Ships

120

A Late Convert

121

The Limit of Life

122

To Daniel Elzevir

123

THE LAST CHANCE

The Last Chance

127

GRASS OF PARNASSUS.

Pale star that by the lochs of Galloway,
   In wet green places ’twixt the depth and height
Dost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away,
   When now the moors have doffed the heather bright,
   Grass of Parnassus, flower of my delight,
How gladly with the unpermitted bay—
Garlands not mine, and leaves that not decay—
   How gladly would I twine thee if I might!

The bays are out of reach!  But far below
   The peaks forbidden of the Muses’ Hill,
Grass of Parnassus, thy returning snow
   Between September and October chill
Doth speak to me of Autumns long ago,
   And these kind faces that are with me still.

DEEDS OF MEN

αειδε δ’ αρα κλέα ανδρων

TO
COLONEL IAN HAMILTON

To you, who know the face of war,
You, that for England wander far,
You that have seen the Ghazis fly
From English lads not sworn to die,
You that have lain where, deadly chill,
The mist crept o’er the Shameful Hill,
You that have conquered, mile by mile,
The currents of unfriendly Nile,
And cheered the march, and eased the strain
When Politics made valour vain,
Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,
We send our lays of Englishmen!

SEEKERS FOR A CITY.

“Believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill visible to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed thither. . . But the number and variety of the ways!  For you know, There is but one road that leads to Corinth.”

Hermotimus (Mr Pater’s Version).

“The Poet says, dear city of Cecrops, and wilt thou not say, dear city of Zeus?”

M. Antoninus.

To Corinth leads one road, you say:
Is there a Corinth, or a way?
Each bland or blatant preacher hath
His painful or his primrose path,
And not a soul of all of these
But knows the city ’twixt the seas,
Her fair unnumbered homes and all
Her gleaming amethystine wall!

Blind are the guides who know the way,
The guides who write, and preach, and pray,
I watch their lives, and I divine
They differ not from yours and mine!

One man we knew, and only one,
Whose seeking for a city’s done,
For what he greatly sought he found,
A city girt with fire around,
A city in an empty land
Between the wastes of sky and sand,
A city on a river-side,
Where by the folk he loved, he died. [4a]

Alas! it is not ours to tread
That path wherein his life he led,
Not ours his heart to dare and feel,
Keen as the fragrant Syrian steel;
Yet are we not quite city-less,
Not wholly left in our distress—
Is it not said by One of old,
Sheep have I of another fold?
Ah! faint of heart, and weak of will,
For us there is a city still!

Dear city of Zeus, the Stoic says, [4b]
The Voice from Rome’s imperial days,
In Thee meet all things, and disperse,
In Thee, for Thee, O Universe!
To me all’s fruit thy seasons bring,
Alike thy summer and thy spring;
The winds that wail, the suns that burn,
From Thee proceed, to Thee return.

Dear city of Zeus, shall we not say,
Home to which none can lose the way!
Born in that city’s flaming bound,
We do not find her, but are found.
Within her wide and viewless wall
The Universe is girdled all.
All joys and pains, all wealth and dearth,
All things that travail on the earth,
God’s will they work, if God there be,
If not, what is my life to me?

Seek we no further, but abide
Within this city great and wide,
In her and for her living, we
Have no less joy than to be free;
Nor death nor grief can quite appal
The folk that dwell within her wall,
Nor aught but with our will befall!

THE WHITE PACHA.

Vain is the dream!  However Hope may rave,
He perished with the folk he could not save,
And though none surely told us he is dead,
And though perchance another in his stead,
Another, not less brave, when all was done,
Had fled unto the southward and the sun,
Had urged a way by force, or won by guile
To streams remotest of the secret Nile,
Had raised an army of the Desert men,
And, waiting for his hour, had turned again
And fallen on that False Prophet, yet we know
Gordon is dead, and these things are not so!
Nay, not for England’s cause, nor to restore
Her trampled flag—for he loved Honour more—
Nay, not for Life, Revenge, or Victory,
Would he have fled, whose hour had dawned to die.
He will not come again, whate’er our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed
From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen and