SONGS, SONNETS & MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
BY
THOMAS RUNCIMAN
PRIVATELY PRINTED
MCMXXII
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
THE TEMPLE SHEEN
PRESS MARCH
MCMXXII
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