GOD'S GRAAL

THE ark of the Lord of Hosts Whose name is called by the name of Him Who dwelleth between the Cherubim.

O Thou that in no house dost dwell,
But walk'st in tent and tabernacle.

For God of all strokes will have one
In every battle that is done.

Lancelot lay beside the well: (God's Graal is good)

Oh my soul is sad to tell

The weary quest and the bitter quell;
For he was the lord of lordlihood,
And sleep on his eyelids fell.

Lancelot lay before the shrine ;

(The apple tree's in the wood)

There was set Christ's very sign,

The bread unknown and the unknown wine
That the soul's life for a livelihood

Craves from his wheat and vine.

As much as in a hundred years, she's dead:
Yet is to-day the day on which she died.

ON BURNS

IN whomsoe'er, since Poesy began,
A Poet most of all men we may scan,
Burns of all poets is the most a Man.

THE ORCHARD-PIT

PILED deep below the screening apple-branch
They lie with bitter apples in their hands:
And some are only ancient bones that blanch,
And some had ships that last year's wind did launch,
And some were yesterday the lords of lands.

In the soft dell, among the apple-trees,

High up above the hidden pit she stands,
And there for ever sings, who gave to these,
That lie below, her magic hour of ease,

And those her apples holden in their hands,

This in my dreams is shown me; and her hair
Crosses my lips and draws my burning breath;
Her song spreads golden wings upon the air,
Life's eyes are gleaming from her forehead fair,
And from her breasts the ravishing eyes of Death,

Men say to me that sleep hath many dreams,
Yet I knew never but this dream alone:
There, from a dried-up channel, once the stream's,
The glen slopes up; even such in sleep it seems
As to my waking sight the place well known.

My love I call her, and she loves me well:
But I love her as in the maelstrom's cup
The whirled stone loves the leaf inseparable
That clings to it round all the circling swell,
And that the same last eddy swallows up.

TO ART

I LOVED thee ere I loved a woman, Love,

FIOR DI MAGGIO

OH! May sits crowned with hawthorn-flower,
And is Love's month, they say;

And Love's the fruit that is ripened best
By ladies' eyes in May.

And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at Cuma, hanging in a jar: and, when the boys asked her, "What would you, Sibyl? "she answered, "I would die."

-PETRONIUS.

"I SAW the Sibyl at Cuma "

(One said) "with mine own eye.

She hung in a cage, and read her rune

To all the passers-by.

Said the boys, 'What wouldst thou, Sibyl ? '

She answered, 'I would die.'"

As balmy as the breath of her you love

When deep between her breasts it comes to you.

"WAS it a friend or foe that spread these lies?"

"

Nay, who but infants question in such wise? 'Twas one of my most intimate enemies."

IF I could die like the British Queen
Who faced the Roman war,

Or hang in a cage for my country's sake
Like Black Bess of Dunbar !

SHE bound her green sleeve on my helm,
Sweet pledge of love's sweet meed :
Warm was her bared arm round my neck
As well she bade me speed;

And her kiss clings still between my lips,
Heart's beat and strength at need.

WHERE is the man whose soul has never waked
To sudden pity of the poor torn past?

AT her step the water-hen

Springs from her nook, and skimming the clear stream, Ripples its waters in a sinuous curve,

And dives again in safety.

WOULD God I knew there were a God to thank
When thanks rise in me!

I SHUT myself in with my soul,

And the shapes come eddying forth.

I HATE " says over and above

This is a soul that I might love."

"

None lightly says "My friend : even so
Be jealous of that name My foe."

An enemy for an enemy,

But dogs for what a dog can be.

Hold those at heart, and time shall prove,

Do still thy best, albeit the clue

Be snapt of that thou strovest to;

Do still thy best, though direful hate

Should toil to leave thee desolate.

Do still thy best whom Fate would damn.

Say-such as I was made I am,

And did even such as I could do,

Anomalies against all rules

Acknowledge, though beyond the schools :—

Those passionate states when to know true
Some thing, and to believe, are two;
And that extraordinary sect

Whom no amount of intellect

Can save, alas, from being fools.

THE bitter stage of life

Where friend and foe are parts alternated.

THE winter garden-beds all bare,

Save only where the redbreast lingering there
Brings back one flower-like gleam 'mid the dark mould.

WHO shall say what is said in me,

With all that I might have been dead in me?

WHO knoweth not love's sounds and silences?

Where the poets all-
Echoes of singing nature-list her call.

A BAD OMEN

On the first day the priest

Could find no heart in the beast,
And two on the second day.

EVEN as the dreariest swamps, in sweet Springtide,
Are most with Mary-flowers beatified.

OR reading in some sunny nook

Where grass-blade shadows fall across your book,

AYE, we'll shake hands, though scarce for love, we two: But I hate hatred worse than I hate you.

AND heavenly things in your eyes have place,
Those breaks of sky in the twilight face.

THOUGH all the rest go by

Ditties and dirges of the unanswering sky.

WHAT face but thine has taught me all that art
Can be, and still be Nature's counterpart-
The zodiac of all beauty?