Poems — Volume 2

Transcribed from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” edition by David

Price, email ccx074@.org

[Picture: Book cover]

[Picture: The Châlet, Box Hill]

POEMS

VOL. II

BY

GEORGE MEREDITH

* * * * *

SURREY EDITION

* * * * *

LONDON

THE TIMES BOOK CLUB

376–384 OXFORD STREET, W.

1912

* * * * *

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to his Majesty

CONTENTS

PAGE

TO J. M., 1

Let Fate or Insufficiency provide

LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA, 2

Now farewell to you! you are

TIME AND SENTIMENT, 11

I see a fair young couple in a wood,

LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT, 12

On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose

THE STAR SIRIUS, 12

Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales

SENSE AND SPIRIT, 13

The senses loving Earth or well or ill

EARTH’S SECRET, 13

Not solitarily in fields we find

INTERNAL HARMONY, 14

Assured of worthiness we do not dread

GRACE AND LOVE, 14

Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she

APPRECIATION, 15

Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared,

THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM, 15

Rich labour is the struggle to be wise

THE STATE OF AGE, 16

Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg

PROGRESS, 16

In Progress you have little faith, say you:

THE WORLD’S ADVANCE, 17

Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline

A CERTAIN PEOPLE, 17

As Puritans they prominently wax,

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS, 18

That Garden of sedate Philosophy

A LATER ALEXANDRIAN, 18

An inspiration caught from dubious hues

AN ORSON OF THE MUSE, 19

Her son, albeit the Muse’s livery

THE POINT OF TASTE, 19

Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!

CAMELUS SALTAT, 20

What say you, critic, now you have become

CONTINUED, 20

Oracle of the market! thence you drew

MY THEME, 21

Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt:

CONTINUED, 21

’Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts

ON THE DANGER OF WAR, 22

Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,

TO CARDINAL MANNING, 23

I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,

TO COLONEL CHARLES, 24

An English heart, my commandant,

TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS, 27

Strike not thy dog with a stick!

Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN, 33

Enter these enchanted woods,

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN, 48

Last night returning from my twilight walk

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES, 49

He who has looked upon Earth

THE LARK ASCENDING, 67

He rises and begins to round,

PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS, 71

When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,

MELAMPUS, 75

With love exceeding a simple love of the things

LOVE IN THE VALLEY, 80

Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,

THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD, 88

Carols nature, counsel men,

THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH, 90

I chanced upon an early walk to spy

EARTH AND MAN, 92

On her great venture, Man,

A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT, 100

See the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath

Ballads and poems of Tragic Life

THE TWO MASKS, 115

Melpomene among her livid people,

ARCHDUCHESS ANNE, 116

I. In middle age an evil thing

II. Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost

III. Old Kraken read a missive penned

THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA, 133

Queen Theodolind has built

A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD, 139

Ladies who in chains of wedlock

THE YOUNG PRINCESS, 144

I. When the South sang like a nightingale

II. The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick,

III. Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire;

IV. The soft night-wind went laden to death

KING HARALD’S TRANCE, 154

Sword in length a reaping-hook amain

WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY, 158

Hawk or shrike has done this deed

YOUNG REYNARD, 159

Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub

MANFRED, 160

Projected from the bilious Childe,

HERNANI, 161

Cistercians might crack their sides

THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA, 162

Flat as to an eagle’s eye,

ANEURIN’S HARP, 180

Prince of Bards was old Aneurin;

MEN AND MAN, 186

Men the Angels eyed;

THE LAST CONTENTION, 187

Young captain of a crazy bark!

PERIANDER, 190

How died Melissa none dares shape in words.

SOLON, 195

The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye

BELLEROPHON, 197

Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod

PHAÉTHÔN, 200

At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous

charioteer,

A Reading of Earth

SEED-TIME, 209

Flowers of the willow-herb are wool;

HARD WEATHER, 211

Bursts from a rending East in flaws

THE SOUTH-WESTER, 215

Day of the cloud in fleets! O day

THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY, 220

I know him, February’s thrush,

THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER, 226

Demeter devastated our good land,

EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN, 231

The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South,

MOTHER TO BABE, 234

Fleck of sky you are,

WOODLAND PEACE, 235

Sweet as Eden is the air,

THE QUESTION WHITHER, 236

When we have thrown off this old suit,

OUTER AND INNER, 237

From twig to twig the spider weaves

NATURE AND LIFE, 239

Leave the uproar: at a leap

DIRGE IN WOODS, 240

A wind sways the pines,

A FAITH ON TRIAL, 241

On the morning of May,

CHANGE IN RECURRENCE, 260

I stood at the gate of the cot

HYMN TO COLOUR, 261

With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,

MEDITATION UNDER STARS, 265

What links are ours with orbs that are

WOODMAN AND ECHO, 268

Close Echo hears the woodman’s axe,

THE WISDOM OF ELD, 270

We spend our lives in learning pilotage,

EARTH’S PREFERENCE, 270

Earth loves her young: a preference manifest:

SOCIETY, 271

Historic be the survey of our kind,

WINTER HEAVENS, 271

Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive

NOTES 272

TO J. M.

LET Fate or Insufficiency provide

Mean ends for men who what they are would be:

Penned in their narrow day no change they see

Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride.

Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide:

And whether Earth’s great offspring, by decree,

Must rot if they abjure rapacity,

Not argument but effort shall decide.

They number many heads in that hard flock:

Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel.

Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel

The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew

A chasm sheer into the barrier rock,

And bring the army of the faithful through.

LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA

I

NOW farewell to you! you are

One of my dearest, whom I trust:

Now follow you the Western star,

And cast the old world off as dust.

II

From many friends adieu! adieu!

The quick heart of the word therein.

Much that we hope for hangs with you:

We lose you, but we lose to win.

III

The beggar-king, November, frets:

His tatters rich with Indian dyes

Goes hugging: we our season’s debts

Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise.

IV

We send our worthiest; can no less,

If we would now be read aright,—

To that great people who may bless

Or curse mankind: they have the might.

V

The proudest seasons find their graves,

And we, who would not be wooed, must court.

We have let the blunderers and the waves

Divide us, and the devil had sport.

VI

The blunderers and the waves no more

Shall sever kindred sending forth

Their worthiest from shore to shore

For welcome, bent to prove their worth.

VII

Go you and such as you afloat,

Our lost kinsfellowship to revive.

The battle of the antidote

Is tough, though silent: may you thrive!

VIII

I, when in this North wind I see

The straining red woods blown awry,

Feel shuddering like the winter tree,

All vein and artery on cold sky.

IX

The leaf that clothed me is torn away;

My friend is as a flying seed.

Ay, true; to bring replenished day

Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed.

X

What husky habitations seem

These comfortable sayings! they fell,

In some rich year become a dream:—

So cries my heart, the infidel! . . .

XI

Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest,

Arabian visions could not vie

With those broad wonders of the West,

And would I bid you stay? Not I!

XII

The strange experimental land

Where men continually dare take

Niagara leaps;—unshattered stand

’Twixt fall and fall;—for conscience’ sake,

XIII

Drive onward like a flood’s increase;—

Fresh rapids and abysms engage;—

(We live—we die) scorn fireside peace,

And, as a garment, put on rage,

XIV

Rather than bear God’s reprimand,

By rearing on a full fat soil

Concrete of sin and sloth;—this land,

You will observe it coil in coil.

XV

The land has been discover’d long,

The people we have yet to know;

Themselves they know not, save that strong

For good and evil still they grow.

XVI

Nor know they us. Yea, well enough

In that inveterate machine

Through which we speak the printed stuff

Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien

XVII

Tremendous:—as a lion’s show

The grand menagerie paintings hide:

Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow!

The poor old Lion lies inside! . . .

XVIII

It is not England that they hear,

But mighty Mammon’s pipers, trained

To trumpet out his moods, and stir

His sluggish soul: _her_ voice is chained:

XIX

Almost her spirit seems moribund!

O teach them, ’tis not she displays

The panic of a purse rotund,

Eternal dread of evil days,—

XX

That haunting spectre of success

Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths:

Not England answers nobleness,—

‘Live for thyself: thou art not earth’s.’

XXI

Not she, when struggling manhood tries

For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate,

Points out the planet, Compromise,

And shakes a mild reproving pate:

XXII

Says never: ‘I am well at ease,

My sneers upon the weak I shed:

The strong have my cajoleries:

And those beneath my feet I tread.’

XXIII

Nay, but ’tis said for her, great Lord!

The misery’s there! The shameless one

Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword,

Herself not yielding what it won:—

XXIV

Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach,

On sweet Prosperity—or greed.

‘Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each,

God’s blessings let us take, and feed!’

XXV

Ungrateful creatures crave a part—

She tells them firmly she is full;

Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart

With bleating, stops her ears with wool:—

XXVI

Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms

(Nightmares of bankruptcy and death),—

Showers down in lumps a load of alms,

Then pants as one who has lost a breath;

XXVII

Believes high heaven, whence favours flow,

Too kind to ask a sacrifice

For what it specially doth bestow;—

Gives _she_, ’tis generous, cheese to mice.

XXVIII

She saw the young Dominion strip

For battle with a grievous wrong,

And curled a noble Norman lip,

And looked with half an eye sidelong;

XXIX

And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,

Denounced the waste of blood and coin,

Implored the combatants, with tears,

Never to think they could rejoin.

XXX

Oh! was it England that, alas!

Turned sharp the victor to cajole?

Behold her features in the glass:

A monstrous semblance mocks her soul!

XXXI

A false majority, by stealth,

Have got her fast, and sway the rod:

A headless tyrant built of wealth,

The hypocrite, the belly-God.

XXXII

To him the daily hymns they raise:

His tastes are sought: his will is done:

He sniffs the putrid steam of praise,

Place for true England here is none!

XXXIII

But can a distant race discern

The difference ’twixt her and him?

My friend, that will you bid them learn.

He shames and binds her, head and limb.

XXXIV

Old wood has blossoms of this sort.

Though sound at core, she is old wood.

If freemen hate her, one retort

She has; but one!—‘You are my blood.’

XXXV

A poet, half a prophet, rose

In recent days, and called for power.

I love him; but his mountain prose—

His Alp and valley and wild flower—

XXXVI

Proclaimed our weakness, not its source.

What medicine for disease had he?

Whom summoned for a show of force?

Our titular aristocracy!

XXXVII

Why, these are great at City feasts;

From City riches mainly rise:

’Tis well to hear them, when the beasts

That die for us they eulogize!

XXXVIII

But these, of all the liveried crew

Obeisant in Mammon’s walk,

Most deferent ply the facial screw,

The spinal bend, submissive talk.

XXXIX

Small fear that they will run to books

(At least the better form of seed)!

I, too, have hoped from their good looks,

And fables of their Northman breed;—

XL

Have hoped that they the land would head

In acts magnanimous; but, lo,

When fainting heroes beg for bread

They frown: where they are driven they go.

XLI

Good health, my friend! and may your lot

Be cheerful o’er the Western rounds.

This butter-woman’s market-trot

Of verse is passing market-bounds.

XLII

Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone.

On banks of fog faint lines extend:

Adieu! bring back a braver dawn

To England, and to me my friend.

_November_ 15_th_, 1867.

TIME AND SENTIMENT

I SEE a fair young couple in a wood,

And as they go, one bends to take a flower,

That so may be embalmed their happy hour,

And in another day, a kindred mood,

Haply together, or in solitude,

Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,

The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,

Wherewith by their young blood they are endued

To move all enviable, framed in May,

And of an aspect sisterly with Truth:

Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed:

Who will be prompted on some pallid day

To lift the hueless flower and show that dead,

Even such, and by this token, is their youth.

LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT

ON a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.

Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend

Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,

Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.

Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.

And now upon his western wing he leaned,

Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,

Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.

Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars

With memory of the old revolt from Awe,

He reached a middle height, and at the stars,

Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.

Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,

The army of unalterable law.

THE STAR SIRIUS

BRIGHT Sirius! that when Orion pales

To dotlings under moonlight still art keen

With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien

Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales:

Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails,

Reducing many lustrous to the lean:

Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen

To show what source divine is, and prevails.

Long watches through, at one with godly night,

I mark thee planting joy in constant fire;

And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire

Life to the spirit, passion for the light,

Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight

Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.

SENSE AND SPIRIT

THE senses loving Earth or well or ill

Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot.

The mind is in their trammels, and lights not

By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will

To find in nature things which less may chill

An ardour that desires, unknowing what.

Till we conceive her living we go distraught,

At best but circle-windsails of a mill.

Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life

Creatively has given us blood and breath

For endless war and never wound unhealed,

The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field

Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife

To read her own and trust her down to death.

EARTH’S SECRET

NOT solitarily in fields we find

Earth’s secret open, though one page is there;

Her plainest, such as children spell, and share

With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind.

Not where the troubled passions toss the mind,

In turbid cities, can the key be bare.

It hangs for those who hither thither fare,

Close interthreading nature with our kind.

They, hearing History speak, of what men were,

And have become, are wise. The gain is great

In vision and solidity; it lives.

Yet at a thought of life apart from her,

Solidity and vision lose their state,

For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.

INTERNAL HARMONY

ASSURED of worthiness we do not dread

Competitors; we rather give them hail

And greeting in the lists where we may fail:

Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head!

My betters are my masters: purely fed

By their sustainment I likewise shall scale

Some rocky steps between the mount and vale;

Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed.

So that I draw the breath of finer air,

Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn,

Nor rivals tightly belted for the race.

Good speed to them! My place is here or there;

My pride is that among them I have place:

And thus I keep this instrument in tune.

GRACE AND LOVE

TWO flower-enfolding crystal vases she

I love fills daily, mindful but of one:

And close behind pale morn she, like the sun

Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see,

Clear water in the cup, and into me

The image of herself: and that being done,

Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run

In climbers or in creepers or the tree

She ranges with unerring fingers fine,

To harmony so vivid that through sight

I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold

Beyond the senses, where such love as mine,

Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold

Their starry more from her and me, unite.

APPRECIATION

EARTH was not Earth before her sons appeared,

Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born:

And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn

At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared;

To none by her fresh wingedness endeared;

Unwelcome unto revellers outworn.

I the last echoes of Diana’s horn

In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered.

No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul!

And more than simple duty moved thy feet.

New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame,

From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll

May men read on the heart I taught to beat:

That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim.

THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM

RICH labour is the struggle to be wise,

While we make sure the struggle cannot cease.

Else better were it in some bower of peace

Slothful to swing, contending with the flies.

You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies,

As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece:

She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece,

Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies.

So following her, your hewing may attain

The right to speak unto the mute, and shun

That sly temptation of the illumined brain,

Deliveries oracular, self-spun.

Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain

To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.

THE STATE OF AGE

RUB thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg

Honours from aught about thee. Light the young.

Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,

O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.

Thou art for this our life an ancient egg,

Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue,

Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung,

Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg.

Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires.

But hast thou in thy season set her fires

To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash,

Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high:

Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I

Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash.

PROGRESS

IN Progress you have little faith, say you:

Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates,

By force, and gentle women choose their mates

Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew:

The human heart Bellona’s mad halloo

Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates.

‘Now at this time,’ says History, ‘those two States

Stood ready their past wrestling to renew.

They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes

Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight

Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred

The bloody settlement of their disputes

Till God should bless them better.’ They did right.

And naming Progress, both shall have the word.

THE WORLD’S ADVANCE

JUDGE mildly the tasked world; and disincline

To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.

You have perchance observed the inebriate’s track

At night when he has quitted the inn-sign:

He plays diversions on the homeward line,

Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack:

A hedge may take him, but he turns not back,

Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine.

‘Spiral,’ the memorable Lady terms

Our mind’s ascent: our world’s advance presents

That figure on a flat; the way of worms.

Cherish the promise of its good intents,

And warn it, not one instinct to efface

Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.

A CERTAIN PEOPLE

AS Puritans they prominently wax,

And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.

Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,

They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.

But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks

When Peace another door in them unlocks,

Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox

Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe.

Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness,

Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut.

They need their pious exercises less

Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief

That these are devilish only to their thief,

Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.

THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS

THAT Garden of sedate Philosophy

Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap,

A shining spot upon a shaggy map;

Where mind and body, in fair junction free,

Luted their joyful concord; like the tree

From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.

Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature’s lap

Of gentlemen the happy nursery.

That Garden would on light supremest verge,

Were the long drawing of an equal breath

Healthful for Wisdom’s head, her heart, her aims.

Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge,

And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims

The crucifix that came of Nazareth.

A LATER ALEXANDRIAN

AN inspiration caught from dubious hues

Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased;

For they lead farther than the single-faced,

Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.

The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse,

His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.

Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced,

And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews.

Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled

Responsively: he sang not Nature’s own

Divinest, but his lyric had a tone,

As ’twere a forest-echo of her voice:

What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled

From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice.

AN ORSON OF THE MUSE

HER son, albeit the Muse’s livery

And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts,

Naked and hairy in his savage haunts,

To Nature only will he bend the knee;

Spouting the founts of her distillery

Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants

Being Nature’s, civil limitation daunts

His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.

Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,

The Muse will hearken to with graver ear

Than many of her train can waken: him

Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear

Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,

If in no vessel built for sea they swim.

THE POINT OF TASTE

UNHAPPY poets of a sunken prime!

You to reviewers are as ball to bat.

They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat

With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime

On you the excommunicates of Rhyme,

Because you sing not in the living Fat.

The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat

Is verse that shuns their self-producing time.

Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,

Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs,

You win their pleased attention. But, bright God

O’ the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!

Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump

Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs.

CAMELUS SALTAT

WHAT say you, critic, now you have become

An author and maternal?—in this trap

(To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap

On instruments as like as drum to drum.

You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum,

So like the nose fly-teased in its noon’s nap.

You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap

With that between the fingers and the thumb.

