25 The echo of the whole sea's speech. And all mankind is thus at heart Not any thing but what thou art: SONNETS SIBYLLA PALMIFERA (For a Picture) Under the arch of Life, where love and death, awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. 5 Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, 10 The sky and sea bend on thee,-which can draw, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise Thy voice and hand shake still,-long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem,-the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably, In what fond flight, how many ways and days! (From The House of Life, in Ballads and Sonnets, 1881) SONNET XIX SILENT NOON Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,- 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. 5 All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthornhedge. 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass. Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly 10 Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky :So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, This close-companioned inarticulate hour When twofold silence was the song of love. SONNET LXIII. INCLUSIVENESS The changing guests, each in a different mood, And every life among them in likewise Is a soul's board set daily with new food. 5 What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed? 10 May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell well; And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, SONNET XCVII. A SUPERSCRIPTION Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; 5 Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell 10 Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me how still I am! But should there dart sighs, Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart William Morris 1834-1896 AN APOLOGY (From The Earthly Paradise, 1868-70) Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing, But rather, when aweary of your mirth, From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh, 10 And, feeling kindly unto all the earth, Grudge every minute as it passes by, 15 Made the more mindful that the sweet days die— The idle singer of an empty day. The heavy trouble, the bewildering care So let me sing of names remembered, Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, To those who in the sleepy region stay, Folk say, a wizard to a northern king 30 At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, That through one window men beheld the spring, And through another saw the summer glow, And through a third the fruited vines a-row, While still, unheard, but in its wonted way, 35 Piped the drear wind of that December day. So with this Earthly Paradise it is, Midmost the beating of the steely sea, 40 Where tossed about all hearts of men must be; Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay, Not the poor singer of an empty day. THE DAY OF DAYS (From Poems by the Way, 1892) Each eve earth falleth down the dark, Yet lurks the sun where day is done 5 Grey grows the dawn while men-folk sleep, Till the thrush sings to the coloured things, No otherwise wends on our Hope: 10 E'en as a tale that's told Are fair lives lost, and all the cost Of wise and true and bold. We've toiled and failed; we spake the word; 15 Our Hope is dead, the seed we spread What's this? For joy our hearts stand still, The lost and found the Cause hath crowned, 20 The Day of Days is here. |