ON THE EMBANKMENT
Within, it was colour and laughter, warmth and wine.
Without, it was darkness, hunger and bitter cold, Where those white globes on the wet Embankment shine, Greasing the Thames with gold.
And was it a bundle of fog in the dark drew nigh?
A bundle of rags and bones it crept to the light,-- A monstrous thing that coughed as it shuffled by, A shape of the shapeless night,
Spawned as brown things that mimic their mothering earth, Green creeping things that the grass lifts to the sun, Out of its wrongs the City had brought to the birth The shape of those wrongs, in one.
A woman, a woman whose lips had once been kissed, (It was Christmas Eve, and the bells began their chime!) She sank to a seat like a coughing bundle of mist Exhaled from the river-slime.
_Bells for the birth of Christ!_ She heard, and she thought-- Vacantly--of her man, that was long since dead, The smell of the Christmas food, and the drink they had bought Together, the year they were wed.
She thought of their one-room home, and the night-long sigh Recalled, as he slept, of his breath in her loosened hair.
_He slept._ She opened her haggard eyes with a cry.
But only the night was there.
Nay, out of the formless night, at her furtive glance, Crouched at the end of her cold wet bench, there grew A bundle of fog, a bundle of rags that, perchance, Once was a woman, too.
A huddled shape, a fungus of foul grey mist Spawned of the river, in peace and much good-will, And even the woman whose lips had once been kissed Wondered, it crouched so still.
No breath, no shadow of breath in the lamp-light smoked, It crouched so still--that bunch at the bench's end.
She stretched her neck like a crow, then leaned and croaked, "_A Merry Christmas, friend!_"
She rose, and peered, peered at its vacant eyes.
Touched its cold claws. Its arms of knotted bone Were wands of ice; like iron rods the thighs; The left breast--like a stone.
_Far, far along the rows of warmth and light The Christmas waits, with cornet and bassoon, Carolled "While shepherds watched their flocks by night."
The bells pealed to the moon._
A bundle of rags and bones, a bundle of mist, And never a hell or heaven to hear or see, The woman, the woman whose lips had once been kissed, Knelt down feverishly.
She plucked the shawl out of that frozen clutch.
The dead are dead. Why should the living freeze?
She touched the cold flesh that she feared to touch Kneeling upon her knees.
Her palsied hands unlaced the shoes--good shoes!-- She tore them quick from the crooked yellow feet.
If Death be generous, why should Life refuse To take, and pawn, and eat?
A heavy step drew nearer thro' the mist.
She bundled them into the shawl. Her eyes were bright.
The woman, the woman whose lips had once been kissed, Slunk, chuckling, thro' the night.
THE IRON CROWN
Not memory of a vanished bliss, But suddenly to know, I had forgotten! This, O this With iron crowned my woe:
To know that on some midnight sea Whence none could lift the pall A drowning hand was waved to me, Then--swept beyond recall.
THE OLD DEBATE
His angels fell, and myriads grope In doubt, for this dark cause alone,-- That God hath given them room for hope, And made their struggling wills their own.
In the same breath, they plead for chains And freedom; pray for ordered spheres, Then murmur that the sun retains Its course, unchecked by smiles or tears.
"The Omnipotent would grant us this, Or else He is not good," they say; But O, the Power withholds their bliss Till they agree what prayer to pray.
A SONG OF HOPE
Not in those eyes, too kind for truth, Which dare not note how beauties wane; Nor in that crueller joy of youth Which turns from sorrow with disdain; No--no--not there, Abides the hope that answers our despair.
Lie where they hid thy dead away.
Knock on that unrelenting door; Then break, O desolate heart, and say Farewell, farewell, for evermore ...
There, only there, Abides the hope that conquers all despair.
The silence that refused to bless Till grief had turned the heart to stone ...
What soul compact of nothingness Could hear so fierce a trumpet blown?
Then hear, O hear, The dreadful hope that equals all despair.
There, till the deep atoning Might Shall answer all that each can pray, The very boundlessness of night Proclaims--and waits--an equal day.
There, only there, --_But O, sing low, sweet strings, lest hope take wing!_-- Abides the hope that answers all despair.
THE HEDGE-ROSE OPENS
How passionately it opens after rain, And O, how like a prayer To those great shining skies! Do they disdain A bride so small and fair?
See the imploring petals, how they part And utterly lay bare The perishing treasures of that piteous heart In wild surrender there.
What? Would'st _thou_, too, drink up the Eternal bliss, Ecstatically dare, O, little bride of God, to invoke _His_ kiss?-- But O, how like a prayer!
THE MAY-TREE