It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch,

Which bade our public gobble or reject.

O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked,

Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!

What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere,

You dealt?—the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.

CONTINUED

ORACLE of the market! thence you drew

The taste which stamped you guide of the inept.—

A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept,

A sturdy and a briny, once men knew.

He loved small beer, and for that copious brew,

To roll ingurgitation till he slept,

Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept:

And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew.

At last this dancer to the Polar star

Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched,

To drink the sea and pilot him to land.

O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched,

Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are

Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.

MY THEME

OF me and of my theme think what thou wilt:

The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.

But I have never stood at Fortune’s beck:

Were she and her light crew to run atilt

At my poor holding little would be spilt;

Small were the praise for singing o’er that wreck.

Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck;

He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.

Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell

With other than those votaries she deals

The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.

I say but that this love of Earth reveals

A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,

Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.

CONTINUED

’TIS true the wisdom that my mind exacts

Through contemplation from a heart unbent

By many tempests may be stained and rent:

The summer flies it mightily attracts.

Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts,

Which scarce give breathing of the sty’s content

For their diurnal carnal nourishment:

Which treat with Nature in official pacts.

The deader body Nature could proclaim.

Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath

Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth.

But during calms the flies of idle aim

Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst

For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.

ON THE DANGER OF WAR

AVERT, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,

This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.

When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric

Seems reason they are ripe for cannon’s food.

Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,

But with the doubt ’tis our old devil’s trick.

O now the down-slope of the lunatic

Illumine lest we redden of that brood.

For not since man in his first view of thee

Ascended to the heavens giving sign

Within him of deep sky and sounded sea,

Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;

In peril of his blood his ears incline

To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.

TO CARDINAL MANNING

I, WAKEFUL for the skylark voice in men,

Or straining for the angel of the light,

Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,

When I behold one lamp that through our fen

Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again

A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright

From speaking to the soul of us forthright

What things our craven senses keep from ken.

This is the doing of the Christ; the way

He went on earth; the service above guile

To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;

Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay

Such misery as by these present signs

Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.

TO COLONEL CHARLES

(DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)

I

AN English heart, my commandant,

A soldier’s eye you have, awake

To right and left; with looks askant

On bulwarks not of adamant,

Where white our Channel waters break.

II

Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness

Across the ruffled strip of salt,

You look, and like the prospect less.

On men and guns would you lay stress,

To bid the Island’s foemen halt.

III

While loud the Year is raising cry

At birth to know if it must bear

In history the bloody dye,

An English heart, a soldier’s eye,

For the old country first will care.

IV

And how stands she, artillerist,

Among the vapours waxing dense,

With cannon charged? ’Tis hist! and hist!

And now she screws a gouty fist,

And now she counts to clutch her pence.

V

With shudders chill as aconite,

The couchant chewer of the cud

Will start at times in pussy fright

Before the dogs, when reads her sprite

The streaks predicting streams of blood.

VI

She thinks they may mean something; thinks

They may mean nothing: haply both.

Where darkness all her daylight drinks,

She fain would find a leader lynx,

Not too much taxing mental sloth.

VII

Cleft like the fated house in twain,

One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench!

Gambetta’s word on dull MacMahon:

‘The cow that sees a passing train’:

So spies she Russian, German, French.

VIII

She? no, her weakness: she unbraced

Among those athletes fronting storms!

The muscles less of steel than paste,

Why, they of nature feel distaste

For flash, much more for push, of arms.

IX

The poet sings, and well know we,

That ‘iron draws men after it.’

But towering wealth may seem the tree

Which bears the fruit _Indemnity_,

And draw as fast as battle’s fit,

X

If feeble be the hand on guard,

Alas, alas! And nations are

Still the mad forces, though the scarred.

Should they once deem our emblem Pard

Wagger of tail for all save war;—

XI

Mechanically screwed to flail

His flanks by Presses conjuring fear;—

A money-bag with head and tail;—

Too late may valour then avail!

As you beheld, my cannonier,

XII

When with the staff of Benedek,

On the plateau of Königgrätz,

You saw below that wedgeing speck;

Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck,

Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.

_February_ 1887.

TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS

I

STRIKE not thy dog with a stick!

I did it yesterday:

Not to undo though I gained

The Paradise: heavy it rained

On Kobold’s flanks, and he lay.

II

Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,

From his hunt had come back to my heel.

I heard a sharp worrying sound,

And Bruno foamed on the ground,

With Koby as making a meal.

III

I did what I could not undo

Were the gates of the Paradise shut

Behind me: I deemed it was just.

I left Koby crouched in the dust,

Some yards from the woodman’s hut.

IV

He bewhimpered his welting, and I

Scarce thought it enough for him: so,

By degrees, through the upper box-grove,

Within me an old story hove,

Of a man and a dog: you shall know.

V

The dog was of novel breed,

The Shannon retriever, untried:

His master, an old Irish lord,

In an oaken armchair snored

At midnight, whisky beside.

VI

Perched up a desolate tower,

Where the black storm-wind was a whip

To set it nigh spinning, these two

Were alone, like the last of a crew,

Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.

VII

The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;

He quitted his couch on the rug,

Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;

And, finding the signals unmarked,

Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.

VIII

He pulled till his master jumped

For fury of wrath, and laid on

With the length of a tough knotted staff,

Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,

And leave a sheer carcase anon.

IX

That done, he sat, panted, and cursed

The vile cross of this brute: nevermore

Would he house it to rear such a cur!

The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,

Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.

X

Then his master raised head too, and sniffed:

It struck him the dog had a sense

That honoured both dam and sire.

You have guessed how the tower was afire.

The Shannon retriever dates thence.

XI

I mused: saw the pup ease his heart

Of his instinct for chasing, and sink

Overwrought by excitement so new:

A scene that for Koby to view

Was the seizure of nerves in a link.

XII

And part sympathetic, and part

Imitatively, raged my poor brute;

And I, not thinking of ill,

Doing eviller: nerves are still

Our savage too quick at the root.

XIII

They spring us: I proved it, albeit

I played executioner then

For discipline, justice, the like.

Yon stick I had handy to strike

Should have warned of the tyrant in men.

XIV

You read in your History books,

How the Prince in his youth had a mind

For governing gently his land.

Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,

When the temper is other than kind!

XV

At home all was well; Koby’s ribs

Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,

He forgives me, his criminal air

Throws a shade of Llewellyn’s despair

For the hound slain for saving his child.

POEMS AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH

THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN

I

ENTER these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

Nothing harms beneath the leaves

More than waves a swimmer cleaves.

Toss your heart up with the lark,

Foot at peace with mouse and worm,

Fair you fare.

Only at a dread of dark

Quaver, and they quit their form:

Thousand eyeballs under hoods

Have you by the hair.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

II

Here the snake across your path

Stretches in his golden bath:

Mossy-footed squirrels leap

Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:

Yaffles on a chuckle skim

Low to laugh from branches dim:

Up the pine, where sits the star,

Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.

Each has business of his own;

But should you distrust a tone,

Then beware.

Shudder all the haunted roods,

All the eyeballs under hoods

Shroud you in their glare.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

III

Open hither, open hence,

Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,

Where the strawberry runs red,

With white star-flower overhead;

Cumbered by dry twig and cone,

Shredded husks of seedlings flown,

Mine of mole and spotted flint:

Of dire wizardry no hint,

Save mayhap the print that shows

Hasty outward-tripping toes,

Heels to terror on the mould.

These, the woods of Westermain,

Are as others to behold,

Rich of wreathing sun and rain;

Foliage lustreful around

Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.

Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,

Shelter eager minikins,

Myriads, free to peck and pipe:

Would you better? would you worse?

You with them may gather ripe

Pleasures flowing not from purse.

Quick and far as Colour flies

Taking the delighted eyes,

You of any well that springs

May unfold the heaven of things;

Have it homely and within,

And thereof its likeness win,

Will you so in soul’s desire:

This do sages grant t’ the lyre.

This is being bird and more,

More than glad musician this;

Granaries you will have a store

Past the world of woe and bliss;

Sharing still its bliss and woe;

Harnessed to its hungers, no.

On the throne Success usurps,

You shall seat the joy you feel

Where a race of water chirps,

Twisting hues of flourished steel:

Or where light is caught in hoop

Up a clearing’s leafy rise,

Where the crossing deerherds troop

Classic splendours, knightly dyes.

Or, where old-eyed oxen chew

Speculation with the cud,

Read their pool of vision through,

Back to hours when mind was mud;

Nigh the knot, which did untwine

Timelessly to drowsy suns;

Seeing Earth a slimy spine,

Heaven a space for winging tons.

Farther, deeper, may you read,

Have you sight for things afield,

Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,

Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;

Showing a kind face and sweet:

Look you with the soul you see’t.

Glory narrowing to grace,

Grace to glory magnified,

Following that will you embrace

Close in arms or aëry wide.

Banished is the white Foam-born

Not from here, nor under ban

Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn,

Pipings of the reedy Pan.

Loved of Earth of old they were,

Loving did interpret her;

And the sterner worship bars

None whom Song has made her stars.

You have seen the huntress moon

Radiantly facing dawn,

Dusky meads between them strewn

Glimmering like downy awn:

Argent Westward glows the hunt,

East the blush about to climb;

One another fair they front,

Transient, yet outshine the time;

Even as dewlight off the rose

In the mind a jewel sows.

Thus opposing grandeurs live

Here if Beauty be their dower:

Doth she of her spirit give,

Fleetingness will spare her flower.

This is in the tune we play,

Which no spring of strength would quell;

In subduing does not slay;

Guides the channel, guards the well:

Tempered holds the young blood-heat,

Yet through measured grave accord,

Hears the heart of wildness beat

Like a centaur’s hoof on sward.

Drink the sense the notes infuse,

You a larger self will find:

Sweetest fellowship ensues

With the creatures of your kind.

Ay, and Love, if Love it be

Flaming over _I_ and _ME_,

Love meet they who do not shove

Cravings in the van of Love.

Courtly dames are here to woo,

Knowing love if it be true.

Reverence the blossom-shoot

Fervently, they are the fruit.

Mark them stepping, hear them talk,

Goddess, is no myth inane,

You will say of those who walk

In the woods of Westermain.

Waters that from throat and thigh

Dart the sun his arrows back;

Leaves that on a woodland sigh

Chat of secret things no lack;

Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,

Bare or veiled they move sincere;

Not by slavish terrors tripped

Being anew in nature dipped,

Growths of what they step on, these;

With the roots the grace of trees.

Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,

For a tyrant’s flattered pride,

Mind, which nourished not by light,

Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:

Whereof are strange tales to tell;

Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.

Here the ancient battle ends,

Joining two astonished friends,

Who the kiss can give and take

With more warmth than in that world

Where the tiger claws the snake,

Snake her tiger clasps infurled,

And the issue of their fight

People lands in snarling plight.

Here her splendid beast she leads

Silken-leashed and decked with weeds

Wild as he, but breathing faint

Sweetness of unfelt constraint.

Love, the great volcano, flings

Fires of lower Earth to sky;

Love, the sole permitted, sings

Sovereignly of _ME_ and _I_.

Bowers he has of sacred shade,

Spaces of superb parade,

Voiceful . . . But bring you a note

Wrangling, howsoe’er remote,

Discords out of discord spin

Round and round derisive din:

Sudden will a pallor pant

Chill at screeches miscreant;

Owls or spectres, thick they flee;

Nightmare upon horror broods;

Hooded laughter, monkish glee,

Gaps the vital air.

Enter these enchanted woods

You who dare.

IV

You must love the light so well

That no darkness will seem fell.

Love it so you could accost

Fellowly a livid ghost.

Whish! the phantom wisps away,

Owns him smoke to cocks of day.

In your breast the light must burn

Fed of you, like corn in quern

Ever plumping while the wheel

Speeds the mill and drains the meal.

Light to light sees little strange,

Only features heavenly new;

Then you touch the nerve of Change,

Then of Earth you have the clue;

Then her two-sexed meanings melt

Through you, wed the thought and felt.

Sameness locks no scurfy pond

Here for Custom, crazy-fond:

Change is on the wing to bud

Rose in brain from rose in blood.

Wisdom throbbing shall you see

Central in complexity;

From her pasture ’mid the beasts

Rise to her ethereal feasts,

Not, though lightnings track your wit

Starward, scorning them you quit:

For be sure the bravest wing

Preens it in our common spring,

Thence along the vault to soar,

You with others, gathering more,

Glad of more, till you reject

Your proud title of elect,

Perilous even here while few

Roam the arched greenwood with you.

Heed that snare.

Muffled by his cavern-cowl

Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,

Who was lord ere light you drank,

And lest blood of knightly rank

Stream, let not your fair princess

Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,

Watches keenly there.

Oft has he been riven; slain

Is no force in Westermain.

Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,

Put his fangs to uses, tame,

Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,

How to cure him sick and lame.

Much restricted, much enringed,

Much he frets, the hooked and winged,

Never known to spare.

’Tis enough: the name of Sage

Hits no thing in nature, nought;

Man the least, save when grave Age

From yon Dragon guards his thought.

Eye him when you hearken dumb

To what words from Wisdom come.

When she says how few are by

Listening to her, eye his eye.

Self, his name declare.

Him shall Change, transforming late,

Wonderously renovate.

Hug himself the creature may:

What he hugs is loathed decay.

Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!

Change will strip his armour off;

Make of him who was all maw,

Inly only thrilling-shrewd,

Such a servant as none saw

Through his days of dragonhood.

Days when growling o’er his bone,

Sharpened he for mine and thine;

Sensitive within alone;

Scaly as the bark of pine.

Change, the strongest son of Life,

Has the Spirit here to wife.

Lo, their young of vivid breed,

Bear the lights that onward speed,

Threading thickets, mounting glades,

Up the verdurous colonnades,

Round the fluttered curves, and down,

Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown,

Whither, in her central space,

Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase.

Fount unresting, Lure divine!

There meet all: too late look most.

Fire in water hued as wine,

Springs amid a shadowy host,

Circled: one close-headed mob,

Breathless, scanning divers heaps,

Where a Heart begins to throb,

Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.

And ’tis very strange, ’tis said,

How you spy in each of them

Semblance of that Dragon red,

As the oak in bracken-stem.

And, ’tis said, how each and each:

Which commences, which subsides:

First my Dragon! doth beseech

Her who food for all provides.

And she answers with no sign;

Utters neither yea nor nay;

Fires the water hued as wine;

Kneads another spark in clay.

Terror is about her hid;

Silence of the thunders locked;

Lightnings lining the shut lid;

Fixity on quaking rocked.

Lo, you look at Flow and Drought

Interflashed and interwrought:

Ended is begun, begun

Ended, quick as torrents run.

Young Impulsion spouts to sink;

Luridness and lustre link;

’Tis your come and go of breath;

Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;

Each of either reaped and sown:

Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.

See you so? your senses drift;

’Tis a shuttle weaving swift.

Look with spirit past the sense,

Spirit shines in permanence.

That is She, the view of whom

Is the dust within the tomb,

Is the inner blush above,

Look to loathe, or look to love;

Think her Lump, or know her Flame;

Dread her scourge, or read her aim;

Shoot your hungers from their nerve;

Or, in her example, serve.

Some have found her sitting grave;

Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,

Hurling dust of fool and knave

In a hissing smithy’s jet.

More it were not well to speak;

Burn to see, you need but seek.

Once beheld she gives the key

Airing every doorway, she.

Little can you stop or steer

Ere of her you are the seër.

On the surface she will witch,

Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze

Under, and the soul is rich

Past computing, past amaze.

Then is courage that endures

Even her awful tremble yours.

Then, the reflex of that Fount

Spied below, will Reason mount

Lordly and a quenchless force,

Lighting Pain to its mad source,

Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,

Shot through all its phantom shapes.

Then your spirit will perceive

Fleshly seed of fleshly sins;

Where the passions interweave,

How the serpent tangle spins

Of the sense of Earth misprised,

Brainlessly unrecognized;

She being Spirit in her clods,

Footway to the God of Gods.

Then for you are pleasures pure,

Sureties as the stars are sure:

Not the wanton beckoning flags

Which, of flattery and delight,

Wax to the grim Habit-Hags

Riding souls of men to night:

Pleasures that through blood run sane,

Quickening spirit from the brain.

Each of each in sequent birth,

Blood and brain and spirit, three,

(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),

Join for true felicity.

Are they parted, then expect

Some one sailing will be wrecked:

Separate hunting are they sped,

Scan the morsel coveted.

Earth that Triad is: she hides

Joy from him who that divides;

Showers it when the three are one

Glassing her in union.

Earth your haven, Earth your helm,

You command a double realm;

Labouring here to pay your debt,

Till your little sun shall set;

Leaving her the future task:

Loving her too well to ask.

Eglantine that climbs the yew,

She her darkest wreathes for those

Knowing her the Ever-new,

And themselves the kin o’ the rose.

Life, the chisel, axe and sword,

Wield who have her depths explored:

Life, the dream, shall be their robe

Large as air about the globe;

Life, the question, hear its cry

Echoed with concordant Why;

Life, the small self-dragon ramped,

Thrill for service to be stamped.

Ay, and over every height

Life for them shall wave a wand:

That, the last, where sits affright,

Homely shows the stream beyond.

Love the light and be its lynx,

You will track her and attain;

Read her as no cruel Sphinx

In the woods of Westermain,

Daily fresh the woods are ranged;

Glooms which otherwhere appal,

Sounded: here, their worths exchanged

Urban joins with pastoral:

Little lost, save what may drop

Husk-like, and the mind preserves.

Natural overgrowths they lop,

Yet from nature neither swerves,

Trained or savage: for this cause:

Of our Earth they ply the laws,

Have in Earth their feeding root,

Mind of man and bent of brute.

Hear that song; both wild and ruled.

Hear it: is it wail or mirth?

Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?

None, and all: it springs of Earth.

