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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1042-0.txt b/1042-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a37d2c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/1042-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2645 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Reading of Life, by George Meredith + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Reading of Life + with Other Poems + + +Author: George Meredith + + + +Release Date: April 18, 2013 [eBook #1042] +[This file was first posted on September 25, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A READING OF LIFE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1901 Archibald Constable and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + A READING OF LIFE + WITH OTHER POEMS + + + BY GEORGE MEREDITH + + * * * * * + + WESTMINSTER + ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD + 2 WHITEHALL GARDENS + 1901 + + * * * * * + + BUTLER & TANNER, + THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS, + FROME, AND LONDON + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +A READING OF LIFE + THE VITAL CHOICE 1 + WITH THE HUNTRESS 3 + WITH THE PERSUADER 8 + THE TEST OF MANHOOD 28 +THE CAGEING OF ARES 45 +THE NIGHT-WALK 55 +THE HUELESS LOVE 60 +SONG IN THE SONGLESS 63 +UNION IN DISSEVERANCE 64 +THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH 65 +THE MAIN REGRET 66 +ALTERNATION 68 +HAWARDEN 69 +AT THE CLOSE 70 +FOREST HISTORY 71 +A GARDEN IDYL 81 +FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE 88 +FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETERS +VERSE-- + THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES 109 + ,, ,, ,, ,, 112 + MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS 114 + AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT 117 + PARIS AND DIOMEDES 119 + HYPNOS ON IDA 121 + CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS 122 + THE HORSES OF ACHILLES 123 +THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE-- + FROM THE _MIREIO_ 126 + + + + + +A READING OF LIFE + + +THE VITAL CHOICE + + +I + + + OR shall we run with Artemis + Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? + Both are mighty; + Both give bliss; + Each can torture if divided; + Each claims worship undivided, + In her wake would have us wallow. + + +II + + + Youth must offer on bent knees + Homage unto one or other; + Earth, the mother, + This decrees; + And unto the pallid Scyther + Either points us shun we either + Shun or too devoutly follow. + + + +WITH THE HUNTRESS + + + THROUGH the water-eye of night, + Midway between eve and dawn, + See the chase, the rout, the flight + In deep forest; oread, faun, + Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; + Ravenous all the line for speed. + See yon wavy sparkle beck + Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead. + Down her course a serpent star + Coils and shatters at her heels; + Peals the horn exulting, peals + Plaintive, is it near or far. + Huntress, arrowy to pursue, + In and out of woody glen, + Under cliffs that tear the blue, + Over torrent, over fen, + She and forest, where she skims + Feathery, darken and relume: + Those are her white-lightning limbs + Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. + Mountains hear her and call back, + Shrewd with night: a frosty wail + Distant: her the emerald vale + Folds, and wonders in her track. + Now her retinue is lean, + Many rearward; streams the chase + Eager forth of covert; seen + One hot tide the rapturous race. + Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, + Up on a flash the lighted mound + Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft + Strung to barb with archer's craft, + Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet + Songs to see, past pitch of sweet. + Fearful swiftness they outrun, + Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, + Challenge, charge of tusks elude: + Theirs the dance to tame the rude; + Beast, and beast in manhood tame, + Follow we their silver flame. + Pride of flesh from bondage free, + Reaping vigour of its waste, + Marks her servitors, and she + Sanctifies the unembraced. + Nought of perilous she reeks; + Valour clothes her open breast; + Sweet beyond the thrill of sex; + Hallowed by the sex confessed. + Huntress arrowy to pursue, + Colder she than sunless dew, + She, that breath of upper air; + Ay, but never lyrist sang, + Draught of Bacchus never sprang + Blood the bliss of Gods to share, + High o'er sweep of eagle wings, + Like the run with her, when rings + Clear her rally, and her dart, + In the forest's cavern heart, + Tells of her victorious aim. + Then is pause and chatter, cheer, + Laughter at some satyr lame, + Looks upon the fallen deer, + Measuring his noble crest; + Here a favourite in her train, + Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; + All applauded. Shall she reign + Worshipped? O to be with her there! + She, that breath of nimble air, + Lifts the breast to giant power. + Maid and man, and man and maid, + Who each other would devour + Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, + There are comrades, led by her, + Maid-preserver, man-maker. + + + +WITH THE PERSUADER + + + WHO murmurs, hither, hither: who + Where nought is audible so fills the ear? + Where nought is visible can make appear + A veil with eyes that waver through, + Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come, + Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, + She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, + Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire + To clasp and strike a slackened lyre, + Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, + Flame in a crystal vessel sails + Beneath a dome of jewelled spray, + For land that drops the rosy day + On nights of throbbing nightingales. + + Landward did the wonder flit, + Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. + We saw the heavens fling down their rose; + On rapturous waves we saw her glide; + The pearly sea-shell half enclose; + The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; + And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more + Behold than tracks along a startled shore, + With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign + An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain. + + More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, + The very she called forth by ripened blood + For its next breath of being, murmurs; she, + Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, + The stream within us urged to flood; + Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, + Maid, woman and divinity; + Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate + Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit + Untasted; she our written fate + Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root: + Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; + The evanescent, ever-present she, + Great Nature's stern necessity + In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; + With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take + Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break. + + The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. + Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, + Her form is given to pardoned sight, + And lets our mortal eyes receive + The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; + Adored by them who solitarily pace, + In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, + The paths among the meadow asphodel, + Remembering. Never there her face + Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell + Around such whiteness the enamoured air + Of noon that clothes her, never there. + Daughter of light, the joyful light, + She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, + Sweet in her disregard of aid + Divine to conquer or persuade. + A fountain jets from moss; a flower + Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower. + By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen + With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen. + + Shorn of attendant Graces she can use + Her natural snares to make her will supreme. + A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse + Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: + One arm at curve along a rounded thigh; + Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way + A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, + Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. + The bud of fresh virginity awaits + The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: + She touches on the hour of happy mates; + Still is she unaware she wakens thirst. + + And while commanding blissful sight believe + It holds her as a body strained to breast, + Down on the underworld's perpetual eve + She plunges the possessor dispossessed; + And