The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 40
Part II
Part II.
A Reverie.
Ah, tranquilly sleeping in nature's soft keeping,
The hot sun above,
This seed of our sowing is evermore growing
A pledge to our love.
Will the plentiful showers, and long summer hours
Bring burdens of fruit?
Or will winter winds chill, and bitter frosts kill
This stem at its root?
Will buds and bright blossoms be hopes in our bosoms,
And light to our life?
Or will sin with its morrow of anger and sorrow,
Darken with strife?
The hours of light laughter and thought that comes after,
Shall surely be thine,
But deeds of thy doings, and loves of thy wooing,
Oh, who shall divine?
Ah, infantine beauty, quite dreamless of duty,
And free of all care,
No vows or entreating—thy little heart beating
Unconciously there!
Still! peacefully slumber, for soon shalt thou number
The days of unrest,
When joy shall seem sadness, and mirth be but madness,
And sleep shall seem best.
Oh, seed-time and reaping, oh, bright hopes and weeping—
Twin comrades alway,
The joy that gives warning, the night chasing morning,
The dark-seeking day.
I felt that
she listened, and looking, saw glistened
Her eyes with big tears.
I drew myself nearer, spoke softly to cheer her,
And scatter her fears;
Though grief come unbidden, and years are still hidden,
We act as we can;
Our veriest blunders, the sorrow that sunders,
Are part of the Plan.
We have loved, we are loving, and time is but proving
The strength of our tie;
If sorrow comes nearer love's eyes see the clearer—
Ah, love cannot die.
Yes, love is still stronger than all things that wrong her,
And evermore sways,
Her steps are the ages, her footprints the sages,
That blazen her ways.
The air is all trembling, dark clouds are assembling,
The torrents will come;
Ah, dearest and nearest, through tears we see clearest,
Come quick, let us home.
The Poet.
O! I thank you for your kindness,
But your pains are tittle worth;
I must grope along in blindness
Till the light has sadden birth.
Yes, the subject has its beauty,
And a poet could reveal it;
But a thousand calls of duty
Call for silence till
I feel it.
O! I may not choose the season,
I am called and I obey,
And with brighter lamp than reason
I can tread a trackless way.
Not in action, but in being,
Are my golden moments won;
When the eye too rapt for seeing,
Dreams in music self-begun;
And the soul, to all the forces
Yields in concert all her power!—
To the planets in their courses,
To the sea, the growing flower.
And in truest recreation
All my pulses beat anew,
And with sweet and strange elation
Comes the beautiful and true.
Then life's mystery seems lightened,
And more freely I respire,
And my faith and love are heightened—
I have passed through cleansing fire.
Oh, I know you but suggested
With a heart that overflows;
That the scene in language vested
Might give pleasure or repose.
But I must be thrilled with pleasure,
Or be moved by bitter wrong.
Ere my thoughts can run in measure,
Or blossom into song.
Sonnet.
On Keats.
Now while the air is sweet with breath of spring
And loud with liquid melody and mirth,
When budding flowers burst into early birth.
And orchard trees are white with blossoming,
And on their snowy twigs the sweet birds sing;
When beauty is new-born o'er all the earth,
And with the last chill wind, the fear of dearth
And other piercing fears have taken wing :
This is the season I would think of One,
The dear Endymion, the star-eyed youth
Who loved the quickened earth as doth the sun,
Whose heart was full of courage and of ruth,
Whose voice in sweetest melodies would run—
And lo! how Beauty war with him the Truth!
In a Garden.
I saw my fair one plucking fruit,
The velvet peach and dusky plum;
And, as she stooped to gather some
That hid themselves in scarlet plots
And blue beds of forget-me-nots,
I stood as though I'd taken root,
And durst not lift intruding foot—
So, leaning on a neighbouring gum,
(I knew she had not seen me come),
I watched her stand, and upward reach
And shame the pink of tinted peach
In stretching where some ripe one lies
Behind its screen of leafy green,
With just a speck of crimson seen—
The burning kiss of summer skies—
Then turn, some laurel leaves to cull
Wherewith to trim her basketful,
And as she eat with careless grace,
And set each beauty in its place,
I drank the scene with open eyes,
And like half-wakened memories,
Came tender thoughts in quiet mood
That made me wish for solitude.
I could not choose to linger there
Where all was grace and debonair,
Where every movement seemed to be
Some preconcerted melody,
Where but to speak was to destroy
The blissful calm, the tender joy.