O but hear it! ’tis the mind;

Mind that with deep Earth unites,

Round the solid trunk to wind

Rings of clasping parasites.

Music have you there to feed

Simplest and most soaring need.

Free to wind, and in desire

Winding, they to her attached

Feel the trunk a spring of fire,

And ascend to heights unmatched,

Whence the tidal world is viewed

As a sea of windy wheat,

Momently black, barren, rude;

Golden-brown, for harvest meet,

Dragon-reaped from folly-sown;

Bride-like to the sickle-blade:

Quick it varies, while the moan,

Moan of a sad creature strayed,

Chiefly is its voice. So flesh

Conjures tempest-flails to thresh

Good from worthless. Some clear lamps

Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.

Monster is it still, and blind,

Fit but to be led by Pain.

Glance we at the paths behind,

Fruitful sight has Westermain.

There we laboured, and in turn

Forward our blown lamps discern,

As you see on the dark deep

Far the loftier billows leap,

Foam for beacon bear.

Hither, hither, if you will,

Drink instruction, or instil,

Run the woods like vernal sap,

Crying, hail to luminousness!

But have care.

In yourself may lurk the trap:

On conditions they caress.

Here you meet the light invoked

Here is never secret cloaked.

Doubt you with the monster’s fry

All his orbit may exclude;

Are you of the stiff, the dry,

Cursing the not understood;

Grasp you with the monster’s claws;

Govern with his truncheon-saws;

Hate, the shadow of a grain;

You are lost in Westermain:

Earthward swoops a vulture sun,

Nighted upon carrion:

Straightway venom wine-cups shout

Toasts to One whose eyes are out:

Flowers along the reeling floor

Drip henbane and hellebore:

Beauty, of her tresses shorn,

Shrieks as nature’s maniac:

Hideousness on hoof and horn

Tumbles, yapping in her track:

Haggard Wisdom, stately once,

Leers fantastical and trips:

Allegory drums the sconce,

Impiousness nibblenips.

Imp that dances, imp that flits,

Imp o’ the demon-growing girl,

Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pits

Round you, and with them you whirl

Fast where pours the fountain-rout

Out of Him whose eyes are out:

Multitudes on multitudes,

Drenched in wallowing devilry:

And you ask where you may be,

In what reek of a lair

Given to bones and ogre-broods:

And they yell you Where.

Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.

A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN

I

LAST night returning from my twilight walk

I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow

Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk

He reached me flowers as from a withered bough:

O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!

II

Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.

Another stood by me, a shape in stone,

Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,

And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:

O Life, how naked and how hard when known!

III

Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I.

Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,

And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,

Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s decline

Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.

THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES

I

HE who has looked upon Earth

Deeper than flower and fruit,

Losing some hue of his mirth,

As the tree striking rock at the root,

Unto him shall the marvellous tale

Of Callistes more humanly come

With the touch on his breast than a hail

From the markets that hum.

II

Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.

’Twas the season when wintertide,

In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,

Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,

By light throwing shallow shade,

Between the beam and the gloom,

Sicilian Enna, whose Maid

Such aspect wears in her bloom

Underneath since the Charioteer

Of Darkness whirled her away,

On a reaped afternoon of the year,

Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.

O and naked of her, all dust,

The majestic Mother and Nurse,

Ringing cries to the God, the Just,

Curled the land with the blight of her curse:

Recollected of this glad isle

Still quaking. But now more fair,

And momently fraying the while

The veil of the shadows there,

Soft Enna that prostrate grief

Sang through, and revealed round the vines,

Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,

The wheat-blades tripping in lines,

A hue unillumined by sun

Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts:

All the penetrable dun

Of the morn ere she mounts.

III

Nor had saffron and sapphire and red

Waved aloft to their sisters below,

When gaped by the rock-channel head

Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow,

Reverberant over the plain:

A sound oft fearfully swung

For the coming of wrathful rain:

And forth, like the dragon-tongue

Of a fire beaten flat by the gale,

But more as the smoke to behold,

A chariot burst. Then a wail

Quivered high of the love that would fold

Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,

Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed,

And the team of the chariot swart

Reared in marble, the six, dismayed,

Like hoofs that by night plashing sea

Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:

For, lo, the Great Mother, She!

And Callistes gazed, he gave

His eyeballs up to the sight:

The embrace of the Twain, of whom

To men are their day, their night,

Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:

Our Lady of the Sheaves

And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet

Of Enna: he saw through leaves

The Mother and Daughter meet.

They stood by the chariot-wheel,

Embraced, very tall, most like

Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel

Down their shivering columns and strike

Head to head, crossing throats: and apart,

For the feast of the look, they drew,

Which Darkness no longer could thwart;

And they broke together anew,

Exulting to tears, flower and bud.

But the mate of the Rayless was grave:

She smiled like Sleep on its flood,

That washes of all we crave:

Like the trance of eyes awake

And the spirit enshrouded, she cast

The wan underworld on the lake.

They were so, and they passed.

IV

He tells it, who knew the law

Upon mortals: he stood alive

Declaring that this he saw:

He could see, and survive.

V

Now the youth was not ware of the beams

With the grasses intertwined,

For each thing seen, as in dreams,

Came stepping to rear through his mind,

Till it struck his remembered prayer

To be witness of this which had flown

Like a smoke melted thinner than air,

That the vacancy doth disown.

And viewing a maiden, he thought

It might now be morn, and afar

Within him the memory wrought

Of a something that slipped from the car

When those, the august, moved by:

Perchance a scarf, and perchance

This maiden. She did not fly,

Nor started at his advance:

She looked, as when infinite thirst

Pants pausing to bless the springs,

Refreshed, unsated. Then first

He trembled with awe of the things

He had seen; and he did transfer,

Divining and doubting in turn,

His reverence unto her;

Nor asked what he crouched to learn:

The whence of her, whither, and why

Her presence there, and her name,

Her parentage: under which sky

Her birth, and how hither she came,

So young, a virgin, alone,

Unfriended, having no fear,

As Oreads have; no moan,

Like the lost upon earth; no tear;

Not a sign of the torch in the blood,

Though her stature had reached the height

When mantles a tender rud

In maids that of youths have sight,

If maids of our seed they be:

For he said: A glad vision art thou!

And she answered him: Thou to me!

As men utter a vow.

VI

Then said she, quick as the cries

Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!

And Helios rose in her eyes,

That were full as the dew-balls bright,

Relucent to him as dews

Unshaded. Breathing, she sent

Her voice to the God of the Muse,

And along the vale it went,

Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:

Sweet, but no young maid’s throat:

The echo beyond the hill

Ran falling on half the note:

And under the shaken ground

Where the Hundred-headed groans

By the roots of great Aetna bound,

As of him were hollow tones

Of wondering roared: a tale

Repeated to sunless halls.

But now off the face of the vale

Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls

Of the lake’s rock-head were gold,

And the breast of the lake, that swell

Of the crestless long wave rolled

To shore-bubble, pebble and shell.

A morning of radiant lids

O’er the dance of the earth opened wide:

The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids

Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,

Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:

There was milk, honey, music to make:

Up their branches the little birds billed:

Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.

O shining in sunlight, chief

After water and water’s caress,

Was the young bronze-orange leaf,

That clung to the tree as a tress,

Shooting lucid tendrils to wed

With the vine-hook tree or pole,

Like Arachne launched out on her thread.

Then the maiden her dusky stole

In the span of the black-starred zone,

Gathered up for her footing fleet.

As one that had toil of her own

She followed the lines of wheat

Tripping straight through the fields, green blades,

To the groves of olive grey,

Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades

Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray

In a night, like the snow-packed storm:

Pear, apple, almond, plum:

Not wintry now: pushing, warm!

And she touched them with finger and thumb,

As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,

Recounting again and again,

Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,

With the meaning known to men.

For hours in the track of the plough

And the pruning-knife she stepped,

And of how the seed works, and of how

Yields the soil, she seemed adept.

Then she murmured that name of the dearth,

The Beneficent, Hers, who bade

Our husbandmen sow for the birth

Of the grain making earth full glad.

She murmured that Other’s: the dirge

Of life-light: for whose dark lap

Our locks are clipped on the verge

Of the realm where runs no sap.

She said: We have looked on both!

And her eyes had a wavering beam

Of various lights, like the froth

Of the storm-swollen ravine stream

In flame of the bolt. What links

Were these which had made him her friend?

He eyed her, as one who drinks,

And would drink to the end.

VII

Now the meadows with crocus besprent,

And the asphodel woodsides she left,

And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent

Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft

That tutors the torrent-brook,

Delaying its forceful spleen

With many a wind and crook

Through rock to the broad ravine.

By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,

And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,

And the sun-loving lizards and snakes

On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid

Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,

At a snap of twig or bark

In the track of the foreign foot-fall,

She climbed to the pineforest dark,

Overbrowing an emerald chine

Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath,

Running poplar and cypress to pine,

The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,

Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,

The citadel watching the bay,

The bay with the town in its arms,

The town shining white as the spray

Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,

Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,

White-ringed, as the midday flock,

Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.

That hour of the piercing shaft

Transfixes bough-shadows, confused

In veins of fire, and she laughed,

With her quiet mouth amused

To see the whole flock, adroop,

Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,

Imperceptibly filling the loop

Of its shade at a slant of sun.

The pipes under pent of the crag,

Where the goatherds in piping recline,

Have whimsical stops, burst and flag

Uncorrected as outstretched swine:

For the fingers are slack and unsure,

And the wind issues querulous:—thorns

And snakes!—but she listened demure,

Comparing day’s music with morn’s.

Of the gentle spirit that slips

From the bark of the tree she discoursed,

And of her of the wells, whose lips

Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.

And much of the sacred loon,

The frolic, the Goatfoot God,

For stories of indolent noon

In the pineforest’s odorous nod,

She questioned, not knowing: he can

Be waspish, irascible, rude,

He is oftener friendly to man,

And ever to beasts and their brood.

For the which did she love him well,

She said, and his pipes of the reed,

His twitched lips puffing to tell

In music his tears and his need,

Against the sharp catch of his hurt.

Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak,

Nor spake as the schools, to divert,

But fondly, perceiving him weak

Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear,

A holiness, horn and heel.

All this she had learnt in her ear

From Callistes, and taught him to feel.

Yea, the solemn divinity flushed

Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast,

And the steeps where the cataract rushed,

And the wilds where the forest is priest,

Were his temple to clothe him in awe,

While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read

The haunts of the beak and the claw

As plain as the land of bread,

But Cities and martial States,

Whither soon the youth veered his theme,

Were impervious barrier-gates

To her: and that ship, a trireme,

Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,

Though he dwelt on the message it bore

Of sceptre and sword and lance

To the bee-swarms black on the shore,

Which were audible almost,

So black they were. It befel

That he called up the warrior host

Of the Song pouring hydromel

In thunder, the wide-winged Song.

And he named with his boyish pride

The heroes, the noble throng

Past Acheron now, foul tide!

With his joy of the godlike band

And the verse divine, he named

The chiefs pressing hot on the strand,

Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.

The fleetfoot and ireful; the King;

Him, the prompter in stratagem,

Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,

O Muse! But she cried: Not of them

She breathed as if breath had failed,

And her eyes, while she bade him desist,

Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,

As you see the grey river-mist

Hold shapes on the yonder bank.

A moment her body waned,

The light of her sprang and sank:

Then she looked at the sun, she regained

Clear feature, and she breathed deep.

She wore the wan smile he had seen,

As the flow of the river of Sleep,

On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.

In sunlight she craved to bask,

Saying: Life! And who was she? who?

Of what issue? He dared not ask,

For that partly he knew.

VIII

A noise of the hollow ground

Turned the eye to the ear in debate:

Not the soft overflowing of sound

Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,

Barely swayed to some whispers remote,

Some swarming whispers above:

Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,

Hush-hushing the nested dove:

It was not the pines, or the rout

Oft heard from mid-forest in chase,

But the long muffled roar of a shout

Subterranean. Sharp grew her face.

She rose, yet not moved by affright;

’Twas rather good haste to use

Her holiday of delight

In the beams of the God of the Muse.

And the steeps of the forest she crossed,

On its dry red sheddings and cones

Up the paths by roots green-mossed,

Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.

Then out where the brook-torrent starts

To her leap, and from bend to curve

A hurrying elbow darts

For the instant-glancing swerve,

Decisive, with violent will

In the action formed, like hers,

The maiden’s, ascending; and still

Ascending, the bud of the furze,

The broom, and all blue-berried shoots

Of stubborn and prickly kind,

The juniper flat on its roots,

The dwarf rhododaphne, behind

She left, and the mountain sheep

Far behind, goat, herbage and flower.

The island was hers, and the deep,

All heaven, a golden hour.

Then with wonderful voice, that rang

Through air as the swan’s nigh death,

Of the glory of Light she sang,

She sang of the rapture of Breath.

Nor ever, says he who heard,

Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,

From bosom of singer or bird

A sweetness thus rich of the God

Whose harmonies always are sane.

She sang of furrow and seed,

The burial, birth of the grain,

The growth, and the showers that feed,

And the green blades waxing mature

For the husbandman’s armful brown.

O, the song in its burden ran pure,

And burden to song was a crown.

Callistes, a singer, skilled

In the gift he could measure and praise,

By a rival’s art was thrilled,

Though she sang but a Song of Days,

Where the husbandman’s toil and strife

Little varies to strife and toil:

But the milky kernel of life,

With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil

The song did give him to eat:

Gave the first rapt vision of Good,

And the fresh young sense of Sweet

The grace of the battle for food,

With the issue Earth cannot refuse

When men to their labour are sworn.

’Twas a song of the God of the Muse

To the forehead of Morn.

IX

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:

Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:

The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,

Bent abeam, with a whitened track,

Surprised, fast hauling the net,

As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.

She said: Is it night? O not yet!

With a travail of thoughts in her look.

The mountain heaved up to its peak:

Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;

Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.

Night? but never so fell a scowl

Wore night, nor the sky since then

When ocean ran swallowing shore,

And the Gods looked down for men.

Broke tempest with that stern roar

Never yet, save when black on the whirl

Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.

Then the youth and the shuddering girl,

Dim as shades in the angry shower,

Joined hands and descended a maze

Of the paths that were racing alive

Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,

Incessant, with sound of a hive.

The height was a fountain-urn

Pouring streams, and the whole solid height

Leaped, chasing at every turn

The pair in one spirit of flight

To the folding pineforest. Yet here,

Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,

The stillness bred spectral fear

Of the awfulness ranging without,

And imminent. Downward they fled,

From under the haunted roof,

To the valley aquake with the tread

Of an iron-resounding hoof,

As of legions of thunderful horse

Broken loose and in line tramping hard.

For the rage of a hungry force

Roamed blind of its mark over sward:

They saw it rush dense in the cloak

Of its travelling swathe of steam;

All the vale through a thin thread-smoke

Was thrown back to distance extreme:

And dull the full breast of it blinked,

Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er,

Diminished, in strangeness distinct,

Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:

An Enna of fields beyond sun,

Out of light, in a lurid web;

And the traversing fury spun

Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb;

As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,

Retire, and in ravenous greed,

Inveterate, swell its return.

Up and down, as if wringing from speed

Sights that made the unsighted appear,

Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.

Lo, a sea upon land held career

Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.

Callistes of home and escape

Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.

She gazed at the Void of shape,

She put her white hand to his reach,

Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.

And divided from day, from night,

From air that is breath, stood she,

Like the vale, out of light.

X

Then again in disorderly words

He muttered of home, and was mute,

With the heart of the cowering birds

Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot.

He gave her some redness that streamed

Through her limbs in a flitting glow.

The sigh of our life she seemed,

The bliss of it clothing in woe.

Frailer than flower when the round

Of the sickle encircles it: strong

To tell of the things profound,

Our inmost uttering song,

Unspoken. So stood she awhile

In the gloom of the terror afield,

And the silence about her smile

Said more than of tongue is revealed.

I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:

It said: and not joylessly shone

The remembrance of light through the screen

Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.

She led the youth trembling, appalled,

To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise

Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called,

And the hurricane blackness had eyes.

It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt.

Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side

Would have clasped her and dared a revolt

Sacrilegious as ever defied

High Olympus, but vainly for strength

His compassionate heart shook a frame

Stricken rigid to ice all its length.

On amain the black traveller came.

Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,

Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,

And the lord of the steeds was in form

He, the God of implacable brow,

Darkness: he: he in person: he raged

Through the wave like a boar of the wilds

From the hunters and hounds disengaged,

And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s.

Horror melted in anguish to hear.

Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path

Of the terrible Charioteer,

With the foam and torn features of wrath,

Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;

And the steeds clove it, rushing at land

Like the teeth of the famished at meat.

Then he swept out his hand.

XI

This, no more, doth Callistes recall:

He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,

On the maiden the chariot fall,

As a thundercloud swings on the moon.

Forth, free of the deluge, one cry

From the vanishing gallop rose clear:

And: Skiágeneia! the sky

Rang; Skiágeneia! the sphere.

And she left him therewith, to rejoice,

Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,

The life of their day in her voice,

Left her life in her name.

XII

Now the valley in ruin of fields

And fair meadowland, showing at eve

Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields

After battle, bade men believe

That no other than wrathfullest God

Had been loose on her beautiful breast,

Where the flowery grass was clod,

Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.

The valley, discreet in grief,

Disclosed but the open truth,

And Enna had hope of the sheaf:

There was none for the desolate youth

Devoted to mourn and to crave.

Of the secret he had divined

Of his friend of a day would he rave:

How for light of our earth she pined:

For the olive, the vine and the wheat,

Burning through with inherited fire:

And when Mother went Mother to meet,

She was prompted by simple desire

In the day-destined car to have place

At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,

And be drawn to the dear earth’s face.