bids believe that image, heaving warm, + Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame; + The phantom any breeze blows out of form; + A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim. + + The rapture shed the torture weaves; + The direst blow on human heart she deals: + The pain to know the seen deceives; + Nought true but what insufferably feels. + And stabs of her delicious note, + That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard + Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, + We answer as the midnight's morning's bird. + + She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; + In her delicious laughter part revealed; + Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, + For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. + Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: + Yon folded couples, passing under shade, + Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, + Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. + We dolorous complainers had a dream, + Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, + We saw stand bare of her celestial beam + The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire. + + Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips + Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; + And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips + She nods: at once that creature wears her lure. + Blush of our being between birth and death: + Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: + Her wily semblance nought of her denies; + Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, + The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm + Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; + Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. + Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. + But scorn she has for them that walk alone; + Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. + The men as chief of criminals she disdains, + And holds the reason in perceptive thought. + More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, + Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought. + Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, + Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, + In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths: + Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes + For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew. + Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn + Across her garden from the insaner crew, + She darkens to malignity of scorn. + A shiver courses through her garden-grounds: + Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, + The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring + Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. + These, the irreverent of Life's design, + Division between natural and divine + Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, + In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest; + And these because the roses flood their cheeks, + Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. + With them is war; and well the Goddess knows + What undermines the race who mount the rose; + How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, + Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: + Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, + The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, + And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. + They who her sway withstand a sea defy, + At every point of juncture must be proof; + Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge + Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge + For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. + She, tenderness, is pitiless to them + Resisting in her godhead nature's truth. + No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; + Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. + These miserably disinclined, + The lamentably unembraced, + Insult the Pleasures Earth designed + To people and beflower the waste. + Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: + For death they live, in life they die. + + Her head the Goddess from them turns, + As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. + She views her quivering couples unconsoled, + And of her beauty mirror they become, + Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, + Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. + Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, + Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, + Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, + They play the music made of two: + Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end: + Cunninger than the numbered strings, + For melodies, for harmonies, + For mastered discords, and the things + Not vocable, whose mysteries + Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend. + + Is it an anguish overflowing shame + And the tongue's pudency confides to her, + With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, + The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, + Then is the Goddess tenderness + Maternal, and she has a sister's tones + Benign to soothe intemperate distress, + Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. + Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease + To those of her milk-bearer votaries + As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source + Direct; erratic but in heart's excess; + Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force; + Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. + And pray they under skies less overcast, + That swiftly may her star of eve descend, + Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, + To lengthen blissful night will she befriend. + + Unfailing her reply to woman's voice + In supplication instant. Is it man's, + She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, + And him: the flowers are various, he has choice. + Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; + Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; + And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise + Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys. + + She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps + To her invoked: distraction is implored. + A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps + Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored. + His tales of her declare she condescends; + Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: + Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose + A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose. + She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs + Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; + Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings. + 'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse + Rarely the music made of two ascends, + And Beauty's Queen some other way is won. + Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends + Herself to all, and yields herself to none, + Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised + In hot assurance under shade of doubt: + And numerous are the images bepraised + As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout. + + Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo + Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. + That is her garden's precept, seen where shines + Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines. + Daughter of light, the joyful light, + She bids her couples face full East, + Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast + Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, + The lion-haunted thickets hold apart. + In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; + High confidence in her whose aid is lent + To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, + Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone. + And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, + Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, + Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's. + + Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe + He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show. + For him requiring woman's arts to please + Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, + No race of giants! In the woman's veins + Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains. + Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, + Aspiring blends the Titan with the God; + Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss + In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss; + And is it needed that Love's daintier brute + Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. + She is great Nature's ever intimate + In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, + Until perverted by her senseless