51. To R. B.   
   
   
THE FINE delight that fathers thought; the strong      
Spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame,      
Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came,      
Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.      
Nine months she then, nay years, nine years she long           5   
Within her wears, bears, cares and moulds the same:      
The widow of an insight lost she lives, with aim      
Now known and hand at work now never wrong.      
  Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;      
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.           10   
O then if in my lagging lines you miss      
The roll, the rise, the carol, the creation,      
My winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss      
Now, yields you, with some sighs, our explanation.      

   
52. Summa   
   
   
THE BEST ideal is the true      
  And other truth is none.      
All glory be ascribèd to      
  The holy Three in One.      

53. ‘What being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been’   
   
   
WHAT being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been      
That hére pérsonal tells off these heart-song powerful peals?—      
A bush-browed, beetle-brówed bíllow is it?      
With a soúth-wésterly wínd blústering, with a tide rolls reels      
Of crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seas in; seen           5   
Únderneath, their glassy barrel, of a fairy green.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .      
Or a jaunting vaunting vaulting assaulting trumpet telling      

54. On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People   
   
   
A Brother and Sister   
   
   
O I ADMIRE and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves      
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.      
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,      
And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears.      
   
Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:           5   
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest      
In one fair fall; but, for time’s aftercast,      
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.      
   
And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams      
Their young delightful hour do feature down           10   
That fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreams      
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.      
   
She leans on him with such contentment fond      
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;      
His looks, the soul’s own letters, see beyond,           15   
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.      
   
But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you are      
Of favoured make and mind and health and youth,      
Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul’s star?      
There’s none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.           20   
   
There ’s none but good can bé good, both for you      
And what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid;      
None good but God—a warning wavèd to      
One once that was found wanting when Good weighed.      
   
Man lives that list, that leaning in the will           25   
No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,      
The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,      
Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.      
   
Your feast of; that most in you earnest eye      
May but call on your banes to more carouse.           30   
Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry,      
To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward boughs?      
   
Enough: corruption was the world’s first woe.      
What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?      
O but I bear my burning witness though           35   
Against the wild and wanton work of men.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .      

55. ‘The Sea took pity: it interposed with doom’   
   
   
THE SEA took pity: it interposed with doom:      
‘I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand:      
Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb,      
And she shall child them on the New-world strand.’
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

56. (Ash-boughs)   
    
    
a.

NOT of all my eyes see, wandering on the world,      
Is anything a milk to the mind so, so sighs deep      
Poetry to it, as a tree whose boughs break in the sky.      
Say it is ashboughs: whether on a December day and furled      
Fast ór they in clammyish lashtender combs creep           5   
Apart wide and new-nestle at heaven most high.      
They touch heaven, tabour on it; how their talons sweep      
The smouldering enormous winter welkin! May      
Mells blue and snowwhite through them, a fringe and fray      
Of greenery: it is old earth’s groping towards the steep           10   
        Heaven whom she childs us by.      
    
(Variant from line 7.) b.

They touch, they tabour on it, hover on it[; here, there hurled],      
        With talons sweep      
The smouldering enormous winter welkin. [Eye,      
        But more cheer is when] May           15   
Mells blue with snowwhite through their fringe and fray      
Of greenery and old earth gropes for, grasps at steep      
        Heaven with it whom she childs things by.      
 

   
57. ‘Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out’   
   
   
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
HOPE holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out      
To take His lovely likeness more and more.      
It will not well, so she would bring about      
An ever brighter burnish than before      
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes           5   
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.      
Her glass is blest but she as good as blind      
Holds till hand aches and wonders what is there;      
Her glass drinks light, she darkles down behind,      
All of her glorious gainings unaware.           10   
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
I told you that she turned her mirror dim      
Betweenwhiles, but she sees herself not Him.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .      