She was fire for the blue and the green

Of our earth, dark fire; athirst

As a seed of her bosom for dawn,

White air that had robed and nursed

Her mother. Now was she gone

With the Silent, the God without tear,

Like a bud peeping out of its sheath

To be sundered and stamped with the sere.

And Callistes to her beneath,

As she to our beams, extinct,

Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.

In division so were they linked.

But the song which had betrayed

Her flight to the cavernous ear

For its own keenly wakeful: that song

Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer

Of the husbandman’s heart made strong

Through droughts and deluging rains

With his faith in the Great Mother’s love:

O the joy of the breath she sustains,

And the lyre of the light above,

And the first rapt vision of Good,

And the fresh young sense of Sweet:

That song the youth ever pursued

In the track of her footing fleet.

For men to be profited much

By her day upon earth did he sing:

Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch

On the blossoms of tender Spring,

Immortal: and how in her soul

She is with them, and tearless abides,

Folding grain of a love for one goal

In patience, past flowing of tides.

And if unto him she was tears,

He wept not: he wasted within:

Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,

Only crazed where the cravings begin.

Our Lady of Gifts prized he less

Than her issue in darkness: the dim

Lost Skiágencia’s caress

Of our earth made it richest for him.

And for that was a curse on him raised,

And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,

Though the bounteous Giver be praised

Through the island with rites of old time

Exceedingly fervent, and reaped

Veneration for teachings devout,

Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped

And the wine-presses ruddily spout,

And the olive and apple are juice

At a touch light as hers lost below.

Whatsoever to men is of use

Sprang his worship of them who bestow,

In a measure of songs unexcelled:

But that soul loving earth and the sun

From her home of the shadows he held

For his beacon where beam there is none:

And to join her, or have her brought back,

In his frenzy the singer would call,

Till he followed where never was track,

On the path trod of all.

THE LARK ASCENDING

HE rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound,

Of many links without a break,

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,

All intervolved and spreading wide,

Like water-dimples down a tide

Where ripple ripple overcurls

And eddy into eddy whirls;

A press of hurried notes that run

So fleet they scarce are more than one,

Yet changeingly the trills repeat

And linger ringing while they fleet,

Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear

To her beyond the handmaid ear,

Who sits beside our inner springs,

Too often dry for this he brings,

Which seems the very jet of earth

At sight of sun, her music’s mirth,

As up he wings the spiral stair,

A song of light, and pierces air

With fountain ardour, fountain play,

To reach the shining tops of day,

And drink in everything discerned

An ecstasy to music turned,

Impelled by what his happy bill

Disperses; drinking, showering still,

Unthinking save that he may give

His voice the outlet, there to live

Renewed in endless notes of glee,

So thirsty of his voice is he,

For all to hear and all to know

That he is joy, awake, aglow;

The tumult of the heart to hear

Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,

And know the pleasure sprinkled bright

By simple singing of delight;

Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,

Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained

Without a break, without a fall,

Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,

Perennial, quavering up the chord

Like myriad dews of sunny sward

That trembling into fulness shine,

And sparkle dropping argentine;

Such wooing as the ear receives

From zephyr caught in choric leaves

Of aspens when their chattering net

Is flushed to white with shivers wet;

And such the water-spirit’s chime

On mountain heights in morning’s prime,

Too freshly sweet to seem excess,

Too animate to need a stress;

But wider over many heads

The starry voice ascending spreads,

Awakening, as it waxes thin,

The best in us to him akin;

And every face to watch him raised,

Puts on the light of children praised;

So rich our human pleasure ripes

When sweetness on sincereness pipes,

Though nought be promised from the seas,

But only a soft-ruffling breeze

Sweep glittering on a still content,

Serenity in ravishment

For singing till his heaven fills,

’Tis love of earth that he instils,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup,

And he the wine which overflows

To lift us with him as he goes:

The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,

He is, the hills, the human line,

The meadows green, the fallows brown,

The dreams of labour in the town;

He sings the sap, the quickened veins;

The wedding song of sun and rains

He is, the dance of children, thanks

Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,

And eye of violets while they breathe;

All these the circling song will wreathe,

And you shall hear the herb and tree,

The better heart of men shall see,

Shall feel celestially, as long

As you crave nothing save the song.

Was never voice of ours could say

Our inmost in the sweetest way,

Like yonder voice aloft, and link

All hearers in the song they drink.

Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,

Our passion is too full in flood,

We want the key of his wild note

Of truthful in a tuneful throat;

The song seraphically free

Of taint of personality,

So pure that it salutes the suns

The voice of one for millions,

In whom the millions rejoice

For giving their one spirit voice.

Yet men have we, whom we revere,

Now names, and men still housing here,

Whose lives, by many a battle-dint

Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,

Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet

For song our highest heaven to greet:

Whom heavenly singing gives us new,

Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,

From firmest base to farthest leap,

Because their love of Earth is deep,

And they are warriors in accord

With life to serve, and, pass reward,

So touching purest and so heard

In the brain’s reflex of yon bird:

Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,

Through self-forgetfulness divine,

In them, that song aloft maintains,

To fill the sky and thrill the plains

With showerings drawn from human stores,

As he to silence nearer soars,

Extends the world at wings and dome,

More spacious making more our home,

Till lost on his aërial rings

In light, and then the fancy sings.

PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS

I

WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,

Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,

Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,

Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!

Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe

Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,

How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,

Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

II

Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks:

Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey:

Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:

Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.

Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,

Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:

Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,

Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s gate.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

III

Water, first of singers, o’er rocky mount and mead,

First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,

Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,

Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.

Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,

Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,

Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool

Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

IV

Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields:

Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:

Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,

Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!

Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins

Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice rose:

Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;

Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

V

Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft:

Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s teeth

Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;

Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!

Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped

Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new gold.

Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead

Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

VI

Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above:

Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air!

Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love

Ease because the creature was all too fair.

Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good,

Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast.

He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood

Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

VII

Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known,

Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.

Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,

After he had taught how the sweet sounds came

Stretched about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see

Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.

So began contention to give delight and be

Excellent in things aimed to make life kind.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

VIII

You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats,

You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!

Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!

Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!

You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,

You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:

He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!

Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.

God! of whom music

And song and blood are pure,

The day is never darkened

That had thee here obscure.

MELAMPUS

I

WITH love exceeding a simple love of the things

That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;

Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings

From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck;

Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;

Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook;

The good physician Melampus, loving them all,

Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.

II

For him the woods were a home and gave him the key

Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers.

The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we

To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours:

And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined

Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows

In them, in us, from the source by man unattained

Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose.

III

And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast

Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,

The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best

Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape.

For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk,

As babes they learn where her motherly help is great:

They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,

And need they medical antidotes, find them straight.

IV

Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods,

Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain

Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods

Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane

The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns

To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life

Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns

Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife.

V

Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire,

A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret

That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,

Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set

Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue

Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears

A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,

He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears!

VI

A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech

Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves

To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;

He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves.

No fears have I of a man who goes with his head

To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand:

I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;

I pipe him much for his good could he understand.

VII

Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist

He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.

Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,

He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird.

His cushion mosses in shades of various green,

The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake

Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,

It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake.

VIII

Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full,

As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth,

Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool

To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth.

The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;

The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;

Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,

The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.

IX

He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed

Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one

They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed

For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun,

Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,

Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned:

He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,

The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned.

X

Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,

By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth

With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat,

Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth,

The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,

Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,

Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,

The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.

XI

So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates

We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged

With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,

With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged.

Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,

He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled,

To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root

A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.

XII

Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form

Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave,

Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,

And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave,

And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,

And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere;

And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,

He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear.

XIII

Sweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze

In heat, the run of the river on root and stone,

All senses joined, as the sister Pierides

Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own.

In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,

From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried

The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,

Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.

XIV

And there vitality, there, there solely in song,

Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs,

Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,

The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,

(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),

In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.

Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount

To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground.

XV

Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage,

He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed,

Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage

Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed.

He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings

Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,

Through love exceeding a simple love of the things

That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.

LOVE IN THE VALLEY

UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,

Couched with her arms behind her golden head,

Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,

Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.

Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,

Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,

Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:

Then would she hold me and never let me go?

* * *

Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow,

Swift as the swallow along the river’s light

Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,

Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.

Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,

Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,

She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,

Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won!

* * *

When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,

Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,

Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,

More love should I have, and much less care.

When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,

Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,

Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,

I should miss but one for the many boys and girls.

* * *

Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows

Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.

No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:

Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon.

Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure,

Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less:

Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones

Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.

* * *

Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping

Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.

Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,

Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.

Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:

So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.

Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,

Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled.

* * *

Stepping down the hill with her fair companions,

Arm in arm, all against the raying West,

Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,

Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.

Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking

Whispered the world was; morning light is she.

Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;

Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.

* * *

Happy happy time, when the white star hovers

Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,

Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,

Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew.

Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens

Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.

Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;

Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.

* * *

Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting

Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,

Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter

Chill as a dull face frowning on a song.

Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom

Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend

Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset

Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.

* * *

When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window

Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams,

Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily

Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.

When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle

In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,

Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily

Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.

* * *

Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight,

Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim,

Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,

Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him.

Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,

Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers.

Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever

Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers.

* * *

All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose;

Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands.

My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,

Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.

Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,

Coming the rose: and unaware a cry

Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,

Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.

* * *

Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips,

Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain:

Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel

She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again.

Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way:

She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.

So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder,

Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.

* * *

Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,

Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please.

I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.

O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.

You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,

Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,

They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,

You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way.

* * *

Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,

Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.

Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine

Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.

Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest

Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes,

Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine

Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.

* * *

Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;

Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:

Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;

Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.

Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;

Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:

Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,

Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.

* * *

This I may know: her dressing and undressing

Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport

Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder

Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port

White sails furl; or on the ocean borders

White sails lean along the waves leaping green.

Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight

Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.

* * *

Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse

Open with the morn, and in a breezy link

Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,

Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.

Busy in the grass the early sun of summer

Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes

Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge:

Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!

* * *

Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy

Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,

Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;

O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!

Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher

Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.

Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,

Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laughed and leaned her cheek.

* * *

Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof

Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo.

Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way

Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue.

Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,

Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.

Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,

Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.

* * *

O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!

O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

O the treasure-tresses one another over

Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist!

Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet

Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist,

Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness!

O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

* * *

Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops,

Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:

Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise,

Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.

Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree

Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.

Here may life on death or death on life be painted.

Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!

* * *

Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber

Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.

‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers,

Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.

Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled:

Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.

Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy

Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.

* * *

Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,

Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise

High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;

Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.

Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,

Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.—

Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,

Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names.

* * *

Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.

Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye,

Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,

Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.

Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.

Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!

Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,

Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.

* * *

Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April

Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you

Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,

Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:

Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:

Fair as in image my seraph love appears

Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids:

Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.

* * *

Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,

I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.

Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,

Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed.

Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;

Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;

Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:

All seem to know what is for heaven alone.

THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD

CAROLS nature, counsel men.

Different notes as rook from wren

Hear we when our steps begin,

And the choice is cast within,

Where a robber raven’s tale

Urges passion’s nightingale.

Hark to the three. Chimed they in one,

Life were music of the sun.

Liquid first, and then the caw,

Then the cry that knows not law.

I

As the birds do, so do we,

Bill our mate, and choose our tree.

Swift to building work addressed,

Any straw will help a nest.

Mates are warm, and this is truth,

Glad the young that come of youth.

They have bloom i’ the blood and sap

Chilling at no thunder-clap.

Man and woman on the thorn

Trust not Earth, and have her scorn.

They who in her lead confide,

Wither me if they spread not wide!

Look for aid to little things,

You will get them quick as wings,

Thick as feathers; would you feed,

Take the leap that springs the need.

II

Contemplate the rutted road:

Life is both a lure and goad.

Each to hold in measure just,

Trample appetite to dust.

Mark the fool and wanton spin:

Keep to harness as a skin.

Ere you follow nature’s lead,

Of her powers in you have heed;

Else a shiverer you will find

You have challenged humankind.

Mates are chosen marketwise:

Coolest bargainer best buys.

Leap not, nor let leap the heart:

Trot your track, and drag your cart.

So your end may be in wool,

Honoured, and with manger full.

III

O the rosy light! it fleets,

Dearer dying than all sweets.

That is life: it waves and goes;

Solely in that cherished Rose

Palpitates, or else ’tis death.

Call it love with all thy breath.

Love! it lingers: Love! it nears:

Love! O Love! the Rose appears,

Blushful, magic, reddening air.

Now the choice is on thee: dare!

Mortal seems the touch, but makes

Immortal the hand that takes.

Feel what sea within thee shames

Of its force all other claims,

Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be

Heavenly Rose to swelling sea.

THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH

I CHANCED upon an early walk to spy

A troop of children through an orchard gate:

The boughs hung low, the grass was high;

They had but to lift hands or wait

For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.

They shouted, running on from tree to tree,

And played the game the wind plays, on and round.

’Twas visible invisible glee

Pursuing; and a fountain’s sound

Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.

I could have watched them till the daylight fled,

Their pretty bower made such a light of day.

A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! head!’

The rest to comfort her straightway

Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red.

The tiny creature flashing through green grass,

And laughing with her feet and eyes among

Fresh apples, while a little lass

Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung:

That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.

My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes,

Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;

Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,

Across a heath I walked for hours,

And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.

Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,

When, under a patched channel-bank enriched

With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,

Behold, a family had pitched

Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.

Here, too, were many children, quick to scan

A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth:

In many-coloured rags they ran,

Like iron runlets of the heath.

Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.

Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea

Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid

From either ridge unequally),

Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid

A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.

They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke

In act to follow, but as one they snuffed

Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke

Of provender, its pale flame puffed,

And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.

Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,

The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,

Paused for its bubbling-up supreme:

A dog upright in circle sat,

And oft his nose went with the flying steam.

I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now

The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light;

Threw high aloft a golden bough,

And seemed the desert of the night

Far down with mellow orchards to endow.

EARTH AND MAN

I

ON her great venture, Man,

Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast

Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,

And fair to scan.

II

More aid than that embrace,

That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart

Involves his fate; and she who urged the start

Abides the race.

III

For he is in the lists

Contentious with the elements, whose dower

First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour

If he desists.

IV

His breath of instant thirst

Is warning of a creature matched with strife,

To meet it as a bride, or let fall life

On life’s accursed.

V

No longer forth he bounds

The lusty animal, afield to roam,

But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome

Strange themes propounds.

VI

By hunger sharply sped

To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,

In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews,

An infant’s head.

VII

And ever that old task

Of reading what he is and whence he came,

Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame

Across her mask.

VIII

She hears his wailful prayer,

When now to the Invisible he raves

To rend him from her, now of his mother craves

Her calm, her care.

IX

The thing that shudders most

Within him is the burden of his cry.

Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye

The eyeless Ghost.

X

Or sometimes she will seem

Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white,

Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight,

With gold-buds dim.

XI

Once worshipped Prime of Powers,

She still was the Implacable: as a beast,

She struck him down and dragged him from the feast

She crowned with flowers.

XII

Her pomp of glorious hues,

Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile,

Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile

With symbol-clues.

XIII

The mystery she holds

For him, inveterately he strains to see,

And sight of his obtuseness is the key

Among those folds.

XIV

He may entreat, aspire,

He may despair, and she has never heed.

She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need,

Not his desire.

XV

She prompts him to rejoice,

Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud.

He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed

A wanton’s choice.

XVI

Albeit thereof he has found

Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain;

Has half transferred the battle to his brain,

From bloody ground;

XVII

He will not read her good,

Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures;

Through that old devil of the thousand lures,

Through that dense hood:

XVIII

Through terror, through distrust;

The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live:

Through all that makes of him a sensitive

Abhorring dust.

XIX

Behold his wormy home!

And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave

Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave

To waste in foam.

XX

Therefore the wretch inclined

Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith,

Can raise him high: with vows of living faith

For little signs.

XXI

Some signs he must demand,

Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few,

To satisfy the senses it is true,

And in his hand,

XXII

This miracle which saves

Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch,

By virtue of his worth, contrasting much

With brutes and knaves.

XXIII

From dust, of him abhorred,

He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth.

‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth!

Me take, dear Lord!’

XXIV

She hears him. Him she owes

For half her loveliness a love well won

By work that lights the shapeless and the dun,

Their common foes.

XXV

He builds the soaring spires,

That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws,

Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws,

Her purest fires.

XXVI

Through him hath she exchanged,

For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown,

Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown

Where monsters ranged.

XXVII

And order, high discourse,

And decency, than which is life less dear,

She has of him: the lyre of language clear,

Love’s tongue and source.

XXVIII

She hears him, and can hear

With glory in his gains by work achieved:

With grief for grief that is the unperceived

In her so near.

XXIX

If he aloft for aid

Imploring storms, her essence is the spur.

His cry to heaven is a cry to her

He would evade.

XXX

Not elsewhere can he tend.

Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins;

Those her revulsions from the skull that grins

To ape his end.

XXXI

And her desires are those

For happiness, for lastingness, for light.

’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night

The hoped dawn-rose.

XXXII

Fair fountains of the dark

Daily she waves him, that his inner dream

May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam,

A quivering lark:

XXIII

This life and her to know

For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee

To feel stern joy her origin: not he

The child of woe.

XXXIV

But that the senses still

Usurp the station of their issue mind,

He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind:

As yet he will;

XXXV

As yet he will, she prays,

Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;—

The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf

In shifting rays;—

XXXVI

That captain of the scorned;

The coveter of life in soul and shell,

The fratricide, the thief, the infidel,

The hoofed and horned;—

XXXVII

He singularly doomed

To what he execrates and writhes to shun;—

When fire has passed him vapour to the sun,

And sun relumed,

XXXVIII

Then shall the horrid pall

Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine,

‘Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,’

Will hear her call.

XXXIX

Whence looks he on a land

Whereon his labour is a carven page;

And forth from heritage to heritage

Nought writ on sand.

XL

His fables of the Above,

And his gapped readings of the crown and sword,

The hell detested and the heaven adored,

The hate, the love,

XLI

The bright wing, the black hoof,

He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined,

And never unfaith clamouring to be coined

To faith by proof.

XLII

She her just Lord may view,

Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned

With all her gifts to reach the light discerned

Her spirit through.

