but effective hyperbaton or suspension, in
which the action of the mind mimics that of the labourer--
surveys his lot, low but free from care; then by a sudden
strong act throws it over the shoulder or tosses it away as
a light matter. The witnessing of which lightheartedness
makes me indignant with the fools of Radical Levellers.
But presently I remember that this is all very well for
those who are in, however low in, the Commonwealth and
share in any way the common weal; but that the curse of
our times is that many do not share it, that they are out-
casts from it and have neither security nor splendour;
that they share care with the high and obscurity with the
low, but wealth or comfort with neither. And this state
of things, I say, is the origin of Loafers, Tramps, Corner-
boys, Roughs, Socialists and other pests of society. And
I think that it is a very pregnant sonnet, and in point
of execution very highly wrought, too much so, I am
afraid. ... G.M.H.'
43. 'HARRY PLOUGHMAN. Dromore, Sept. 1887.' Autograph
in A.--Autograph in B has several emendations written
over without deletion of original. Text is B with these
corrections, which are all good.--line 10, _features_ is the
verb.--13, _'s_ is _his_. I have put a colon at _plough_, in
place of author's full stop, for the convenience of reader.--
15 = _his lilylocks windlaced_. 'Saxo cere- comminuit
-brum.'--17, _Them. These_, A.--In the last three lines
the grammar intends, 'How his churl's grace governs the
movement of his booted (in bluff hide) feet, as they are
matched in a race with the wet shining furrow overturned
by the share'. G. M. H. thought well of this sonnet and
wrote on Sept. 28, 1887: 'I have been touching up some
old sonnets you have never seen and have within a few
days done the whole of one, I hope, very good one and
most of another; the one finished is a direct picture of
a ploughman, without afterthought. But when you read
it let me know if there is anything like it in Walt Whit-
man; as perhaps there may be, and I should be sorry for
that.' And again on Oct. 11, '87: 'I will enclose the
sonnet on Harry Ploughman, in which burden-lines (they
might be recited by a chorus) are freely used: there is in
this very heavily loaded sprung rhythm a call for their
employment. The rhythm of this sonnet, which is alto-
gether for recital, and not for perusal (as by nature verse
should be), is very highly studied. From much consider-
ing it I can no longer gather any impression of it: perhaps
it will strike you as intolerably violent and artificial.' And
again on Nov. 6, '87: 'I want Harry Ploughman to be
a vivid figure before the mind's eye; if he is not that the
sonnet fails. The difficulties are of syntax no doubt.
Dividing a compound word by a clause sandwiched into it
was a desperate deed, I feel, and I do not feel that it was
an unquestionable success.'
44, 45, 46, 47. These four sonnets (together with No. 56) are
all written undated in a small hand on the two sides of
a half-sheet of common sermon-paper, in the order in which
they are here printed. They probably date back as early
as 1885, and may be all, or some of them, those referred to
in a letter of Sept. 1, 1885: 'I shall shortly have some
sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came
like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in
the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded
and harassed mind, if in any leisure I try to do anything
I make no way--nor with my work, alas! but so it must
be.' I have no certain nor single identification of date.
44. _To seem the stranger_. H, with corrections which my text
embodies.--l. 14, _began_. I have no other explanation
than to suppose an omitted relative pronoun, like _Hero
savest_ in No. 17. The sentence would then stand for
'leaves me a lonely (one who only) began'. No title.
45. _I wake and feel_. H, with corrections which text embodies:
no title.
46. PATIENCE. As 45. l. 2, _Patience is_. The initial capital is
mine, and the comma after _ivy_ in line 6. No title.
47 _My own heart_. As 45.--1. 6, I have added the comma after
_comfortless_; that word has the same grammatical value as
_dark_ in the following line. 'I cast for comfort, (which)
I can no more find in my comfortless (world) than a blind
man in his dark world. . . .'--l. 10, MS. accents _let_.--
13 and 14, the text here from a good correction separately
written (as far as _mountains_) on the top margin of No. 56.
There are therefore two writings of _betweenpie_, a strange
word, in which _pie_ apparently makes a compound verb
with _between_, meaning 'as the sky seen between dark
mountains is brightly dappled', the grammar such as
_intervariegates_ would make. This word might have
delighted William Barnes, if the verb 'to pie' existed.
It seems not to exist, and to be forbidden by homophonic
absurdities.
48. 'HERACLITEAN FIRE. (Sprung rhythm, with many out-
rides and hurried feet: sonnet with two [_sic_] codas.)
