



Produced by Mark C. Orton, Branko Collin and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









IOLAeUS




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

A SON OF CAIN: POEMS. Cr. 8vo. 3/6 net.

IN THE WAKE OF THE PH[OE]NIX: POEMS. F'cap. 8vo. 3/6 net.




IOLAeUS:

THE MAN THAT WAS A GHOST

BY

JAMES A. MACKERETH

  LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
  39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
  NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA

1913




  TO THE MEMORY OF
  MY FRIEND
  ARTHUR RANSOM





HAIL AND FAREWELL

To A.R.


    We range the ringing <DW72>s of life; but you
      Scale the last summit, high in lonelier air,
      Whose dizzy pinnacle each soul must dare
    For valedictions born and ventures new.
    From dust to spirit climb, O brave and true!
      Strong in the wisdom that is more than prayer;
      High o'er the mists of pain and of despair,
    Mount to the vision, and the far adieu.

    Merged in the vastness, with a calm surmise
      Mount, lonely climber, brightened from afar;
      Whose soul is secret as the evening-star;
    Whose steps are toward the ultimate surprise:
    No dubious morrow dims those daring eyes--
      Divinely lit whence truth's horizons are.





_The sonnets in this volume have previously appeared in the columns of
"The Academy," "The Eye-Witness," and "The Yorkshire Observer." My
thanks are due to the Editors of these publications for their kind
permission to republish._

J.A.M.

  _Stocka House,
      Cottingley,
          Bingley._





CONTENTS


  Title Poem:              Page

  Iolaeus                   13

  Sonnets:

  The Return               67
  The Soul and the Sea     69
  Nations Estranged        71
  The Passing-Bell         73
  Condemned                75
  To America. I.           77
        "     II.          79
  To Italy. I.             81
       "    II.            83





IOLAeUS:

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 Iolaeus, 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 Faery!

    Beyond a gently-heaving brine
      We broke with