male, + She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, + The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, + Elusive to allure, since he grew tame. + + Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, + And greatest and most present, with her dower + Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute + For meditated guile. She laughs to hear + A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, + Her garden's histories tell of to all near. + Let it be said, But less upon her guile + Doth she rely for her immortal smile. + Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens + To push her conquests by the simplest means. + While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves + From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves. + + Her spacious garden and her garden's grant + She offers in reward for handsome cheer: + Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant + The secret down a dewy leer + Of corner eyelids into haze: + Many a fair Aphrosyne + Like flower-bell to honey-bee: + And here they flicker round the maze + Bewildering him in heart and head: + And here they wear the close demure, + With subtle peeps to reassure: + Others parade where love has bled, + And of its crimson weave their mesh: + Others to snap of fingers leap, + As bearing breast with love asleep. + These are her laughters in the flesh. + Or would she fit a warrior mood, + She lights her seeming unsubdued, + And indicates the fortress-key. + Or is it heart for heart that craves, + She flecks along a run of waves + The one to promise deeper sea. + + Bands of her limpid primitives, + Or patterned in the curious braid, + Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives, + For what he gives is he repaid. + Good is it if by him 'tis held + He wins the fairest ever welled + From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I + Not fairer! and forbids him to deny, + Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, + Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,-- + And be they doves or be they asps,-- + Must seem to him the sovereignty fair; + Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed. + Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, + Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned + The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, + He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, + Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. + Doth man divide divine Necessity + From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts + A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain + Present her; armed to bless and to constrain. + Of this he perishes; not she, the throned + On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts. + A loftier Reason out of deeper founts + Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned + While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, + And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky; + Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry, + Uplifted by the innumerable hosts. + + Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, + When the wild sap at high tide smites + Within us; or benignly clear + To vision; or as the iris lights + On fluctuant waters; she is ours + Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen; + Flushing the world with odorous flowers: + A soft compulsion on terrene + By heavenly: and the world is hers + While hunger after Beauty spurs. + + So is it sung in any space + She fills, with laugh at shallow laws + Forbidding love's devised embrace, + The music Beauty from it draws. + + + +THE TEST OF MANHOOD + + + LIKE a flood river whirled at rocky banks, + An army issues out of wilderness, + With battle plucking round its ragged flanks; + Obstruction in the van; insane excess + Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress + Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, + And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, + The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. + They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone; + A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. + Then was the gracious birth of man's new day; + Divided from the haunted night it shone. + + That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang + Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide. + Another sun had risen to clasp his bride: + It was another earth unto him sang. + + Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights? + From the Persuader came it, in those vales + Whereunto she melodiously invites, + Her troops of eager servitors regales? + Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed + Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead; + Nor either points for us the way of flame. + From him predestined mightier it came; + His task to hold them both in breast, and yield + Their dues to each, and of their war be field. + + The foes that in repulsion never ceased, + Must he, who once has been the goodly beast + Of one or other, at whose beck he ran, + Constrain to make him serviceable man; + Offending neither, nor the natural claim + Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name. + + Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife + To hold them fast conjoined within him still; + Submissive to his will + Along the road of life! + And marvel not he wavered if at whiles + The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles. + For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain; + Repentance offered ecstasy in pain. + Delicious licence called it Nature's cry; + Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh; + A tread on shingle timed his lame advance + Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance, + He of the troubled marching army leaned + On godhead visible, on godhead screened; + The radiant roseate, the curtained white; + Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night. + + He drank of fictions, till celestial aid + Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed; + Sagely the generous Giver circumspect, + To choose for grants the egregious, his elect; + And ever that imagined succour slew + The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew. + + In fellowship religion has its founts: + The solitary his own God reveres: + Ascend no sacred Mounts + Our hungers or our fears. + As only for the numbers Nature's care + Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, + So to Divinity the spring of prayer + From brotherhood the one way upward leads. + Like the sustaining air + Are both for flowers and weeds. + But he who claims in spirit to be flower, + Will find them both an air that doth devour. + + Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored + External gifts bestowed but on the sword; + Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, + Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, + His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail; + See a black adversary's ghost prevail; + Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win + While still the conflict tore his breast within. + + Out of that agony, misread for those + Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased, + The ghost of his black adversary rose, + To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased. + And long with him was wrestling ere emerged + A mind to read in him the reflex shade + Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged; + By craven compromises hourly swayed. + + Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, + The man's mind opened under weight of cloud. + To penetrate the dark was it endowed; + Stood day before a vision shooting wide. + Whereat the spectral enemy lost form; + The traversed wilderness exposed its track. + He felt the far advance in looking back; + Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm. + + Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire, + That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, + Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart + All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire; + A stranger still, religiously divined; + Not yet with understanding read aright. + But when the mind, the cherishable mind, + The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight, + Himself as mirror raised among his kind, + He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight: + Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, + His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, + Had come of many a grip in mastery, + Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, + And of his bosom made him lord, to keep + The starry roof of his unruffled frame + Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep + Below, above, aye with a wistful aim. + + The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, + By traitor inmates baited, upward burned; + Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, + The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown. + To