July 26, 1888. Co. Dublin. The last sonnet [this] pro-
visional only.' Autograph in A.--I have found no other
copy nor trace of draft. The title is from A.--line 6, con-
struction obscure, _rutpeel_ may be a compound word,
MS. uncertain. 8, ? omitted relative pronoun. If so =
'the manmarks that treadmire toil foot-fretted in it'. MS.
does not hyphen nor quite join up _foot_ with _fretted_.--
12. MS. has no caesural mark.--On Aug. 18, '88, he
wrote: 'I will now go to bed, the more so as I am going to
preach tomorrow and put plainly to a Highland congrega-
tion of MacDonalds, Mackintoshes, Mackillops, and the
rest what I am putting not at all so plainly to the rest of
the world, or rather to you and Canon Dixon, in a sonnet
in sprung rhythm with two codas.' And again on Sept.
25, '88: 'Lately I sent you a sonnet on the Heraclitean
Fire, in which a great deal of early Greek philosophical
thought was distilled; but the liquor of the distillation
did not taste very greek, did it? The effect of studying
masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So
it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me
to a marked degree. Perhaps then more reading would
only _refine my singularity_, which is not what you want.'
Note, that the sonnet has three codas, not two.
49. ALFONSUS. Text from autograph with title and 'upon the
first falling of his feast after his canonisation' in B. An
autograph in A, sent Oct. 3 from Dublin asking for im-
mediate criticism, because the sonnet had to go to Majorca.
'I ask your opinion of a sonnet written to order on the
occasion of the first feast since his canonisation proper of
St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, a laybrother of our Order, who
for 40 years acted as hall porter to the College of Palma
in Majorca; he was, it is believed, much favoured by God
with heavenly light and much persecuted by evil spirits.
The sonnet (I say it snorting) aims at being intelligible.'
And on Oct. 9, '88, 'I am obliged for your criticisms, "con-
tents of which noted", indeed acted on. I have improved
the sestet. . . . (He defends 'hew') ... at any rate
whatever is markedly featured in stone or what is like
stone is most naturally said to be hewn, and to _shape_,
itself, means in old English to hew and the Hebrew _bara_
to create, even, properly means to hew. But life and
living things are not naturally said to be hewn: they grow,
and their growth is by trickling increment. . . . The (first)
line now stands "Glory is a flame off exploit, so we say ".'
50. 'JUSTUS ES, &c. Jer. xii. 1 (for title), March 17,'89.'
Autograph in A.--Similar autograph in B, which reads
line 9, _Sir, life on thy great cause_. Text from A, which
seems the later, being written in the peculiar faint ink of
the corrections in B, and embodying them.--Early drafts
in H.
51. 'To R. B. April 22, '89.' Autograph in A. This, the last
poem sent to me, came on April 29.--No other copy, but
the working drafts in H.--In line 6 the word _moulds_ was
substituted by me for _combs_ of original, when the sonnet
was published by Miles; and I leave it, having no doubt
that G. M. H. would have made some such alteration.
52. 'SUMMA.' This poem had, I believe, the ambitious design
which its title suggests. What was done of it was destroyed,
with other things, when he joined the Jesuits. My copy
is a contemporary autograph of 16 lines, written when he
was still an undergraduate; I give the first four. A.
53. _What being_. Two scraps in H. I take the apparently later
one, and have inserted the comma in line 3.
54. 'ON THE PORTRAIT, &c. Monastereven, Co. Kildare,
Christmas, '86.' Autograph with full title, no corrections,
in A. Early drafts in H.
55. _The sea took pity_. Undated pencil scrap in H.
56. ASHBOUGHS (my title). In H in two versions; first as
a curtal sonnet (like 13 and 22) on same sheet with the
four sonnets 44-47, and preceding them: second, an
apparently later version in the same metre on a page by
itself; with expanded variation from seventh line, making
thirteen lines for eleven. I print the whole of this second
MS., and have put brackets to show what I think would
make the best version of the poem: for if the bracketed
words were omitted the original curtal sonnet form would
be preserved and carry the good corrections. The uncom-
fortable _eye_ in the added portion was perhaps to be worked
as a vocative referring to first line (?).
57. _Hope holds_. In H, a torn undated scrap which carries
a vivid splotch of local colour.--line 4, a variant has
_A growing burnish brighter than_.
58. ST. WINEFRED. G. M. H. began a tragedy on St. Winefred
Oct. '79, for which he subsequently wrote the chorus,
No. 36, above. He was at it again in 1881, and had
mentioned the play in his letters, and when, some years
later, I determined to write my _Feast of Bacchus_ in six-
stressed verse, I sent him a sample of it, and asked him to
let me see what he had made of the measure. The MS.
which he sent me, April 1, 1885, was copied, and that
copy is the text in this book, from A, the original not
being discoverable. It may therefore contain copyist's
errors. Twenty years later, when I was writing my
_Demeter_ for the lady-students at Somerville College, I re-
membered the first line of Caradoc's soliloquy, and made
some use of it. On the other hand the broken line _I have
read her eyes_ in my 1st part of _Nero_ is proved by date to
be a coincidence, and not a reminiscence.--Caradoc was
to 'die impenitent, struck by the finger of God'.