58. St. Winefred’s Well   
   
   
ACT I. SC. I
Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.   
T.   WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me?       
W.   You came by Caerwys, sir?   
T.               I came by Caerwys.   
W.                           There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle.   
T.   Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night.   
W.               To-night, sir!   
T.                           Soon, now: therefore
Have all things ready in his room.   
W.               There needs but little doing.   
T.   Let what there needs be done. Stay! with him one companion,
His deacon, Dirvan Warm: twice over must the welcome be,
But both will share one cell.—This was good news, Gwenvrewi.   
W.   Ah yes!   
T.     Why, get thee gone then; tell thy mother I want her.
Exit Winefred.

No man has such a daughter. The fathers of the world
Call no such maiden ‘mine’. The deeper grows her dearness
And more and more times laces round and round my heart,
The more some monstrous hand gropes with clammy fingers there,
Tampering with those sweet bines, draws them out, strains them, strains them;
Meantime some tongue cries ‘What, Teryth! what, thou poor fond father!
How when this bloom, this honeysuckle, that rides the air so rich about thee,
Is all, all sheared away, thus!’ Then I sweat for fear.
Or else a funeral, and yet ’tis not a funeral,
Some pageant which takes tears and I must foot with feeling that
Alive or dead my girl is carried in it, endlessly
Goes marching thro’ my mind. What sense is this? It has none.
This is too much the father; nay the mother. Fanciful!
I here forbid my thoughts to fool themselves with fears.

Enter Gwenlo.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   
ACT II.—Scene, a wood ending in a steep bank over a dry dene, Winefred having been murdered within. Re-enter Caradoc with a bloody sword.   
C.   My heart, where have we been? What have we seen, my mind?
What stroke has Caradoc’s right arm dealt? what done? Head of a rebel
Struck off it has; written upon lovely limbs,
In bloody letters, lessons of earnest, of revenge;
Monuments of my earnest, records of my revenge,
On one that went against me whéreas I had warned her—
Warned her! well she knew. I warned her of this work.
What work? what harm ’s done? There is no harm done, none yet;
Perhaps we struck no blow, Gwenvrewi lives perhaps;
To makebelieve my mood was—mock. O I might think so
But here, here is a workman from his day’s task sweats.
Wiped I am sure this was; it seems not well; for still,
Still the scarlet swings and dances on the blade.
So be it. Thou steel, thou butcher,
I cán scour thee, fresh burnish thee, sheathe thee in thy dark lair; these drops
Never, never, never in their blue banks again.
The woeful, Cradock, O the woeful word! Then what,
What have we seen? Her head, sheared from her shoulders, fall,
And lapped in shining hair, roll to the bank’s edge; then
Down the beetling banks, like water in waterfalls,
It stooped and flashed and fell and ran like water away.
Her eyes, oh and her eyes!
In all her beauty, and sunlight to it is a pit, den, darkness,
Foam-falling is not fresh to it, rainbow by it not beaming,
In all her body, I say, no place was like her eyes,
No piece matched those eyes kept most part much cast down
But, being lifted, immortal, of immortal brightness.
Several times I saw them, thrice or four times turning;
Round and round they came and flashed towards heaven: O there,
There they did appeal. Therefore airy vengeances
Are afoot; heaven-vault fast purpling portends, and what first lightning
Any instant falls means me. And I do not repent;
I do not and I will not repent, not repent.
The blame bear who aroused me. What I have done violent
I have like a lion done, lionlike done,
Honouring an uncontrolled royal wrathful nature,
Mantling passion in a grandeur, crimson grandeur.
Now be my pride then perfect, all one piece. Henceforth
In a wide world of defiance Caradoc lives alone,
Loyal to his own soul, laying his own law down, no law nor
Lord now curb him for ever. O daring! O deep insight!
What is virtue? Valour; only the heart valiant.
And right? Only resolution; will, his will unwavering
Who, like me, knowing his nature to the heart home, nature’s business,
Despatches with no flinching. But will flesh, O can flesh
Second this fiery strain? Not always; O no no!
We cannot live this life out; sometimes we must weary
And in this darksome world what comfort can I find?
Down this darksome world cómfort whére can I find
When ’ts light I quenched; its rose, time’s one rich rose, my hand,
By her bloom, fast by her fresh, her fleecèd bloom,
Hideous dashed down, leaving earth a winter withering
With no now, no Gwenvrewi. I must miss her most
That might have spared her were it but for passion-sake. Yes,
To hunger and not have, yét hope ón for, to storm and strive and
Be at every assault fresh foiled, worse flung, deeper disappointed,
The turmoil and the torment, it has, I swear, a sweetness,
Keeps a kind of joy in it, a zest, an edge, an ecstasy,
Next after sweet success. I am not left even this;
I all my being have hacked in half with her neck: one part,
Reason, selfdisposal, choice of better or worse way,
Is corpse now, cannot change; my other self, this soul,
Life’s quick, this kínd, this kéen self-feeling,
With dreadful distillation of thoughts sour as blood,
Must all day long taste murder. What do nów then? Do? Nay,
Deed-bound I am; one deed treads all down here cramps all doing. What do? Not yield,
Not hope, not pray; despair; ay, that: brazen despair out,
Brave all, and take what comes—as here this rabble is come,
Whose bloods I reck no more of, no more rank with hers
Than sewers with sacred oils. Mankind, that mobs, comes. Come!   
Enter a crowd, among them Teryth, Gwenlo, Beuno.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