whom unwittingly did he aspire + In wilderness, where bitter was his need: + To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed + For light and air, he struck through crimson mire. + But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp, + And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed, + All choral in its fruitful garden camp, + The spiritual the palpable illumed. + + This gift of penetration and embrace, + His prize from tidal battles lost or won, + Reveals the scheme to animate his race: + How that it is a warfare but begun; + Unending; with no Power to interpose; + No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, + Heard of the Highest; never battle's close, + The victory complete and victor crowned: + Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense + Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed. + In manhood must he find his competence; + In his clear mind the spiritual food: + God being there while he his fight maintains; + Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, + While he rejects the suicide despair; + Accepts the spur of explicable pains; + Obedient to Nature, not her slave: + Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows; + Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave, + And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-- + Whence Evil in a world unread before; + That mystery to simple springs resolved. + His God the Known, diviner to adore, + Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved. + Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns + In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face. + Back to the primal brute shall he retrace + His path, doth he permit to force her chains + A soft Persuader coursing through his veins, + An icy Huntress stringing to the chase: + What one the flash disdains; + What one so gives it grace. + + But is he rightly manful in her eyes, + A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies, + A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs, + Desireing and desireable he shines; + As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise + And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines. + Earth fills him with her juices, without fear + That she will cast him drunken down the steeps. + All woman is she to this man most dear; + He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps: + She conscient, she sensitive, in him; + With him enwound, his brave ambition hers: + By him humaner made; by his keen spurs + Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb, + Her crazy adoration of big thews, + Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled, + Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world + In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse. + + This man, this hero, works not to destroy; + This godlike--as the rock in ocean stands;-- + He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands + Creative; in his edifice has joy. + How strength may serve for purity is shown + When he himself can scourge to make it clean. + Withal his pitch of pride would not disown + A sober world that walks the balanced mean + Between its tempters, rarely overthrown: + And such at times his army's march has been. + + Near is he to great Nature in the thought + Each changing Season intimately saith, + That nought save apparition knows the death; + To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought. + She counts not loss a word of any weight; + It may befal his passions and his greeds + To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, + But life gone breathless will she reinstate. + + Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, + When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, + Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, + Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets. + Unresting she, unresting he, from change + To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; + She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, + Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range. + + No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, + She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; + But he, the flower at head and soil at root, + Is miracle, guides he the brute to God. + And that way seems he bound; that way the road, + With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, + Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, + He travels, urged by some internal goad. + + Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing + He would become is in his mind its child; + Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; + For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled. + So moves he forth in faith, if he has made + His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth. + Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid, + He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. + Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; + The star of sky upon his footway cast; + Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, + The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's. + Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, + To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. + + Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate? + Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; + The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; + With her the barren Huntress alternate; + His rough refractory off on kicking heels + To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; + And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, + His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels? + May not his aspect, like her own so fair + Reflexively, the central force belie, + And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, + Be rebel at the core? What hope is there? + + 'Tis that in each recovery he preserves, + Between his upper and his nether wit, + Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; + He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves; + With such a grasp upon his brute as tells + Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. + A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun + Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels. + + + + +THE CAGEING OF ARES + + + ILIAD, v. V. 385 + + [_Dedicated to the Council at The Hague_.] + + HOW big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed + At sight of her boy Giants on the leap + Each over other as they neighboured home, + Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, + And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced. + Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, + Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, + It signalled some adventurous master-trick + To set Olympians buzzing in debate, + Lest it might be their godhead undermined, + The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high + On shoulders of his brother Otos waved + For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, + Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar + While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, + With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; + Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, + And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, + Burst the hot story out of throats of both, + Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut + The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm + Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon + A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam + Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, + Signification marvellous she caught, + Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, + Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last + Subsided, and the serious naked deed, + With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, + Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe + That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, + These two made up of lion, bear and fox, + Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, + Still by the reckoning infants among men, + Had done the deed to strike the Titan host + In envy dumb, in envious heart elate: + These two combining strength and craft had snared, + Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged + The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War; + Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes; + The barren furrower of anointed fields; + The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, + Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: + Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth + When they had seized on his implacable spear, + Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite + His godlike fury startled from