59. _What shall I do_. Sent me in a letter with his own melody
and a note on the poem. 'This is not final of course.
Perhaps the name of England is too exclusive.' Date
Clongower, Aug. 1885. A.
60. _The times are nightfall_. Revised and corrected draft in H.
The first two lines are corrected from the original opening
in old syllabic verse:
The times are nightfall and the light grows less;
The times are winter and a world undone;
61. 'CHEERY BEGGAR.' Undated draft with much correction,
in H. Text is the outcome.
62 and 63. These are my interpretation of the intention of some
unfinished disordered verses on a sheet of paper in H. In
63, line 1, _furl_ is I think unmistakable: an apparently
rejected earlier version had _Soft childhood's carmine
dew-drift down_.
64. 'THE WOODLARK.' Draft on one sheet of small notepaper
in H. Fragments in some disorder: the arrangement of
them in the text satisfies me. The word _sheath_ is
printed for _sheaf_ of MS., and _sheaf_ recurs in correc-
tions. Dating of July 5, '76.
65. 'MOONRISE. June 19, 1876.' H. Note at foot shows
intention to rewrite with one stress more in the second
half of each line, and the first is thus rewritten 'in the
white of the dusk, in the walk of the morning'.
66. CUCKOO. From a scrap in H without date or title.
67. It being impossible to satisfy myself I give this MS. in
facsimile as an example, after p. 92.
68. _The child is father_. From a newspaper cutting with another
very poor comic triolet sent me by G. M. H. They are
signed _BRAN_. His comic attempts were not generally so
successful as this is.
69. _The shepherd's brow_. In H. Various consecutive full
drafts on the same sheet as 51, and date April 3, '89.
The text is what seems to be the latest draft: it has no
corrections. Thus its date is between 50 and 51. It
might be argued that this sonnet has the same right to be
recognised as a finished poem with the sonnets 44-47, but
those had several years recognition whereas this must have
been thrown off one day in a cynical mood, which he
could not have wished permanently to intrude among his
last serious poems.
70. 'TO HIS WATCH.' H. On a sheet by itself; apparently
a fair copy with corrections embodied in this text, except
that the original 8th line, which is not deleted, is preferred
to the alternative suggestion, _Is sweetest comfort's carol
or worst woe's smart_.
71. _Strike, churl_. H, on same page with a draft of part of
No. 45.--l. 4, _Have at_ is a correction for _aim at_.--This
scrap is some evidence for the earlier dating of the four
sonnets.
72. 'EPITHALAMION.' Four sides of pencilled rough sketches,
and five sides of quarto first draft, on 'Royal University
of Ireland' candidates paper, as if G. M. H. had written
it while supervising an examination. Fragments in disorder
with erasures and corrections; undated. H.--The text,
which omits only two disconnected lines, is my arrange-
ment of the fragments, and embodies the latest corrections.
It was to have been an Ode on the occasion of his brother's
marriage, which fixes the date as 1888. It is mentioned
in a letter of May 25, whence the title comes.--I have
printed _dene_ for _dean_ (in two places). In l. 9 of poem
cover = covert, which should be in text, as G. M. H. never
spelt phonetically.--l. 11, _of_ may be _at_, MS. uncertain.--
page 90, line 16, _shoots_ is, I think, a noun.
73. _Thee, God, I come from_. Unfinished draft in H. Undated,
probably '85, on same sheet with first draft of No. 38.--
l. 2, _day long_. MS. as two words with accent on _day_.--
l. 17, above the words _before me_ the words _left with me_
are written as alternative, but text is not deleted. All the
rest of this hymn is without question. In l. 19, _Yea_ is
right. After the verses printed in text there is some
versified _credo_ intended to form part of the complete
poem; thus:
Jesus Christ sacrificed
On the cross. . . .
Moulded, he, in maiden's womb,
Lived and died and from the tomb
Rose in power and is our
Judge that comes to deal our doom.
74. _To him who_. Text is an underlined version among working
drafts in H.--line 6, _freed_ = got rid of, banished. This sense
of the word is obsolete; it occurs twice in Shakespeare,
cp. Cymb. III. vi. 79, 'He wrings at some distress . . .
would I could free 't!'.
FINIS
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