A Lost Morning / Herman Charles Merivale

A Lost Morning

(Midsummer)

Oh foolish world! The writer's necromancy
    At times is powerless on the restive pen,
And the blank page reflects the lagging fancy,
            Which has no message then.

The honest schoolboy, of his cricket dreaming,
    Could trace no ruder figures o'er the slate,
Than those which yield my brain, with nothing teeming,
            Outlet articulate.

My tale of work, in well-considered order,
    Lies fair before me on the laden desk;
But nothing in me speaks, save dreams that border
            The grave with the grotesque.

Plans jotted down for many-sided labor
    Invite in turn from various pigeon-holes,
Where the next story has some play for neighbor,
            Stocked with imagined souls.

Yet spite of will, o'er which men make such pother,
    I cannot call one spirit from the deep,
Where all the thoughts, which crowded each on other,
            Like very Merlin sleep.

Is it the sweet and heavy hum of summer,
    Full charged with the mesmeric scent of thyme,
That, through my window, an unbidden comer,
            Dissolves them into rhyme?

Is it the sun, in his new kinghood, sharing
    The message of pure luxury with me,
Which to the footsteps of his throne is bearing
            The murmur of the sea?—

And whispering, "Rest thee, over-anxious mortal,
    Awhile oblivious of the world's commands,
Content to offer at my golden portal
            A chaplet from thy hands.

"E'en weave it as thou wilt; thy garden musters
    Mute hints of ditties to inspire the lute;
And to thy lips and sense stoop glowing clusters
            Of glowing flower and fruit.

Fritz Zuber-Bühler, Daydreams.

Wikimedia Commons.

"Bring me no ode of an heroic measure;
    Tell me no tale; seek no satiric theme,
But merely babble, out of very pleasure,
            Thine unconnected dream!"

What could I answer? All the heat was singing,
    The insect chorus hummed in undertone;
Slow to my feet my mighty dog was bringing
            A too-exacting bone.

So happy in mere happiness of living,
    I let the hours slip unimproved by,
And, past the hope of cultured man's forgiving,
            Thus "diem perdidi."

So have I writ lines that begin and end not,
    An idle morning's thriftless castaway;
For whence they came, and whither tend or tend not,
            Critic! 'tis thine to say.

Herman Charles Merivale (1839-1906)
from Through the Year with the Poets: July, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Herman Charles Merivale biography