  A SONG IN AUTUMNO LOVE, can the tree lure the summer bird Again to the bough where it used to sing, When never a throat in the autumn is heard, And never the glint of a vagrant wing? Love, Love, can the lute lure the old-time touch Unto fingers forgetful of melody? And we, who have loved for a time overmuch, Bring back the old life as it used to be? Nay, though there is little in me to love, Come back as the bird to a songless bough: Back now as you came when the blue was above, And summer gleamed soft on your girlish brow. Come home, O Heart, for the autumn is grey, And I, who have looked for your coming so long, En-isled in your arms, in the old lost way Shall dream our December estranged by a song. So come, Vernal-Heart, now summer is flown; Let autumn elude the return of the rime, And the sad sea change with the season alone: Not us who have loved—loved well in our time. Shall summer not know the autumnal touch? Shall love when forlorn of the spring be green? Or we, who were lovers of old overmuch, Regain what is lost, or relume what has been? (Oxford) THEIR very gods, it seems, we have forgot; And drawing back the riven veil once more, Too late we learn that theirs the happier lot Who had their foolish gods to perish for. SANG one of England in his island home: "Her veins are million, but her heart is one;" And looked from out his wave-bound homeland isle To us who dwell beyond its western sun. And we among the northland plains and lakes, We youthful dwellers on a younger land, Turn eastward to the wide Atlantic waste, And feel the clasp of England's outstretched hand. For we are they who wandered far from home To swell the glory of an ancient name; Who journeyed seaward on an exile long, When fortune's twilight to our island came. But every keel that cleaves the midway waste Binds with a silent thread our sea-cleft strands, Till ocean dwindles and the sea-waste shrinks, And England mingles with a hundred lands. And weaving silently all far-off shores A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth, Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths, Till all lands die to make one glorious birth. So we remote compatriots reply, And feel the world-task only half begun: "We are the girders of the ageing earth, Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one." HE wandered down, an Orpheus wilder-souled, From some melodious world of love and song, And through our earthly vales strange music rolled. Who heard that alien note could only long, As pale Eurydice once longed, to know again The happier ways, the more harmonious air, Where once they heard that half-remembered strain,— Where once their exiled feet were wont to fare. A gleam of some strange golden life now gone, A sad remembrance of celestial things, Some old-time glory, like the gods', outshone From men's rapt souls, wherein a memory clings Of that diviner day, from them withdrawn. For all the dreams that smouldered in man's breast, And all the clearer ways he yearned to reach,— The fugitive ideal, the old unrest,— Found utterance in song, that slept in speech. And like a minstrel in an alien land, Who sings his native strains while men crowd round And hearken long, but cannot understand, He sang to us, and through the unknown sound We caught a passing glimmer of the soul Those foreign runes concealed, and strove to glean From out the uninterpretable whole Some earthlier harmony. It must have been He heard far-off that low uranian strain That only maddens him who vainly hears; For they, the gods, soon saw the god-like pain That mocked a man, and closed his listening ears. |
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