amaze. + For he had eyed them nearing him in play, + The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, + Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount + Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there + On Earth's original fisticuffs they called + For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God, + Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, + Good servitors of Ares they would be, + And ply the pointed spear to dominate + Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood + Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced + Amusedly he watched them, and as one + The lusty twain were on him and they had him. + Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud! + Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes! + Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes! + Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, + Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; + A desolating fire to blind the sight + With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; + The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; + Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, + Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. + Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, + And tumbled down the cave. But rather look-- + Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, + Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, + Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! + Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, + And shatter earth's delirious holiday, + Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, + Resolving to composure on its throbs. + But see her in the Seasons through that year; + That one glad year and the fair opening month. + Had never our Great Mother such sweet face! + War with her, gentle war with her, each day + Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, + On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength + Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won, + From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, + Her ready secret: the abounding life + Returned for valiant labour: she and they + Defeated and victorious turn by turn; + By loss enriched, by overthrow restored. + Exchange of powers of this conflict came; + Defacement none, nor ever squandered force. + Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned, + As music unto the hand that smote the strings; + And she the rosier from their showery brows, + They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast. + Back to the primal rational of those + Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp + Stability in hatred of the insane, + Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce + The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced + Above; those beautiful, those masterful, + Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, + Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just? + Earth in her happy children asked that word, + Whereto within their breast was her reply. + Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, + Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years; + Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired + The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, + Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, + To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced, + And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, + Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, + Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled + The Tyranny. This her voice within them told, + When softly the Great Mother chid her sons + Not of the giant brood, who did create + Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain + Set moving by an abject blood, that waked + To wanton under elements more benign, + And planted aliens on Olympian heights;-- + Imagination's cradle poesy + Become a monstrous pressure upon men;-- + Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed + By light from her, born of the love of her, + Their lordship the illumined brain rejects + For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, + Her other name. So spake she in their heart, + Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath + Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, + Confidently to cling. And when brown corn + Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, + With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss; + When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil + Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; + When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, + Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth; + The very eye of passion drowsed by excess, + And yet a burning lion for the spring; + Then in that time of general cherishment, + Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, + He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, + Then did good Gaea's children gratefully + Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace, + Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call + Harmoniously and images her Law; + Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, + In memories made present on the brain + By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes; + The picture of an earth allied to heaven; + Between them the known smile behind black masks; + Rightly their various moods interpreted; + And frolic because toilful children borne + With larger comprehension of Earth's aim + At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid. + + + + +THE NIGHT-WALK + + + AWAKES for me and leaps from shroud + All radiantly the moon's own night + Of folded showers in streamer cloud; + Our shadows down the highway white + Or deep in woodland woven-boughed, + With yon and yon a stem alight. + + I see marauder runagates + Across us shoot their dusky wink; + I hear the parliament of chats + In haws beside the river's brink; + And drops the vole off alder-banks, + To push his arrow through the stream. + These busy people had our thanks + For tickling sight and sound, but theme + They were not more than breath we drew + Delighted with our world's embrace: + The moss-root smell where beeches grew, + And watered grass in breezy space; + The silken heights, of ghostly bloom + Among their folds, by distance draped. + 'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, + That cried to have its chaos shaped: + Absorbing, little noting, still + Enriched, and thinking it bestowed; + With wistful looks on each far hill + For something hidden, something owed. + Unto his mantled sister, Day + Had given the secret things we sought + And she was grave and saintly gay; + At times she fluttered, spoke her thought; + She flew on it, then folded wings, + In meditation passing lone, + To breathe around the secret things, + Which have no word, and yet are known; + Of thirst for them are known, as air + Is health in blood: we gained enough + By this to feel it honest fare; + Impalpable, not barren, stuff. + + A pride of legs in motion kept + Our spirits to their task meanwhile, + And what was deepest dreaming slept: + The posts that named the swallowed mile; + Beside the straight canal the hut + Abandoned; near the river's source + Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; + The roadway missed; were our discourse; + At times dear poets, whom some view + Transcendent or subdued evoked + To speak the memorable, the true, + The luminous as a moon uncloaked; + For proof that there, among earth's dumb, + A soul had passed and said our best. + Or it might be we chimed on some + Historic favourite's astral crest, + With part to reverence in its gleam, + And part to rivalry the shout: + So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream + Of power within to strike without. + But most the silences were sweet, + Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel + It lived in such divine conceit + As envies aught we stamp for real. + + To either then an untold tale + Was Life, and author, hero, we. + The chapters holding peaks to scale, + Or depths to fathom, made our glee; + For we were armed of inner fires, + Unbled in us the ripe desires; + And passion rolled a quiet sea, + Whereon was Love the phantom sail. + + + + +THE HUELESS LOVE + + + UNTO that love must we through fire attain, + Which those two held as breath of common air; + The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; + Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain. + + Midway the road of our life's term they met, + And one another knew without surprise; + Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; + Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret. + + To them it was revealed how they had found + The kindred nature and the needed mind; + The mate by long conspiracy designed; + The flower to plant in sanctuary ground. + + Avowed in