Verses

VERSES

=THE GARDEN OF KAMA=; and other Love Lyrics from India. Arranged in Verse by +Laurence Hope+. Square 8vo, 5_s._ net.

=STARS OF THE DESERT.= By +Laurence Hope+. Square 8vo, price 5_s._ net.

Uniform with the above (shortly)

=LAST POEMS.= By +Laurence Hope+.

+London+: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.

VERSES

BY

VIOLET JACOB

(MRS. ARTHUR JACOB)

AUTHOR OF ‘THE SHEEP-STEALERS,’ ‘THE INTERLOPER’

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1905

All rights reserved.

TO

THE IDEAL CRITIC

I have to thank the Editors of the Westminster Gazette, _The English Illustrated Magazine_, and _Country Life_ for permission to reprint some of the following poems.--V. J.

CONTENTS

PAGE To H. M. C. 1 Half-way 2 White Magic 4 Serenade 5 The Shadow 6 The Mill-house 8 ‘I sleep but my Heart waketh’ 13 An Immortelle 14 The Two Queens 15 The Lost Track 16 At a Brookside 18 Revenant 18 To Aurelia, with a Pearl Necklace 19 Beyond the Walls 20 ‘Come on, come up, ye rovers’ 22 An Echo 24 A Young Moon 26 The Soul 27 The Ballad of Hakon 29 Ignis Fatuus 33 The Little Nightjar 34 Possession 36 Airlie Kirk 38 The Flute player 39 In Lower Egypt 42 Winter and Spring 44 A Tryst 45 The Call 47 Time and Space 49 A Translation 50 Glamour 52 Lenore in the Oliveyards 54 New Year’s Eve 55 Three Poems for Children-- I. The Lilacs 57 II. Dreams 58 III. The Snow Witch 61 The Valley of the Kings 62 The Lowland Ploughman 65 Late February 67 From a Train-window 68 Poems of India-- I. In a Mango-tope 70 II. Night in the Plains 73 III. The Resting-place 75 IV. Evening in the Opium Fields 77 V. ‘God is great’ 78 VI. A Mahommedan Graveyard 81 VII. Cherry-Blossom at Dagshai 83 VIII. ‘With Military Honours’ 85 IX. The Distant Temple 87

TO H. M. C.

A silence falls on us to-day, Our lips are closed, we do not speak, But, in each other’s eyes we seek And find the thing that each would say.

So deep it lies, a rock set fast, Washed hard by life, by love, by tears, Beneath the floods of time and years Built up and rooted in the past.

And sometimes, when the tide is low, A voice comes up the Northern sea; Across the sands to you and me It calls from lands left long ago.

By marshes lying dim and wide, Through wet, grey sea-fogs, creeping on, Back from that youth for ever gone It comes to us across the tide.

How shall we speak? What words can say The thing for which no words are known, That calls to us from places lone Through past, through present, through to-day?

❦

HALF-WAY

The world is not the dream of living gold We dreamed when we were young; Then, all the glory that the west could hold Burned, fold on fold, A molten veil across its portals flung Behind whose shade the years lay sleeping still, Like tales untold; But now, beyond the beeches bare and chill, Beyond the woods set far upon the hill, The clouds are cold.

And life is not the journey that we planned As we set out with morn; We said, ‘We will rest here and view the land, Or take our stand Upon these hills and see the ripening corn, Or step aside along the mere to mark The wild-fowl band;’ But now, we know we must tread swift and stark, If we would cross the desert ere the dark Creeps on the sand.

And death is not the dim and distant shade So far against the sky; The half-seen trap for others waiting laid, While we, arrayed In pride and plume of youth, go sweeping by. We thought to meet him with a spirit braced By conquests made; But now, we know, when half the road is traced, Our hope is but to reach him undisgraced And unafraid.

❦

WHITE MAGIC

I saw the moon come out and stand last night Above the plains of cloud, Like a lone chief, who, at his tented door, Looks down upon the forest’s silent floor From a far battlement upon the height, And drops his mantle proud Into the swimming vapours of the light.

