Coogee

   Sing the song of wave-worn Coogee, Coogee in the distance white,
   With its jags and points disrupted, gaps and fractures fringed with light;
   Haunt of gledes, and restless plovers of the melancholy wail
   Ever lending deeper pathos to the melancholy gale.
   There, my brothers, down the fissures, chasms deep and wan and wild,
   Grows the sea-bloom, one that blushes like a shrinking, fair, blind child;
   And amongst the oozing forelands many a glad, green rock-vine runs,
   Getting ease on earthy ledges, sheltered from December suns.

   Often, when a gusty morning, rising cold and grey and strange,
   Lifts its face from watery spaces, vistas full with cloudy change,
   Bearing up a gloomy burden which anon begins to wane,
   Fading in the sudden shadow of a dark, determined rain,
   Do I seek an eastern window, so to watch the breakers beat
   Round the steadfast crags of Coogee, dim with drifts of driving sleet:
   Hearing hollow mournful noises sweeping down a solemn shore,
   While the grim sea-caves are tideless, and the storm strives at their core.

   Often when the floating vapours fill the silent autumn leas,
   Dreaming mem'ries fall like moonlight over silver sleeping seas.
   Youth and I and Love together!  Other times and other themes
   Come to me unsung, unwept for, through the faded evening gleams:
   Come to me and touch me mutely—I that looked and longed so well,
   Shall I look and yet forget them?—who may know or who foretell?
   Though the southern wind roams, shadowed with its immemorial grief,
   Where the frosty wings of Winter leave their whiteness on the leaf.

   Friend of mine beyond the waters, here and here these perished days
   Haunt me with their sweet dead faces and their old divided ways.
   You that helped and you that loved me, take this song, and when you read,
   Let the lost things come about you, set your thoughts and hear and heed.
   Time has laid his burden on us—we who wear our manhood now,
   We would be the boys we have been, free of heart and bright of brow—
   Be the boys for just an hour, with the splendour and the speech
   Of thy lights and thunders, Coogee, flying up thy gleaming beach.

   Heart's desire and heart's division! who would come and say to me,
   With the eyes of far-off friendship, "You are as you used to be"?
   Something glad and good has left me here with sickening discontent,
   Tired of looking, neither knowing what it was or where it went.
   So it is this sight of Coogee, shining in the morning dew,
   Sets me stumbling through dim summers once on fire with youth and you—
   Summers pale as southern evenings when the year has lost its power
   And the wasted face of April weeps above the withered flower.

   Not that seasons bring no solace, not that time lacks light and rest;
   But the old things were the dearest and the old loves seem the best.
   We that start at songs familiar, we that tremble at a tone
   Floating down the ways of music, like a sigh of sweetness flown,
   We can never feel the freshness, never find again the mood
   Left among fair-featured places, brightened of our brotherhood.
   This and this we have to think of when the night is over all,
   And the woods begin to perish and the rains begin to fall.

Ogyges

   Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns,
   And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff
   With shocks of clamour,—let the chasm take
   The noise of many trumpets, lest the hunt
   Should die across the dim Aonian hills,
   Nor break through thunder and the surf-white cave
   That hems about the old-eyed Ogyges
   And bars the sea-wind, rain-wind, and the sea!

   Much fierce delight hath old-eyed Ogyges
   (A hairless shadow in a lion's skin)
   In tumult, and the gleam of flying spears,
   And wild beasts vexed to death; "for," sayeth he,
   "Here lying broken, do I count the days
   For every trouble; being like the tree—
   The many-wintered father of the trunks
   On yonder ridges:  wherefore it is well
   To feel the dead blood kindling in my veins
   At sound of boar or battle; yea to find
   A sudden stir, like life, about my feet,
   And tingling pulses through this frame of mine
   What time the cold clear dayspring, like a bird
   Afar off, settles on the frost-bound peaks,
   And all the deep blue gorges, darkening down,
   Are filled with men and dogs and furious dust!"

