Robert Bridges (1844 – 1930)
English poet.
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?
When first we met we did not guess
That Love would prove so hard a master.
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!
For beauty being the best of all we know
Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims
Of nature.
The evening darkens over
After a day so bright,
The windcapt waves discover
That wild will be the night.
I will not let thee go.
I hold thee by too many bands:
Thou sayest farewell, and lo!
I have thee by the hands,
And will not let thee go.
Behind the western bars
The shrouded day retreats,
And unperceived the stars
Steal to their sovran seats.
And whiter grows the foam,
The small moon lightens more;
And as I turn me home,
My shadow walks before.
When Death to either shall come—
I pray it be first to me.
Seeking unceasingly for the First Cause of All,
in question for what special purpose he was made,
Man, in the unsearchable darkness, knoweth one thing:
that as he is, so was he made; and if the Essence
and characteristic faculty of humanity
is our conscient Reason and our desire of knowledge,
that was Nature's Purpose in the making of man.
The constellated sounds
ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above
with stars was spangled o’er.
The storm is over, the land hushes to rest:
The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone,
Is fallen back in the west.
Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee,
With promise of strength and manhood full and fair!
My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night.
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.
Man's Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
that tho' she guide his highest flight heav'nward, and teach him
dignity morals manners and human comfort,
she can delicatly and dangerously bedizen
the rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell.
The broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky
Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield,
And in her tranquil light
Sleep falls on forest and field.
See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:
The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.
Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristened smile,
That shadows neither love nor guile.
Beauty is the highest of all these occult influences,
the quality of appearances that thru' the sense
wakeneth spiritual emotion in the mind of man.