The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Roadside Harp, by Louise Imogen Guiney This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: A Roadside Harp A Book of Verses Author: Louise Imogen Guiney Release Date: June 1, 2017 [eBook #54822] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROADSIDE HARP*** E-text prepared by Emmy, MWS, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) This ebook is dedicated to EMMY friend, colleague, mentor, role model who fell off the planet far too soon. Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/roadsideharpbook00guinuoft A Roadside Harp Cover By Miss Guiney. THE WHITE SAIL, AND OTHER POEMS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. SONGS AT THE START. 16mo, $1.00. A ROADSIDE HARP. 16mo. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York. Title page A ROADSIDE HARP A BOOK OF VERSES BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY “Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet, More oft than to a chamber melody!” BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY M DCCC XCIII COPYRIGHT, 1893 BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. TO DORA AND HESTER SIGERSON There in the Druid brake If the cuckoo be awake Again, O take my rhyme! And keep it long for the sake Of a bygone primrose-time; You of the star-bright head That twilight thoughts sequester, You to your native fountains led Like to a young Muse garlanded: Dora, and Hester. March, 1893. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ETER RUGG the Bostonian 1 A Ballad of Kenelm 8 Vergniaud in the Tumbril 10 Winter Boughs 13 M. A. 1822–1888 13 W. H. 1778–1830 14 The Vigil-at-Arms 14 A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo 15 Spring Nightfall 15 A Friend’s Song for Simoisius 16 Athassel Abbey 17 Florentin 18 Friendship Broken 19 A Song of the Lilac 20 In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm 21 The Cherry Bough 21 Two Irish Peasant Songs 23 The Japanese Anemone 25 Tryste Noel 26 A Talisman 27 Heathenesse 27 For Izaak Walton 28 Sherman: “An Horatian Ode” 29 When on the Marge of Evening 32 Rooks in New College Gardens 32 Open, Time 33 The Knight Errant (Donatello’s Saint George) 34 To a Dog’s Memory 35 A Seventeenth-Century Song 36 On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford 37 The Still of the Year 38 A Foot-note to a Famous Lyric 39 T. W. P. 1819–1892 41 Summum Bonum 41 Saint Florent-le-Vieil 42 Hylas 42 Nocturne 43 The Kings 44 Alexandriana 47 London: Twelve Sonnets. On First Entering Westminster Abbey 55 Fog 55 St. Peter-ad-Vincula 56 P Strikers in Hyde Park 56 Changes in the Temple 57 The Lights of London 58 Doves 58 In the Reading-Room of the British Museum 59 Sunday Chimes in the City 59 A Porch in Belgravia 60 York Stairs 61 In the Docks 61 A ROADSIDE HARP. POEMS BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY 1 Peter Rugg the Bostonian I HE mare is pawing by the oak, The chaise is cool and wide For Peter Rugg the Bostonian With his little son beside; The women loiter at the wheels In the pleasant summer-tide. “And when wilt thou be home, Father?” “And when, good husband, say: The cloud hangs heavy on the house What time thou art away.” He answers straight, he answers short, “At noon of the seventh day.” “Fail not to come, if God so will, And the weather be kind and clear.” “Farewell, farewell! But who am I A blockhead rain to fear? God willing or God unwilling, I have said it, I will be here.” He gathers up the sunburnt boy And from the gate is sped; He shakes the spark from the stones below, The bloom from overhead, Till the last roofs of his own town Pass in the morning-red. Upon a homely mission North unto York he goes, Through the long highway broidered thick With elder-blow and rose; And sleeps in sound of breakers At every twilight’s close. Intense upon his heedless head Frowns Agamenticus, Knowing of Heaven’s challenger The answer: even thus The Patience that is hid on high Doth stoop to master us. II Full light are all his parting dreams; Desire is in his brain; He tightens at the tavern-post The fiery creature’s rein: “Now eat thine apple, six years’ child! We face for home again.” They had not gone a many mile With nimble heart and tongue, When the lone thrush grew silent The walnut woods among; And on the lulled horizon A premonition hung. The babes at Hampton schoolhouse, T 2 3 The babes at Hampton schoolhouse, The wife with lads at sea, Search with a level-lifted hand The distance bodingly; And farmer folk bid pilgrims in Under a safe roof-tree. The mowers mark by Newbury How low the swallows fly, They glance across the southern roads All white and fever-dry, And the river, anxious at the bend, Beneath a thinking sky. But there is one abroad was born To disbelieve and dare: Along the highway furiously He cuts the purple air. The wind leaps on the startled world As hounds upon a hare; With brawl and glare and shudder ope The sluices of the storm; The