Or those red-curtained panes, Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes, Might turn a caravansery's, wherein You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk, And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, You'd not have given away For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous You had that dark and disleaved afternoon Escaped on a roc's claw, Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while The schoolboy satchel at your hip Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers Of Tartary and the bazaars, Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind. -
Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart The magian East: thus the child eyes Spelled out the wizard message by the light Of the sober, workaday hours They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind In ancient Severn's arm, Amongst her water-meadows and her docks, Whose floating populace of ships -
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines, Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought To her very doorsteps and geraniums The scents of the World's End; the calls That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals For comradeship that sound Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale, Telling itself anew In terms of living, labouring life, Took on the colours, busked it in the wear Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance, The Angel-Playmate, raining down His golden influences On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did, Walked with me arm in arm, Or left me, as one bediademed with straws And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart Who had the gift to seek and feel and find His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things, Sends the same silver dews Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk Sullenly smoking over a row Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings Of hurtling, tipping trams) -
As on the amorous nightingales And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears, Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names! That star-vaned belvedere Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide Might overtake you: for one fringe, One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one Floats founded vague In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas, The promise of wistful hills -
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.
BRIC-A-BRAC
'The tune of the time.'--HAMLET, concerning OSRIC
BALLADE OF A TOYOKUNI COLOUR-PRINT--To W. A.
Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?
A histrion angular and profound?
A priest? a porter?--Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old Japan.
As here you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting--even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o' the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in old Japan.
Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, A blue canal the lake's blue bound Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!
Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow, I see you turn, with flirted fan, Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow . . .
I loved you once in old Japan!
Envoy Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago;
But that I was a lucky man The Toyokuni here will show:
I loved you--once--in old Japan.
BALLADE (DOUBLE REFRAIN) OF YOUTH AND AGE--I. M. Thomas Edward Brown (1829-1896)
Spring at her height on a morn at prime, Sails that laugh from a flying squall, Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme -
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
Winter sunsets and leaves that fall, An empty flagon, a folded page, A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball -
These are a type of the world of Age.
Bells that clash in a gaudy chime, Swords that clatter in onsets tall, The words that ring and the fames that climb -
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
Hymnals old in a dusty stall, A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage, The scene of a faded festival -
These are a type of the world of Age.
Hours that strut as the heirs of time, Deeds whose rumour's a clarion-call, Songs where the singers their souls sublime -
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A staff that rests in a nook of wall, A reeling battle, a rusted gage, The chant of a nearing funeral -
These are a type of the world of Age.
Envoy Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl -
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A smouldering hearth and a silent stage -
These are a type of the world of Age.
BALLADE (DOUBLE REFRAIN) OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS--To W. H.
With a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, And the winds are one with the clouds and beams -
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise -
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
The wood's green heart is a nest of dreams, The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams -
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways, All secret shadows and mystic lights, Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze -
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!
There's a music of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams -
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!
