The Evening Darkens Over

THE evening darkens over

After a day so bright,

The windcapt waves discover

That wild will be the night.

There's sound of distant thunder.

The latest sea-birds hover

Along the cliff's sheer height;

As in the memory wander

Last flutterings of delight,

White wings lost on the white.

There's not a ship in sight;

And as the sun goes under,

Thick clouds conspire to cover

The moon that should rise yonder.

Thou art alone, fond lover.

Robert Bridges

My Delight and Thy Delight

MY delight and thy delight

Walking, like two angels white,

In the gardens of the night:

My desire and thy desire

Twinning to a tongue of fire,

Leaping live, and laughing higher;

Thro' the everlasting strife

In the mystery of life.

Love, from whom the world begun,

Hath the secret of the sun.

Love can tell and love alone,

Whence the million stars are strewn,

Why each atom knows its own,

How, in spite of woe and death,

Gay is life, and sweet is breath:

This he taught us, this we knew,

Happy in his science true,

Hand in hand as we stood

'Neath the shadows of the wood,

Heart to heart as we lay

In the dawning of the day.

Robert Bridges

Nightingales

BEAUTIFUL must be the mountains whence ye come,

And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams wherefrom

    Ye learn your song:

Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,

  Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air

    Bloom the year long!

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:

Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,

    A throe of the heart,

Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,

  No dying cadence, nor long sigh can sound,

    For all our art.

Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men

We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,

    As night is withdrawn

From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,

  Dream, while the innumerable choir of day

    Welcome the dawn.

Robert Bridges

Low Barometer

THE south-wind strengthens to a gale,

Across the moon the clouds fly fast,

The house is smitten as with a flail,

The chimney shudders to the blast.

On such a night, when air has loosed

Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,

Old terrors then of god or ghost

Creep from their caves to life again.

And reason kens he herits in

A haunted house. Tenants unknown

Assert their squalid lease of sin

With earlier title than his own.

Unbodied presences, the packed

Pollution and remorse of Time,

Slipped from oblivion reenact

The horrors of unhouseld crime.

Some men would quell the thing with prayer

Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor,

Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair

Or bursts the locked forbidden door.

Some have seen corpses long interred

Escape from hallowing control,

Pale charnel forms--nay ev'n have heard

The shrilling of a troubled soul,

That wanders till the dawn hath crossed

The dolorous dark, or Earth hath wound

Closer her storm-spread cloke, and thrust

The baleful phantoms underground.

Robert Bridges

I Love All Beauteous Things

I LOVE all beauteous things,

I seek and adore them;

God hath no better praise,

And man in his hasty days

Is honoured for them.

I too will something make

And joy in the making!

Altho' tomorrow it seem'

Like the empty words of a dream

Remembered, on waking.

Robert Bridges

London Snow

WHEN men were all asleep the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;

Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;

Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:

Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;

Hiding difference, making unevenness even,

Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.

All night it fell, and when full inches seven

It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,

The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;

And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled--marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,

"O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!"

With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,

A country company long dispersed asunder:

When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.

For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

Robert Bridges

A Passer-By

WHITHER, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,

Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,

That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,

Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

Ah! soon, when Winter has all our vales opprest,

When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,

Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest

Ina summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.

I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,

Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:

I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,

And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,

Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare;

Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped, grandest

Peak, that is over the feathery palms more fair

Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.

And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,

I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine

That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,

Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.

But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,

As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,

From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line

In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.

Robert Bridges

"For Beauty Being the Best of All We Know"

FOR beauty being the best of all we know

Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims

Of nature, and on joys whose earthly names

Were never told can form and sense bestow;

And man has sped his instinct to outgo

The step of science; and against her shames

Imagination stakes out heavenly claims,

Building a tower above the head of woe.

Nor is there fairer work for beauty found

Than that she win in nature her release

From all the woes that in the world abound;

Nay with his sorrow may his love increase,

If from man's greater need beauty redound,

And claim his tears for homage of his peace.

Robert Bridges

"I Have Loved Flowers That Fade"

I have loved flowers that fade,

Within whose magic tents

Rich hues have marriage made

With sweet unmemoried scents:

A honeymoon delight--

A joy of love at sight,

That ages in an hour--

My song be like a flower!

I have loved airs that die

Before their charm is writ

Along a liquid sky

Trembling to welcome it.

Notes, that with pulse of fire

Proclaim the spirit's desire,

Then die, and are nowhere--

My song be like an air!

Die, song, die like a breath,

And wither as a bloom;

Fear not a flowery death,

Dread not an airy tomb!

Fly with delight, fly hence!

'Twas thine love's tender sense

To feast; now on thy bier

Beauty shall shed a tear.

Robert Bridges

North Wind in October

IN the golden glade the chestnuts are fallen all;

From the sered boughs of the oak the acorns fall:

The beech scatters her ruddy fire;

The lime hath stripped to the cold,

And standeth naked above her yellow attire:

The larch thinneth her spire

To lay the ways of the wood with cloth of gold.

Out of the golden-green and white

Of the brake the fir-trees stand upright

In the forest of flame, and wave aloft

To the blue of heaven their blue-green tuftings soft.

But swiftly in shuddering gloom the splendours fail,

As the harrying North-wind beareth

A cloud of skirmishing hail

The grieved woodland to smite:

In a hurricane through the trees he teareth,

Raking the boughs and the leaves rending,

And whistleth to the descending

Blows of his icy flail.

Gold and snow he mixeth in spite,

And whirleth afar; as away on his winnowing flight

He passeth, and all again for ahile is bright.

Robert Bridges

To the United States of America

BROTHERS in blood! They who this wrong began

To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day

When first they challenged freeman to the fray,

And with the Briton dared the American.

Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man:

Labour and Justice now shall have their way,

And in a League of Peace -- God grant we may --

Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan.

Sure is our hope since he who led your nation

Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe

Of that high call to work the world's salvation;

Clearing your minds of all estrangling blindness

In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law,

Freedom and Honour and sweet Loving kindness.

Robert Bridges, April 30, 1917

Lord Kitchner

UNFLINCHING hero, watchful to foresee

And face thy country's peril wheresoe'er,

Directing war and peace with equal care,

Till by long toil ennobled thou wert he

Whom England call'd and bade "Set my arm free

To obey my will and save my honour fair," --

What day the foe presumed on her despair

And she herself had trust in none but thee:



Among Herculean deeds the miracle

That mass'd the labour of ten years in one

Shall be thy monument. Thy work was done

Ere we could thank thee; and the high sea swell

Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell

By the lone Orkneys, at the set of sun.

Robert Bridges, June 8, 1916