woods break down, the sand upblows In blinding volleys warm; The yellow floods in frantic surge Familiar fields deform. From evening until morning His skill will not avail, And as he cheers his youngest born, His cheek is spectre-pale; For the bonnie mare from courses known Has drifted like a sail! III On some wild crag he sees the dawn Unsheathe her scimitar. “Oh, if it be my mother-earth, And not a foreign star, Tell me the way to Boston, And is it near or far?” One watchman lifts his lamp and laughs: “Ye’ve many a league to wend.” The next doth bless the sleeping boy From his mad father’s end; A third upon a drawbridge growls: “Bear ye to larboard, friend.” Forward and backward, like a stone The tides have in their hold, He dashes east, and then distraught Darts west as he is told, (Peter Rugg the Bostonian, That knew the land of old!) And journeying, and resting scarce A melancholy space, Turns to and fro, and round and round, The frenzy in his face, And ends alway in angrier mood, And in a stranger place, Lost! lost in bayberry thickets Where Plymouth plovers run, And where the masts of Salem 3 4 And where the masts of Salem Look lordly in the sun; Lost in the Concord vale, and lost By rocky Wollaston! Small thanks have they that guide him, Awed and aware of blight; To hear him shriek denial It sickens them with fright: “They lied to me a month ago With thy same lie to-night!” To-night, to-night, as nights succeed, He swears at home to bide, Until, pursued with laughter Or fled as soon as spied, The weather-drenchèd man is known Over the country side! IV The seventh noon ’s a memory, And autumn ’s closing in; The quince is fragrant on the bough, And barley chokes the bin. “O Boston, Boston, Boston! And O my kith and kin!” The snow climbs o’er the pasture wall, It crackles ’neath the moon; And now the rustic sows the seed, Damp in his heavy shoon; And now the building jays are loud In canopies of June. For season after season The three are whirled along, Misled by every instinct Of light, or scent, or song; Yea, put them on the surest trail, The trail is in the wrong. Upon those wheels in any path The rain will follow loud, And he who meets that ghostly man Will meet a thunder-cloud, And whosoever speaks with him May next bespeak his shroud. Tho’ nigh two hundred years have gone, Doth Peter Rugg the more A gentle answer and a true Of living lips implore: “Oh, show me to my own town, And to my open door!” V Where shall he see his own town Once dear unto his feet? The psalms, the tankard to the King, The beacon’s cliffy seat, The gabled neighborhood, the stocks Set in the middle street? How shall he know his own town If now he clatters thro’? Much men and cities change that have Another love to woo; 5 6 Another love to woo; And things occult, incredible, They find to think and do. With such new wonders since he went A broader gossip copes, Across the crowded triple hills, And up the harbor slopes, Tradition’s self for him no more Remembers, watches, hopes. But ye, O unborn children! (For many a race must thrive And drip away like icicles Ere Peter Rugg arrive,) If of a sudden to your ears His plaint is blown alive; If nigh the city, folding in A little lad that cries, A wet and weary traveller Shall fix you with his eyes, And from the crazy carriage lean To spend his heart in sighs:— “That I may enter Boston, Oh, help it to befall! There would no fear encompass me, No evil craft appall; Ah, but to be in Boston, God willing, after all!”— Ye children, tremble not, but go And lift his bridle brave In the one Name, the dread Name, That doth forgive and save, And lead him home to Copp’s Hill ground, And to his fathers’ grave. 7 A Ballad of Kenelm “In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm King born Lieth under a thorn.” T was a goodly child, Sweet as the gusty May; It was a knight that broke On his play, A fair and coaxing knight: “O little liege!” said he, “Thy sister bids thee come After me. “A pasture rolling west Lies open to the sun, Bright-shod with primroses Doth it run; And forty oaks be nigh, Apart, and face to face, And cow-bells all the morn In the space. “And there the sloethorn bush Beside the water grows, And hides her mocking head Under snows; Black stalks afoam with bloom, And never a leaf hath she: Thou crystal of the realm, Follow me!” Uplooked the undefiled: “All things, ere I was born My sister found; now find Me the thorn.” They travelled down the lane, An hour’s dust they made: The belted breast of one Bore a blade. The primroses were out, The aislèd oaks were green, The cow-bells pleasantly Tinked between; The brook was beaded gold, The thorn was burgeoning, Where evil Ascobert Slew the King. He hid him in the ground, Nor washed away the dyes, Nor smoothed the fallen curls From his eyes. No father had the babe To bless his bed forlorn; No mother now to weep By the thorn. There fell upon that place A shaft of heavenly light; The thorn in Mercia spake Ere the night: 8 I 9