Edward Shanks

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A Night-Piece

Come out and walk. The last few drops of light

Drain silently out of the cloudy blue;

The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,

   The fields are wet with dew.

All's quiet in the wood but, far away,

Down the hillside and out across the plain,

Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,

   The softly panting train.

Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see

The flowers, save dark or light against the grass,

Or glimmering silver on a scented tree

   That trembles as we pass.

Hark now! So far, so far . . . that distant song . . .

Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.

The dusk is full of sounds, that all along

   The muttering boughs repeat.

So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt.

Wind, or the blood that beats within our ears,

Has feigned a dubious and delusive note,

   Such as a dreamer hears.

Again . . . again! The faint sounds rise and fail.

So far the enchanted tree, the song so low . . .

A drowsy thrush? A waking nightingale?

   Silence. We do not know.

In Absence

My lovely one, be near to me to-night.

For now I need you most, since I have gone

Through the sparse woodland in the fading light,

Where in time past we two have walked alone,

And seen the wild rose folded up for sleep,

And whispered, though the soft word choked my throat,

Your dear name out across the valley deep.

Be near to me, for now I need you most.

To-night I saw an unsubstantial flame

Flickering along those shadowy paths, a ghost

That turned to me and answered to your name,

Mocking me with a wraith of far delight.

. . . My lovely one, be near to me to-night.

The Glow-Worm

The pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies,

And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs,

Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers,

Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies.

We regard it; and this hill and all the other hills

That fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep,

And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fills

Fade like phantoms round the light, and night is deep, so deep, --

That all the world is emptiness about the still flame,

And we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night.

We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight,

And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came,

And place it on the short grass. Then the shadowy flowers fade,

The walls waver and melt and the houses disappear

And the solid town trembles into insubstantial shade

Round the light of the burning glow-worm, steady and clear.

The Cataclysm

When a great wave disturbs the ocean cold

   And throws the bottom waters to the sky,

   Strange apparitions on the surface lie,

Great battered vessels, stripped of gloss and gold,

And, writhing in their pain, sea-monsters old,

   Who stain the waters with a bloody dye,

   With unaccustomed mouths bellow and cry

And vex the waves with struggling fin and fold.

And with these too come little trivial things

   Tossed from the deeps by the same casual hand;

   A faint sea flower, dragged from the lowest sand,

That will not undulate its luminous wings

In the slow tides again, lies dead and swings

   Along the muddy ripples to the land.

A Hollow Elm

   What hast thou not withstood,

       Tempest-despising tree,

   Whose bloat and riven wood

       Gapes now so hollowly,

What rains have beaten thee through many years,

What snows from off thy branches dripped like tears?

   Calmly thou standest now

       Upon thy sunny mound;

   The first spring breezes flow

       Past with sweet dizzy sound;

Yet on thy pollard top the branches few

Stand stiffly out, disdain to murmur too.

   The children at thy foot

       Open new-lighted eyes,

   Where, on gnarled bark and root,

       The soft warm sunshine lies --

Dost thou, upon thine ancient sides, resent

The touch of youth, quick and impermanent?

   These at the beck of spring

       Live in the moment still:

   Thy boughs unquivering,

       Remembering winter's chill,

And many other winters past and gone,

Are mocked, not cheated, by the transient sun.

   Hast thou so much withstood,

       Tempest-despising tree,

   That now thy hollow wood

       Stiffens disdainfully

Against the soft spring airs and soft spring rain,

Knowing too well that winter comes again?

Fête Galante

Aristonoë, the fading shepherdess,

Gathers the young girls round her in a ring,

Teaching them wisdom of love,

What to say, how to dress,

How frown, how smile,

How suitors to their dancing feet to bring,

How in mere walking to beguile,

What words cunningly said in what a way

Will draw man's busy fancy astray,

All the alphabet, grammar and syntax of love.

The garden smells are sweet,

Daisies spring in the turf under the high-heeled feet,

Dense, dark banks of laurel grow

Behind the wavering row

Of golden, flaxen, black, brown, auburn heads,

Behind the light and shimmering dresses

Of these unreal, modern shepherdesses;

And gaudy flowers in formal patterned beds

Vary the dim long vistas of the park,

Far as the eye can see,

Till at the forest's edge the ground grows dark

And the flowers vanish in the obscurity.

The young girls gather round her,

Remembering eagerly how their fathers found her

Fresh as a spring-like wind in February,

Subtler in her moving heart than sun-motes that vary

At every waft of an opening and shutting door;

They gather chattering near,

Hush, break out in laughter, whisper aside,

Grow silent more and more,

Though she will never chide.

Now through the silence sounds her voice still clear,

And all give ear.

Like a silver thread through the golden afternoon,

Equably the voice discloses

All that age-old wisdom; like an endless tune

Aristonoë's voice wavers among the roses,

Level and unimpassioned,

Telling them how of nothing love is fashioned,

How it is but a movement of the mind,

Bidding Celia mark

That light skirts fluttering in the wind,

Or white flowers stuck in dark

Glistening hair, have fired the dull beholder,

Or telling Anais

That faint indifference ere now hath bred a kiss

Denied to flaunted snowy breast or shoulder.

The girls attend,

Each thinking on her friend,

Whether he be real or imaginary,

Whether he be loving or cold;

For each ere she grows old

Means to pursue her joy, and the whole unwary

Troop of their wishes has this wild quarry in cry,

That draws them ineluctably,

More and more as the summer slippeth by.

And Celia leans aside

To contemplate her balck-silked ankle on the grass;

In remote dreaming pride,

Rosalind recalls the image in her glass;

Phillis through all her body feels

How divine energy steals,

Quiescent power and resting speed,

Stretches her arms out, feels the warm blood run

Ready for pursuit, for strife and deed,

And turns her flowing face up to the sun.

Phillida smiles,

And lazily trusts her lazy wit,

A slow arrow that hath often hit;

Chloe, bemused by many subtle wiles,

Grows not more dangerous for all of it,

But opens her red lips, yawning drowsily,

And shows her small white teeth,

Dimpling the round chin beneath,

And stretches, moving her young body deliciously.

And still the lesson goes on,

For this is an old story that is never done;

And now the precept is of ribbon and shoe,

What with linens and silks love finds to do,

And how man's heart is tangled in a string

Or taken in gauze like a weak and helpless thing.

Chloe falls asleep; and the long summer day

Drifts slowly past the girls and the warm roses,

Giving in dreams its hours away.

Now Stella throws her head back, and Phillis disposes

Her strong brown hands quietly in her lap,

And Rose's slender feet grow restless and tap

The turf to an imaginary tune.

Now all this grace of youthful bodies and faces

Is wrought to a glow by the golden weather of June;

Now, Love, completing grace of all the graces,

Strong in these hearts thy pure streams rise,

Transmuting what they learn by heavenly alchemies,

Swift from the listeners the spell vanishes,

And through the tinkling, empty words,

True thoughts of true love press,

Flying and wheeling nearer;

As through a sunny sky a flock of birds

Against the throbbing blue grows clearer and clearer,

So closer come those thoughts and dearer.

Helen rises with a laugh;

Chloe wakes;

All the enchantment scatters off like chaff;

The cord is loosened and the spell breaks.

Rosalind

Resolves that to-night she will be kind to her lover,

Unreflecting, warm and kind.

Celia tells the lessons over,

Counting on her fingers -- one and two . . .

Ribbon and shoe,

Skirts, flowers, song, dancing, laughter, eyes . . .

Through the whole catalogue of formal gallantry

And studious coquetries,

Counting to herself maliciously.

But the old, the fading shepherdess, Aristonoë

Rises stiffly and walks alone

Down the broad path where densely the laurels grow,

And over a little lawn, not closely mown,

Where wave the flowering grass and the rich meadow-sweet.

She seems to talk painfully now and slow,

And drags a little on her high-heeled feet.

And stops at last below

An old and twisted plum-tree, whose last petal is gone,

Leans on the comfortable, rugged bole,

And stares through the green leaves at the drooping sun.

The tree and the warm light comfort her ageing soul.

The long day closes;

The last light fades in the amber sky;

Warm through the warm dusk glow the roses,

And a heavier shade drops slowly from the trees,

While through the garden as all colours die

The scents come livelier on the quickening breeze.

The world grows larger, vaguer, dimmer,

Over the dark laurels a few faint stars glimmer;

The moon, that was a pallid ghost,

Hung low on the horizon, faint and lost,

Comes up, a full and splendid golden round

By black and sharp-cut foliage overcrossed.

The girls laugh and whisper now with hardly a sound,

Till all sound vanishes, dispersed in the night,

Like a wisp of cloud that fades in the moon's light,

And the garden grows silent and the shadows grow

Deeper and blacker below

The mysteriously moving and murmuring trees,

That stand out darkly against the star-luminous sky;

Huge stand the trees,

Shadowy, whispering immensities,

That rain down quietude and darkness on heart and eyes.

None move, none speak, none sigh

But from the laurels comes a leaping voice

Crying in tones that seem not man's nor boy's,

But only joy's,

And hard behind a loud tumultuous crying,

A tangled skein of noise,

And the girls see their lovers come, each vying

Against the next in glad and confident poise,

Or softly moving

To the side of the chosen with gentle words and loving

Gifts for her pleasure of sweetmeats and jewelled toys.

Dear Love, whose strength no pedantry can stir,

Whether in thine iron enemies,

Or in thine own strayed follower

Bemused with subtleties and sophistries,

Now dost thou rule the garden, now

The gatherers' hands have grasped the scented bough.

Slow the sweet hours resolve, and one by one are aped.

The garden lieth empty. Overhead

A nightjar rustles by, wing touching wing,

And passes, uttering

His hoarse and whirring note.

The daylight birds long since are fled,

Nor has the moon yet touched the brown bird's throat,

All's quiet, all is silent, all around

The day's heat rises gently from the ground,

And still the broad moon travels up the sky,

Now glancing through the trees and now so high

That all the garden through her rays are shed,

And from the laurels one can just descry

Where in the distance looms enormously

The old house, with all its windows black and dead.

Song

As I lay in the early sun,

Stretched in the grass, I thought upon

My true love, my dear love,

Who has my heart for ever,

Who is my happiness when we meet,

My sorrow when we sever.

She is all fire when I do burn,

Gentle when I moody turn,

Brave when I am sad and heavy

And all laughter when I am merry.

And so I lay and dreamed and dreamed and dreamed,

And so the day wheeled on,

While all the birds with thoughts like mine

Were singing to the sun.

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