After Winefred’s raising from the dead and the breaking out of the fountain.   
BEUNO.   O now while skies are blue, now while seas are salt,
While rushy rains shall fall or brooks shall fleet from fountains,
While sick men shall cast sighs, of sweet health all despairing,
While blind men’s eyes shall thirst after daylight, draughts of daylight,
Or deaf ears shall desire that lipmusic that ’s lost upon them,
While cripples are, while lepers, dancers in dismal limb-dance,
Fallers in dreadful frothpits, waterfearers wild,
Stone, palsy, cancer, cough, lung wasting, womb not bearing,
Rupture, running sores, what more? in brief; in burden,
As long as men are mortal and God merciful,
So long to this sweet spot, this leafy lean-over,
This Dry Dene, now no longer dry nor dumb, but moist and musical
With the uproll and the downcarol of day and night delivering
Water, which keeps thy name, (for not in róck wrítten,
But in pale water, frail water, wild rash and reeling water,
That will not wear a print, that will not stain a pen,
Thy venerable record, virgin, is recorded).
Here to this holy well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, everywhere,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, móre pílgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome cáme hither!
Not now to náme even
Those dearer, more divine boons whose haven the heart is.
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
As sure as what is most sure, sure as that spring primroses
Shall new-dapple next year, sure as to-morrow morning,
Amongst come-back-again things, thíngs with a revival, things with a recovery,
Thy name…
   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   

   
59. ‘What shall I do for the land that bred me’   
   
   
WHAT shall I do for the land that bred me,      
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?—      
Be under her banner and live for her honour:      
Under her banner I’ll live for her honour.      
  CHORUS.  Under her banner live for her honour.           5   
   
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,      
But country and flag, the flag I am under—      
There is the shilling that finds me willing      
To follow a banner and fight for honour.      
  CH.  We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.           10   
   
Call me England’s fame’s fond lover,      
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.      
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,      
But under her banner I live for her honour.      
  CH.  Under her banner we march for her honour.           15   
   
Where is the field I must play the man on?      
O welcome there their steel or cannon.      
Immortal beauty is death with duty,      
If under her banner I fall for her honour.      
  CH.  Under her banner we fall for her honour.           20   

   
60. ‘The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less’   
   
   
THE TIMES are nightfall, look, their light grows less;      
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:      
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run      
Or bring more or more blazon man’s distress.      
And I not help. Nor word now of success:           5   
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—      
Work which to see scarce so much as begun      
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.      
   
Or what is else? There is your world within.      
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.           10   
Your will is law in that small commonweal…