Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of l.u.s.t Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes Now, leaved how thick! laced they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain, Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

_51 To R. B._

THE fine delight that fathers thought; the strong Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame, Breathes once and, quenched faster than it came, Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.

Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same: The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim Now known and hand at work now never wrong.

Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this; I want the one rapture of an inspiration.

O then if in my lagging lines you miss The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation, My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.

UNFINISHED POEMS & FRAGMENTS

_52 Summa_

THE best ideal is the true And other truth is none.

All glory be ascribed to The holy Three in One.

_53_

WHAT being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been That here personal tells off these heart-song powerful peals?-- A bush-browed, beetle-browed billow is it?

With a south-westerly wind bl.u.s.tering, with a tide rolls reels Of crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seas in; seen underneath, their gla.s.sy barrel, of a fairy green.

Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting a.s.saulting trumpet telling

_54 On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People

A Brother and Sister_

O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.

A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves, And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.

Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast: Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest In one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast, Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.

And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams Their young delightful hour do feature down That fleeted else like day-dissolved dreams Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.

She leans on him with such contentment fond As well the sister sits, would well the wife; His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond, Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.

But ah, bright forelock, cl.u.s.ter that you are Of favoured make and mind and health and youth, Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul's star?

There's none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.

There's none but good can be good, both for you And what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid; None good but G.o.d--a warning waved to One once that was found wanting when Good weighed.

Man lives that list, that leaning in the will No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess, The selfless self of self, most strange, most still, Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.

Your feast of; that most in you earnest eye May but call on your banes to more carouse.

Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry, To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward boughs?

Enough: corruption was the world's first woe.

What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?

O but I bear my burning witness though Against the wild and wanton work of men.

_55_

THE sea took pity: it interposed with doom: 'I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand: Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb, And she shall child them on the New-world strand.'

_56 (Ash-boughs)_

a.

NOT of all my eyes see, wandering on the world, Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.

Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled Fast or they in clammyish lashtender combs creep Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.

They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray Of greenery: it is old earth's groping towards the steep Heaven whom she childs us by.

(Variant from line 7.) b.

They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there hurled], With talons sweep The smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye, But more cheer is when] May Mells blue with snowwhite through their fringe and fray Of greenery and old earth gropes for, grasps at steep Heaven with it whom she childs things by.

_57_

HOPE holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out To take His lovely likeness more and more.

It will not well, so she would bring about An ever brighter burnish than before And turns to wash it from her welling eyes And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.

Her gla.s.s is blest but she as good as blind Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there; Her gla.s.s drinks light, she darkles down behind, All of her glorious gainings unaware.

I told you that she turned her mirror dim Betweenwhiles, but she sees herself not Him.

_53 St. Winefred's Well

ACT I. Sc. I

_Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following._

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me?