   So in the time whereof thou weetest well—
   The melancholy morning of the World—
   He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee,
   And shakes his sides—a cavern-hutted King!
   But when the ouzel in the gaps at eve
   Doth pipe her dreary ditty to the surge
   All tumbling in the soft green level light,
   He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock,
   And dreameth in his cold old savage way
   Of gliding barges on the wine-dark waves,
   And glowing shapes, and sweeter things than sleep,
   But chiefly, while the restless twofold bat
   Goes flapping round the rainy eaves above,
   Where one broad opening letteth in the moon,
   He starteth, thinking of that grey-haired man,
   His sire:  then oftentimes the white-armed child
   Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes
   And droops above him with her short sweet sighs
   For Love distraught—for dear Love's faded sake
   That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death
   Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost,
   And careless mutterings, and most weary years.

   Bethink you, doth the wan Egyptian count
   This passion, wasting like an unfed flame,
   Of any worth now; seeing that his thighs
   Are shrunken to a span and that the blood,
   Which used to spin tumultuous down his sides
   Of life in leaping moments of desire,
   Is drying like a thin and sluggish stream
   In withered channels—think you, doth he pause
   For golden Thebe and her red young mouth?

   Ah, golden Thebe—Thebe, weeping there,
   Like some sweet wood-nymph wailing for a rock,
   If Octis with the Apollonian face—
   That fair-haired prophet of the sun and stars—
   Could take a mist and dip it in the West
   To clothe thy limbs of shine about with shine
   And all the wonder of the amethyst,
   He'd do it—kneeling like a slave for thee!
   If he could find a dream to comfort thee,
   He'd bring it:  thinking little of his lore,
   But marvelling greatly at those eyes of thine.
   Yea, if the Shepherd waiting for thy steps,
   Pent down amongst the dank black-weeded rims,
   Could shed his life like rain about thy feet,
   He'd count it sweetness past all sweets of love
   To die by thee—his life's end in thy sight.

   Oh, but he loves the hunt, doth Ogyges!
   And therefore should we blow the horn for him:
   He, sitting mumbling in his surf-white cave
   With helpless feet and alienated eyes,
   Should hear the noises nathless dawn by dawn
   Which send him wandering swiftly through the days
   When like a springing cataract he leapt
   From crag to crag, the strongest in the chase
   To spear the lion, leopard, or the boar!
   Oh, but he loves the hunt; and, while the shouts
   Of mighty winds are in this mountained World,
   Behold the white bleak woodman, Winter, halts
   And bends to him across a beard of snow
   For wonder; seeing Summer in his looks
   Because of dogs and calls from throats of hair
   All in the savage hills of Hyria!
   And, through the yellow evenings of the year,
   What time September shows her mooned front
   And poppies burnt to blackness droop for drouth,
   The dear Demeter, splashed from heel to thigh
   With spinning vine-blood, often stoops to him
   To crush the grape against his wrinkled lips
   Which sets him dreaming of the thickening wolves
   In darkness, and the sound of moaning seas.
   So with the blustering tempest doth he find
   A stormy fellowship:  for when the North
   Comes reeling downwards with a breath like spears,
   Where Dryope the lonely sits all night
   And holds her sorrow crushed betwixt her palms,
   He thinketh mostly of that time of times
   When Zeus the Thunderer—broadly-blazing King—
   Like some wild comet beautiful but fierce,
   Leapt out of cloud and fire and smote the tops
   Of black Ogygia with his red right hand,
   At which great fragments tumbled to the Deeps—
   The mighty fragments of a mountain-land—
   And all the World became an awful Sea!

   But, being tired, the hairless Ogyges
   Best loveth night and dim forgetfulness!
   "For," sayeth he, "to look for sleep is good
   When every sleep is as a sleep of death
   To men who live, yet know not why they live,
   Nor how they live!  I have no thought to tell
   The people when this time of mine began;
   But forest after forest grows and falls,
   And rock by rock is wasted with the rime,
   While I sit on and wait the end of all;
   Here taking every footstep for a sign;
   An ancient shadow whiter than the foam!"

By the Sea

   The caves of the sea have been troubled to-day
    With the water which whitens, and widens, and fills;
   And a boat with our brother was driven away
    By a wind that came down from the tops of the hills.
   Behold I have seen on the threshold again
    A face in a dazzle of hair!
   Do you know that she watches the rain, and the main,
    And the waves which are moaning there?
     Ah, moaning and moaning there!

   Now turn from your casements, and fasten your doors,
    And cover your faces, and pray, if you can;
   There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,
    And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!
   Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,
    So sad with the sound of the foam!
   Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge;
    And his boat may never come home!
     Ah, never and never come home!

