Classic Poem

BASIL S ANDY H ERBERT

Sandy: I cannot write, I cannot think;
 'Tis half delight and half distress:
My memory stumbles on the brink
 Of some unfathomed happiness—

Of some old happiness divine.
 What haunting scent, what haunting note,
What word, or what melodious line,
 Sends my heart throbbing to my throat?

Basil: What? thrilled with happiness to-day,
 The longest day in all the year,
Which we must spend in making hay
 By threshing straw in Fleet Street here!

What scent? what sound? The odour stale
 Of watered streets; the rumour loud
Of hoof and wheel on road and rail,
 The rush and trample of the crowd!

Herbert: Humming the song of many a lark,
 Out of the sea, across the shires,
The west wind blows about the park,
 And faintly stirs the Fleet Street wires.

Perhaps it sows the happy seed
 That blossoms in your memory;
Certain of many a western mead,
 And hill and stream it speaks to me.

Basil: Go on: of rustic visions tell
 Till I forget the wilderness
Of sooty brick, the dusty smell,
 The jangle of the printing-press.

Herbert: I hear the woodman's measured stroke;
 I see the amber streamlet glide—
Above, the green gold of the oak
 Fledges the gorge on either side.

A thatched roof shines athwart the gloom
 Of the high moorland's darksome ground;
Far off the surging rollers boom,
 And fill the shadowy wood with sound.

Basil: You have pronounced the magic sign!
 The city with its thousand years,
Like some embodied mood of mine
 Uncouth, prodigious, disappears.

I stand upon a lowly bridge,
 Moss-grown beside the old Essex home;
Over the distant purple ridge
 The clouds arise in sultry foam;

In many a cluster, wreath and chain
 A silvery vapour hangs on high,
And snowy scarfs of silken grain
 Bedeck the blue slopes of the sky;

The wandering water sighs and calls,
 And breaks into a chant that rings
Beneath the vaulted bridge, then falls
 And under heaven softly sings;

A light wind lingers here and there,
 And whispers in an unknown tongue
The passionate secrets of the air,
 That never may by man be sung:

Low, low, it whispers; stays, and goes;
 It comes again; again takes flight;
And like a subtle presence grows
 And almost gathers into sight.

Sandy: The wind that stirs the Fleet Street wires,
 And roams and quests about the Park,
That wanders all across the shires,
 Humming the song of many a lark—

The wind—it is the wind, whose breath,
 Perfumed with roses, wakes in me
From shrouded slumbers deep as death
 A yet unfaded memory.

Basil: About Midsummer, every hour
 Ten thousand rosebuds opening blush,
The land is all one rosy bower,
 And rosy odours haunt and flush

The winds of heaven up and down:
 On the top-gallant of the air
The lark, the pressman in the town
 Breathe only rosy incense rare.

Sandy: And I, enchanted by the rose,
 Remember when I first began
To know what in its bosom glows
 Exhaling scent ambrosian.

A child, at home in streets and quays,
 The city tumult in my brain,
I only knew of tarnished trees,
 And skies corroding vapours stain.

One summer—Time upon my head
 Had showered the curls of years eleven—
Me, for a month, good fortune led
 Where trees are green and hills kiss heaven.

By glen and mountain, moor and lawn,
 Burn-side and sheep-path, day and night,
I wandered, a belated faun,
 All sense, all wonder, all delight.

And once at eve I climbed a hill,
 Burning to see the sun appear,
And watched the jewelled darkness fill
 With lamps and clustered tapers clear.

At last the strongest stars were spent;
 A glimmering shadow overcame
The swarthy-purple firmament,
 And throbbed and kindled into flame;

The pallid day, the trembling day
 Put on her saffron wedding-dress,
And watched her bridegroom far away
 Soar through the starry wilderness.

I clasped my hands and closed my eyes,
 And tears relieved my ecstasy:
I dared not watch the sun arise;
 Nor knew what magic daunted me:

And yet the roses seemed to tell
 More than the morn, had I but known
The meaning of the fragrant smell
 That bound me with a subtle zone.

But in the gloaming when we played
 At hide-and-seek, and I with her
Behind a rose-bush hid, afraid
 To meet her gaze, to breathe, or stir,

The dungeon of my sense was riven,
 The beauty of the world laid bare,
A great wind caught me up to heaven
 Upon a cloud of golden hair;

And mouth touched mouth; and love was born;
 And when our wondering vision blent,
We found the meaning of the morn,
 The meaning of the rose's scent.

Ah me! ah me! since then! since then!

  Herbert: Nay, nay; let self-reproaches be!
Now that this thought is throned again,
 Be zealous for its sovereignty.

Basil: And brave, great Nature must be thanked,
 And we must worship on our knees,
And hold for ever sacro-sanct
 Such dewy memories as these.