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Low Barometer
The south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,
The house is smitten as with a flail,
The chimney shudders to the blast.
On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;
And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their squalid lease of sin
With earlier title than his own.
Unbodied presences, the pack’d
Pollution and remorse of Time,
Slipp’d from oblivion reënact
The horrors of unhouseld crime.
Some men would quell the thing with prayer
Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor,
Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair
Or burts the lock’d forbidden door.
Some have seen corpses long interr’d
Escape from hallowing control,
Pale charnel forms—nay ev’n have heard
The shrilling of a troubled soul,
That wanders till the dawn hath cross’d
The dolorous dark, or Earth hath wound
Closer her storm-spredd cloke, and thrust
The baleful phantoms underground.
Robert Bridges
(1844-1930)
Low Barometer
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
To Joseph Joachim
Belov’d of all to whom that Muse is dear
Who hid her spirit of rapture from the Greek,
Whereby our art excelleth the antique,
Perfecting formal beauty to the ear;
Thou that hast been in England many a year
The interpreter who left us nought to seek,
Making Beethoven’s inmost passion speak,
Bringing the soul of great Sebastian near.
Their music liveth ever, and ’tis just
That thou, good Joachim, so high thy skill,
Rank (as thou shalt upon the heavenly hill)
Laurel’d with them, for thy ennobling trust
Remember’d when thy loving hand is still
And every ear that heard thee stopt with dust.
Robert Bridges
(1844-1930)
To Joseph Joachim
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
To the President of Magdalen College, Oxford
Since now from woodland mist and flooded clay
I am fled beside the steep Devonian shore,
Nor stand for welcome at your gothic door,
‘Neath the fair tower of Magdalen and May,
Such tribute, Warren, as fond poets pay
For generous esteem, I write, not more
Enhearten’d than my need is, reckoning o’er
My life-long wanderings on the heavenly way:
But well-befriended we become good friends,
Well-honour’d honourable; and all attain
Somewhat by fathering what fortune sends.
I bid your presidency a long reign,
True friend; and may your praise to greater ends
Aid better men than I, nor me in vain.
Robert Bridges
(1844-1930)
To the President of Magdalen College, Oxford
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert, WAR & PEACE
To Thos. Floyd
How fares it, friend, since I by Fate annoy’d
Left the old home in need of livelier play
For body and mind? How fare, this many a day,
The stubborn thews and ageless heart of Floyd?
If not too well with country sport employ’d,
Visit my flock, the breezy hill that they
Choose for their fold; and see, for thence you may,
From rising walls all roofless yet and void,
The lovely city, thronging tower and spire,
The mind of the wide landscape, dreaming deep,
Grey-silvery in the vale; a shrine where keep
Memorian hopes their pale celestial fire:
Like man’s immortal conscience of desire,
The spirit that watcheth in me ev’n in my sleep.
“While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry”
While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish’d sky
The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,
And where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell’d twigs, fair beds of primrose lie.
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million buds but stay their blossoming;
And trustful birds have built their nests amid
The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing
Till one soft shower from the south shall bid,
And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of spring.
“In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan”
In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan
Is fragrant in the wake of summer hence,
‘Tis sweet to sit entranced, and muse thereon
In melancholy and godlike indolence:
When the proud spirit, lull’d by mortal prime
To fond pretence of immortality,
Vieweth all moments from the birth of time,
All things whate’er have been or yet shall be.
And like the garden, where the year is spent,
The ruin of old life is full of yearning,
Mingling poetic rapture of lament
With flowers and sunshine of spring’s sure returning;
Only in visions of the white air wan
By godlike fancy seized and dwelt upon.
Robert Bridges
(1844-1930)
To Thos. Floyd
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: *War Poetry Archive, Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
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!.
I have loved airs that die
Before their charm is writ
Along a liquid sky
Trembling to welcome it.
Notes, that with pulse of fire
Proclaim the spirit’s desire,
Then die, and are nowhere
My song be like an air!.
Die, song, die like a breath,
And wither as a bloom;
Fear not a flowery death,
Dread not an airy tomb!
Fly with delight, fly hence!
‘Twas thine love’s tender sense
To feast; now on thy bier
Beauty shall shed a tear.
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 – 1930)
I have loved flowers that fade
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
A Toast to our Native Land
Huge and alert, irascible yet strong,
We make our fitful way ‘mid right and wrong.
One time we pour out millions to be free,
Then rashly sweep an empire from the sea!
One time we strike the shackles from the slaves,
And then, quiescent, we are ruled by knaves.
Often we rudely break restraining bars,
And confidently reach out toward the stars.
Yet under all there flows a hidden stream
Sprung from the Rock of Freedom, the great dream
Of Washington and Franklin, men of old
Who knew that freedom is not bought with gold.
This is the Land we love, our heritage,
Strange mixture of the gross and fine, yet sage
And full of promise destined to be great.
Drink to Our Native Land! God Bless the State!
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 – 1930)
A Toast to our Native Land
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
For beauty being the best of all we know
For beauty being the best of all we know
Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims
Of nature, and on joys whose earthly names
Were never told can form and sense bestow;
And man has sped his instinct to outgo
The step of science; and against her shames
Imagination stakes out heavenly claims,
Building a tower above the head of woe.
Nor is there fairer work for beauty found
Than that she win in nature her release
From all the woes that in the world abound;
Nay with his sorrow may his love increase,
If from man’s greater need beauty redound,
And claim his tears for homage of his peace.
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 – 1930)
For beauty being the best of all we know
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
The Evening Darkens Over
The evening darkens over
After a day so bright,
The windcapt waves discover
That wild will be the night.
There’s sound of distant thunder.
The latest sea-birds hover
Along the cliff’s sheer height;
As in the memory wander
Last flutterings of delight,
White wings lost on the white.
There’s not a ship in sight;
And as the sun goes under,
Thick clouds conspire to cover
The moon that should rise yonder.
Thou art alone, fond lover
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 – 1930)
The Evening Darkens Over
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
My delight and thy delight
My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:
My desire and thy desire
Twinning to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher;
Thro’ the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.
Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.
Love can tell and love alone,
Whence the million stars are strewn,
Why each atom knows its own,
How, in spite of woe and death,
Gay is life, and sweet is breath:
This he taught us, this we knew,
Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood
‘Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 – 1930)
My delight and thy delight
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
I love all beauteous things
I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.
I too will something make
And joy in the making!
Altho’ tomorrow it seem’
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered, on waking.
Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 – 1930)
I love all beauteous things
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
(1844 – 1930)
The Downs
O bold majestic downs, smooth, fair and lonely;
O still solitude, only matched in the skies:
Perilous in steep places,
Soft in the level races,
Where sweeping in phantom silence the cloudland flies;
With lovely undulation of fall and rise;
Entrenched with thickets thorned,
By delicate miniature dainty flowers adorned!
I climb your crown, and lo! a sight surprising
Of sea in front uprising, steep and wide:
And scattered ships ascending
To heaven, lost in the blending
Of distant blues, where water and sky divide,
Urging their engines against wind and tide,
And all so small and slow
They seem to be wearily pointing the way they would go.
The accumulated murmur of soft plashing,
Of waves on rocks dashing and searching the sands,
Takes my ear, in the veering
Baffled wind, as rearing
Upright at the cliff, to the gullies and rifts he stands;
And his conquering surges scour out over the lands;
While again at the foot of the downs
He masses his strength to recover the topmost crowns.
Robert Bridges poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
Robert Bridges
(1844 – 1930)
Melancholia
The sickness of desire, that in dark days
Looks on the imagination of despair,
Forgetteth man, and stinteth God his praise;
Nor but in sleep findeth a cure for care.
Incertainty that once gave scope to dream
Of laughing enterprise and glory untold,
Is now a blackness that no stars redeem,
A wall of terror in a night of cold.
Fool! thou that hast impossibly desired
And now impatiently despairest, see
How nought is changed: Joy’s wisdom is attired
Splended for others’ eyes if not for thee:
Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled:
If they delite thee not, ’tis thou art dead.
Robert Bridges poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive A-B, Bridges, Robert
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