An Invitation

COME to the river-bank with me;

For there are plumed ferns of crescent green,

And in the wine-dark pools are seen

The crimson-spotted trout.

Hush! hush! move through the brake most silently,

Vex with no loud unhallow'd shout

The holy secrecy of this sweet glade,

And you shall see

The dipper rush with sudden flash, and fade

Into the woodland screen;

Nor shall you by your presence make afraid

The kingfisher, who looks down dreamily

At his own shadow gorgeously array'd.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

Perfume

WHAT gift for passionate lovers shall we find?

Not flowers nor books of verse suffice for me,

But splinters of the odorous cedar-tree,

And tufts of pine-buds, oozy in the wind;

Give me young shoots of aromatic rind,

Or samphire, redolent of sand and sea,

For all such fragrances I deem to be

Fit with my sharp desires to be combined.

My heart is like a poet, whose one room,

Scented with Latakia* faint and fine,          [aromatic Turkish tobacco]

Dried rose leaves, and spilt attar, and old wine,

From curtained windows gathers its warm gloom

Round all but one sweet picture, where incline

His thoughts and fancies mingled with perfume.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

May-Day

THE Past is like a funeral gone by,

The Future comes like an unwelcome guest,

And some men gaze behind them to find rest

And some urge forward with a stifled sigh;

But soft perennial flowers break forth and die,

And sweet birds pair and twine a woodland nest;

They, sifting all things, find the Present best,

And garnish life with that philosophy.

Like birds, like flowers, oh! let us live To-day,

And leave To-morrow to the Fates' old fingers,

And waste no weeping over Yesterday!

Lo! round about the golden lustre lingers,

The fresh green boughs are full of choral singers,

And all the Dryades keep holiday.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

Epithalamium

HIGH in the organ-loft, with lilied hair,

Love plied the pedals with his snowy foot,

Pouring forth music like the scent of fruit,

And stirring all the incense-laden air;

We knelt before the altar's gold rail where

The priest stood robed, with chalice and palm-shoot,

With music-men, who bore citole and lute,

Behind us, and the attendant virgins fair;

And so our red aurora flashed to gold,

Our dawn to sudden sun, and all the while

The high-voiced children trebled clear and cold,

The censer-boys went swinging down the aisle,

And far above, with fingers strong and sure,

Love closed our lives' triumphant overture.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

Villanelle: "Wouldst thou not be content to die"

WOULDST thou not be content to die

When low-hung fruit is hardly clinging,

And golden Autumn passes by?

Beneath this delicate rose-gray sky,

While sunset bells are faintly ringing,

Wouldst thou not be content to die?

For wintry webs of mist on high

Out of the muffled earth are springing,

And golden Autumn passes by.

O now when pleasures fade and fly,

And Hope her southward flight is winging,

Wouldst thou not be content to die?

Lest Winter come, with wailing cry

His cruel icy bondage bringing,

When golden Autumn hath passed by.

And thou, with many a tear and sigh,

While life her wasted hands is wringing,

Shalt pray in vain for leave to die

When golden Autumn hath passed by.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

A Winter Jingle

THE soft wind blows

Across the snows,

And turns the palest face to rose;

The wind it goes

Where no one knows,

Like water round the world it flows;

The sunlit air is warm and light

Though all the earth be wrapped in white.

But owlets shrill

Shriek round the hill

When twilight fades, and all is still;

The keen gusts fill

The frozen rill

With treacherous snowdrifts deep and chill;

The wanderer findeth small delight

In crossing there at dead of night.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

May Morning

[Ed. Note: This poem can be compared with both Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us" and Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach."]

BREAK, long wave, below my feet!

Wind and meet,

Sea-streams that the moon hath shaken!

From the shingle white and bare,

All the air

With sonorous cadence waken!

From the distance dim and bright,

Gulphed in light,

To the long spent wave that dashes,

All the sea shines through and through

Fiery blue:

When the wind is up, it flashes.

And the milder heaven above,

Full of love,

Smiles upon the rolling ocean,

Like a woman's heart content

To be spent

And absorbed in sweet devotion.

Surely Venus through the sea

Clear and free,

Rose on such a morn as this is,

Called her doves about her there,

Heard the air

Murmur through their wings like kisses.

Out of cold green depths of foam,

Sea-nymphs' home,

To the live air, red with roses,

Came she, clothed about with light,

Warm and white,

Like a moon the mist encloses.

Like a summer moon whose limbs,

As she swims

Ever up in the pale aether,

Cast their lawny veils aside

Till they hide

Nought from the mad earth beneath her.