King Saul at Gilboa

   With noise of battle and the dust of fray,
   Half hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;
   But Succoth's watchers, from their outer fields,
   Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields;
   For, where the yellow river draws its spring,
   The hosts of Israel travelled, thundering!
   There, beating like the storm that sweeps to sea
   Across the reefs of chafing Galilee,
   The car of Abner and the sword of Saul
   Drave Gaza down Gilboa's southern wall;
   But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew,
   Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew.
   "Shout, Timnath, shout!" the blazing leaders cried,
   And hurled the stone and dashed the stave aside.
   "Shout, Timnath, shout!  Let Hazor hold the height,
   Bend the long bow and break the lords of fight!"

   From every hand the swarthy strangers sprang,
   Chief leaped on chief, with buckler buckler rang!
   The flower of armies!  Set in Syrian heat,
   The ridges clamoured under labouring feet;
   Nor stayed the warriors till, from Salem's road,
   The crescent horns of Abner's squadrons glowed.
   Then, like a shooting splendour on the wing,
   The strong-armed son of Kish came thundering;
   And as in Autumn's fall, when woods are bare,
   Two adverse tempests meet in middle air,
   So Saul and Achish, grim with heat and hate,
   Met by the brook and shook the scales of Fate.
   For now the struggle swayed, and, firm as rocks
   Against the storm-wind of the equinox,
   The rallied lords of Judah stood and bore,
   All day, the fiery tides of fourfold war.

   But he that fasted in the secret cave
   And called up Samuel from the quiet grave,
   And stood with darkness and the mantled ghosts
   A bitter night on shrill Samarian coasts,
   Knew well the end—of how the futile sword
   Of Israel would be broken by the Lord;
   How Gath would triumph, with the tawny line
   That bend the knee at Dagon's brittle shrine;
   And how the race of Kish would fall to wreck,
   Because of vengeance stayed at Amalek.
   Yet strove the sun-like king, nor rested hand
   Till yellow evening filled the level land.
   Then Judah reeled before a biting hail
   Of sudden arrows shot from Achor's vale,
   Where Libnah, lapped in blood from thigh to heel,
   Drew the tense string, and pierced the quivering steel.
   There fell the sons of Saul, and, man by man,
   The chiefs of Israel, up to Jonathan;
   And while swift Achish stooped and caught the spoil,
   Ten chosen archers, red with sanguine toil,
   Sped after Saul, who, faint and sick, and sore
   With many wounds, had left the thick of war.
   He, like a baffled bull by hunters pressed,
   Turned sharp about, and faced the flooded west,
   And saw the star-like spears and moony spokes
   Gleam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks—
   A sea of splendour!  How the chariots rolled
   On wheels of blinding brightness manifold!
   While stumbling over spike and spine and spur
   Of sultry lands, escaped the son of Ner
   With smitten men.  At this the front of Saul
   Grew darker than a blasted tower wall;
   And seeing how there crouched upon his right,
   Aghast with fear, a black Amalekite,
   He called, and said:  "I pray thee, man of pain,
   Red from the scourge, and recent from the chain,
   Set thou thy face to mine, and stoutly stand
   With yonder bloody sword-hilt in thy hand,
   And fall upon me."  But the faltering hind
   Stood trembling, like a willow in the wind.
   Then further Saul:  "Lest Ashdod's vaunting hosts
   Should bear me captive to their bleak-blown coasts,
   I pray thee, smite me! seeing peace has fled,
   And rest lies wholly with the quiet dead."
   At this a flood of sunset broke, and smote
   Keen, blazing sapphires round a kingly throat,
   Touched arm and shoulder, glittered in the crest,
   And made swift starlights on a jewelled breast.
   So, starting forward, like a loosened hound,
   The stranger clutched the sword and wheeled it round,
   And struck the Lord's Anointed.  Fierce and fleet
   Philistia came, with shouts and clattering feet;
   By gaping gorges and by rough defile
   Dark Ashdod beat across a dusty mile;
   Hot Hazor's bowmen toiled from spire to spire,
   And Gath sprang upwards, like a gust of fire;
   On either side did Libnah's lords appear,
   And brass-clad Timnath thundered in the rear.
   "Mark, Achish, mark!"—South-west and south there sped
   A dabbled hireling from the dreadful dead.
   "Mark, Achish, mark!"—The mighty front of Saul,
   Great in his life and god-like in his fall!
   This was the arm that broke Philistia's pride,
   Where Kishon chafes his seaward-going tide;
   This was the sword that smote till set of sun
   Red Gath, from Michmash unto Ajalon,
   Low in the dust.  And Israel scattered far!
   And dead the trumps and crushed the hoofs of war!

