Iolaus The man that was a ghost

Excerpt

THE MAN THAT WAS A GHOST

Gold light across the golden coomb;
The sun went west with horns of fire;
Athwart the sweet, sea-breathing room
The swallows swooped; the village spire
Glowed red against a gleam of broom;
While earth its scented secrets told,
There, silent, sunset-aureoled,
Sat Ioläus, mild and old.
In distance large the moving ships
Sailed on into the evening skies.
He gazed, and saw not. In eclipse
He tensely sat, like one who grips
Some semblance that his dream descries,
With such a look of far surprise
That half-uncanny seemed the man,
So warped with age, so weirdly wan:
He had such ghostly eyes.
Then half to self, and half to me,
Aloof in passion and lone despair,
He spoke like one whose secrets flee
From silence unaware:
Now plaintively from a grief gone blind,
Heavy with cumbering care,
Now, thrilling thought like a white sea-wind,
His words, the echoes of his mind,
Haunted the air:
... 'Tis gone like the roses of long ago:
Yet a dawn's impassioned thrill
Makes blush the blossom's virgin snow
Far on in a faery hill.
Two faces there in the glamour glow
In a place that is strangely still.
On the rim of the world is a ruined tower
Sky-poised above wide sea-foam,
Where a beautiful spirit waits hour by hour,
Far-eyed 'gainst a dawn like a phantom flower,
Till a ghostly lover comes home....
To leeward spread the freshening deep
Purple beneath a rosy gleam.
From a high, mist-engirdled steep
Thin anthems to the orient beam
Came faint as languid waves of sleep
That lap the lonely strands of dream.
We sank our anchor solemnly
Into that lustrous, splendid sea;
For we, that chased the summer's smile
Across the world a wondering while,
Hailed at the heart the Happy Isle,
The haunted shores of Faëry!
Beyond a gently-heaving brine
We broke with oars a trembling bay.
The swerving water, like rare wine,
Slid iridescent from our way.
A lovely hand was laid on mine
Pensively as to say:
"Life is divine!"
The drifting, witching wonder grew.
From out the burgeoning bounds of space
It seemed some morn unearthly drew
To that grave glamourous place,
Where, fearful of some far adieu,
I talked with one who never knew
The peril of her face.
The joy that lives is mightier far
Than foretaste of all grief unborn.
The earth to youth is a silver star
That glitters on the edge of morn,
A star! a star! a dancing star.
The fair, the mystic, happy morn!
Dawn glimmered on the gladdening sea;
Each zephyr blew an elfin horn
To echoes in felicity.
All sounds to silver rhythm ran:
Came flutings as from piping Pan
In purpled hills of Arcady!
Seaward we heard the breakers roar;
And the belated nightingales
Sang all their moonlight raptures o'er,
Enchanted still in echoing vales.
We lingered by the brightening shore;
We leapt upon the roseate strand:
The joy that in our hearts we bore
We loved, nor longed to understand.
Soft siren voices evermore
Chanted to chimes in Faeryland.
O, life was like a bird that sings
At morning on a vernal bough...!