XLIIII

Then in him time shall run

As in the hour that to young sunlight crows;

And—‘If thou hast good faith it can repose,’

She tells her son.

XLIV

Meanwhile on him, her chief

Expression, her great word of life, looks she;

Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree,

Or dated leaf.

A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT

I

SEE the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath

The ever-falling fountain of green leaves

Round the white bending stem, and like a wreath

Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through,

To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves:

Is one for me? is one for you?

II

—Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place,

And you shall choose among us which you will,

Without the idle pastime of the chase,

If to this treaty you can well agree:

To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil.

He who’s for us, for him are we!

III

—Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth,

A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells,

And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth

In the first plucking of them, past us flew

To labour, singing rustic ritornells:

Had they a cause? are they of you?

IV

—Sirs, they are as unthinking armies are

To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs.

When they know men they know the state of war:

But now they dream like sunlight on a sea,

And deem you hold the half of happy pairs.

He who’s for us, for him are we!

V

—Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames;

Judicial in the robe and wig; secure

As venerated portraits in their frames;

And they denounced some insurrection new

Against sound laws which keep you good and pure.

Are you of them? are they of you?

VI

—Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes,

And by as much: let them together chime:

It is an ancient bell within their throats,

Pulled by an aged ringer; with what glee

Befits the yellow yesterdays of time.

He who’s for us, for him are we!

VII

—Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit;

Dowered of all favours and all blessed things

Whereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit;

Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew,

Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings?

Who is for love must be for you.

VIII

—The manners of the market, honest sirs,

’Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares.

You flatter us, or perchance our milliners

You flatter; so this vain and outworn She

May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs!

A higher lord than Love claim we.

IX

—One day, dear lady, missing the broad track,

I came on a wood’s border, by a mead,

Where golden May ran up to moted black:

And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review,

With Love before her throne in act to plead.

Take him for me, take her for you.

X

—Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known.

Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt:

She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throne

The shadow of his back froze witheringly,

And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt.

O not such slaves of Love are we!

XI

—Love, lady, like the star above that lance

Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud,

Sad as the last line of a brave romance!—

Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw

Beams of fresh fire, while Beauty waned and bowed.

Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you.

XII

—Called she not for her mirror, sir? Forth ran

Her women: I am lost, she cried, when lo,

Love in the form of an admiring man

Once more in adoration bent the knee,

And brought the faded Pagan to full blow:

For which her throne she gave: not we!

XIII

—My version, madam, runs not to that end.

A certain madness of an hour half past,

Caught her like fever; her just lord no friend

She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew

The prim acerbity, sweet Love’s outcast.

Great heaven ward off that stroke from you!

XIV

—Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous:

How generous likewise that you do not name

Offended nature! She from all of us

Couched idle underneath our showering tree,

May quite withhold her most destructive flame;

And then what woeful women we!

XV

—Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youth

May run to drought in visionary schemes:

And a late waking to perceive the truth,

When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu,

Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams:

And that may be in store for you.

XVI

—O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t in the skies,

Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours?

But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes

That look on it! the diverse things they see,

According to their thirst for fruit or flowers!

Pass on: it is the truth seek we.

XVII

—Lady, there is a truth of settled laws

That down the past burns like a great watch-fire.

Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause,

Whetting its edge to cut the race in two,

Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre,

Much honour and much glory you!

XVIII

—Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride,

And not as cat and serpent and poor slave,

Wherewith we walked in union by your side?

Spare to false womanliness her delicacy,

Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave:

In our defence thus chained are we.

XIX

—Yours, madam, were the privileges of life

Proper to man’s ideal; you were the mark

Of action, and the banner in the strife:

Yea, of your very weakness once you drew

The strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark:

Wrapped in a robe of flame were you!

XX

—Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, when we were chill,

You clothed us warmly; all in honour! when

We starved you fed us; all in honour still:

Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably!

Deep is the gratitude we owe to men,

For privileged indeed were we!

XXI

—You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad,

But come in the red struggle of our growth.

Alas, that I should have to say it! bad

Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do,

Shows animal impatience, mental sloth:

Man monstrous! pining seraphs you!

XXII

—I fain would ask your friend . . . but I will ask

You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague,

Your sad exceptions were to break that mask

They wear for your cool mind historically,

And blaze like black lists of a _present_ plague?

But in that light behold them we.

XXIII

—Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world,

Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof

And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled

In his hard-earned oblivion! You are few,

Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof,

I have lived, and have known none like you.

XXIV

—We may be blind to men, sir: we embrace

A future now beyond the fowler’s nets.

Though few, we hold a promise for the race

That was not at our rising: you are free

To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes.

He who’s for us, for him are we.

XXV

—Ah! madam, were they puppets who withstood

Youth’s cravings for adventure to preserve

The dedicated ways of womanhood?

The light which leads us from the paths of rue,

That light above us, never seen to swerve,

Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you.

XXVI

—Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we perchance

Shall not abandon, though we see not how,

Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advance

Beside our lords in any real degree,

Unless we move: and to advance is now

A sovereign need, think more than we.

XXVII

—So push you out of harbour in small craft,

With little seamanship; and comes a gale,

The world will laugh, the world has often laughed,

Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue,

When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale,

How swift to the old nest fly you!

XXVIII

—What thinks your friend, kind sir? We have escaped

But partly that old half-tamed wild beast’s paw

Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped:

Men, too, have known the cramping enemy

In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe:

Him our deliverer, await we!

XXIX

—Delusions are with eloquence endowed,

And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres

To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed,

Deliverer, lady! but like summer dew

O’er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears,

Who see the awakening for you.

XXX

—Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps not.

O sir, delusion mounting like a sun

On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot,

Giving it warmth and movement! if this be

Delusion, think of what thereby was won

For men, and dream of what win we.

XXXI

—Lady, the destiny of minor powers,

Who would recast us, is but to convulse:

You enter on a strife that frets and sours;

You can but win sick disappointment’s hue;

And simply an accelerated pulse,

Some tonic you have drunk moves you.

XXXII

—Thinks your friend so? Good sir, your wit is bright;

But wit that strives to speak the popular voice,

Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light.

Curfew, would seem your conqueror’s decree

To women likewise: and we have no choice

Save darkness or rebellion, we!

XXXIII

—A plain safe intermediate way is cleft

By reason foiling passion: you that rave

Of mad alternatives to right and left

Echo the tempter, madam: and ’tis due

Unto your sex to shun it as the grave,

This later apple offered you.

XXXIV

—This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet;

Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouth

Are little wooed by it; yet we would eat.

We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea.

We have thirsted long; this apple suits our drouth:

’Tis good for men to halve, think we.

XXXV

—But say, what seek you, madam? ’Tis enough

That you should have dominion o’er the springs

Domestic and man’s heart: those ways, how rough,

How vile, outside the stately avenue

Where you walk sheltered by your angel’s wings,

Are happily unknown to you.

XXXVI

—We hear women’s shrieks on them. We like your phrase,

Dominion domestic! And that roar,

‘What seek you?’ is of tyrants in all days.

Sir, get you something of our purity

And we will of your strength: we ask no more.

That is the sum of what seek we.

XXXVII

—O for an image, madam, in one word,

To show you as the lightning night reveals,

Your error and your perils: you have erred

In mind only, and the perils that ensue

Swift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels

Address your hopes of safety you!

XXXVIII

—To err in mind, sir . . . your friend smiles: he may!

To err in mind, if err in mind we can,

Is grievous error you do well to stay.

But O how different from reality

Men’s fiction is! how like you in the plan,

Is woman, knew you her as we!

XXXIX

—Look, lady, where yon river winds its line

Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face

The splendour of fair life: to be divine,

’Tis nature bids you be to nature true,

Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace,

Reflecting heaven in clearness you.

XL

—Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes.

To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse,

Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes,

Who is not wholly of the nursery,

Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse;

Together shake it off, say we!

XLI

—Hear, then, my friend, madam! Tongue-restrained he stands

Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched

With traceries of the artificer’s hands,

Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view.—

Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched!

Heed him not! Traitress beauties you!

XLII

—We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage!

—Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast!

—Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage.

—Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key.

—Then are there fresher mornings mounting East

Than ever yet have dawned, sing we!

XLIII

—False ends as false began, madam, be sure!

—What lure there is the pure cause purifies!

—Who purifies the victim of the lure?

—That soul which bids us our high light pursue.

—Some heights are measured down: the wary wise

Shun Reason in the masque with you!

XLIV

—Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks.

Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal;

A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks!

But could she give more loyal guarantee

Than wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul

Has risen? Adieu: content are we!

XLV

Those ladies led their captive to the flood’s

Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most

Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds.

Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too?

For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast

His comrade over me and you.

XLVI

Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed

Over the sea of blood the blushing star,

That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed,

When not possessing her (for such is he!),

Might in a wondering season seen afar,

Be tamed to say not ‘I,’ but ‘we’?

XLVII

And shall they make of Beauty their estate,

The fortress and the weapon of their sex?

Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate,

More queenly than of old, how we must woo,

Ere she will melt? The halter’s on our necks,

Kick as it likes us, I and you.

XLVIII

Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained

Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high:

If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained.

But can she keep her followers without fee?

Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry,

He who’s for us, for him are we!

BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE

THE TWO MASKS

I

MELPOMENE among her livid people,

Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks,

Warned by old contests that one museful ripple

Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks

Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos,

Perchance may change of masks midway demand,

Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos,

The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.

II

For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures

Appealing to the fount of tears: that they

Strive never to outleap our human features,

And do Right Reason’s ordinance obey,

In peril of the hum to laughter nighest.

But prove they under stress of action’s fire

Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest,

She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre.

ARCHDUCHESS ANNE

I

I

IN middle age an evil thing

Befell Archduchess Anne:

She looked outside her wedding-ring

Upon a princely man.

II

Count Louis was for horse and arms;

And if its beacon waved,

For love; but ladies had not charms

To match a danger braved.

III

On battlefields he was the bow

Bestrung to fly the shaft:

In idle hours his heart would flow

As winds on currents waft.

IV

His blood was of those warrior tribes

That streamed from morning’s fire,

Whom now with traps and now with bribes

The wily Council wire.

V

Archduchess Anne the Council ruled,

Count Louis his great dame;

And woe to both when one had cooled!

Little was she to blame.

VI

Among her chiefs who spun their plots,

Old Kraken stood the sword:

As sharp his wits for cutting knots

Of babble he abhorred.

VII

He reverenced her name and line,

Nor other merit had

Save soldierwise to wait her sign,

And do the deed she bade.

VIII

He saw her hand jump at her side

Ere royally she smiled

On Louis and his fair young bride

Where courtly ranks defiled.

IX

That was a moment when a shock

Through the procession ran,

And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock,

Yet smiled Archduchess Anne.

X

No touch gave she to hound in leash,

No wink to sword in sheath:

She seemed a woman scarce of flesh;

Above it, or beneath.

XI

Old Kraken spied with kennelled snarl,

His Lady deemed disgraced.

He footed as on burning marl,

When out of Hall he paced.

XII

’Twas seen he hammered striding legs,

And stopped, and strode again.

Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs,

But Patience must be hen.

XIII

Too slow are they for wrath to hatch,

Too hot for time to rear.

Old Kraken kept unwinding watch;

He marked his day appear.

XIV

He neighed a laugh, though moods were rough

With standards in revolt:

His nostrils took the news for snuff,

His smacking lips for salt.

XV

Count Louis’ wavy cock’s plumes led

His troops of black-haired manes,

A rebel; and old Kraken sped

To front him on the plains.

XVI

Then camp opposed to camp did they

Fret earth with panther claws

For signal of a bloody day,

Each reading from the Laws.

XVII

‘Forefend it, heaven!’ Count Louis cried,

‘And let the righteous plead:

My country is a willing bride,

Was never slave decreed.

XVIII

‘Not we for thirst of blood appeal

To sword and slaughter curst;

We have God’s blessing on our steel,

Do we our pleading first.’

XIX

Count Louis, soul of chivalry,

Put trust in plighted word;

By starlight on the broad brown lea,

To bar the strife he spurred.

XX

Across his breast a crimson spot,

That in a quiver glowed,

The ruddy crested camp-fires shot,

As he to darkness rode.

XXI

He rode while omens called, beware

Old Kraken’s pledge of faith!

A smile and waving hand in air,

And outward flew the wraith.

XXII

Before pale morn had mixed with gold,

His army roared, and chilled,

As men who have a woe foretold,

And see it red fulfilled.

XXIII

Away and to his young wife speed,

And say that Honour’s dead!

Another word she will not need

To bow a widow’s head.

XXIV

Old Kraken roped his white moustache

Right, left, for savage glee:

—To swing him in his soldier’s sash

Were kind for such as he!

XXV

Old Kraken’s look hard Winter wears

When sweeps the wild snow-blast:

He had the hug of Arctic bears

For captives he held fast.

II

I

Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost,

Shut off from priest and spouse.

Her lips were locked, her arms were crossed,

Her eyes were in her brows.

II

One hand enclosed a paper scroll,

Held as a strangled asp.

So may we see the woman’s soul

In her dire tempter’s grasp.

III

Along that scroll Count Louis’ doom

Throbbed till the letters flamed.

She saw him in his scornful bloom,

She saw him chained and shamed.

IV

Around that scroll Count Louis’ fate

Was acted to her stare,

And hate in love and love in hate

Fought fell to smite or spare.

V

Between the day that struck her old,

And this black star of days,

Her heart swung like a storm-bell tolled

Above a town ablaze.

VI

His beauty pressed to intercede,

His beauty served him ill.

—Not Vengeance, ’tis his rebel’s deed,

’Tis Justice, not our will!

VII

Yet who had sprung to life’s full force

A breast that loveless dried?

But who had sapped it at the source,

With scarlet to her pride!

VIII

He brought her waning heart as ’twere

New message from the skies.

And he betrayed, and left on her

The burden of their sighs.

IX

In floods her tender memories poured;

They foamed with waves of spite:

She crushed them, high her heart outsoared,

To keep her mind alight.

X

—The crawling creature, called in scorn

A woman!—with this pen

We sign a paper that may warn

His crowing fellowmen.

XI

—We read them lesson of a power

They slight who do us wrong.

That bitter hour this bitter hour

Provokes; by turns the strong!

XII

—That we were woman once is known:

That we are Justice now,

Above our sex, above the throne,

Men quaking shall avow.

XIII

Archduchess Anne ascending flew,

Her heart outsoared, but felt

The demon of her sex pursue,

Incensing or to melt.

XIV

Those counterfloods below at leap

Still in her breast blew storm,

And farther up the heavenly steep

Wrestled in angels’ form.

XV

To disentangle one clear wish

Not of her sex, she sought;

And womanish to womanish

Discerned in lighted thought.

XVI

With Louis’ chance it went not well

When at herself she raged;

A woman, of whom men might tell

She doted, crazed and aged.

XVII

Or else enamoured of a sweet

Withdrawn, a vengeful crone!

And say, what figure at her feet

Is this that utters moan?

XVIII

The Countess Louis from her head

Drew veil: ‘Great Lady, hear!

My husband deems you Justice dread,

I know you Mercy dear.

XIX

‘His error upon him may fall;

He will not breathe a nay.

I am his helpless mate in all,

Except for grace to pray.

XX

‘Perchance on me his choice inclined,

To give his House an heir:

I had not marriage with his mind,

His counsel could not share.

XXI

‘I brought no portion for his weal

But this one instinct true,

Which bids me in my weakness kneel,

Archduchess Anne, to you.’

XXII

The frowning Lady uttered, ‘Forth!’

Her look forbade delay:

‘It is not mine to weigh your worth;

Your husband’s others weigh.

XXIII

‘Hence with the woman in your speech,’

For nothing it avails

In woman’s fashion to beseech

Where Justice holds the scales.’

XXIV

Then bent and went the lady wan,

Whose girlishness made grey

The thoughts that through Archduchess Anne

Shattered like stormy spray.

XXV

Long sat she there, as flame that strives

To hold on beating wind:

—His wife must be the fool of wives,

Or cunningly designed!

XXVI

She sat until the tempest-pitch

In her torn bosom fell;

—His wife must be a subtle witch

Or else God loves her well!

III

I

Old Kraken read a missive penned

By his great Lady’s hand.

Her condescension called him friend,

To raise the crest she fanned.

II

Swiftly to where he lay encamped

It flew, yet breathed aloof

From woman’s feeling, and he stamped

A heel more like a hoof.

III

She wrote of Mercy: ‘She was loth

Too hard to goad a foe.’

He stamped, as when men drive an oath

Devils transcribe below.

IV

She wrote: ‘We have him half by theft.’

His wrinkles glistened keen:

And see the Winter storm-cloud cleft

To lurid skies between!

V

When read old Kraken: ‘Christ our Guide,’

His eyes were spikes of spar:

And see the white snow-storm divide

About an icy star!

VI

‘She trusted him to understand,’

She wrote, and further prayed

That policy might rule the land.

Old Kraken’s laughter neighed.

VII

Her words he took; her nods and winks

Treated as woman’s fog.

The man-dog for his mistress thinks,

Not less her faithful dog.

VIII

She hugged a cloak old Kraken ripped;

Disguise to him he loathed.

—Your mercy, madam, shows you stripped,

While mine will keep you clothed.

IX

A rough ill-soldered scar in haste

He rubbed on his cheek-bone.

—Our policy the man shall taste;

Our mercy shall be shown.

X

‘Count Louis, honour to your race

Decrees the Council-hall:

You ’scape the rope by special grace,

And like a soldier fall.’

XI

—I am a man of many sins,

Who for one virtue die,

Count Louis said.—They play at shins,

Who kick, was the reply.

XII

Uprose the day of crimson sight,

The day without a God.

At morn the hero said Good-night:

See there that stain on sod!

XIII

At morn the Countess Louis heard

Young light sing in the lark.

Ere eve it was that other bird,

Which brings the starless dark.

