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Title: A Summer's Poems

Author: Francis J. Lys

Release date: February 21, 2016 [eBook #51277]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SUMMER'S POEMS ***

A SUMMER'S POEMS

BY

F. J. LYS

LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED
ESSEX STREET, STRAND
1893

These poems were written,—except No. III., which was partly written two or three weeks earlier,—during a stay of six weeks, in August and September, at Hallstatt, among the mountains of Upper Austria.

They are published at once, not because I am unaware of their defects, but in the hope that, in spite of these, they may give some small pleasure to a few friends and other readers.

F. J. L.

Oxford,
September 28th, 1893.

A SUMMER'S POEMS.

I. TO THE MUSE.
II. TO A FLOWER.
III. LIFE'S VOYAGE.
IV. ON RE-READING 'RUTH.'
V. Ἒπους σμικροû χἁριν.
VI. ON A ROCK IN THE WALDBACH TORRENT.
VII. BY THE WALDBACH.
VIII. IBIDEM.
IX. AUTUMN.
X. 'JUSTITIA EXCEDENS TERRIS.'
XI. THE WAYS OF LIFE.
XII. TO R. H. K. AND J. M. K.

I.
TO THE MUSE.

Thy whispers float upon the liquid air,
 The sunbeams quiver by thy breath made quick,
 The myriad forest-branches thronging thick
 Thrill with delight thy mystic touch to bear,
 Like an enchanted harp to fingers fair
 Yielding a music that can soothe the sick,
 Or heal a heart that cruel pain doth prick;
 Waters and winds thy living spirit share;
 Thy wrath is in the thunder, and thy tears
 Weep for man's dulness in melodious rain.
 Mistress, forgive me if on deafened ears,
 Full of life's clamour and its harsh refrain,
 Thy words have fallen all these barren years,
 And take me for thy minister again.

II.
TO A FLOWER.

Happy blossom that shinest,
 Lit by the smiles of the sun,
 Lavishing of thy finest
 Fragrance on every one;
 Happy that ne'er repinest
 For the day when the dusk is begun,
 But humbly thy head inclinest,
 Content that thy work is done.

Sorrowing hearts thou cheerest,
 Bidding them live like thee,
 Who calmly the wild storm hearest
 Gathering threateningly,
 And never the dark night fearest,
 And trustest that, though they be
 Withered and dead, thy dearest
 Another summer shall see.

III.
LIFE'S VOYAGE.
Επ' ἠεροειδἐα πὀντον πλαζὀμενοι.

Proudly the glad ships breast the buoyant wave,
 Touched by the radiant fingers of the sun,
 Exulting in the promise of dawn, and brave
 Over the deep their unknown race to run,
 From nothingness that none remembereth
 On to the undiscovered haven of death.

Out of the impenetrable night they drew,
 Mist-curtained, moving darkly through the haze;
 And the East brightened and the breezes blew,
 And o'er life's widening waters now they gaze,
 Greet the companions of their voyage, and know
 Some dim awakening purpose in them grow.

Lightly they sail beneath unclouded skies,
 Effortless gliding on their easy way,
 Till the winds gather and the wild floods rise,
 And tempests frown upon the forehead of day,
 And they that fared together lonelier drift,
 Sundered by driving storms and tides that shift.

Quenched are the beacon lights that brightly burned,
 Distant the guiding voices that were near;
 The frolic temper of the prime is turned
 To weariness, and faith is dimmed with fear:
 What if one battle against the beating waves,
 Who knows if he shall win the haven he craves?

Where lies the haven, or if there be in sooth
 Some haven of peace for them that wrestle and fight—
 Who shall be bold to take his trust for truth,
 The gleams he follows for the world's one light,
 When to his fellows' eyes as naught they seem,
 Or but false phantoms of a fading dream?

This way or that on waves that rise and fall—
 Falling and rising aimlessly they drive—
 Haply some flash of light, some far-off call
 Wakes them a little while to struggle and strive
 Onward with hope, until it fades again,
 And leaves them drifting on the dreary main.

Blindly the many drift, and drifting dream,—
 Dream idle dreams, or waking scarce descry
 Aught but the froth and foam and fitful gleam
 Of clashing cataracts as they thunder by:
 They feel some short-lived passion in them glow,
 Or wondering watch the bubbles come and go.

