Sydney Thompson Dobell (Сидней Томпсон Добелл)
An Autumn Mood
Pile the pyre, light the fire-there is fuel enough and to spare; You have fire enough and to spare with your madness and gladness; Burn the old year-it is dead, and dead, and done. There is something under the sun that I cannot bear: I cannot bear this sadness under the sun, I cannot bear this sun upon all this sadness. Here on this prophecy, here on this leafless log, Log upon log, and leafless on leafless, I sit. Yes, Beauty, I see thee; yes, I see, but I will not rejoice. Down, down, wild heart! down, down, thou hungry dog That dost but leap and gaze with a want thou canst not utter! Down, down! I know the ill, but where is the cure? Moor and stubble and mist, stubble and mist and moor, Here, on the turf that will feel the snows, a vanishing flutter Of bells that are ringing farewells, And overhead, from a branch that will soon be bare, Is it a falling leaf that disturbs my blood like a voice? Or is it an autumn bird that answers the evening light? The evening light on stubble and moor and mist, And pallid woods, and the pale sweet hamlets of dying men. Oh, autumn bird! I also will speak as I list. Oh, woods! oh, fields! oh, trees! oh, hill and glen! You who have seen my glory, you who wist How I have walked the mornings of delight- Myself a morning, summer'd through and lit With light and summer as the sunny dew With sun: you saw me then- You see me now; oh, hear my heart and answer it. Where is the Nevermore and the land of the Yesterdays? Aye, Where are Youth and Joy, the dew and the honey-dew, The day of the rose, and the night of the nightingale? Where- Where are the sights and the sounds that shall ne'er and shall e'er Come again? Once more I have cried my cry, once more in vain I have listen'd; once more, for a moment, the ancient pain Is less, though I know that the year is dead and done. Once more I bear Under the sun the sadness, over the sadness the sun. Bear? I have borne, I shall bear. But what is a man That his soul should be seen and heard in the trees and flow'rs of the field? Have I tinctured them mortal? or doth their mortality yield Me like a fragrance of autumn? Ah! passion of Eve, Ah! Eve of my passion,-which is it that aches to complain? Oh, old old Minstrelsy, oh, wafty winds of Romaunt, Blow me your harps. My sick soul cannot weave These gossamers of feeling that remain To any string whereon its ill may grieve. Blow me your harps-harp, wind-harp, dulcimer, Citerne, bataunt, And mandolin, and each string'd woe Of the sweet olden world, and let them blow By me, as in sea-streams the sea-gods see The streaming, streaming hair Of drownèd girls, and every sorrowy sin O' the sea. And so let them blow out the din Of daylight, and blow in, With legendary song Of buried maids, The evening shades. And when the thronging harps, and all The murmurings of wild wind-harps, Are still; And shimmer of dim dulcimer, And thrill of trill'd citerne, And plaint of quaint bataunt, and throb of long Long silent mandolin, And every other sound that grieves, Hath dropt into its colour on the leaves, In the silence let me hear The round and heavy tear Of orchards fall. And as I listen let the air unseen Be stirr'd with words; Let the ripe husk of what is gape open and shed What has been; Through click of gates and the games Of the living village at play, Let me hear forgotten names Of ancient day. Down like a drop of rain from the evening sky Let somewhat be said; Up from the pool, like a bubble, let something reply, In the tongue of the dead. Through the swallows that fly their last Round the grey spire of the past, In the faded elms by the height, Let the last hour of light Strike, and the yellow chimes Forget and remember A dream of other times. And above let the rocks be warm with the mystical day that is not To-day or to-morrow; And from the nest in the rock let me hear the croon Of orphan-doves that yearn For the wings that will never return. And below the rocks, on the grassy slopes and scarps, Let the tender flowering flame of the exquisite crocus of sorrow Sadden the green of the grass to the pathos of gentle September. And below the slopes and scarps, where the strangled rill Blackens to rot, Let the unrest of the troublous hour Blossom on through the night, and the running flow'r O' the fatuous fire flicker, and flicker, and flare, Through the aimless dark of disaster, the aimless light of despair. And meantime, let the serious evening star Contemplative, enlarge her slow pale-brow'd Regard, until she shake With tears, and sudden, snatch a hasty cloud To hide whate'er in those pure realms afar Is likest human sadness: and, full-soon, Let night begin to slake The west; and many-headed darkness peer From every copse and brake; While from a cottage nigh, Where the poor candle of dull Poverty May barely serve to show Her stony privilege of woe, Or if, like her, it try To leave the cabin'd precincts of its lot, Steals trembling forth to struggle and expire; A milkless babe that shall not see the morn Starves to the fretted ear, With lullaby and lullaby, And rocking shadow to and fro Athwart the lattice low; And from yon western ridge, black as the bier Of day, let a faint, far-off horn, Mourning across the ravish'd fields forlorn, Sound like a streak of sunset seen through the grief of the moon. And, further yet, from the slant of the seaward plain, The bleating and lowing of many-voicèd flocks and herds, Forced from their fields, mix on the morning breeze With sob of seas, Till the long-rising wind be high, And, from the distant main, A gale sweep up the vale, and on the gale a wail Of shipwreck fill and fail, Fail and fill, fill and fail, like a sinking, sinking sail In the rain! But ere all this to us let the dim smoke rise! To us from the nearest field, from the nearest pyre Of stubbled corn, let the dim smoke rise; and let The fire that loosens the stubble corn Loose the soul like smoke, and let tears in the eyes Confuse the passionate sense till the heart forget Whether we be the world, or whether the fading world be We.
Sydney Thompson Dobell’s other poems:
1744