XIV

To heaven she vowed herself, and yearned

Beside her lord to lie.

Archduchess Anne on Kraken turned,

All white as a dead eye.

XV

If I could kill thee! shrieked her look:

If lightning sprang from Will!

An oaken head old Kraken shook,

And she might thank or kill.

XVI

The pride that fenced her heart in mail

By mortal pain was torn.

Forth from her bosom leaped a wail,

As of a babe new-born.

XVII

She clad herself in courtly use,

And one who heard them prate

Had said they differed upon views

Where statecraft raised debate.

XVIII

The wretch detested must she trust,

The servant master own:

Confide to godless cause so just,

And for God’s blessing moan.

XIX

Austerely she her heart kept down,

Her woman’s tongue was mute

When voice of People, voice of Crown,

In cannon held dispute.

XX

The Crown on seas of blood, like swine,

Swam forefoot at the throat:

It drank of its dear veins for wine,

Enough if it might float!

XXI

It sank with piteous yelp, resurged

Electrical with fear.

O had she on old Kraken urged

Her word of mercy clear!

XXII

O had they with Count Louis been

Accordant in his plea!

Cursed are the women vowed to screen

A heart that all can see!

XXIII

The godless drove unto a goal

Was worse than vile defeat.

Did vengeance prick Count Louis’ soul

They dressed him luscious meat.

XXIV

Worms will the faithless find their lies

In the close treasure-chest.

Without a God no day can rise,

Though it should slay our best.

XXV

The Crown it furled a draggled flag,

It sheathed a broken blade.

Behold its triumph in the hag

That lives with looks decayed!

XXVI

And lo, the man of oaken head,

Of soldier’s honour bare,

He fled his land, but most he fled

His Lady’s frigid stare.

XXVII

Judged by the issue we discern

God’s blessing, and the bane.

Count Louis’ dust would fill an urn,

His deeds are waving grain.

XXVIII

And she that helped to slay, yet bade

To spare the fated man,

Great were her errors, but she had

Great heart, Archduchess Anne.

THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA

I

QUEEN Theodolind has built

In the earth a furnace-bed:

There the Traitor Nail that spilt

Blood of the anointed Head,

Red of heat, resolves in shame:

White of heat, awakes to flame.

Beat, beat! white of heat,

Red of heat, beat, beat!

II

Mark the skeleton of fire

Lightening from its thunder-roof:

So comes this that saw expire

Him we love, for our behoof!

Red of heat, O white of heat,

This from off the Cross we greet.

III

Brown-cowled hammermen around

Nerve their naked arms to strike

Death with Resurrection crowned,

Each upon that cruel spike.

Red of heat the furnace leaps,

White of heat transfigured sleeps.

IV

Hard against the furnace core

Holds the Queen her streaming eyes:

Lo! that thing of piteous gore

In the lap of radiance lies,

Red of heat, as when He takes,

White of heat, whom earth forsakes.

V

Forth with it, and crushing ring

Iron hymns, for men to hear

Echoes of the deeds that sting

Earth into its graves, and fear!

Red of heat, He maketh thus,

White of heat, a crown of us.

VI

This that killed Thee, kissed Thee, Lord!

Touched Thee, and we touch it: dear,

Dark it is; adored, abhorred:

Vilest, yet most sainted here.

Red of heat, O white of heat,

In it hell and heaven meet.

VII

I behold our morning day

When they chased Him out with rods

Up to where this traitor lay

Thirsting; and the blood was God’s!

Red of heat, it shall be pressed,

White of heat, once on my breast!

VIII

Quick! the reptile in me shrieks,

Not the soul. Again; the Cross

Burn there. Oh! this pain it wreaks

Rapture is: pain is not loss.

Red of heat, the tooth of Death,

White of heat, has caught my breath.

IX

Brand me, bite me, bitter thing!

Thus He felt, and thus I am

One with Him in suffering,

One with Him in bliss, the Lamb.

Red of heat, O white of heat,

Thus is bitterness made sweet.

X

Now am I, who bear that stamp

Scorched in me, the living sign

Sole on earth—the lighted lamp

Of the dreadful Day divine.

White of heat, beat on it fast!

Red of heat, its shape has passed.

XI

Out in angry sparks they fly,

They that sentenced Him to bleed:

Pontius and his troop: they die,

Damned for ever for the deed!

White of heat in vain they soar:

Red of heat they strew the floor.

XII

Fury on it! have its debt!

Thunder on the Hill accurst,

Golgotha, be ye! and sweat

Blood, and thirst the Passion’s thirst.

Red of heat and white of heat,

Champ it like fierce teeth that eat.

XIII

Strike it as the ages crush

Towers! for while a shape is seen

I am rivalled. Quench its blush,

Devil! But it crowns me Queen,

Red of heat, as none before,

White of heat, the circlet wore.

XIV

Lowly I will be, and quail,

Crawling, with a beggar’s hand:

On my breast the branded Nail,

On my head the iron band.

Red of heat, are none so base!

White of heat, none know such grace!

XV

In their heaven the sainted hosts,

Robed in violet unflecked,

Gaze on humankind as ghosts:

I draw down a ray direct.

Red of heat, across my brow,

White of heat, I touch Him now.

XVI

Robed in violet, robed in gold,

Robed in pearl, they make our dawn.

What am I to them? Behold

What ye are to me, and fawn.

Red of heat, be humble, ye!

White of heat, O teach it me!

XVII

Martyrs! hungry peaks in air,

Rent with lightnings, clad with snow,

Crowned with stars! you strip me bare,

Pierce me, shame me, stretch me low,

Red of heat, but it may be,

White of heat, some envy me!

XVIII

O poor enviers! God’s own gifts

Have a devil for the weak.

Yea, the very force that lifts

Finds the vessel’s secret leak.

Red of heat, I rise o’er all:

White of heat, I faint, I fall.

XIX

Those old Martyrs sloughed their pride,

Taking humbleness like mirth.

I am to His Glory tied,

I that witness Him on earth!

Red of heat, my pride of dust,

White of heat, feeds fire in trust.

XX

Kindle me to constant fire,

Lest the nail be but a nail!

Give me wings of great desire,

Lest I look within, and fail!

Red of heat, the furnace light,

White of heat, fix on my sight.

XXI

Never for the Chosen peace!

Know, by me tormented know,

Never shall the wrestling cease

Till with our outlasting Foe,

Red of heat to white of heat,

Roll we to the Godhead’s feet!

Beat, beat! white of heat,

Red of heat, beat, beat!

A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD

I

LADIES who in chains of wedlock

Chafe at an unequal yoke,

Not to nightingales give hearing;

Better this, the raven’s croak.

II

Down the Prado strolled my seigneur,

Arm at lordly bow on hip,

Fingers trimming his moustachios,

Eyes for pirate fellowship.

III

Home sat she that owned him master;

Like the flower bent to ground

Rain-surcharged and sun-forsaken;

Heedless of her hair unbound.

IV

Sudden at her feet a lover

Palpitating knelt and wooed;

Seemed a very gift from heaven

To the starved of common food.

V

Love me? she his vows repeated:

Fiery vows oft sung and thrummed:

Wondered, as on earth a stranger;

Thirsted, trusted, and succumbed.

VI

O beloved youth! my lover!

Mine! my lover! take my life

Wholly: thine in soul and body,

By this oath of more than wife!

VII

Know me for no helpless woman;

Nay, nor coward, though I sink

Awed beside thee, like an infant

Learning shame ere it can think.

VIII

Swing me hence to do thee service,

Be thy succour, prove thy shield;

Heaven will hear!—in house thy handmaid,

Squire upon the battlefield.

IX

At my breasts I cool thy footsoles;

Wine I pour, I dress thy meats;

Humbly, when my lord it pleaseth,

Lie with him on perfumed sheets:

X

Pray for him, my blood’s dear fountain,

While he sleeps, and watch his yawn

In that wakening babelike moment,

Sweeter to my thought than dawn!—

XI

Thundered then her lord of thunders;

Burst the door, and, flashing sword,

Loud disgorged the woman’s title:

Condemnation in one word.

XII

Grand by righteous wrath transfigured,

Towers the husband who provides

In his person judge and witness,

Death’s black doorkeeper besides!

XIII

Round his head the ancient terrors,

Conjured of the stronger’s law,

Circle, to abash the creature

Daring twist beneath his paw.

XIV

How though he hath squandered Honour

High of Honour let him scold:

Gilding of the man’s possession,

’Tis the woman’s coin of gold.

XV

She inheriting from many

Bleeding mothers bleeding sense

Feels ’twixt her and sharp-fanged nature

Honour first did plant the fence.

XVI

Nature, that so shrieks for justice;

Honour’s thirst, that blood will slake;

These are women’s riddles, roughly

Mixed to write them saint or snake.

XVII

Never nature cherished woman:

She throughout the sexes’ war

Serves as temptress and betrayer,

Favouring man, the muscular.

XVIII

Lureful is she, bent for folly;

Doating on the child which crows:

Yours to teach him grace in fealty,

What the bloom is, what the rose.

XIX

Hard the task: your prison-chamber

Widens not for lifted latch

Till the giant thews and sinews

Meet their Godlike overmatch.

XX

Read that riddle, scorning pity’s

Tears, of cockatrices shed:

When the heart is vowed for freedom,

Captaincy it yields to head.

XXI

Meanwhile you, freaked nature’s martyrs,

Honour’s army, flower and weed,

Gentle ladies, wedded ladies,

See for you this fair one bleed.

XXII

Sole stood her offence, she faltered;

Prayed her lord the youth to spare;

Prayed that in the orange garden

She might lie, and ceased her prayer.

XXIII

Then commanding to all women

Chastity, her breasts she laid

Bare unto the self-avenger.

Man in metal was the blade.

THE YOUNG PRINCESS

A BALLAD OF OLD LAWS OF LOVE

I

I

WHEN the South sang like a nightingale

Above a bower in May,

The training of Love’s vine of flame

Was writ in laws, for lord and dame

To say their yea and nay.

II

When the South sang like a nightingale

Across the flowering night,

And lord and dame held gentle sport,

There came a young princess to Court,

A frost of beauty white.

III

The South sang like a nightingale

To thaw her glittering dream:

No vine of Love her bosom gave,

She drank no wine of Love, but grave

She held them to Love’s theme.

IV

The South grew all a nightingale

Beneath a moon unmoved:

Like the banner of war she led them on;

She left them to lie, like the light that has gone

From wine-cups overproved.

V

When the South was a fervid nightingale,

And she a chilling moon,

’Twas pity to see on the garden swards,

Against Love’s laws, those rival lords

As willow-wands lie strewn.

VI

The South had throat of a nightingale

For her, the young princess:

She gave no vine of Love to rear,

Love’s wine drank not, yet bent her ear

To themes of Love no less.

II

I

The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick,

Heart-free Lord Dusiote laughed:

I prize her no more than a fling o’ the dice,

But, or shame to my manhood, a lady of ice,

We master her by craft!

II

Heart-sick the lords of joyance yawned,

Lord Dusiote laughed heart-free:

I count her as much as a crack o’ my thumb,

But, or shame of my manhood, to me she shall come

Like the bird to roost in the tree!

III

At dead of night when the palace-guard

Had passed the measured rounds,

The young princess awoke to feel

A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel

Within the garden-bounds.

IV

It ceased, and she thought of whom was need,

The friar or the leech;

When lo, stood her tirewoman breathless by:

Lord Dusiote, madam, to death is nigh,

Of you he would have speech.

V

He prays you of your gentleness,

To light him to his dark end.

The princess rose, and forth she went,

For charity was her intent,

Devoutly to befriend.

VI

Lord Dusiote hung on his good squire’s arm,

The priest beside him knelt:

A weeping handkerchief was pressed

To stay the red flood at his breast,

And bid cold ladies melt.

VII

O lady, though you are ice to men,

All pure to heaven as light

Within the dew within the flower,

Of you ’tis whispered that love has power

When secret is the night.

VIII

I have silenced the slanderers, peace to their souls!

Save one was too cunning for me.

I die, whose love is late avowed,

He lives, who boasts the lily has bowed

To the oath of a bended knee.

IX

Lord Dusiote drew breath with pain,

And she with pain drew breath:

On him she looked, on his like above;

She flew in the folds of a marvel of love

Revealed to pass to death.

X

You are dying, O great-hearted lord,

You are dying for me, she cried;

O take my hand, O take my kiss,

And take of your right for love like this,

The vow that plights me bride.

XI

She bade the priest recite his words

While hand in hand were they,

Lord Dusiote’s soul to waft to bliss;

He had her hand, her vow, her kiss,

And his body was borne away.

III

I

Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire;

He gazed at her lighted room:

The laughter in his heart grew slack;

He knew not the force that pushed him back

From her and the morn in bloom.

II

Like a drowned man’s length on the strong flood-tide,

Like the shade of a bird in the sun,

He fled from his lady whom he might claim

As ghost, and who made the daybeams flame

To scare what he had done.

III

There was grief at Court for one so gay,

Though he was a lord less keen

For training the vine than at vintage-press;

But in her soul the young princess

Believed that love had been.

IV

Lord Dusiote fled the Court and land,

He crossed the woeful seas,

Till his traitorous doing seemed clearer to burn,

And the lady beloved drew his heart for return,

Like the banner of war in the breeze.

V

He neared the palace, he spied the Court,

And music he heard, and they told

Of foreign lords arrived to bring

The nuptial gifts of a bridegroom king

To the princess grave and cold.

VI

The masque and the dance were cloud on wave,

And down the masque and the dance

Lord Dusiote stepped from dame to dame,

And to the young princess he came,

With a bow and a burning glance.

VII

Do you take a new husband to-morrow, lady?

She shrank as at prick of steel.

Must the first yield place to the second, he sighed.

Her eyes were like the grave that is wide

For the corpse from head to heel.

VIII

My lady, my love, that little hand

Has mine ringed fast in plight:

I bear for your lips a lawful thirst,

And as justly the second should follow the first,

I come to your door this night.

IX

If a ghost should come a ghost will go:

No more the lady said,

Save that ever when he in wrath began

To swear by the faith of a living man,

She answered him, You are dead.

IV

I

The soft night-wind went laden to death

With smell of the orange in flower;

The light leaves prattled to neighbour ears;

The bird of the passion sang over his tears;

The night named hour by hour.

II

Sang loud, sang low the rapturous bird

Till the yellow hour was nigh,

Behind the folds of a darker cloud:

He chuckled, he sobbed, alow, aloud;

The voice between earth and sky.

III

O will you, will you, women are weak;

The proudest are yielding mates

For a forward foot and a tongue of fire:

So thought Lord Dusiote’s trusty squire,

At watch by the palace-gates.

IV

The song of the bird was wine in his blood,

And woman the odorous bloom:

His master’s great adventure stirred

Within him to mingle the bloom and bird,

And morn ere its coming illume.

V

Beside him strangely a piece of the dark

Had moved, and the undertones

Of a priest in prayer, like a cavernous wave,

He heard, as were there a soul to save

For urgency now in the groans.

VI

No priest was hired for the play this night:

And the squire tossed head like a deer

At sniff of the tainted wind; he gazed

Where cresset-lamps in a door were raised,

Belike on a passing bier.

VII

All cloaked and masked, with naked blades,

That flashed of a judgement done,

The lords of the Court, from the palace-door,

Came issuing silently, bearers four,

And flat on their shoulders one.

VIII

They marched the body to squire and priest,

They lowered it sad to earth:

The priest they gave the burial dole,

Bade wrestle hourly for his soul,

Who was a lord of worth.

IX

One said, farewell to a gallant knight!

And one, but a restless ghost!

’Tis a year and a day since in this place

He died, sped high by a lady of grace

To join the blissful host.

X

Not vainly on us she charged her cause,

The lady whom we revere

For faith in the mask of a love untrue

To the Love we honour, the Love her due,

The Love we have vowed to rear.

XI

A trap for the sweet tooth, lures for the light,

For the fortress defiant a mine:

Right well! But not in the South, princess,

Shall the lady snared of her nobleness

Ever shamed or a captive pine.

XII

When the South had voice of a nightingale

Above a Maying bower,

On the heights of Love walked radiant peers;

The bird of the passion sang over his tears

To the breeze and the orange-flower.

KING HARALD’S TRANCE

I

SWORD in length a reaping-hook amain

Harald sheared his field, blood up to shank:

’Mid the swathes of slain,

First at moonrise drank.

II

Thereof hunger, as for meats the knife,

Pricked his ribs, in one sharp spur to reach

Home and his young wife,

Nigh the sea-ford beach.

III

After battle keen to feed was he:

Smoking flesh the thresher washed down fast,

Like an angry sea

Ships from keel to mast.

IV

Name us glory, singer, name us pride

Matching Harald’s in his deeds of strength;

Chiefs, wife, sword by side,

Foemen stretched their length!

V

Half a winter night the toasts hurrahed,

Crowned him, clothed him, trumpeted him high,

Till awink he bade

Wife to chamber fly.

VI

Twice the sun had mounted, twice had sunk,

Ere his ears took sound; he lay for dead;

Mountain on his trunk,

Ocean on his head.

VII

Clamped to couch, his fiery hearing sucked

Whispers that at heart made iron-clang:

Here fool-women clucked,

There men held harangue.

VIII

Burial to fit their lord of war

They decreed him: hailed the kingling: ha!

Hateful! but this Thor

Failed a weak lamb’s baa.

IX

King they hailed a branchlet, shaped to fare,

Weighted so, like quaking shingle spume,

When his blood’s own heir

Ripened in the womb!

X

Still he heard, and doglike, hoglike, ran

Nose of hearing till his blind sight saw:

Woman stood with man

Mouthing low, at paw.

