A New Light

There is a low rude lichened wall that folds
A humble graveyard on a lowly hill ;
Within there grows a solitary ash,
Amid whose delicate foliage myriad throats
Flood stainless blue with thronging notes of joy;
Whence elfin forms dip swift and shimmering
With wing's-rim spirting sunshine oft" in spray.
Air-skimmed their tremulous music from the mouth.
What trilling cheeping twittering in the tree !
How do they gossip fresh from over-sea.
With childlike breaks exuberant of glee.
Their strange experience in alien lands
And of the long long journey o'er the brine !
While underneath, the speargrass lush and tall
Upon each vivid blade lets flaky light
Slide glinting, kindling beryl atmosphere
In bowers below, where gamesome shadows play
With mingling daisy kingcup and sweet clover.

Here drones the bee with pollen-golden limb,
Haze-blue the landscape vague expands afar.
Where silver river shines from bosoming wood.
Here, dappled o'er of tender floating shadow,
Under the tree a boy was wont to lie

Three summers gone and commune with the soul,
The gentle soft-eyed spirit of the spot.
When last he came he wept into her lap
"Serene you'll smile, my playmate, when
I go ! "
He, frail and spiritual, communed oft
With echoes hollow from these vanished lives
Among their grassy mounds and tottering stones.

"Ah ! yet," he cried, this frail wan poetboy,
" I'd live my own full proper life and die,
I'd press deep in some flower-bells of the world.
In to their dim soft-folded mystic heart
Where lurk some clear rich honeydrops for man !
I would add somewhat to the hived store.
O'er human hearts all silent cold to me
I would float free my thistledowns of thought
To germinate chance-wafted where they fall,
And quicken those barren tracts my soul o'eryeams
To joy with purple-blossomed sympathy.
Yea, I would press into the heart of things,
Thence into human hearts, to be a power
Therein to quicken, to soothe, to elevate.
To thrill with joy of what I see and feel.
Alone some little love and sympathy
I crave from them, some warmth from fire I feed.
Some smiling back in rainbow hues to me.
Some tender breath ofthanks from seeds I sow!
For if I find it not, ah ! woe is me ;
Must I not deem the wing-germs of my soul
A mere dead dust, mine embers all aglow
With heat and light mere simulated fire !

"Clasp but my hand, great brotherhood, in yours.
And hail me one, though weak, yet one of you !
Assure my steps with calm supernal eyes
You who have won the goal —

" None answer me !
For ye have scaled the height with yearlong
Of hand and foot, and lying proudly there
Too much in sooth it were that I should hope
Help from you, patient conquerors, whom few
Helped in your progress calm indomitable !
Sweet is the flavour of the fruit of toil.
When we have won it may we not enjoy ?
So hearkening to the still small inner voice
' Thou art a poet,' full of confidence
I bend my gaze upon the Heaven-kissed height,
Mounting alone — until the body faint —
I shall be higher, life will not be lost. . . .

" Ah ! yet how soon life falters to the close,
And none may hear the feeble note I sing
Mellowing hourly to entrance the world.
Spare me awhile, sweet death, and come again.
For now no token of me may remain.
No undulation where the water gulfed,
About my day's mild flash and faint report
No lingering wraithlike mist among the wood.
And no unquiet murmur in the rock !
No muttered thunder from far realms of death
Daring the shadowy mountains to forget
The march of storm that smote and blinded them !

' ' Nay, why not be forgotten like the rest,
As these are round me ? unto God I yield
Myself, my being — mother, so is best,
And home I turn to fade upon thy breast
Where blindly first I felt my way to life ! "

Now he is dead — go seek him where he lay
Four springs ago — there is not any change ;
Birds yet are shaking mazy song abroad ;
As then the cherry and the applebloom
Heave silent rosed white foam athwart the blue,
And sleek leaves flutter over violet pools
In woods as then — ah ! not those very birds.
Nor bloom those very blossoms, leaves and flowers !
Some change I ween the very place may show ;
Yon turf freshmounded where he loved to lie—
Nay, but he lies there — only will not move
With dayfall homeward as he used of yore,
But lie through moonrise and unhasting stars ;
No more she waits him near the cottage door
As in that summer gone, but near the wheel
She sits, a wintrier snow upon her head,
And a light faded from her reverend face.
And while he lies, all vainly mellow lights
With shadows move " eye-music " o'er his breast,
A flowersoft breast of yore how sensitive !
Vain do the birds with tireless melody
Visit an ear more apt to thrill of yore
Than any sporecell tipping elfin moss
Upon some breezy hill-top — all in vain !
He sleeps and may not waken any more.