And here is one undauntedly that steers—
 Or there another—steadfast through the surge,
 Through storm and darkness. What is that which cheers
 His spirit in danger? what beyond the verge
 Of vision leads him on his perilous path?
 Sure naught but God's own truth such following hath.

Faint the gleams flicker through the earthborn cloud;
 Trust thou and follow where they seem to lead;
 Soon will thy sight be clearer, and the shroud
 Of night be shrivelled, and the day succeed:
 Light may be stained or hidden, yet 'tis light;
 Trust thou and follow—'tis not of the night.

IV.
ON RE-READING 'RUTH.'

As one that in the sapless winter of life
 Feels the benumbing touch of icy death
 Chill his warm pulses, and no more for strife
 Against the foe that ever followeth
 Finds the old fire within, or power, or breath,
 But knows that soon the eternal frost shall bind
 These failing organs of his earthly mind:

And looking backward through the misty years
 Beyond the harvest and the summer glow,
 Into awakening life's fresh springtide, hears
 Voices that rang around him long ago,—
 Strange sweet dream-music that he seems to know,
 And dimly sees old faces that made bright
 The days of childhood with love's softest light:

Like one beneath the glimmering starlight treading
 Ways unfamiliar save in the full sun,
 He moves bewildered where remembrance, shedding
 Faint fitful gleams, illumines one by one
 Far-distant scenes where life was first begun,
 Quick with light-hearted fancies and fresh hope,
 Fearless and steadfast with all foes to cope:

And as he looks he wonders if indeed
 That life beyond the years be truly his—
 His those high-soaring hopes, that simple creed,
 That buoyant spirit: till some light that is
 The lode-star of his life shines out in this
 Far-off child-world, some goal whereto his aim
 Has aye been set unchangingly the same.

And so to eyes that through long-buried ages
 Look on that alien-seeming world, that glows
 Pictured in fire upon the sacred pages
 Where God his dealings with his children shows,—
 A larger life than our dwarfed spirit knows,—
 Man in the giant vigour of his prime
 Looming heroic even through guilt and crime;

Creature in converse with Creator,—signs
 Of power writ large in heaven and on the earth,—
 Pillar of cloud by day and fire that shines
 In darkness,—plague and pestilence and dearth
 And deluge,—almost from our very birth
 Familiar,—yet how strange and far away
 From all the fever of our little day.

Yet as we look on that mysterious story,
 Scarce feeling kinship with that primal race,
 We that with sin have marred and dimmed the glory
 Of God's own presence manifest by grace,
 Until he seems to hide afar his face,
 Find something in our deadened hearts that rings
 Responsive to those far-off echoings.

Ours the old war with sin, the struggle of soul
 In passions' eddying waters, ours the choice
 To falter and fail, or battle towards the goal
 Unyielding; and at times our hearts rejoice,
 When borne from out the distance comes a voice
 Of brother-men that in the self-same strife
 Have fought through weakness and have won their life.

And more than all, when haply shines above
 The clouds and heavy mists of low desire
 The perfect beauty of true human love,
 Beaconing through the darkness like a fire,
 And witnessing that hearts can yet aspire
 To kinship with the soul that shone in Ruth,
 Of woman's faithfulness and woman's truth.

V.
Ἒπους σμικροû χἁριν.

Her eyes shone bright as the luminous star
 That breaks through the shadows of dusk from far,
 And the wavy tresses that floated and gleamed,
 Guarding her radiant temples, seemed
 As the faery fires that a vision enfold,
 Or light as the tremulous flames of gold
 That quiver and glance on the forehead of dawn,
 When the curtains of night are backward drawn;
 And her smile was like to the rippling sea
 Greeting the beams of the sun with glee;
 And her voice was the singing of springtide, heard
 In the orison chanted by soaring bird,
 And in the breath of the soft west breeze
 Wooing the buds of the wakened trees,
 And in the music of fountains free
 At last from their icy slavery;
 And she moved with a step as light and glad
 As ever a nymph or a goddess had.
 Could mortal eyes on a form divine
 Gaze for a moment, and then not pine
 With passionate hunger for that sweet food
 Of the beauteous blossom of maidenhood?
 To feed for ever on that soft light
 That conquered the gloom of the world's dark night,
 And shed in its lustre a mystic sense
 Of soothing solace and joy intense?
 Could ears drink once of the silver flow
 Of melody poured from her lips, nor know
 The thirst of a madman, rendering up
 Life for the pleasure of one sweet cup?
 Seeing and hearing, he scarce wist first
 What light on his sunless path had burst,
 But he felt about him a wondrous glow
 Flooding the field of his vision, so
 That the shadows shrank as in shame away,
 And hope rekindled her flickering ray;
 And over his spirit seemed to flow
 A quickening influence, even as though,
 Out of the heavy and poisoned air
 Of some dark city, a God might bear
 One that struggled with labouring breath,
 All but held in the grasp of death,
 And might set him high on the aery brink
 Of a loftily-bastioned Alp, to drink
 The strength of the mountains—a stronger draught
 Than ever of vintage fire was quaffed,
 Coursing exultantly through and through
 His veins, and giving him life anew.
 So awhile he rejoiced, scarce heedful why,
 And the days went sweetly and swiftly by;
 Alas! too swiftly over and lost,
 Like blossoms of summer seared by the frost,
 That feel more bitter the wintry spite
 Because of the fulness of past delight.
 'Twas but a parting, and oft before
 Parting of friends, though his heart was sore,
 Parting and loss he had known to bear—
 'Tis a lesson we learn from our cradle to share:
 But a sudden anguish upon him fell,
 As upon one cast from heaven to hell,
 For a moment showed what had lifted his life
 Out of the weary and sordid strife
 Of men that struggle and die for gold,
 And sell themselves as a chattel is sold.—
 And lo! it was over, and life once more
 Must sink to the depth where it groped before:
 To part;—and it might be, never again
 To know the joy of her presence; fain
 Was his heart to utter its secret woe,
 And all the strength of its love to show.
 Sure 'twas a strength that must prevail
 To win the world, or the heavens to scale;
 High above earth she seemed, yet heaven
 Is mingled with earth by love's sweet leaven,
 And even the goddess of dawn, 'tis said,
 Deignèd a mortal man to wed.
 Yet when he looked on the light divine
 That seemed in those lustrous orbs to shine,
 His lips would falter, and pale shame froze
 The fountain of love from his heart that rose:
 How could a spirit as free as air
 Brook to be fettered, or stoop to share
 An earthlier life from her range sublime?
 Even the fancy he deemed a crime,—
 As if one dreamt to win for his own
 The queen of night from her star-girt throne
 And enjoy the light of the world alone,—
 What if he spake could she feel or say?
 Words of scorn? or of anger? Nay,
 Pity belike for a mind distraught,
 That rashly to soar from its sphere had sought.
 Harder were pity to bear than scorn;
 Better to hide how his heart was torn:
 So might the thought of that sweet time be
 Ever a cloudless memory,
 As of a day that from break to close
 Never a film on its bright face shows.—
 And so she was gone from his life, and left
 His heart of joy and of light bereft,
 And tenanted only by blank despair,
 That finds no longer the sunshine fair,
 And knows no healing for its distress
 Except to pass into nothingness.
 'Tis but a word and the tale is o'er,—
 And haply the like has chanced before,
 And it wants not this poor art of mine,—
 For he sought as his sorrow's anodyne
 The blood-red riot of war, to sate
 All thought with the numbing opiate
 Of the frenzy of battle; and gave his life
 As a prodigal gives, in an alien strife:
 And under the shroud of the desert sand
 He lies at rest in a far-off land.
 And one there is that for many a year
 Hath mourned with many a secret tear;
 And the light of her eyes is dimmed with care,
 And age has silvered her sunny hair,
 And hollower rings the full rich flow
 Of her voice; and her step is weary and slow;
 And little, I ween, is understood
 The tale of her maiden-widowhood:
 And naught of her trouble of soul she saith,
 But ever beyond the river of death,
 Soothed as she draws to its margin nigher,
 She looks to the haven of her desire:
 And dimly her gaze through the mist descries
 One that waiteth with earthward eyes,
 Fired by a deathless love whose glow
 Spoke to her heart long years ago,
 When his lips were sealed and he thought her higher
 (Coward lips!) than he durst aspire;
 And when she hid in her woman's pride
 The love for which she had gladly died.

