The Project Gutenberg eBook of Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems, by Thomas Runciman.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems

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Title: Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems

Author: Thomas Runciman

Release date: February 4, 2005 [eBook #14906]
Most recently updated: December 19, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS, SONNETS & MISCELLANEOUS POEMS *** 


SONGS, SONNETS & MISCELLANEOUS POEMS


BY


THOMAS RUNCIMAN


PRIVATELY PRINTED

  MCMXXII





Thomas Runciman 1841–1909 Thomas Runciman
    1841–1909





CONTENTS


INTRODUCTORY
  NOTE



SONGS

I.

II.

III. Metempsychosis.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII. A Gurly Breeze in
  Scotland.



SONNETS

I. A Hamadryad Dies.

II. "Et in Arcadia ego
  ..."

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.



MISCELLANEOUS
  POEMS

I.

II. An Afternoon
  Soliloquy.

III.

IV. Revoke Not.

V.

VI. Northumbria.—A
  Dirge.

VII. Merely Suburban.

VIII. Whistler versus Ruskin
  Trial.


INTRODUCTORY NOTE


Thomas Runciman was born in Northumberland in 1841, and died
  in London in 1909. He was the second son of Walter Runciman of
  Dunbar and Jean Finlay, his wife. In his youth he left the
  beautiful coast where his father was stationed to go to school
  and work in Newcastle. Artists of his name had been men of mark
  in Scotland, and as he had their strong feeling for colour he was
  allowed for a time to become a pupil of William Bell Scott, who
  was on the fringe of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Throughout his
  life he painted portraits and landscapes, but the latter were
  what he loved. His work was not widely known, for he had a
  nervous contempt for Exhibitions, and the first collection of his
  landscapes in water-colour and oil was opened to the public at a
  posthumous exhibition in Newcastle in 1911. He travelled from
  time to time, and enjoyed living on the banks of the Seine, and
  in other beautiful regions abroad.


His poems were never offered for publication, although
  critical essays of his appeared from time to time, as for
  instance in the "London" of Henley and Stevenson. The Songs and
  Sonnets were written for his own satisfaction, and were sent to a
  few faithful friends and to members of his own family, who have
  allowed me to collect and print them. The miscellaneous verses
  were in many instances found in letters, and others written in
  high spirits were rescued after his death from sketch books and
  scraps of paper by his daughter, Kate Runciman Sellers, and by
  his friend, Edward Nisbet.


W.R.




SONGS




I.





Though here fair blooms the rose and the woodbine waves
      on high,
 And oak and elm and bracken frond
      enrich the rolling lea,
 And winds as if
      from Arcady breathe joy as they go by,
 Yet
      I yearn and I pine for my North Countrie.





I leave the drowsing south and in dreams I northward
      fly,
 And walk the stretching moors that
      fringe the ever-calling sea;
 And am
      gladdened as the gales that are so bitter-sweet go
      by,
 While grey clouds sweetly darken o'er
      my North Countrie.





For there's music in the storms, and there's colour in
      the shades,
 And there's joy e'en in the
      sorrow widely brooding o'er the sea;
 And
      larger thoughts have birth among the moors and lowly
      glades
 And reedy mounds and sands of my
      North Countrie.








II.





You who know what easeful arms

Silence winds about the dead,
 Or
      what far-swept music charms
 Hearts that
      were earth-wearied;





You who know—if aught be known

In that everlasting Hush
 Where the
      life-born years are strewn,
 Where the
      eyeless ages rush,—





Tell me, is it conscious rest
 Heals
      the whilom hurt of life?
 Or is Nirvana
      undistressed
 E'en by memory of
      strife?








III.





Metempsychosis.





When Grief comes this way by
 With
      her wan lip and drooping eye,
 Bid her
      welcome, woo her boldly;
 Soon she'll look
      on thee less coldly.





Her tears soon cease to flow.
 'Tis
      now not Grief but Joy we know;
 From her
      smiling face the roses
 Tell the glad
      metempsychosis.








IV.





Life with the sun in it—

Shaded by gloom!
 Life with the fun in it—
 Shadowed by Doom!





Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate!

Life's laughing morrows frowned over by
      Fate!
 Young Life's wild gladness still
      waylaid by Age!
 All its sweet badness
      still mocking the sage!
 What can e'er
      measure the joy of its strife?





What boundless leisure

Count the heaped treasure

Of woe, that's the pleasure

And beauty of Life?








V.





Once as the aureole

Day left the earth,

Faded, a twilight soul,

Memory, had birth:
 Young
      were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth.





Dark mirrors are her eyes:

Wherein who gaze
 See wan effulgencies
 Flicker and blaze—
 Lorn
      fleeting shadows of beautiful days.





Scan those deep mirrors well

After long years:
 Lo! what aforetime fell
 In
      rain of tears,
 In radiant glamour-mist now
      reappears.





See old wild gladness

Tamed now and coy;
 Grief that was madness
 Turned into joy.
 Fate cannot harry
      them now, nor annoy.





Down from yon throbbing blue,

Passionless, fair,
 Still faces look on you,
 Sunlit their hair,
 With a slow smile
      at your pleasure and care.





Life and death murmurings

From their lips go
 In vaster music-rings;
 Outward they flow,
 Tenderer, wilder,
      than songs that we know.








VI.





My love's unchanged—though time,
      alas!
 Turns silver-gilt the golden
      mass
 Of flowing hair, and pales, I
      wis,
 The rose that deepened with that
      kiss—
 The first—before our
      marriage was.





And though the fields of corn and grass,

So radiant then, as summers pass

Lose something of their look of bliss,

My love's unchanged.





Our tiny girl's a sturdy lass;
 Our
      boy's shrill pipe descends to bass;
 New
      friends appear, the old we miss;
 My
      Love grows old ... in spite of this

My love's unchanged.








VII.





A Gurly Breeze in Scotland.





A gurly breeze swept from the pool

The Autumn peace so blue and cool,

Which all day long had dreamed thereon

Of men and things aforetime gone,

Their vanished joy, their ended dule:

So glooms the sea, so sounds her brool,

As from the East at eve comes on

A gurly breeze.





Sense yields to Fancy 'neath whose rule

This inland scene is quickly full
 Of
      ocean moods wherein I con
 As in a picture;
      quickly gone.
 To what sweet use the mind
      may school
 A gurly
      breeze!








SONNETS




I.





A Hamadryad Dies.





Low mourned the Oread round the Arcadian
      hills;
 The Naiad murmured and the Dryad
      moaned;
 The meadow-maiden left her
      daffodils
 To join the Hamadryades who
      groaned
 Over a sister newly fallen
      dead.
 That Life might perish out of
      Arcady
 From immemorial times was never
      said;
 Yet here one lay dead by her dead
      oak-tree.
 "Who made our Hamadryad cold and
      mute?"
 The others cried in sorrow and in
      wonder.
 "I," answered Death, close by in
      ashen suit;
 "Yet fear not me for this, nor
      start asunder;
 Arcadian life shall keep
      its ancient zest
 Though I be here. My
      name?—is it not Rest?"








II.





"Et in Arcadia ego ..."





"What traveller soever wander here

In quest of peace and what is best of
      pleasure,
 Let not his hope be overcast and
      drear
 Because I, Death, am here to fix the
      measure
 Of life, even in blameless
      Arcady.
 Bay, laurel, myrtle, ivy never
      sere,
 And fields flower-decorated all the
      year,
 And streams that carry secrets to
      the sea,
 And hills that hold back
      something evermore
 Though wild their
      speech with clouds in thunder-roar,—

Yea, every sylvan sight and peaceful tone

Are thine to give thy days their purer
      zest.
 Let not the legend grieve thee on
      this stone.
 I Death am here. What then? My
      name is Rest."








III.





Despairless! Hopeless! Quietly I wait

On these unpeopled tracks the happy close

Of Day, whose advent rang with noise
      elate,
 Whose later stage was quick with
      mirthful shows
 And clasping loves, with
      hate and hearty blows,
 And dreams of
      coming gifts withheld by Fate
 From morrow
      unto morrow, till her great
 Dread eyes
      'gan tell of other gifts than those,
 And
      her advancing wings gloomed like a pall;

Her speech foretelling joy became a dirge

As piteous as pitiless; and all
 My
      company had passed beyond the verge
 And
      lost me ere Fate raised her blinding wings....