vigilant solicitude + For either, what most lived within each breast + They let be seen: yet every human test + Demanding righteousness approved them good. + + She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared + Abandonment to help if heaved or sank + Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, + Life rosier were she but less revered. + + An arm that never shook did not obscure + Her woman's intuition of the bliss-- + Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, + Across the narrow plank--he could abjure. + + Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, + And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, + Was all of earthly in their love untold, + Beyond all earthly known to them who wed. + + So has there come the gust at South-west flung + By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, + When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, + And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung. + + + + +SONG IN THE SONGLESS + + + THEY have no song, the sedges dry, + And still they sing. + It is within my breast they sing, + As I pass by. + Within my breast they touch a string, + They wake a sigh. + There is but sound of sedges dry; + In me they sing. + + + + +UNION IN DISSEVERANCE + + + SUNSET worn to its last vermilion he; + She that star overhead in slow descent: + That white star with the front of angel she; + He undone in his rays of glory spent + + Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, + He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest + Incomplete, were the light for which he dies, + Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest. + + Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks; + Life's full throb over breathless and abased: + Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, + One, more one than the bridally embraced. + + + + +THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH + + + IF that thou hast the gift of strength, then know + Thy part is to uplift the trodden low; + Else in a giant's grasp until the end + A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend. + + + + +THE MAIN REGRET + + + WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM + + + +I + + + SEEN, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission + Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. + They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician; + Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair. + + + +II + + + Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered + Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. + Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered + Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone. + + + + +ALTERNATION + + + BETWEEN the fountain and the rill + I passed, and saw the mighty will + To leap at sky; the careless run, + As earth would lead her little son. + + Beneath them throbs an urgent well, + That here is play, and there is war. + I know not which had most to tell + Of whence we spring and what we are. + + + + +HAWARDEN + + + WHEN comes the lighted day for men to read + Life's meaning, with the work before their hands + Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed, + Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands + Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge; + Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. + The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge, + Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, + Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known + By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. + A splendid image built of man has flown; + His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. + Ours the great privilege to have had one + Among us who celestial tasks has done. + + + + +AT THE CLOSE + + + TO Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, + Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st; + And that black spot in each embattled host, + Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. + Now is it red artillery and white steel; + Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, + That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, + Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. + So in all times of man's descent insane + To brute, did strength and craft combining strike, + Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. + But at the close he entered Thy domain, + Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like + He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe. + + + + +FOREST HISTORY + + +I + + + BENEATH the vans of doom did men pass in. + Heroic who came out; for round them hung + A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue, + With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin: + + + +II + + + Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired + To his last fastness; overthrown by few. + Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. + Then man to play devorant straight was fired. + + + +III + + + More intimate became the forest fear + While pillared darkness hatched malicious life + At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife + And wary slid the glance from ear to ear. + + + +IV + + + In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, + The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass, + On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, + Revealed where lured the swallower byway. + + + +V + + + Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound + Off walls of distance, left each mounted height. + It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite + Of humble human being, held the ground. + + + +VI + + + Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow + The feet sustained by track of feet pursued + Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood + By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe. + + + +VII + + + Anon a mason's work amazed the sight, + And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode. + They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed; + Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight. + + + +VIII + + + What words they taught were nails to scratch the head. + Benignant works explained the chanting brood. + Their monastery lit black solitude, + As one might think a star that heavenward led. + + + +IX + + + Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet, + Like some gold flower nightly inward curled, + Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world, + Or played with it, and had their white retreat. + + + +X + + + Into big books of metal clasps they pored. + They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays. + The treasures women are whose aim is praise, + Was shown in them: the Garden half restored. + + + +XI + + + A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, + With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. + For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, + The lesser savage offered bogs and trees. + + + +XII + + + Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew: + And inmost spots of ancient horror shone + As temples under beams of trials bygone; + For in them sang brave times with God in view. + + + +XIII + + + Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green, + Like night's first little stars through clearing showers. + Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers + The wilderness commanded with fierce mien. + + + +XIV + + + Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance; + For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. + Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, + Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance. + + + +XV + + + It might be that two errant lords across + The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry + They charged forthwith, the better man to try. + One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss. + + + +XVI + + + Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain, + The robbers into gruesome durance drew. + Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue! + She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain. + + + +XVII + + + As we, that ere the worst her hero haps, + Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den: + A toady cave beside an ague fen, + Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps. + + + +XVIII + + + By daylight now the forest fear could read + Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went. + Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent + A dart that laughed at distance and at speed. + + + +XIX + + + Right loud the bugle's hallali elate + Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors; + And deftest hand was he from foreign wars, + But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate. + + + +XX + + + Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke; + At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last. + To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast, + With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke. + + + +XXI + + + The city urchin mooned on forest air, + On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick + As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick + For thinking that his dearer home was there. + + + +XXII + + + Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang + An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. + The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring, + But held in ear it had a chilly clang. + + + +XXIII + + + Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time; + Some warning haunted any sound prolonged, + As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged + To hear an axe and see a township climb. + + + +XXIV + + + The forest's erewhile emperor at eve + Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. + At midnight a small people danced the dales, + So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve + + + +XXV + + + Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats, + Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. + The pensioned forester beside his crutch, + Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes. + + + +XXVI + + + Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart; + Devourer, and insensibly devoured; + In whom the city over forest flowered, + The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart. + + + +XXVII + + + There found he in new form that Dragon old, + From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught + How blindly each its antidote besought; + For either's breath the needs of either told. + + + +XXVIII + + + Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone, + He showed what charm the human concourse works: + Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks + Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone. + + + +XXIX + + + Our conquest these: if haply we retain + The reverence that ne'er will overrun + Due boundaries of realms from Nature won, + Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane. + + + + +A GARDEN IDYL + + + WITH sagest craft Arachne worked + Her web, and at a corner lurked, + Awaiting what should plump her soon, + To case it in the death-cocoon. + Sagaciously her home she chose + For visits that would never close; + Inside my chalet-porch her feast + Plucked all the winds but chill North-east. + + The finished structure, bar on bar, + Had snatched from light to form a star, + And struck on sight, when quick with dews, + Like music of the very Muse. + Great artists pass our single sense; + We hear in seeing, strung to tense; + Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, + To think such beauty means a trap. + But Nature's genius, even man's + At best, is practical in plans; + Subservient to the needy thought, + However rare the weapon wrought. + As long as Nature holds it good + To urge her creatures' quest for food + Will beauty stamp the just intent + Of weapons upon service bent. + For beauty is a flower of roots + Embedded lower than our boots; + Out of the primal strata springs, + And shows for crown of useful things + + Arachne's dream of prey to size + Aspired; so she could nigh despise + The puny specks the breezes round + Supplied, and let them shake unwound; + Assured of her fat fly to come; + Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; + Who takes the fatal odds in fight, + And gives repast an appetite, + By plunging, whizzing, till his wings + Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, + A shrouded lump, for her to see + Her banquet in her victory. + + This matron of the unnumbered threads, + One day of dandelions' heads + Distributing their gray perruques + Up every gust, I watched with looks + Discreet beside the chalet-door; + And gracefully a light wind bore, + Direct upon my webster's wall, + A monster in the form of ball; + The mildest captive ever snared, + That neither struggled nor despaired, + On half the net invading hung, + And plain as in her mother tongue, + While low the weaver cursed her lures, + Remarked, "You have me; I am yours." + + Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, + Her dream of size she saw, agape. + Midway the vast round-raying beard + A desiccated midge appeared; + Whose body pricked the name of meal, + Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal; + Provocative of dread and wrath, + Contempt and horror, in one froth, + Inextricable, insensible, + His poison presence there would dwell, + Declaring him her dream fulfilled, + A catch to compliment the skilled; + And she reduced to beaky skin, + Disgraceful among kith and kin + + Against her corner, humped and aged, + Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, + Beyond disgust or hope in guile. + Ridiculously volatile + He seemed to her last spark of mind; + And that in pallid ash declined + Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, + Wherein throughout her frame she felt + That he, the light wind's libertine, + Without a scoff, without a grin, + And mannered like the courtly few, + Who merely danced when light winds blew, + Impervious to beak and claws, + Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; + Of whom, as actors in old scenes, + Had grannam weavers warned their weans, + With word, that less than feather-weight, + He smote the web like bolt of Fate. + + This muted drama, hour by hour, + I watched amid a world in flower, + Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid + Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade, + And still along the garden-run + The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. + Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance + Her visitor performed a dance; + She puckered thinner; he the same + As when on that light wind he came. + + Next day was told what deeds of night + Were done; the web had vanished quite; + With it the strange opposing pair; + And listless waved on vacant air, + For her adieu to heart's content, + A solitary filament. + + + + +FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE + + + SPRUNG of the father blood, the mother brain, + Are they who point our pathway and sustain. + They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired. + When they do meet, it is our earth inspired. + + To see Life's formless offspring and subdue + Desire of times unripe, we have these two, + Whose union is right reason: join they hands, + The world shall know itself and where it stands; + What cowering angel and what upright beast + Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, + Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers. + When these two meet, a point of time is ours. + + As in a land of waterfalls, that flow + Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, + Some eddies near the brink borne swift along, + Will capture hearing with the liquid song, + So, while the headlong world's imperious force + Resounded under, heard I these discourse. + + First words, where down my woodland walk she led, + To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said: + + --Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, + When still I find you in this mire alone. + + --The few steps taken at a funeral pace + By men had slain me but for those you trace. + + --Look I once back, a broken pinion I: + Black as the rebel angels rained from sky! + + --Needs must you drink of me while here you live, + And make me rich in feeling I can give. + + --A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: + Yet must I read my sister for the How. + My daisy better knows her God of beams + Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems. + She hath the secret never fieriest reach + Of wing shall master till men hear her teach. + + --Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, + My semblance when I have you not as now. + The quiet creatures who escape mishap + Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap: + A picture of the settled peace desired + By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired. + I listen at their breasts: is there no jar + Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, + And such a picture as the piercing mind + Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned + Are my true pupils while the world is brute. + What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, + Stronger impels the motion of my heart. + I am not Resignation's counterpart. + If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word, + Content, but how to savour hope deferred. + We come of earth, and rich of earth may be; + Soon carrion if very earth are we! + The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use + Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce; + Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, + And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat," + Like