VI.
ON A ROCK IN THE WALDBACH TORRENT.

The leaping waters thunder at my feet,
 Thunder, and rush upon white wings of foam
 Down from the fastness of their glacier home,
 Laving the limbs that lift this rocky seat:
 They part a moment, and again they meet
 Far down the gorge, from where my slow steps clomb
 The towering mountain: jubilant they roam,
 With eager voices, hurrying to greet
 Hearts grown aweary of the wasting strife
 Of low ambition,—brother trampling down
 The soul of brother for some tinsel crown;—
 They bear cool healing for our fevered life,
 And a sweet message of serene repose
 Fresh from the pure and everlasting snows.

VII.
BY THE WALDBACH.

Here let me dream a little, while the day
 Wears not one cloud upon his lustrous brow,
 And care and coward fears their faces bow,
 And shrink before his searching light away,
 And only what is pure and true dares stay:
 For the strong spirit of the mountains now
 Steals on me, as I lie and listen how
 Far, far below the torrent-waters play,
 And near beside me slides a sheet of foam
 Precipitous; and high above those cold
 Gaunt sentinels their silent watches hold,
 And warn the dull world from their rocky home:
 And I will ponder upon thoughts untold
 Even to the poets of the age of gold.

VIII.
IBIDEM.

Fresh from the mountain snow,
 And the cold blue glacier-field,
 Leaping and dancing the waters flow;
 Long have they been frost-fettered and sealed,
 And freed at last they are fain to go,
 And find what riches the world may yield
 Far in the plains below.

First by its gray ice-walls
 Moaning the torrent swirled,
 And now 'tis a cataract sheer that falls
 Over the rocks by its rush down-hurled,
 And foaming in tumult of thunder, calls
 To the dumb stark pines; and shattered and whirled
 They bow their heads as its thralls.

Ah! but ye little wot,
 Waters so strong and free,
 That the fuller life that ye seek is not
 Like to the dreams that your young hopes see:
 Liberty soon, too soon, may be got,
 But stained and troubled your course shall be,—
 'Tis life's common lot.

IX.
AUTUMN.

Spirit, whose silent breath
 Teaches the withering leaves
 To rejoice at the coming of Death,
 Though man at his menace grieves,
 Would that mine ear might know
 The message thou bearest of good,
 That makes them to flush and glow
 More than the summer could.

X.
'JUSTITIA EXCEDENS TERRIS.'

Of old upon the earth sat Justice crowned,
 And truth clear-flashing from her lucent eyes
 Withered the pale and festering jealousies
 That in diseased hearts a harbour found;
 But when the voice of hate and the shrill sound
 Of rancorous spite and greed gat strength to rise,
 Borne on the vaporous breath of poisoning lies,
 Through realms that had shone pure with peace profound,
 Then wintry grief upon her bright face froze,
 And her white wings she spread, and soaring high,
 Where the unsealed mountain meets the sky,
 Mantled her in a robe of ageless snows:
 Thence in the sobbing breeze is borne her sigh,
 Thence her far voice that once was heard anigh.

XI.
THE WAYS OF LIFE.

Narrower day by day
 Shrinks the valley we thread;
 Once how many a way
 Into the unknown led!
 All in the morning light
 Beaded with pearls of dew,
 And each, to our wondering sight,
 Full of enchantment new.

One on the easy plain
 Loitering, one on fire
 The topmost summit to gain,
 And to mount from high to higher;
 On by the sparkling brook,
 Or climbing the steep hill-side,
 Lightly our way we took,
 For the world before us was wide.

Lightly the branching ways
 We passed, for the gains of each
 Seemed to our dreamy gaze
 To linger within our reach;
 And all that was bright whereon
 The desires of our youth were set,
 Gathered and fused in one,
 In the glory of manhood met.

Little of all that we saw
 The goal of our vision hath,
 And closer the dark cliffs draw
 Frowning about our path;
 And seldom they part to disclose
 Issue or choice anew,
 But the track that the child once chose,
 The man must still pursue.

XII.
To R. H. K. and J. M. K.

Summer is fled, and the skies are weeping
 For withered blossom and faded scent,
 And over the face of the forest is creeping
 A flush of fever with pale fear blent,
 And even the brows of the mountains borrow
 From the gray cloud-fleeces a scarf of sorrow.

Summer is fled, and the fleeting swallows
 Gather in grief on his path to pursue,
 But not as the loss of one that follows,
 Follows to find, is the loss that I rue;
 For cold is the north, and from true friends parted,
 Few can I find not colder-hearted.

Transcriber's Notes

Table of Content has been added to the beginning of this e-text. It was not available in the original book.

Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, inconsistent or archaic spellings have been kept.