Hark! through the dusk a bird "at heaven's gate
      sings."








IV.





"Despairless? Hopeless? Join the cheerful
      hunt
 Whose hounds are Science, high
      Desires the steeds,
 And Misery the quarry.
      Use and Wont
 No help to human anguish
      bring, that bleeds
 For all two thousand
      years of Christian deeds.
 Let Use and Wont
      in styes still feed and grunt,
 Or, bovine,
      graze knee-deep in flowering meads.
 Mount!
      follow! Onward urge Life's dragon-hunt!"

—So cries the sportsman brisk at break of
      day.
 "The sound of hound and horn is well
      for thee,"
 Thus I reply, "but I have other
      prey;
 And friendly is my quest as you may
      see.
 Though slow my pace, full surely in
      the dark
 I'll chance on it at last, though
      none may mark."








V.





Hopeless! Despairless! like that Indian
      wise
 Free of desire, save no desire to
      know.
 To gain that sweet Nirvana each one
      tries,
 Thinks to assuage soul-wearing
      passion so.
 From the white rest, the
      ante-natal bliss,
 Not loth, the wondrous
      wondering soul awakes;
 Now drawn to that
      illusion, now to this,
 With gathering
      strength each devious pathway takes;
 Till
      at the noon of life his aims decline;

Evermore earthward bend the tiring eyes,

Evermore earthward, till with no surprise

They see Nirvana from Earth's bosom shine.

The still kind mother holds her child
      again
 In blank desirelessness without a
      stain.








VI.





He comes to me like air on parching grass;

His eyes are wells where truth lives, found at
      last;
 Summer is fragrant should he this
      way pass;
 His calm love is a chain that
      binds me fast....
 Yet often melancholy
      will forecast
 That time when I shall have
      grown old—when he—
 Still
      rapturous in his struggle with life's
      blast—
 Shall give a pitying side
      glance to me,
 Who skirt the fog-fringe of
      eternity,
 Straining mine eyes to catch
      what shadowy sign
 Of good or evil omen
      there may be,
 Yet no sure good nor evil
      can divine:
 Only some hints of doubtful
      sound and light,
 That lonelier leave the
      uncompanioned night.








VII.





She scanned the record of Beethoven's
      thought,
 And made the dumb chords speak
      both clear and low,
 And spread the dead
      man's voice till I was caught
 Away, and
      now seemed long and long ago.
 Methought in
      Tellus' bosom still I lay,
 While centuries
      like steeds tramped overhead,
 To the wild
      rhythms that, by night and day,
 From
      nature and man's passions still are made.

The music of their motion as they pranced

Lulled me to flawless ease as of a God;

Never upon me pain or pleasure chanced;

Unknown the dew of bliss, or fate's hard
      rod.
 Thus dreamed I ... But I know our
      mother Earth
 Waits to give back the peace
      she reft at birth.








VIII.





By mead and marsh and sandhill clad with
      bent,
 Soothed by the wistful musings of
      the wind
 That in scarce listening ears are
      mildly dinned,
 On plods the traveller till
      the day be spent,
 And day-dreams end in
      dreamless night at last.
 He hears, beyond
      the grey bent's silken waves,
 The
      foam-embroidered waters ever cast
 On
      sighing sands and into echoing caves.
 And
      from the west, where the last sunset glow

Still lingers on the border hills afar,

Come pastoral sounds, attenuate and low,

Thence where the night shall bring, 'neath cloud and
      star,
 Silence to yearn o'er folk worn with
      day's strife,
 Lost in blank sleep to hope,
      regret, death, life.









[An alternative ending:





While from the West comes murmuring earthly
      noise,
 Sweet, slumberous, attenuate and
      afar;
 Sad sunglows in the border mountains
      poise,
 There where he knows to-night, mid
      cloud and star,
 Silence shall yearn o'er
      folk worn out with strife,
 Lost in blank
      sleep to hope, regret, death, life.]