   So fell the king, as it was said by him
   Who hid his forehead in a mantle dim
   At bleak Endor, what time unholy rites
   Vexed the long sleep of still Samarian heights;
   For, bowed to earth before the hoary priest,
   Did he of Kish withstand the smoking feast,
   To fast, in darkness and in sackcloth rolled,
   And house with wild things in the biting cold,
   Because of sharpness lent to Gaza's sword,
   And Judah widowed by the angry Lord.

   So silence came.  As when the outer verge
   Of Carmel takes the white and whistling surge,
   Hoarse, hollow noises fill the caves, and roar
   Along the margin of the echoing shore,
   Thus war had thundered; but as evening breaks
   Across the silver of Assyrian lakes,
   When reapers rest, and through the level red
   Of sunset, peace, like holy oil, is shed,
   Thus silence fell.  But Israel's daughters crept
   Outside their thresholds, waited, watched, and wept.

   Then they that dwell beyond the flats and fens
   Of sullen Jordan, and in gelid glens
   Of Jabesh-Gilead—chosen chiefs and few—
   Around their loins the hasty girdle drew,
   And faced the forests, huddled fold on fold,
   And dells of glimmering greenness manifold.
   What time Orion in the west did set
   A shining foot on hills of wind and wet;
   These journeyed nightly till they reached the capes
   Where Ashdod revelled over heated grapes;
   And while the feast was loud and scouts were turned,
   From Saul's bound body cord by cord they burned,
   And bore the king athwart the place of tombs,
   And hasted eastward through the tufted glooms;
   Nor broke the cake nor stayed the step till morn
   Shot over Debir's cones and crags forlorn.

   From Jabesh then the weeping virgins came;
   In Jabesh then they built the funeral flame;
   With costly woods they piled the lordly pyre,
   Brought yellow oils and fed the perfect fire;
   While round the crescent stately elders spread
   The flashing armour of the mighty dead,
   With crown and spear, and all the trophies won
   From many wars by Israel's dreadful son.
   Thence, when the feet of evening paused and stood
   On shadowy mountains and the roaring flood,
   (As through a rushing twilight, full of rain,
   The weak moon looked athwart Gadara's plain),
   The younger warriors bore the urn, and broke
   The humid turf about a wintering oak,
   And buried Saul; and, fasting, went their ways,
   And hid their faces seven nights and days.

In the Valley

   Said the yellow-haired Spirit of Spring
    To the white-footed Spirit of Snow,
   "On the wings of the tempest take wing,
    And leave me the valleys, and go."
   And, straightway, the streams were unchained,
    And the frost-fettered torrents broke free,
   And the strength of the winter-wind waned
    In the dawn of a light on the sea.

   Then a morning-breeze followed and fell,
    And the woods were alive and astir
   With the pulse of a song in the dell,
    And a whisper of day in the fir.
   Swift rings of sweet water were rolled
    Down the ways where the lily-leaves grew,
   And the green, and the white, and the gold,
    Were wedded with purple and blue.

   But the lips of the flower of the rose
    Said, "where is the ending hereof?
   Is it sweet with you, life, at the close?
    Is it sad to be emptied of love?"
   And the voice of the flower of the peach
    Was tender and touching in tone,
   "When each has been grafted on each,
    It is sorrow to live on alone."

   Then the leaves of the flower of the vine
    Said, "what will there be in the day
   When the reapers are red with my wine,
    And the forests are yellow and grey?"
   And the tremulous flower of the quince
    Made answer, "three seasons ago
   My sisters were star-like, but since,
    Their graves have been made in the snow."

   Then the whispering flower of the fern
    Said, "who will be sad at the death,
   When Summer blows over the burn,
    With the fierceness of fire in her breath?"
   And the mouth of the flower of the sedge
    Was opened to murmur and sigh,
   "Sweet wind-breaths that pause at the edge
    Of the nightfall, and falter, and die."