O watcher on the planet-woven steep Whose shining feet are set Above the haunted glamour of the skies! Draw me, a slave, with thy compelling eyes, While the slow hours in soundless circle creep, Out through the world, while yet The world’s heart heaves beneath the veil of sleep.

O pale-faced chief! The earth and heaven are still And thou and I awake; I come, with outstretched arms and spirit bound, Forth through the scattered graves where, lying sound, The dead are sown by field and fold and hill And mist-entangled brake; O pale chief! Draw me up into the height, Into the swimming light.

❦

SERENADE

O roses, clustering on the sunny wall In fragrant groups of white and red together, Bend down, bend down your branches, one and all, Beneath the fair June sky and glowing weather; And say to her, I send her A message tender.

And thou, convolvulus, upon the gate, With pale white bells and trails of light leaves swinging, Tell her my love for her is strong as fate, For ever true and like thy tendrils clinging; And kiss her, soft and shy, As she goes by.

O jessamine, in wreaths of scented stars Across the balconies and stonework meeting, Climb up and enter at her window-bars And bear among your buds my loving greeting; Then whisper, sweet and slow, ‘He waits below.’

❦

THE SHADOW

What soul has swept your branches, cypress-tree, That you should point so high; That you, whose root among the graves may be, Look ever to the sky?

Dark warden of the long-untended tomb Seen o’er some mouldering wall, Or set where fountained gardens are abloom And roses blush and fall.

Scarcely the wind is voiceful as it sways Your column, dusk, austere; Scarcely the evening breeze that round you plays Brings music to the ear.

Your earth-bound foot mortality retains Imprisoned in the sod, Your earth-freed spirit to that ether strains Which is the breath of God.

The light o’er southern vineyards dying down Smiles on the landscape still, And lays the lengthening shadow of your crown On many a Tuscan hill.

And, nearer home, where memory’s deathless sun Enwraps some tear-sown mound, Your shade, at day’s decline, O silent one, Slants eastward on the ground.

By tomb or pleasance, convent-girdled height, In countries far or near, You bear a message from eternal light To us whose souls are here.

O silent witness! dark where yonder sky In saffron splendour burns, ’Tis but the shadow that on earth must lie, The substance heavenward turns.

❦

THE MILL-HOUSE

Beneath the drawbridge is the moat, On broadened leaves the lilies float, The white bud bursts its oozy coat.

Up from the fields of ripened corn There comes the sound of voices borne From where the stooks stand newly shorn.

Above her head the banner flies, A dragon blue with banded eyes, Grey in the sun the towers rise.

Within, the knights sit in a row, And ladies, with their hands of snow; The golden cup goes to and fro.

She heeds nor feast, nor song, nor wine, She only sees the weapons shine Upon the plains of Palestine.

She only hears the trumpets bray Their summons through the Eastern day, The tramp of horses far away.

Her heart sees all the far-off scene, And, with her heart, she hears the green Wild roll of waters in between.

The light from the horizon’s rim Strikes, like the wings of seraphim, Upon the fountain’s circled brim.

A shadow lies before her face, Sir Hugh has risen and left his place: “Elayne, the seasons march apace;

Lo, patience is a good knight’s stay, Yet comes the time when men may say ‘Who waits too long will lose the day.’

The dial by the swinging vane Marks how the long hours wax and wane-- ’Tis time the priest were brought, Elayne.

Yon knight who fights in Palestine, What is his love compared with mine? I will load your hair with jewels fine,

You shall lie on silk, you shall sit, a queen, In costly raiment blue and green With golden roses wrought in between.”

To where the crazy mill-house stands He has borne her with his iron hands, Her hair hangs down in russet bands;

He has shorn a long tress of her hair And bound her feet so slim and fair, He has borne her out on the mill-house stair.

“Elayne, Elayne, you are young to die, There is none to hear should you call or cry, Shall the water have you or shall I?”