MISCELLANEOUS POEMS




I.





What though my voice cease like a moan o' the
      wind?
 Not the less shall I

Cast on this life a kindly eye,
 Glad
      if through its mystery
 Faint gleams of
      love and truth glance o'er my mind.





What though I end like a spring leaf shed on the
      wind?
 Restrained by pure-eyed Sorrow's
      hand,
 Lithe Joy through this wondrous
      land
 Leads me; nothing have I
      scanned
 Unmixed with good. Fate's sharpest
      stroke is kind.





To me, thoughts lived of old anew are born

From glances at the unsullied sea,

Or breath of morning purity,
 From
      cloud or blown grass tossing free,
 Or
      frail dew quivering on leaf, rose or thorn.





What though behind me all is mist and
      shade,
 Yet warmth of afterglow bathes
      all.
 Hallowed spirits move and
      call
 Each to me, a willing
      thrall,
 With kindly speech of mountain,
      plain or glade.





Before me, through the veil that covers
      all,
 Rays of a vasty Dawn strike
      high
 To the zenith of the
      sky.
 Intense, yet low as true love's
      sigh,
 Prophetic voices to my spirit
      call.





So, though my voice cease like a moan o' the
      wind,
 Not the less shall I

Cast on life a kindly eye,
 Glad if
      through its mystery
 Stray gleams of love
      and truth illume my mind.








II.





An Afternoon Soliloquy.





How good some years of life may be!

Ah, once it was not guessed by me,

Past years would shine, like some bright
      sea,
 In golden dusks of
      memory.





Ere then the music of the dawn
 From
      me had long since surged away;
 And in the
      disillusioned day
 Of chill mid-life I
      plodded on.





Anon a fuller music thrilled
 My
      world with meaning undertones,
 That
      elegized our vanished ones,
 And told how
      Lethe's banks are filled





With wordless calm, and wistful rest,

And sweet large silence, solemn sleep,

And brooding shadows cool and deep,

And grand oblivions, undistressed.





No more 'twas "Lethe rolling doom,"

But Lethe calling, "Come to me,
 And
      wash away all memory
 And taint of what
      precedes the tomb;





And know the changeless afterthought,

Half guessed, half named from age to age,

Wherein I quench the flame and rage

And sorrow with which life is fraught."








III.





The Love that speaks in word and kiss,

That dyes the cheek and fires the eye,

Through surface signs of shallow bliss

That, quickly born, may quickly die;

Sweet, sweet are these to man and woman;

Who thinks them poor is less than human.





But I do know a quavering tone,
 And
      I do know lack-lustre eyes,
 Behind the
      which, dumb and alone,
 A stronger Love his
      labour plies:
 He cannot sing or dance or
      toy—
 He works and sighs for other's
      joy.





In gloom he tends the growth of food,

While others joy in sun and flowers:

None knows the passion of his mood

Save they who know what bitter hours

Are his whose heart, alive to beauty,

Yet dies to it and lives for duty.








IV.





Revoke Not.





Long is it since they ceased to look on
      light,
 To thrill with hope in our fond
      human way.
 Why grudge them rest in their
      sweet ancient night,
 Ungrieved,
      if never gay,
 Eased from Life's
      sorry day?





Is it because at times when storms subside

Through which thou oarest Life's ill-fitted
      bark,
 Dreams rise, from sounds of lapping
      of the tide,
 To veil the
      daylight stark,
 Its anguish and
      its cark?





What was their joy here? Absence of great
      pain?
 Some music in lamentings of the
      wind?
 The mystic whispers of the dripping
      rain?
 Sad yearnings toward
      their kind?
 Ruth for old loves
      that pined?





For these would'st thou revoke their flawless
      rest?
 Restore hope unfulfilled which they
      knew here?
 Oh! well they fare, safe
      sheltered in that nest
 Of
      silence, far from fear,
 Their
      memory not yet sere.





Take thou no joy in any passing dream

Of revocation from their stainless state!

Love them: haste on, till thou to others
      seem
 As these to
      thee—their mate,
 A waning
      name, a date!





Till then, the low keen sound of Life's
      "Alas!"
 Change as thou canst to themes in
      every key,
 That so for thee and others
      time may pass
 Full of presagings of
      content to be
 Age-long in that
      far bourne,
 Till thought end,
      quite outworn.








V.





"And there shall be no night there and
      they
 need no candle, and neither light of
      the sun;

for the Lord God giveth them Light."









Your place is Heaven, a stormless nightless
      home?
 Then we twain never more shall live
      together
 Such days of gladdest thought as
      here, whilom,
 We spent amid the change of
      earthly weather.





No white young day like hope smiles in yon
      east,
 Or, westering, cleaves wild-omened
      scarlet glooms;
 No frosty breezes wreathe
      your woods in mist;
 No breaker o'er
      Heaven's glassy ocean booms.





No scents of delvéd dewy soil
      arise;
 No storm-blue pall in state hangs
      hill or lea;
 No nightly seas swirl in grey
      agonies;
 Nor old Earth's sweet decays dye
      herb or tree.





Do wan gold tints shot on the midnight air

Herald the moon that loiters far away?

Or moony sea-gleams peep and beckon there

From sapphire dark or mystic silver grey?





No, not the olden pleasure shall be there

We knew, before the grass sprang o'er your
      breast;
 Yet that is yours which here
      hearts cannot share—
 Heaven's summer
      peace eterne and noonday rest.








VI.





Northumbria.—A Dirge.





Dirge the sorrows by time made dim:

Seas are sullen in rain and
      mist.
 Regret the woes that behind us
      swim:
 Sullen's the north and
      grey the east.





Black boats speck the horizon's rim:

The north is heavy and grey the
      east.
 They plash to shore in unison
      grim:
 The breakers roar
      through rain and mist.





Ah! the ravening Dane of old!
 Joys are born of time and sorrow.

He was beautiful, cruel and bold:

Death yesterday is life
      to-morrow.





The slain lie stark on bented mounds:

Winds are calling in rain and
      mist.
 There's blood and smoke and wide
      red wounds,
 And black boats
      make to north and east.





Through murky weltering seas they row:

Dirge the eyes their deeds made
      dim.
 Wives at their conning smile and
      glow,
 And hail them on the
      horizon's rim.





There's peace on low mounds and shallow
      dells,
 Yellow rag-wort and
      sea-reed grey,
 And thrumming and booming
      of village bells:
 Dirge the
      lives of that faded day.








VII.





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!





Englan' heurs and rubs her ee,

Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!

"Just as I had guessed," quo' she:

Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!

No so James. He to the Judge
 Cries,
      "John he ca's my noketurns 'fudge':
 That's
      a lee—spoke in a grudge."
 Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!





Ca' up Michael! Ca' up Moore!
 Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!
 Bring up
      Wills—he's kenned before!
 Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!
 Midmay
      Michael's ta'en his stan',
 Moore and Wills
      say Whistler' gran',
 Nae better work done
      in this lan':
 Ha, ha, the
      viewin' o't!





Now bring Jones—let's hear his min':

Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!

Out spake he: "Jim's work's rale fine,"

Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!

"An' were't like Titian's here or mine,

A' this or that, I'd no decline
 To
      say they're rather like muneshine."
 Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!





Run in Frith. Says he: "Dear me!"

Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!

"For my pairt here's nowt like me:"

Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!

"Nothing is like nature here.

Where's the detail roun' an' clear,

Such as in my work appear?"
 Ha, ha, the viewin' o't!





How it cam let lawyers tell:
 Ha, ha, the provin' o't!
 Jury bodies
      luik fu' swell:
 Ha, ha, the
      provin' o't!
 "John's no right, yet Jim's
      no wrang!
 Art's made of nocht but peut an'
      slang!
 Half a bawbee! Hame let's
      gang!"
 Ha, ha, the provin'
      o't!








ONE HUNDRED & FIFTY COPIES OF THIS

  BOOK HAVE BEEN PRINTED BY HAND

  FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  WALTER RUNCIMAN   AT

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  MCMXXII



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