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Read Ebook: Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney by Guiney Louise Imogen
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Ebook has 80 lines and 7953 words, and 2 pages
am-caps, well descried, Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide, Away, and far away, his barque is borne Riding the noisy morn, Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know The helm and tightening halyards still Follow the urging of his will, And scoff at sullen earth a league below.
Alas! Fate bars him from his heirdom high, And shackles him with many an inland tie, And of his only wisdom makes a jibe Amid an alien tribe: No wave abroad but moans his fallen state. The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! Why is it on a yellowing page he pores? Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate?
Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim, Familiar Danger, Oh, forget not him! Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole Unto his subject soul, Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth, Nor hath so tamely worn her chain, But she may know that voice again, And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth.
And give him back, before his passion fail, The singing cordage and the hollow sail, And level with those ageing eyes let be The bright unsteady sea; And like a film remove from sense and brain This pasture wall, these boughs that run Their evening arches to the sun, Yon hamlet spire across the sown champaign;
And on the shut space and the shallow hour, Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower, With rapt arrest and solemn loitering, Him whom thou lovedst, bring: That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip, Not having, at the last, less grace Of thee than had his roving race, Sum up his strength to perish with a ship.
OXFORD AND LONDON
OXFORD
FURROW to furrow, oar to oar succeeds, Each length away, more bright, more exquisite; The sister shells that hither, thither, flit Strew the long stream like scattered maple-seeds. A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads, Who with short calls his pace doth intermit: An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sits, Auspicious Pan among the river reeds.
West of the glowing hayricks, tawny black Where waters by their warm escarpments run, Two lovers, newly crossed from Kennington, Print in the early dew a married track, And drain the aroma'd eve, and spend the sun, Ere in laborious health the crews come back.
MY gentle Aubrey, who in everything Hadst of thy city's youth so lovely lust, Yet never lineal to her towers august Thy spirit could fix, or perfectly upbring, Sleep, sleep! I ope, not unremembering, Thy comely manuscript, and interthrust Find delicate hueless leaves more sad than dust, Two centuries unkissed of any Spring.
Filling a homesick page beneath a lime, Thy mood beheld, as mine thy debtor's now, The endless terraces of ended Time Vague in green twilight. Goodly was release Into that Past where these poor leaves, and thou, Do freshen in the air of eldest peace.
SUCH natural debts of love our Oxford knows, So many ancient dues undesecrate, I marvel how the landmark of a hate For witness unto future time she chose; How 'gainst her own corroborate ranks arose The Three, in great denial only great, For Art's enshrining! Thus, averted straight, My soul to seek a holier captain goes:
That sweet adventurer whom Truth befell Whenas the synagogues were watching not; Whose crystal name on royal Oriel Hangs like a shield; who to an outland spot Led hence, beholds his Star, and counts it well To live of all his dear domain forgot.
VIEWED yesterday, in sad elusive light, These everlasting heptarchs, tree by tree, Seemed filing off to exile, lingeringly, Each with his giant falchion, kinless quite. All the wild winter day and flooded night They feigned to march far as the eye could see, Through transient oceans plunging to the knee Their centuried greaves, ebon and malachite.
To-day, accustomed bole and branch all bare Stand with old gems inlaid. Like coloured snow Or vista'd flame along the drowsy air, Their gold-green lichens stir and cling and glow. What secret craftsmen painted them so fair? Angels of Moisture and the Long Ago.
Yet over all roofs to the uttermost, Call, Shepherd dear, from thy dream-haunted ground: For some there be, on whatsoever coast, In midst of any morrow's ordered round, Hear as of old And like young lambs, leap homeward at the sound.
IMPERIAL Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green, And Templar Sandford in the boatman's call, And sweet-belled Appleton, and Elsfield wall That dost upon adoring ivies lean; Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall; Clear Cassington, soaring perpetual, Holton, and Hampton Poyle, and fanes between:
If one of all in your sad courts that come Belov?d and disparted! be your own, Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures Some memory of a great communion known At home in quarries of old Christendom,-- Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours.
IS this the end? Is this the pilgrim's day For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? Rather, from grass and air and many spheres In prophecy his heart is called away; And under English eaves, more still than they, Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears The long-arrested, the believing years Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say:
"Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best Who had such beauty"? or, with spirit fain To watch beside her darkened doors, go by With a new psalm: "O banished Light so nigh! Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest: Even here remember me when thou shalt reign."
WHITHERSOEVER cold and fair ye flow, Take me, O gentle moon and gentler wind, Past Wyatt's cumbering portal, frost-entwined, And Merton 'neath that huge tiara's glow, And groves in bridal gossamer below Saint Mary's armoured spire; and whence aligned In altered eminence for dawn to find Sleep the droll Caesars, hooded with the snow.
White sacraments of weather, shine on me! Upbear my footfall and my fancy sift, Lest either blemish an ensainted ground Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound, On recollected wing mine angel drift Across new spheres of immortality.
WARDEN of hours and ages, here I dwell, Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook For good unborn; and towards a willow nook, Pole, princely in the senate and the cell; And doubting the near boom of Osney bell, Turning on me that sweetly subtile look, Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book: Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell.