XI

Woman, man, they mouthed; they spake a thing

Armed to split a mountain, sunder seas:

Still the frozen king

Lay and felt him freeze.

XII

Doglike, hoglike, horselike now he raced,

Riderless, in ghost across a ground

Flint of breast, blank-faced,

Past the fleshly bound.

XIII

Smell of brine his nostrils filled with might:

Nostrils quickened eyelids, eyelids hand:

Hand for sword at right

Groped, the great haft spanned.

XIV

Wonder struck to ice his people’s eyes:

Him they saw, the prone upon the bier,

Sheer from backbone rise,

Sword uplifting peer.

XV

Sitting did he breathe against the blade,

Standing kiss it for that proof of life:

Strode, as netters wade,

Straightway to his wife.

XVI

Her he eyed: his judgement was one word,

Foulbed! and she fell: the blow clove two.

Fearful for the third,

All their breath indrew.

XVII

Morning danced along the waves to beach;

Dumb his chiefs fetched breath for what might hap:

Glassily on each

Stared the iron cap.

XVIII

Sudden, as it were a monster oak

Split to yield a limb by stress of heat,

Strained he, staggered, broke

Doubled at their feet.

WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY

HAWK or shrike has done this deed

Of downy feathers: rueful sight!

Sweet sentimentalist, invite

Your bosom’s Power to intercede.

So hard it seems that one must bleed

Because another needs will bite!

All round we find cold Nature slight

The feelings of the totter-knee’d.

O it were pleasant with you

To fly from this tussle of foes,

The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle!

To dwell in yon dribble of dew

On the cheek of your sovereign rose,

And live the young life of a twinkle.

YOUNG REYNARD

I

GRACEFULLEST leaper, the dappled fox-cub

Curves over brambles with berries and buds,

Light as a bubble that flies from the tub,

Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds.

Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease,

Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce;

Nature’s own prince of the dance: then he sees

Me, and retires as if making excuse.

II

Never closed minuet courtlier! Soon

Cub-hunting troops were abroad, and a yelp

Told of sure scent: ere the stroke upon noon

Reynard the younger lay far beyond help.

Wild, my poor friend, has the fate to be chased;

Civil will conquer: were ’t other ’twere worse;

Fair, by the flushed early morning embraced,

Haply you live a day longer in verse.

MANFRED

I

PROJECTED from the bilious Childe,

This clatterjaw his foot could set

On Alps, without a breast beguiled

To glow in shedding rascal sweat.

Somewhere about his grinder teeth,

He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath,

And summoned Nature to her feud

With bile and buskin Attitude.

II

Considerably was the world

Of spinsterdom and clergy racked

While he his hinted horrors hurled,

And she pictorially attacked.

A duel hugeous. Tragic? Ho!

The cities, not the mountains, blow

Such bladders; in their shapes confessed

An after-dinner’s indigest.

HERNANI

CISTERCIANS might crack their sides

With laughter, and exemption get,

At sight of heroes clasping brides,

And hearing—O the horn! the horn!

The horn of their obstructive debt!

But quit the stage, that note applies

For sermons cosmopolitan,

Hernani. Have we filched our prize,

Forgetting . . .? O the horn! the horn!

The horn of the Old Gentleman!

THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA

I

FLAT as to an eagle’s eye,

Earth hung under Attila.

Sign for carnage gave he none.

In the peace of his disdain,

Sun and rain, and rain and sun,

Cherished men to wax again,

Crawl, and in their manner die.

On his people stood a frost.

Like the charger cut in stone,

Rearing stiff, the warrior host,

Which had life from him alone,

Craved the trumpet’s eager note,

As the bridled earth the Spring.

Rusty was the trumpet’s throat.

He let chief and prophet rave;

Venturous earth around him string

Threads of grass and slender rye,

Wave them, and untrampled wave.

O for the time when God did cry,

Eye and have, my Attila!

II

Scorn of conquest filled like sleep

Him that drank of havoc deep

When the Green Cat pawed the globe:

When the horsemen from his bow

Shot in sheaves and made the foe

Crimson fringes of a robe,

Trailed o’er towns and fields in woe;

When they streaked the rivers red,

When the saddle was the bed.

Attila, my Attila!

III

He breathed peace and pulled a flower.

Eye and have, my Attila!

This was the damsel Ildico,

Rich in bloom until that hour:

Shyer than the forest doe

Twinkling slim through branches green.

Yet the shyest shall be seen.

Make the bed for Attila!

IV

Seen of Attila, desired,

She was led to him straightway:

Radiantly was she attired;

Rifled lands were her array,

Jewels bled from weeping crowns,

Gold of woeful fields and towns.

She stood pallid in the light.

How she walked, how withered white,

From the blessing to the board,

She who would have proudly blushed,

Women whispered, asking why,

Hinting of a youth, and hushed.

Was it terror of her lord?

Was she childish? was she sly?

Was it the bright mantle’s dye

Drained her blood to hues of grief

Like the ash that shoots the spark?

See the green tree all in leaf:

See the green tree stripped of bark!—

Make the bed for Attila!

V

Round the banquet-table’s load

Scores of iron horsemen rode;

Chosen warriors, keen and hard;

Grain of threshing battle-dints;

Attila’s fierce body-guard,

Smelling war like fire in flints.

Grant them peace be fugitive!

Iron-capped and iron-heeled,

Each against his fellow’s shield

Smote the spear-head, shouting, Live,

Attila! my Attila!

Eagle, eagle of our breed,

Eagle, beak the lamb, and feed!

Have her, and unleash us! live,

Attila! my Attila!

VI

He was of the blood to shine

Bronze in joy, like skies that scorch.

Beaming with the goblet wine

In the wavering of the torch,

Looked he backward on his bride.

Eye and have, my Attila!

Fair in her wide robe was she:

Where the robe and vest divide,

Fair she seemed surpassingly:

Soft, yet vivid as the stream

Danube rolls in the moonbeam

Through rock-barriers: but she smiled

Never, she sat cold as salt:

Open-mouthed as a young child

Wondering with a mind at fault.

Make the bed for Attila!

VII

Under the thin hoop of gold

Whence in waves her hair outrolled,

’Twixt her brows the women saw

Shadows of a vulture’s claw

Gript in flight: strange knots that sped

Closing and dissolving aye:

Such as wicked dreams betray

When pale dawn creeps o’er the bed.

They might show the common pang

Known to virgins, in whom dread

Hunts their bliss like famished hounds;

While the chiefs with roaring rounds

Tossed her to her lord, and sang

Praise of him whose hand was large,

Cheers for beauty brought to yield,

Chirrups of the trot afield,

Hurrahs of the battle-charge.

VIII

Those rock-faces hung with weed

Reddened: their great days of speed,

Slaughter, triumph, flood and flame,

Like a jealous frenzy wrought,

Scoffed at them and did them shame,

Quaffing idle, conquering nought.

O for the time when God decreed

Earth the prey of Attila!

God called on thee in his wrath,

Trample it to mire! ’Twas done.

Swift as Danube clove our path

Down from East to Western sun.

Huns! behold your pasture, gaze,

Take, our king said: heel to flank

(Whisper it, the war-horse neighs!)

Forth we drove, and blood we drank

Fresh as dawn-dew: earth was ours:

Men were flocks we lashed and spurned:

Fast as windy flame devours,

Flame along the wind, we burned.

Arrow javelin, spear, and sword!

Here the snows and there the plains;

On! our signal: onward poured

Torrents of the tightened reins,

Foaming over vine and corn

Hot against the city-wall.

Whisper it, you sound a horn

To the grey beast in the stall!

Yea, he whinnies at a nod.

O for sound of the trumpet-notes!

O for the time when thunder-shod,

He that scarce can munch his oats,

Hung on the peaks, brooded aloof,

Champed the grain of the wrath of God,

Pressed a cloud on the cowering roof,

Snorted out of the blackness fire!

Scarlet broke the sky, and down,

Hammering West with print of his hoof,

He burst out of the bosom of ire

Sharp as eyelight under thy frown,

Attila, my Attila!

IX

Ravaged cities rolling smoke

Thick on cornfields dry and black,

Wave his banners, bear his yoke.

Track the lightning, and you track

Attila. They moan: ’tis he!

Bleed: ’tis he! Beneath his foot

Leagues are deserts charred and mute;

Where he passed, there passed a sea.

Attila, my Attila!

X

—Who breathed on the king cold breath?

Said a voice amid the host,

He is Death that weds a ghost,

Else a ghost that weds with Death?

Ildico’s chill little hand

Shuddering he beheld: austere

Stared, as one who would command

Sight of what has filled his ear:

Plucked his thin beard, laughed disdain.

Feast, ye Huns! His arm be raised,

Like the warrior, battle-dazed,

Joining to the fight amain.

Make the bed for Attila!

XI

Silent Ildico stood up.

King and chief to pledge her well,

Shocked sword sword and cup on cup,

Clamouring like a brazen bell.

Silent stepped the queenly slave.

Fair, by heaven! she was to meet

On a midnight, near a grave,

Flapping wide the winding-sheet.

XII

Death and she walked through the crowd,

Out beyond the flush of light.

Ceremonious women bowed

Following her: ’twas middle night.

Then the warriors each on each

Spied, nor overloudly laughed;

Like the victims of the leech,

Who have drunk of a strange draught.

XIII

Attila remained. Even so

Frowned he when he struck the blow,

Brained his horse, that stumbled twice,

On a bloody day in Gaul,

Bellowing, Perish omens! All

Marvelled at the sacrifice,

But the battle, swinging dim,

Rang off that axe-blow for him.

Attila, my Attila!

XIV

Brightening over Danube wheeled

Star by star; and she, most fair,

Sweet as victory half-revealed,

Seized to make him glad and young;

She, O sweet as the dark sign

Given him oft in battles gone,

When the voice within said, Dare!

And the trumpet-notes were sprung

Rapturous for the charge in line:

She lay waiting: fair as dawn

Wrapped in folds of night she lay;

Secret, lustrous; flaglike there,

Waiting him to stream and ray,

With one loosening blush outflung,

Colours of his hordes of horse

Ranked for combat; still he hung

Like the fever dreading air,

Cursed of heat; and as a corse

Gathers vultures, in his brain

Images of her eyes and kiss

Plucked at the limbs that could remain

Loitering nigh the doors of bliss.

Make the bed for Attila!

XV

Passion on one hand, on one,

Destiny led forth the Hun.

Heard ye outcries of affright,

Voices that through many a fray,

In the press of flag and spear,

Warned the king of peril near?

Men were dumb, they gave him way,

Eager heads to left and right,

Like the bearded standard, thrust,

As in battle, for a nod

From their lord of battle-dust.

Attila, my Attila!

Slow between the lines he trod.

Saw ye not the sun drop slow

On this nuptial day, ere eve

Pierced him on the couch aglow?

Attila, my Attila!

Here and there his heart would cleave

Clotted memory for a space:

Some stout chief’s familiar face,

Choicest of his fighting brood,

Touched him, as ’twere one to know

Ere he met his bride’s embrace.

Attila, my Attila!

Twisting fingers in a beard

Scant as winter underwood,

With a narrowed eye he peered;

Like the sunset’s graver red

Up old pine-stems. Grave he stood

Eyeing them on whom was shed

Burning light from him alone.

Attila, my Attila!

Red were they whose mouths recalled

Where the slaughter mounted high,

High on it, o’er earth appalled,

He; heaven’s finger in their sight

Raising him on waves of dead,

Up to heaven his trumpets blown.

O for the time when God’s delight

Crowned the head of Attila!

Hungry river of the crag

Stretching hands for earth he came:

Force and Speed astride his name

Pointed back to spear and flag.

He came out of miracle cloud,

Lightning-swift and spectre-lean.

Now those days are in a shroud:

Have him to his ghostly queen.

Make the bed for Attila!

XVI

One, with winecups overstrung,

Cried him farewell in Rome’s tongue.

Who? for the great king turned as though

Wrath to the shaft’s head strained the bow.

Nay, not wrath the king possessed,

But a radiance of the breast.

In that sound he had the key

Of his cunning malady.

Lo, where gleamed the sapphire lake,

Leo, with his Rome at stake,

Drew blank air to hues and forms;

Whereof Two that shone distinct,

Linked as orbed stars are linked,

Clear among the myriad swarms,

In a constellation, dashed

Full on horse and rider’s eyes

Sunless light, but light it was—

Light that blinded and abashed,

Froze his members, bade him pause,

Caught him mid-gallop, blazed him home.

Attila, my Attila!

What are streams that cease to flow?

What was Attila, rolled thence,

Cheated by a juggler’s show?

Like that lake of blue intense,

Under tempest lashed to foam,

Lurid radiance, as he passed,

Filled him, and around was glassed,

When deep-voiced he uttered, Rome!

XVII

Rome! the word was: and like meat

Flung to dogs the word was torn.

Soon Rome’s magic priests shall bleat

Round their magic Pope forlorn!

Loud they swore the king had sworn

Vengeance on the Roman cheat,

Ere he passed, as, grave and still,

Danube through the shouting hill:

Sworn it by his naked life!

Eagle, snakes these women are:

Take them on the wing! but war,

Smoking war’s the warrior’s wife!

Then for plunder! then for brides

Won without a winking priest!—

Danube whirled his train of tides

Black toward the yellow East.

Make the bed for Attila!

XVIII

Chirrups of the trot afield,

Hurrahs of the battle-charge,

How they answered, how they pealed,

When the morning rose and drew

Bow and javelin, lance and targe,

In the nuptial casement’s view!

Attila, my Attila!

Down the hillspurs, out of tents

Glimmering in mid-forest, through

Mists of the cool morning scents,

Forth from city-alley, court,

Arch, the bounding horsemen flew,

Joined along the plains of dew,

Raced and gave the rein to sport,

Closed and streamed like curtain-rents

Fluttered by a wind, and flowed

Into squadrons: trumpets blew,

Chargers neighed, and trappings glowed

Brave as the bright Orient’s.

Look on the seas that run to greet

Sunrise: look on the leagues of wheat:

Look on the lines and squares that fret

Leaping to level the lance blood-wet.

Tens of thousands, man and steed,

Tossing like field-flowers in Spring;

Ready to be hurled at need

Whither their great lord may sling.

Finger Romeward, Romeward, King!

Attila, my Attila!

Still the woman holds him fast

As a night-flag round the mast.

XIX

Nigh upon the fiery noon,

Out of ranks a roaring burst.

’Ware white women like the moon!

They are poison: they have thirst

First for love, and next for rule.

Jealous of the army, she?

Ho, the little wanton fool!

We were his before she squealed

Blind for mother’s milk, and heeled

Kicking on her mother’s knee.

His in life and death are we:

She but one flower of a field.

We have given him bliss tenfold

In an hour to match her night:

Attila, my Attila!

Still her arms the master hold,

As on wounds the scarf winds tight.

XX

Over Danube day no more,

Like the warrior’s planted spear,

Stood to hail the King: in fear

Western day knocked at his door.

Attila, my Attila!

Sudden in the army’s eyes

Rolled a blast of lights and cries:

Flashing through them: Dead are ye!

Dead, ye Huns, and torn piecemeal!

See the ordered army reel

Stricken through the ribs: and see,

Wild for speed to cheat despair,

Horsemen, clutching knee to chin,

Crouch and dart they know not where.

Attila, my Attila!

Faces covered, faces bare,

Light the palace-front like jets

Of a dreadful fire within.

Beating hands and driving hair

Start on roof and parapets.

Dust rolls up; the slaughter din.

—Death to them who call him dead!

Death to them who doubt the tale!

Choking in his dusty veil,

Sank the sun on his death-bed.

Make the bed for Attila!

XXI

’Tis the room where thunder sleeps.

Frenzy, as a wave to shore

Surging, burst the silent door,

And drew back to awful deeps

Breath beaten out, foam-white. Anew

Howled and pressed the ghastly crew,

Like storm-waters over rocks.

Attila, my Attila!

One long shaft of sunset red

Laid a finger on the bed.

Horror, with the snaky locks,

Shocked the surge to stiffened heaps,

Hoary as the glacier’s head

Faced to the moon. Insane they look.

God it is in heaven who weeps

Fallen from his hand the Scourge he shook.

Make the bed for Attila!

XXII

Square along the couch, and stark,

Like the sea-rejected thing

Sea-sucked white, behold their King.

Attila, my Attila!

Beams that panted black and bright,

Scornful lightnings danced their sight:

Him they see an oak in bud,

Him an oaklog stripped of bark:

Him, their lord of day and night,

White, and lifting up his blood

Dumb for vengeance. Name us that,

Huddled in the corner dark

Humped and grinning like a cat,

Teeth for lips!—’tis she! she stares,

Glittering through her bristled hairs.

Rend her! Pierce her to the hilt!

She is Murder: have her out!

What! this little fist, as big

As the southern summer fig!

She is Madness, none may doubt.

Death, who dares deny her guilt!

Death, who says his blood she spilt!

Make the bed for Attila!

XXIII

Torch and lamp and sunset-red

Fell three-fingered on the bed.

In the torch the beard-hair scant

With the great breast seemed to pant:

In the yellow lamp the limbs

Wavered, as the lake-flower swims:

In the sunset red the dead

Dead avowed him, dry blood-red.

XXIV

Hatred of that abject slave,

Earth, was in each chieftain’s heart.

Earth has got him, whom God gave,

Earth may sing, and earth shall smart!

Attila, my Attila!

XXV

Thus their prayer was raved and ceased.

Then had Vengeance of her feast

Scent in their quick pang to smite

Which they knew not, but huge pain

Urged them for some victim slain

Swift, and blotted from the sight.

Each at each, a crouching beast,

Glared, and quivered for the word.

Each at each, and all on that,

Humped and grinning like a cat,

Head-bound with its bridal-wreath.

Then the bitter chamber heard

Vengeance in a cauldron seethe.