Yet look ! behold ! What splendid cavalcade
Draws nigh this lowly garden of the dead ?
Grave men and reverend, liveried at least
In garbs imposing, with official air.
With pomp of gold-knobbed staff, trombone and drum,
Bland carrying lavish laurel coronets
And incense shut in silver thuribles.

It seems that one, some friend who haunts the grave.
Hath asked " What seek you ? " " 'Tis the poet -boy
We seek," they answer ; "to fulfil we come
His aspiration, clasp his hand in ours,
Hail him as one of us, with grand calm eyes
Look courage into his, to chaunt his praise
And fill his nostrils with our incense. Fame ! "
The friend replies : " It is a little late,
Methinics, for this, wise mentors of young thought.
Whose Solomon awards leave ne'er appeal !
A carcase, O illustrious brotherhood,
Claim for your fellow, clasp this clammy hand.
Look courage in these blank lacklustre eyes,
And titillate yon stiff dead cartilaje
With fumes of fame ! Death's ear is somewhat dull.
And look you this — this body might I fear
Repay with scarce polite indifference
Your fashionably tardy patronage I
Lo ! the World -Soul with birdsong, breath of flower,
And summer light, may waken not his child ;
Will shawms and resin and your fetid breath
(Though these be larger loss a myriadfold)
Think you be more persuasive to arouse ? —
Yet in his life I never heard him crave
Applause from you, nor kith nor kin of yours,
Learned censors of the way wild roses blow !
Who when we deem you nodding in assent
Mayhap are only nodding in your sleep —
Ye chance to want some ' new light ' I suppose.
May one be found not vulgarly alive.
Coarsely in need of you, and even as ye,
Mere grimy feeding man — no footing yield
To such ! the dead are crowned with haloes vague.
And draw the graceful the luxurious tear.
'Tis generous — and cheap — to praise the dead,
Who press no claim — so living seer die !
We pride us on the sepulchres we build
For merit, torturing long-suffering stone.
The seer, fool ! would rather men should hear
Fven if his clothes be coarse or grosser faults
Of erring men be his, than wait the chance
Of flattering lies above his callous dust !
Tell, world-worn Dante ! wert not thou consoled
In far Ravenna, in thy foreign grave,
When Florence piled thee yonder incubus
In Santa Croce for a cenotaph ?

"Yourselves have failed, shall other folk succeed ?
At least with thorns shall bristle all their road.
And they shall climb, if climb they must, in blood !
Well, friends, we challenge your alternative ;
For climb in face of all of you we will !

" But ye intend to keep our letters pure —
Yea, as the worm benevolent intends
When fretting in deep seiis an oyster-shell
To fill the wound with slow-secreted pearl !
Nay, pearls are of the oyster, not the worm.
What in the grand economy of God
Exceeds the generation of a child ?
Yet shall we praise the lecher for his lust ?
Nay everything hath function of his own.
Expect a gnat to settle, not to sting !
Clutch bold your nettle, scotch your venomed snake,
But only fools adjure them not to hurt."

They only smiled a hard superior scorn,
Puffed at their hautboys, clattered on their drums,
While some began to swing the smoke abroad.
If yet he lived, he lived, methought, with
God,
And well methought the quiet green spot he loved
Shrined his young body : so I held my ears
And turned away — these gentlemen I knew
Had private business of their own to do.

Poor boy ! may one indeed akin to thee.
Seasoned more stern for battle and for toil.
Raise where thou liest a cross for memory !
And there enshrined in Death's ice-atmosphere
May thy fair head enwreathed with deathless flowers
Never decay, but grace the special peak
Thy delicate subtle genius hath scaled !