Merely Suburban.
Dry light reverberates, colour
withdrawing
Into a sky so white, sight
cannot follow it.
While in the shadows cast,
rich hues, intenser
Far than in light spaces,
offer me gladness.
Sun reigns triumphantly, thinning
all vapour
Into translucency, through
which the foliage
Bears out in sparkles of full
golden greenery.
O’er this, short dashes
of keen grey-green masses lie;
Even the cooler tints, pitched
in this higher key—
Purpling and greening greys—are
fierce as fires.
All the vast universe lives
in one beautiful
Summer—made lambent
light, offering gladness.
Who can accept of it?
Hearts where no echo rings
Wildly recalling deeds done
by old Destiny—
Deeds of finality, darkening
the spirit—
Rousing the echoes of thought
to reverberate
Ever and ever “Alas!”
evermore.
Once in a burning day’s
brightness like this,
Sad I awaited the quenching
forever of
Light that had mantled and
flickered and ebbed out
Unto some twilight of hope
and of reason.
Out of his own unto future
time’s darkness
Wistfully gazed he, as one
who unhelped floats,
Swept by a current past land
out to sea.
He started alertly with laughter
and mockery,
Loud at its height with the
rapture of contest.
For him the light focusses
now to one vision,
Shot through its beautiful
heart with black terror,
Terror from weakness, remorse
and leave-taking.
To his scared eye the day’s
bitter brightness
Circles about the dark doorway
set open
Awaiting his entrance ere
shut to for ever.
Ever he harkens to voices
behind him
Dolefully hinting defect and
omission;
Cruelly shouting: “This,
this was the true path;
Here greatness lay, by humility
guarded,
She whom thou soughtest through
mountains of pride!
What avails tenderness now
so belated?
What gaining love with no
deed as its child?”
Whitening intenselier ever
to setting
Down sank the last sun save
one he should gaze on.
In the next dawning, with
dull apprehensiveness,
Groped he mid recent and older
remembrance,
Mingled with mad vain desires
for a helping hand;
Then off reeled his soul from
my speechless adieus.
Once more the whole blaze
triumphed through the welkin,
Bitter in brightness in memory
for ever.
VIII.
Whistler versus Ruskin Trial.
Critic John cam here to view
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Lindsay’s picture shop bran new,
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
John, he cast his head fu’ high,
Looked asklent and unco’ skeigh,
Vowed he’d gar James stand abeigh:
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
John he nayther ramps nor roars,
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Soft gans hame and writes in “Fors”—
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!
Writes, and wi’ ae critic-puff
Blaws James oot, like can’le snuff:
Sweers in Art he’s just a muff!
Ha, ha, the viewin’ o’t!