Hurried counsel rage and craft

Yelped to hungry men, whose teeth

Hard the grey lip-ringlet gnawed,

Gleaming till their fury laughed.

With the steel-hilt in the clutch,

Eyes were shot on her that froze

In their blood-thirst overawed;

Burned to rend, yet feared to touch.

She that was his nuptial rose,

She was of his heart’s blood clad:

Oh! the last of him she had!—

Could a little fist as big

As the southern summer fig,

Push a dagger’s point to pierce

Ribs like those? Who else! They glared

Each at each. Suspicion fierce

Many a black remembrance bared.

Attila, my Attila!

Death, who dares deny her guilt!

Death, who says his blood she spilt!

Traitor he, who stands between!

Swift to hell, who harms the Queen!

She, the wild contention’s cause,

Combed her hair with quiet paws.

Make the bed for Attila!

XXVI

Night was on the host in arms.

Night, as never night before,

Hearkened to an army’s roar

Breaking up in snaky swarms:

Torch and steel and snorting steed,

Hunted by the cry of blood,

Cursed with blindness, mad for day.

Where the torches ran a flood,

Tales of him and of the deed

Showered like a torrent spray.

Fear of silence made them strive

Loud in warrior-hymns that grew

Hoarse for slaughter yet unwreaked.

Ghostly Night across the hive,

With a crimson finger drew

Letters on her breast and shrieked.

Night was on them like the mould

On the buried half alive.

Night, their bloody Queen, her fold

Wound on them and struck them through.

Make the bed for Attila!

XXVII

Earth has got him whom God gave,

Earth may sing, and earth shall smart!

None of earth shall know his grave.

They that dig with Death depart.

Attila, my Attila!

XXVIII

Thus their prayer was raved and passed:

Passed in peace their red sunset:

Hewn and earthed those men of sweat

Who had housed him in the vast,

Where no mortal might declare,

There lies he—his end was there!

Attila, my Attila!

XXIX

Kingless was the army left:

Of its head the race bereft.

Every fury of the pit

Tortured and dismembered it.

Lo, upon a silent hour,

When the pitch of frost subsides,

Danube with a shout of power

Loosens his imprisoned tides:

Wide around the frighted plains

Shake to hear his riven chains,

Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath,

As he makes himself a path:

High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile

Floes to bergs, and giant peers

Wrestle on a drifted isle;

Island on ice-island rears;

Dissolution battles fast:

Big the senseless Titans loom,

Through a mist of common doom

Striving which shall die the last:

Till a gentle-breathing morn

Frees the stream from bank to bank.

So the Empire built of scorn

Agonized, dissolved and sank.

Of the Queen no more was told

Than of leaf on Danube rolled.

Make the bed for Attila!

ANEURIN’S HARP

I

PRINCE of Bards was old Aneurin;

He the grand Gododin sang;

All his numbers threw such fire in,

Struck his harp so wild a twang;—

Still the wakeful Briton borrows

Wisdom from its ancient heat:

Still it haunts our source of sorrows,

Deep excess of liquor sweet!

II

Here the Briton, there the Saxon,

Face to face, three fields apart,

Thirst for light to lay their thwacks on

Each the other with good heart.

Dry the Saxon sits, ’mid dinful

Noise of iron knits his steel:

Fresh and roaring with a skinful,

Britons round the hirlas reel.

III

Yellow flamed the meady sunset;

Red runs up the flag of morn.

Signal for the British onset

Hiccups through the British horn.

Down these hillmen pour like cattle

Sniffing pasture: grim below,

Showing eager teeth of battle,

In his spear-heads lies the foe.

IV

—Monster of the sea! we drive him

Back into his hungry brine.

—You shall lodge him, feed him, wive him,

Look on us; we stand in line.

—Pale sea-monster! foul the waters

Cast him; foul he leaves our land.

—You shall yield us land and daughters:

Stay the tongue, and try the hand.

V

Swift as torrent-streams our warriors,

Tossing torrent lights, find way;

Burst the ridges, crowd the barriers,

Pierce them where the spear-heads play;

Turn them as the clods in furrow,

Top them like the leaping foam;

Sorrow to the mother, sorrow,

Sorrow to the wife at home!

VI

Stags, they butted; bulls, they bellowed;

Hounds, we baited them; oh, brave!

Every second man, unfellowed,

Took the strokes of two, and gave.

Bare as hop-stakes in November’s

Mists they met our battle-flood:

Hoary-red as Winter’s embers

Lay their dead lines done in blood.

VII

Thou, my Bard, didst hang thy lyre in

Oak-leaves, and with crimson brand

Rhythmic fury spent, Aneurin;

Songs the churls could understand:

Thrumming on their Saxon sconces

Straight, the invariable blow,

Till they snorted true responses.

Ever thus the Bard they know!

VIII

But ere nightfall, harper lusty!

When the sun was like a ball

Dropping on the battle dusty,

What was yon discordant call?

Cambria’s old metheglin demon

Breathed against our rushing tide;

Clove us midst the threshing seamen:—

Gashed, we saw our ranks divide!

IX

Britain then with valedictory

Shriek veiled off her face and knelt.

Full of liquor, full of victory,

Chief on chief old vengeance dealt.

Backward swung their hurly-burly;

None but dead men kept the fight.

They that drink their cup too early,

Darkness they shall see ere night.

X

Loud we heard the yellow rover

Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick,

Thick as ants the ant-hill over,

Asking who has thrust the stick.

Lo, as frogs that Winter cumbers

Meet the Spring with stiffen’d yawn,

We from our hard night of slumbers

Marched into the bloody dawn.

XI

Day on day we fought, though shattered:

Pushed and met repulses sharp,

Till our Raven’s plumes were scattered:

All, save old Aneurin’s harp.

Hear it wailing like a mother

O’er the strings of children slain!

He in one tongue, in another,

Alien, I; one blood, yet twain.

XII

Old Aneurin! droop no longer.

That squat ocean-scum, we own,

Had fine stoutness, made us stronger,

Brought us much-required backbone:

Claimed of Power their dues, and granted

Dues to Power in turn, when rose

Mightier rovers; they that planted

Sovereign here the Norman nose.

XIII

Glorious men, with heads of eagles,

Chopping arms, and cupboard lips;

Warriors, hunters, keen as beagles,

Mounted aye on horse or ships.

Active, being hungry creatures;

Silent, having nought to say:

High they raised the lord of features,

Saxon-worshipped to this day.

XIV

Hear its deeds, the great recital!

Stout as bergs of Arctic ice

Once it led, and lived; a title

Now it is, and names its price.

This our Saxon brothers cherish:

This, when by the worth of wits

Lands are reared aloft, or perish,

Sole illumes their lucre-pits.

XV

Know we not our wrongs, unwritten

Though they be, Aneurin? Sword,

Song, and subtle mind, the Briton

Brings to market, all ignored.

’Gainst the Saxon’s bone impinging,

Still is our Gododin played;

Shamed we see him humbly cringing

In a shadowy nose’s shade.

XVI

Bitter is the weight that crushes

Low, my Bard, thy race of fire.

Here no fair young future blushes

Bridal to a man’s desire.

Neither chief, nor aim, nor splendour

Dressing distance, we perceive.

Neither honour, nor the tender

Bloom of promise, morn or eve.

XVII

Joined we are; a tide of races

Rolled to meet a common fate;

England clasps in her embraces

Many: what is England’s state?

England her distended middle

Thumps with pride as Mammon’s wife;

Says that thus she reads thy riddle,

Heaven! ’tis heaven to plump her life.

XVIII

O my Bard! a yellow liquor,

Like to that we drank of old—

Gold is her metheglin beaker,

She destruction drinks in gold.

Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing

Hotly for his dues this hour;

Tell her that no drunken blessing

Stops the onward march of Power.

XIX

Has she ears to take forewarnings

She will cleanse her of her stains,

Feed and speed for braver mornings

Valorously the growth of brains.

Power, the hard man knit for action,

Reads each nation on the brow.

Cripple, fool, and petrifaction

Fall to him—are falling now!

MEN AND MAN

I

MEN the Angels eyed;

And here they were wild waves,

And there as marsh descried;

Men the Angels eyed,

And liked the picture best

Where they were greenly dressed

In brotherhood of graves.

II

Man the Angels marked:

He led a host through murk,

On fearful seas embarked;

Man the Angels marked;

To think without a nay,

That he was good as they,

And help him at his work.

III

Man and Angels, ye

A sluggish fen shall drain,

Shall quell a warring sea.

Man and Angels, ye,

Whom stain of strife befouls,

A light to kindle souls

Bear radiant in the stain.

THE LAST CONTENTION

I

YOUNG captain of a crazy bark!

O tameless heart in battered frame!

Thy sailing orders have a mark,

And hers is not the name.

II

For action all thine iron clanks

In cravings for a splendid prize;

Again to race or bump thy planks

With any flag that flies.

III

Consult them; they are eloquent

For senses not inebriate.

They trust thee on the star intent,

That leads to land their freight.

IV

And they have known thee high peruse

The heavens, and deep the earth, till thou

Didst into the flushed circle cruise

Where reason quits the brow.

V

Thou animatest ancient tales,

To prove our world of linear seed:

Thy very virtue now assails,

A tempter to mislead.

VI

But thou hast answer I am I;

My passion hallows, bids command:

And she is gracious, she is nigh:

One motion of the hand!

VII

It will suffice; a whirly tune

These winds will pipe, and thou perform

The nodded part of pantaloon

In thy created storm.

VIII

Admires thee Nature with much pride;

She clasps thee for a gift of morn,

Till thou art set against the tide,

And then beware her scorn.

IX

Sad issue, should that strife befall

Between thy mortal ship and thee!

It writes the melancholy scrawl

Of wreckage over sea.

X

This lady of the luting tongue,

The flash in darkness, billow’s grace,

For thee the worship; for the young

In muscle the embrace.

XI

Soar on thy manhood clear from those

Whose toothless Winter claws at May,

And take her as the vein of rose

Athwart an evening grey.

PERIANDER

I

HOW died Melissa none dares shape in words.

A woman who is wife despotic lords

Count faggot at the question, Shall she live!

Her son, because his brows were black of her,

Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive,

And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur.

II

There is no Corinth save the whip and curb

Of Corinth, high Periander; the superb

In magnanimity, in rule severe.

Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits,

The city under him: a white yoked steer,

That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits.

III

Bloom of the generous fires of his fair Spring

Still coloured him when men forbore to sting;

Admiring meekly where the ordered seeds

Of his good sovereignty showed gardens trim;

And owning that the hoe he struck at weeds

Was author of the flowers raised face to him.

IV

His Corinth, to each mood subservient

In homage, made he as an instrument

To yield him music with scarce touch of stops.

He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly:

At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops;

At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye.

V

His wisdom men acknowledged; only one,

The creature, issue of him, Lycophron,

That rebel with his mother in his brows,

Contested: such an infamous would foul

Pirene! Little heed where he might house

The prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl!

VI

To prove the Gods benignant to his rule,

The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool,

Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power.

A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had:

One greyer pointed on the pallid hour

To come: a river dried of waters glad.

VII

For which of his male issue promised grip

To stride yon people, with the curb and whip?

This Lycophron! he sole, the father like,

Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide,

By right of mastery; stern will to strike;

Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride!

VIII

Himself the prince beheld a failing fount.

His line stretched back unto its holy mount:

The thirsty onward waved for him no sign.

Then stood before his vision that hard son.

The seizure of a passion for his line

Impelled him to the path of Lycophron.

IX

The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea;

A figure shunned along the busy quay,

Perforce of the harsh edict for who dared

Address him outcast. Naming it, he crossed

His father’s look with look that proved them paired

For stiffness, and another pebble tossed.

X

An exile to the Island ere nightfall

He passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all.

It had resemblance to a death: and on,

Against a coast where sapphire shattered white,

The seasons rolled like troops of billows blown

To spraymist. The prince gazed on capping night.

XI

Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy son!

Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done.

He heard historic echoes moan his name,

As of the prince in whom the race had pause;

Till Tyranny paternity became,

And him he hated loved he for the cause.

XII

Not Lycophron the exile now appeared,

But young Periander, from the shadow cleared,

That haunted his rebellious brows. The prince

Grew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth,

Return: and of pure pardon to convince,

Despatched the messenger most dear with both.

XIII

His daughter, from the exile’s Island home,

Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o’er the foam,

Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed;

Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced.

To bring him back a prince the father vowed,

Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist.

XIV

He waved the fleet to strain its westward way

On to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay:

Soil of those hospitable islanders

Whom now his heart, for honour to his blood,

Thanked. They should learn what boons a prince confers

When happiness enjoins him gratitude!

XV

In watch upon the offing, worn with haste

To see his youth revived, and, close embraced,

Pardon who had subdued him, who had gained

Surely the stoutest battle between two

Since Titan pierced by young Apollo stained

Earth’s breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked through.

XVI

Errors aforetime unperceived were bared,

To be by his young masterful repaired:

Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke;

His policy confirmed amid the surge

Of States and people fretting at his yoke.

And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge!

XVII

Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheer

For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier.

They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress

Of numbers the free islanders dismayed

At Tyranny come masking to oppress,

Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid.

XVIII

Who smote the man thrown open to young joy?

The image of the mother of his boy

Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths,

With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct,

Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes?

Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked!

XIX

Dead was he, and demanding earth. Demand

Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand,

The Tyrant in the father heard him cry,

And raged a plague; to prove on free Hellenes

How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye;

How black his Gods behind their marble screens.

SOLON

I

THE Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye

On the great man of Athens, whom for foe

He knew, than on the sycophantic fry

That broke as waters round a galley’s flow,

Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake.

Solidity the Thunderer could not shake,

Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare,

His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look,

From thought drew, and a countenance could wear

Not less at peace than fields in Attic air

Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper’s hook.

II

Most enviable so; yet much insane

To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep,

By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein;

Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap,

My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood.

For ones and twos and threes thy words are good;

For thine own government are pillars: mine

Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst,

Rejecting elegiacs, though they shine

On polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine,

In showering columns from their fountain burst.

III

Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed,

To his high seat upon the sacred rock:

And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed

The meditation which that passing mock

Had buffeted awhile to sallowness.

He little loved the man, his office less,

Yet owned him for a flower of his kind.

Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he!

The people grew not in themselves, but, blind,

Accepted sight from him, to him resigned

Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea.

IV

As under sea lay Solon’s work, or seemed

By turbid shore-waves beaten day by day;

Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed,

Or child that fashioned in another clay

Appears, by strangers’ hands to home returned.

But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned

It was in some way, justly says the sage.

One sees not how, while husbanding regrets;

While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage,

High vision is obscured; for this is age

When robbed—more infant than the babe it frets!

V

Yet see Athenians treading the black path

Laid by a prince’s shadow! well content

To wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath:

They bow to their accepted Orient

With offer of the all that renders bright:

Forgetful of the growth of men to light,

As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow.

Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast.

But still may they who sowed behind the plough

True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW

To make the plagues afflicting us things past.

BELLEROPHON

I

MAIMED, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod

Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread;

Upon the stature of a God,

He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head.

II

Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue

Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc:

Once radiant as the javelin flung

Right at the centre breastplate of his mark.

III

Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look,

Some undermountain narrative he tells,

As gapped by Lykian heat the brook

Cut from the source that in the upland swells.

IV

The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust

With patient inattention hear him prate:

And comes the snow, and comes the dust,

Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.

V

A crazy beggar grateful for a meal

Has ever of himself a world to say.

For them he is an ancient wheel

Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.

VI

He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect;

For never singer in the land had been

Who him for theme did not reject:

Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.

VII

Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight

The snorting white-winged brother of the wave,

They hear him as a thing by fate

Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.

VIII

As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort,

Their sires have told; and of a martial prince

Bestriding him; and old report

Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.

IX

There is that story of the golden bit

By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:

A mortal who could mount, and sit

Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.

X

He rose like the loosed fountain’s utmost leap;

He played the star at span of heaven right o’er

Men’s heads: they saw the snowy steep,

Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.

XI

He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell:

And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins;

And in his breast a mouthless well

Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.

XII

Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs

Of recollections richer than our skies

To feed the flow of tuneful strings,

Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies.

PHAÉTHÔN

ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE

AT the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer,

Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,

And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!

For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to

black;

In the light of him there is music thro’ the poplar and river-sedge,

Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song.

Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly,

In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.

Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite’s loved one it is!

To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon,

Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary,

Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage,

He would grant his son’s petition, whatsoever the sign thereof.

Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: ‘Rule of day give me; give it

me,

Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly

I, divine, proclaim my birthright.’ Darkened Helios, and his

utterance

Choked prophetic: ‘O half mortal!’ he exclaimed in an agony,

‘O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing:

Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious!

Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous

Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy?

Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently;

As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them;

Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin

Shall be known even as when _I_ strike on the string’d shell with

melody,

And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the cavities,

Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships

thereon.’

Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquence

Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks away.

What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in delirium,

Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent,

‘By the oath! the oath! thine oath!’ cried. The effulgent foreseër

then,

Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy’s beaming countenance

Looked and moaned, and urged him for love’s sake, for sweet life’s

sake, to yield the claim,

To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity.

But he, vehement, passionate, called out: ‘Let me show I am what I

say,

That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their whispering.

Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels,

How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily,

Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial,

And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear

dew-drinkers:

Yea, for this I gaze on life’s light; throw for this any sacrifice.’

All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocable

Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless.

Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so decreed.

They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries.

Swift the ripple ripples follow’d, as of aureate Helicon,

Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the distances,

And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight!

Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air!

Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory!

Chafed the youth with their spirit súrcharged, as when blossom is

shaken by winds,

Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quick

On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning

rose:

Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest

fields,

When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it:

Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate

(If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil),

Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate: