Still on life's anvil

Forge they the rhyme.

Still the rapt faces
Glow from the furnace:

Breath of the smithy

Scorches their brows.

Yea, and thou hear'st them? So shall the hammers

Fashion not vainly

Verses of gold.

II

Lo, with the ancient
Roots of man's nature,
Twines the eternal

Passion of song.

Ever Love fans it,

Ever Life feeds it;
Time cannot age it,
Death cannot slay.
Deep in the world-heart
Stand its foundations,
Tangled with all things,
Twin-made with all.

Nay, what is Nature's
Self, but an endless
Strife toward music,
Euphony, rhyme?

Trees in their blooming,
Tides in their flowing,
Stars in their circling,
Tremble with song.

God on His throne is
Eldest of poets:
Unto His measures
Moveth the Whole.

Floweth from all things,

Poured without pause,

Cease we to echo
Faintly the descant
Whereto for ever
Dances the world.

IV

So let the songsmith
Proffer his rhyme-gift,
England my mother,
Maker of men.

Grey grows thy count'nance,

Full of the ages;

Time on thy forehead

Sits like a dream:

Song is the potion
All things renewing,
Youth's one elixir,

Fountain of morn.
Thou, at the world-loom
Weaving thy future,
Fitly may'st temper
Toil with delight.

Deemest thou, labour
Only is earnest?
Grave is all beauty,

Solemn is joy.

Song is no bauble

Slight not the songsmith,

England my mother,
Maker of men.

III

Therefore deride not

Speech of the muses, England my mother, Maker of men.

Nations are mortal,

Fragile is greatness;

Fortune may fly thee,
Song shall not fly.

Song the all-girdling,
Song cannot perish:
Men shall make music,
Man shall give ear.

Not while the choric
Chant of creation

5

A moment's fantasy, the vision came
Of Europe dipped in fiery death, and so
Mounting re-born, with vestal limbs aglow,
Splendid and fragrant from her bath of flame.
It fleeted; and a phantom without name,
Sightless, dismembered, terrible, said: 'Lo,
I am that ravished Europe men shall know
After the morn of blood and night of shame.'
The spectre passed, and I beheld alone
The Europe of the present, as she stands, 10
Powerless from terror of her own vast power,
'Neath novel stars, beside a brink unknown;
And round her the sad Kings, with sleepless
hands,

Piling the fagots, hour by doomful hour.

1893

THE SAINT AND THE SATYR

For all the gods I loved have died,
And I am left alone.

'Silent, in Paphos, Venus sleeps,

And Jove, on Ida, mute;
And every living creature weeps
Pan and his perished flute.

"The Faun, his laughing heart is broke;
The nymph, her fountain fails;
And driven from out the hollow oak
The Hamadryad wails.

'A God more beautiful than mine
Hath conquered mine, they say.
Ah, to that fair young God of thine,
For me I pray thee pray!'

Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears,
April, April,

Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!

1893

1895

15

20

5

5

10

To blunder down by Garden Reach
And rot at Kedgeree,

The tale the Hughli told the shoal
The lean shoal told to me.

"T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house, Where sailor-men reside,

5

And there were men of all the ports

That neither gifts nor gain

Can hold a winking Light o' Love

Or Fancy's flight restrain,

When Anne of Austria rolled her eyes

On Hans the blue-eyed Dane.

Since Life is strife, and strife means knife,
From Howrah to the Bay,

And he may die before the dawn
Who liquored out the day,

In Fultah Fisher's boarding-house

We woo while yet we may.

But cold was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,
Bull-throated, bare of arm,

And laughter shook the chest beneath
The maid Ultruda's Charm

The little silver crucifix

That keeps a man from harm.

Now Anne of Austria shared their drinks, Collinga knew her fame,

From Tarnau in Galicia

To Jaun Bazaar she came,

To eat the bread of infamy

And take the wage of shame.

She held a dozen men to heel

In Anne of Austria's trembling hands, The weary head fell low:

45

'I ship mineselfs to-morrow, straight For Besser in Saro;