Though no more with reverent eyes,

Sadly wise,

Sea and air to us are holy,

Born too late for gods to bless

We profess

To be disenchanted wholly,

Though the nymphs are dead, and we

Cannot see,

Plunging in the gulfs of azure,

Long processions, gods in line,

Half divine,

Blowing horns of mellow leisure,

Yet the old sweet creeds and we

Cannot be

Always so far rent asunder,

Since we feel on such a morn

Life reborn

In the antique world of wonder.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

Dedication to Austin Dobson

NEIGHBOUR of the near domain,

Stay awhile your passing wain!

Though to give is more your way,

Take a gift from me to-day!

From my homely store I bring

Signs of my poor husbanding;--

Here a spike of purple phlox,

Here a spicy bunch of stocks,

Mushrooms from my moister fields,

Apples that my orchard yields,--

Nothing,--for the show they make,

Something,--for the donor's sake;

Since for ten years we have been

Best of neighbours ever seen,

We have fronted evil weather,

Nip of critic's frost, together;

Brother not more kind to brother,

We have cheered and helped each other;

Till so far the fields of each

Into the other's stretch and reach,

That perchance when both are gone

Neither may be named alone.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

With a Copy of Herrick

FRESH with all airs of woodland brooks

And scents of showers,

Take to your haunt of holy books

This saint of flowers.

When meadows burn with budding May,

And heaven is blue,

Before his shrine our prayers we say,--

Saint Robin true.

Love crowned with thorns is on his staff,--

Thorns of sweet briar;

His benediction is a laugh,

Birds are his choir.

His sacred robe of white and red

Unction distils;

He hath a nimbus round his head

Of daffodils.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

Ballade for the Funeral of the Last of the Joyous Poets

[Ed. Note: Theodore de Banville (1823-1891) was a French Romantic poet noted for his graceful lyrics, his craftsmanship in the use of such intricate forms as the villanelle and the ballade, and his gentle sentiment and wit; Gosse uses his death to comment on the state of English poetry in the last years of the 19th century. --Nelson]

ONE ballade more before we say good-night,

O dying Muse, one mournful ballade more!

Then let the new men fall to their delight,

The Impressionist, the Decadent, a score

Of other fresh fanatics who adore

Quaint demons, and disdain thy golden shrine;

Ah! faded goddess, thou wert held divine

When we were young! But now each laurelled head

Has fallen, and fallen the ancient glorious line;

The last is gone, since Banville too is dead.

Peace, peace a moment, dolorous Ibsenite!

Pale Tolstoist, moaning from the Euxine shore!

Psychology, to dreamland take thy flight!

And, fell Heredity, forbear to pour

Drop after drop thy dose of hellebore,

For we look back to-night to ruddier wine

And gayer singing than these moans of thine!

Our skies were azure once, our roses red,

Our poets once were crowned with eglantine;

The last is gone, since Banville too is dead.

With flutes and lyres and many a lovely rite

Through the mad woodland of our youth they bore

Verse, like pure ichor in a chrysolite,

Secret yet splendid, and the world forswore,

For one brief space, the mocking mask it wore.

Then failed, then fell those children of the vine,--

Sons of the sun,--and sank in slow decline;

Pulse after pulse their radiant lives were shed;

To silence we their vocal names consign;

The last is gone, since Banville too is dead.

ENVOI:

Prince-jeweller, whose facet-rhymes combine

All hues that glow, all rays that shift and shine,

Farewell! thy song is sung, thy splendour fled!

No bards to Aganippe's wave incline;

The last is gone, since Banville too is dead.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

The Train of Life

WE traced the bleak ridge, to and fro,

Grave forty, gay fourteen;

While yellow larks, in heaven's blue glow,

Like laughing stars were seen,

And rose-tipp'd larches, fringed below,

Shone fabulously green.

And as I watched my restless son

Leap over gorse and briar,

And felt his golden nature run

With April sap and fire,

Methought another madpate spun

Beside another sire.

Sudden, the thirty years slip by,

Shot like a curtain's rings!

My father treads the ridge, and I

The boy that leaps and flings,

While eyes that in the churchyard lie

Seem smiling tenderest things.

Sir Edmund William Gosse

The Fallen Rose

LIFE, like an overweighted shaken rose,

Falls, in a cloud of colour, to my feet;

Its petals strew my first November snows,

Too soon, too fleet!

'Twas my own breath had blown the leaves apart,

My own hot eyelids stirred them where they lay;

It was the tumult of my own bright heart

Broke them away.

Sir Edmund William Gosse