Daily Archives: December 10, 2018

Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,

That interests our eyes. And who goes there?

I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,

With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?

 

Men go by me whom either beauty bright

In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:

They rain against our much-thick and marsh air

Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.

 

Death or distance soon consumes them: wind

What most I may eye after, be in at the end

I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.

 

Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend

There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot

fóllows kínd,

Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.

(Maidens’ song from St. Winefred’s Well)

The Leaden Echo

 

How to keep–is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere

known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch

or catch or key to keep

Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing

away?

 

Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,

Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still

messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?

No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,

Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,

Do what you may do, what, do what you may,

And wisdom is early to despair:

Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done

To keep at bay

Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,

Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding

sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;

So be beginning, be beginning to despair.

O there’s none; no no no there’s none:

Be beginning to despair, to despair,

Despair, despair, despair, despair.

 

The Golden Echo

 

There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);

Only not within seeing of the sun,

Not within the singeing of the strong sun,

Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air.

Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,

Óne. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,

Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that’s

fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and

swiftly away with, done away with, undone,

Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and

dangerously sweet

Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,

The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,

Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth

To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an ever-

lastingness of, O it is an all youth!

Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,

gallantry and gaiety and grace,

Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks,

loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant,

girlgrace–

Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them

with breath,

And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver

Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before

death

Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s

self and beauty’s giver.

See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair

Is, hair of the head, numbered.

Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould

Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind

what while we slept,

This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold

What while we, while we slumbered.

O then, weary then whý should we tread? O why are we so

haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged,

so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,

When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,

Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept

Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder

A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.–

Yonder.–What high as that! We follow, now we follow.–

Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,

Yonder.

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—

That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;

This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,

Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,

Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells

Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

 

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—

Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,

But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,

But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed

For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

Wild air, world-mothering air,

Nestling me everywhere,

That each eyelash or hair

Girdles; goes home betwixt

The fleeciest, frailest-flixed

Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed

With, riddles, and is rife

In every least thing’s life;

This needful, never spent,

And nursing element;

My more than meat and drink,

My meal at every wink;

This air, which, by life’s law,

My lung must draw and draw

Now but to breathe its praise,

Minds me in many ways

Of her who not only

Gave God’s infinity

Dwindled to infancy

Welcome in womb and breast,

Birth, milk, and all the rest

But mothers each new grace

That does now reach our race—

Mary Immaculate,

Merely a woman, yet

Whose presence, power is

Great as no goddess’s

Was deemèd, dreamèd; who

This one work has to do—

Let all God’s glory through,

God’s glory which would go

Through her and from her flow

Off, and no way but so.

 

I say that we are wound

With mercy round and round

As if with air: the same

Is Mary, more by name.

She, wild web, wondrous robe,

Mantles the guilty globe,

Since God has let dispense

Her prayers his providence:

Nay, more than almoner,

The sweet alms’ self is her

And men are meant to share

Her life as life does air.

If I have understood,

She holds high motherhood

Towards all our ghostly good

And plays in grace her part

About man’s beating heart,

Laying, like air’s fine flood,

The deathdance in his blood;

Yet no part but what will

Be Christ our Saviour still.

Of her flesh he took flesh:

He does take fresh and fresh,

Though much the mystery how,

Not flesh but spirit now

And makes, O marvellous!

New Nazareths in us,

Where she shall yet conceive

Him, morning, noon, and eve;

New Bethlems, and he born

There, evening, noon, and morn

Bethlem or Nazareth,

Men here may draw like breath

More Christ and baffle death;

Who, born so, comes to be

New self and nobler me

In each one and each one

More makes, when all is done,

Both God’s and Mary’s Son.

Again, look overhead

How air is azurèd;

O how! nay do but stand

Where you can lift your hand

Skywards: rich, rich it laps

Round the four fingergaps.

Yet such a sapphire-shot,

Charged, steepèd sky will not

Stain light.   Yea, mark you this:

It does no prejudice.

The glass-blue days are those

When every colour glows,

Each shape and shadow shows.

Blue be it: this blue heaven

The seven or seven times seven

Hued sunbeam will transmit

Perfect, not alter it.

Or if there does some soft,

On things aloof, aloft,

Bloom breathe, that one breath more

Earth is the fairer for.

Whereas did air not make

This bath of blue and slake

His fire, the sun would shake,

A blear and blinding ball

With blackness bound, and all

The thick stars round him roll

Flashing like flecks of coal,

Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,

In grimy vasty vault.

So God was god of old:

A mother came to mould

Those limbs like ours which are

What must make our daystar

Much dearer to mankind;

Whose glory bare would blind

Or less would win man’s mind.

Through her we may see him

Made sweeter, not made dim,

And her hand leaves his light

Sifted to suit our sight.

Be thou then, thou dear

Mother, my atmosphere;

To wend and meet no sin;

Above me, round me lie

Fronting my froward eye

With sweet and scarless sky;

Stir in my ears, speak there

Of God’s love, O live air,

Of patience, penance, prayer:

World-mothering air, air wild,

Wound with thee, in thee isled,

Fold home, fast fold thy child.