Naught steadfast may I image nor attain Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope After my god, like him, inconstant bright: But sun and shade will unto you remain Alternately a symbol and a hope, Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light.
Blest birds! A book held open on the knee Below, is all they guess of Adam's blight: With surer art the while, and simpler rite, They gather power in some monastic tree Where breathe against their docile breasts by night The scholar's star, the star of sanctity.
THE plain gives freedom. Hither from the town How oft a dreamer and a book of yore Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more Inroll from Cowley turf the game's renown, But bade the vernal sky with spices drown His head by Plato's in the grass, before Yon oar that's never old, the sunset oar, At Medley Lock was laid reluctant down!
So seeming far the confines and the crowd, The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire, From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven, Go happier than the inly-moving cloud Who lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire, Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven.
FAIR are the finer creature-sounds; of these Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop Susurrant to the garth from weeds atop; And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries Of wrens in council from an hundred leas; And merry fish of Cherwell, fain to stop The water-plantain's way; and deer that crop Delicious herbage under choral trees.
The cry for silver and gold in Christendom Without, threads not her silence and her dark. Only against the isolate Tower there break Low rhythmic murmurs of good men to come: Invasive seas of hushed approach that make Memorial music, would the ear but hark.
Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls; Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar. Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well, And powers that aye aglow in you, impel Our quickening spirits from the slime we are.
STARS in the bosom of thy braided tide, Soft air and ivy on thy gracile stone, O Glory of the West, as thou wert sown, Stand perfect: O miraculous, abide! And still, for greatness flickering from thy side, Eternal alchemist, evoke, enthrone True heirs in true succession, later blown From that same seed of fire which never died.
Nor Love shall lack her solace, to behold Ranged to the morrow's melancholy verge, Thy lights uprisen in Thought's disclosing spaces; And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old, In radiant broad tumultuary surge For ever, the young voices, the young faces.
LONDON
HOLY of England! since my light is short And faint, Oh, rather by the sun anew Of timeless passion set my dial true, That with thy saints and thee I may consort; And wafted in the cool enshadowed port Of poets, seem a little sail long due, And be as one the call of memory drew Unto the saddle void since Agincourt.
Not now for secular love's unquiet lease Receive my soul, who rapt in thee erewhile Hath broken tryst with transitory things; But seal with her a marriage and a peace Eternal, on thine Edward's altar isle, Above the storm-spent sea of ended Kings.
LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, Through palsied streets the fatal shadows flow, And in their sharp disastrous undertow Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky. The towery vista sinks upon the eye, As if it heard the horns of Jericho, Black and dissolved; nor could the founder, know How what was built so bright should daily die.
Thy mood with man's is broken and blent in, City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown The natural light in which thy life began; Great as thy dole is, smirch?d with his sin, Greater and elder yet the love of man Full in thy look, though the dark visor's down.
TOO well I know, pacing the place of awe, Three Queens, young save in trouble, moulder by; More in his halo, Monmouth's mocking eye, The eagle Essex in a harpy's claw; Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw Sundown of Scotland; how with treasons lie White martyrdoms: rank in a company Breaker and builder of the eternal Law.
Oft as I come, the piteous garden-row Of ruined roses hanging from the stem, Where winds of old defeat yet batter them, Infects me: suddenly must I depart, Ere thought of man's injustice then and now Add to these aisles one other broken heart.
A WOOF reversed the fatal shuttles weave, How slow! but never once they slip the thread. Hither, upon the Georgian idlers' tread, Up spacious ways the lindens interleave, Clouding the royal air since yester-eve, Come men bereft of time and scant of bread, Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead, Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve.
What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so The clear Republic waits the general throe, Along her noonday mountains' open range. God be with both! for one is young to know The other's rote of evil and of change.
THE cry is at thy gates, long-lov?d ground, Again: for oft ere now thy children went Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent Some old red alley with a dial crowned; Some house of honour, in a glory bound With lives and deaths of spirits excellent; Some tree rude-taken from his kingly tent Hard by a little fountain's friendly sound.
Oh, for Virginius' hand, if only that Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon! Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas, Her walled oasis, and where once it was All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat Echo and ivy, and the loitering moon.
THE evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot Far down into the valley's cold extreme, Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not. The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream, From chaos climb with many a hasty gleam, London, one moment fallen and forgot.
Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright Prick door and window; every street obscure Sparkles and swarms with nothing true nor sure, Full as a marsh of mist and winking light: Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.
AH, if man's boast and man's advance be vain, And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome, That monstrous island of the middle main; If each inheritor must sink again Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?-- I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.
What folly lies in forecasts and in fears! Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul's Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls. "God keeps," I said, "our little flock of years."
PRAISED be the moon of books! that doth above A world of men, the sunken Past behold, And colour spaces else too void and cold To make a very heaven again thereof; As when the sun is set behind a grove, And faintly unto nether ether rolled, All night his whiter image and his mould Grows beautiful with looking on her love.
Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray, Lend to our steps both fortitude and light! Feebly along a venerable way They climb the infinite, or perish quite: Nothing are days and deeds to such as they, While in this liberal house thy face is bright.
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