So turning from the magic spell,
And from the form I loved so well,
I mused how pleasure often springs
From far-off-half-remembered things,
And how the vision I had met
Might yield a richer harvest yet;
Then stole away—and in my mind
I carry still that garden scene,
The motions of my graceful queen,
And all the beauty left behind,
The charm of flowers, the wealth of fruit,
The dusky plum and velvet peach,
And the bright lesson that they teach,
How grace and beauty more than preach,
And to the soul are never mute.
Sonnet.
Beloved Shakespeare, when I scan the sky
And think of worlds illimitably far,
And how this earth is smaller than yon star,
My thoughts are lost in drear immensity;
So when I pass before my mental eye
Thy sov'ran types of human character,
And feel how real, how wonderful they are,
Like starry worlds above, they mystify.
I cannot think what aptitude was thine
To grasp all human life as in thy hand,
To pour with sweetest note the song divine,
And deal out wisdom like the countless sand—
In vain I brood, as on the stars that shine,
I can but feel—I cannot understand,
A Remonstrance.
O! pity not nor blame
The poet's wayward ways;
Through ecstasy and shame
He wins the crown of bays.
Why pity him who climbs
To heights to us unknown?
Who weds the fickle rhymes
To music of his own.
Whose steps by sea and brook
To art are consecrate;
And in each secret nook,
Who feels but to create.
Who brings to us the sweep
Of languid summer seas,
And o'er their sapphire deep
The seaweed-scented breeze.
Who burns with costly glow
His own life's fiery flame,
A beacon light to show
The loneliness of fame.
Why blame his strange descent?
From giddy heights he reels—
Is it not punishment
To feel the pang
he feels?
O! pity not nor blame
The poet's wayward ways;
Dear is his tear-bought fame—
But sweet the voice of praise.
Sonnet.
Dim through the shadow land of long ago
Comes like the flooding dawn each newborn thought;
But whence—we may not know—or how begot :
The liquid gold the sinking sun can throw
On ocean's waste, to other scenes we owe
The stars, the flowers, the grassy fields are fraught
With beauty not their own—a gleam is brought
From travelled realms where mem'ry cannot go;
Feast then, my senses, on a day like this—
Garner—in pleasure 'gainst a chilling gloom;
Share with the bush its melody, nor miss
The clematis and rata's crimson bloom;
Drink in ye eyes and care, each moment's bliss
Shall swell in ceaseless surges to the tomb.
In Memoriam.
T. B.
Oh, garden of my heart how soon
Thy beauties pine away and die,
One hour, in pride of noon,
They kiss the kindling sky;
But ere the bud is bloom
There comes a chilling gloom,
And on the dull, cold earth they withered lie.
Another rose is gone that made
My life to me more sweet:
Another heart is still'd that beat
Responsive to mine own.
And now I walk alone
With dull and desolate feet;
And bare and bleak the prospect seems.
And mellow moons and sunny gleams
Mock with untimely mirth a heart dismayed.
Oh, garden of my heart, each leaf
Dies not alone, but takes
A something it forsakes—
So life ebbs slowly out with grief;
And so each stroke, we know,
Falls with more muffled blow.
Until at last we breathe relief,
And rest, where pure and meek the daisies grow.
Oh, garden of my heart, how scant
Thy leaves and perfumed bloom—
Can all thy sunny days but grant
This solitary gloom;
And must we be content,
Glad life and beauty spent,
A deep forgetfulness to seek?
A peace, our withered loves bespeak—
A silence, sweet and seeling, in the tomb.
Oh, garden of my heart, though dead
The rose, its fragance still will cling,
And tender recollections bring
To deify the splendour fled;
And when the vagrant air
Shall waft it everywhere.
And it has faded from our sense,
Yet still we know its influence
Still steals abroad, imperishably fair.
Oh, garden of my heart, not vain
His gentle bloom, his sudden chill,
Though to our sight the gain
Seem loss ineffable.
But who shall fight with Might,
Or curse the Hands that smite,
Sure that in great and small
One purpose works in all—
One goal to reach, one blinding veil of light.
Half-Hearted.
When next you come, O love!
Come in a tumult strong.
Come with a strength above
The reach of song
Fill me with vague alarms,
Smite me with softest fears,
Weak as a babe in arms
Bring me to tears.
Come not, and then go by.
Leaving only unrest;
Come not a passer-by,
Come as a guest.
What could I do? she grew
Fond without fault of mine,
Every day fonder, too,
Foolish Adine!
Had I but loved her more.
Her fettered soul were free
On wings of love to soar
And comfort me.
Had I but loved her less,
I had not mourned her, wed—
Her eyes would not confess
A love not dead.
When next you come, O love!
Come like a welt'ring sea,
Flooding its shores above,
Come so—or flee.
Printed by Jolly, Connor & Co., Octagon, Dunedin.