other corpses, but without death's plea. + + --My sister calls for battle; is it she? + + --Rather a world of pressing men in arms, + Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms + Each drowsy malady and coiling vice + With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price! + No home is here for peace while evil breeds, + While error governs, none; and must the seeds + You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, + Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, + Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood + Moisten, and make new channels of its flood! + + --My sober little maid, when we meet first, + Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst. + So can I not of her till circumstance + Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance + A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, + Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word + Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march, + As to band-music under Victory's arch. + Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then + The beauty of frank animals had men. + + --Observe them, and down rearward for a term, + Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm. + Thence look this way, across the fields that show + Men's early form of speech for Yes and No. + My sister a bruised infant's utterance had; + And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad. + I knew my home where I had choice to feel + The toad beneath a harrow or a heel. + + --Speak of this Age. + + --When you it shall discern + Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn. + + --For neither of us has it any care; + Its learning is through Science to despair. + + --Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not + With evil, casts the burden of its lot. + This Age climbs earth. + + --To challenge heaven. + + --Not less + The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness! + That know I, though the echoes of it wail, + For one step upward on the crags you scale. + Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, + Which means our soul asleep or body's lust, + Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat + A temperate common music, sunlike heat + The happiness not predatory sheds! + + --But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads, + Now rages to outdo a horny Past. + Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast + Are thrown by every novel light upraised. + The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed + And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells. + Combustibles on hot combustibles + Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire + The mountain-torrent of infernal ire + And leave the track of devils where men built. + Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt + Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud, + If drops the chillness of a passing cloud, + To conscience, reason, human love; in vain: + None save they but the souls which them contain. + No extramural God, the God within + Alone gives aid to city charged with sin. + A world that for the spur of fool and knave, + Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save? + But men who ply their wits in such a school, + Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool. + + --Much have I studied hard Necessity! + To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we + May deem the harshness of her later cries + In labour a sure goad to prick the wise, + If men among the warnings which convulse, + Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse. + Long ere the rising of this Age of ours, + The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers. + Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring, + And are as lasting as the parent thing. + Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill, + They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will. + + Behold such army gathering: ours the spur, + No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer. + Not fool or knave is now the enemy + O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery! + A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach. + Now must the brother soul alive in each, + His traitorous individual devildom + Hold subject lest the grand destruction come. + Dimly men see it menacing apace + To overthrow, perchance uproot the race. + Within, without, they are a field of tares: + Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares, + And wherefore warrior service they must yield, + Shines visible as life on either field. + That is my comfort, following shock on shock, + Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock. + Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night, + Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight, + Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect, + The human and Satanic intellect, + Determined for their uses to control + What forces on the earth and under roll, + Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand + Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land. + They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are: + Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war. + + --My sister, as I read them in my glass, + Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. + How waken them that have not any bent + Save browsing--the concrete indifferent! + Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff: + They fear not for the race when full the trough. + They have much fear of giving up the ghost; + And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. + + --If I could see with you, and did not faint + In beating wing, the future I would paint. + Those massed indifferents will learn to quake: + Now meanwhile is another mass awake, + Once denser than the grunters of the sty. + If I could see with you! Could I but fly! + + --The length of days that you with them have housed, + An outcast else, approves their cause espoused. + + --O true, they have a cause, and woe for us, + While still they have a cause too piteous! + Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined, + They walk no longer with a stumbler blind, + And quicken in the virtue of their cause, + To think me a poor mouther of old saws! + I wait the issue of a battling Age; + The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage; + Instructing them through their acutest sense, + How close the dangers of indifference! + Already have my people shown their worth, + More love they light, which folds the love of Earth. + That love to love of labour leads: thence love + Of humankind--earth's incense flung above. + + --Admit some other features: Faithless, mean; + Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene; + Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells + On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles; + And if I bid it face what _I_ observe, + Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve! + + --Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil, + Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil: + Disowned them as the unholiest of Time, + Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime. + Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry: + As little as Time's earliest knew the sky. + Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame + At intervals, in proof of whom they came. + To strengthen our foundations is the task + Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask, + Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves + The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves. + My sister sees no round beyond her mood; + To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood. + Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves, + It moves: O much for me to say it moves! + About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile, + Though not the stream of the paternal smile: + And where his tide of nourishment he drives, + An Abyssinian wantonness revives. + Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims; + He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs, + The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills; + Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills. + + To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers, + He is the vast Insensate who devours + His golden promise over leagues of seed, + Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed. + The races which on barbarous force begin, + Inherit onward of their origin, + And cancelled blessings will the current length + Reveal till they know need of shaping strength. + 'Tis not in men to recognize the need + Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed. + Then may sharp suffering their nature grind; + Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind. + Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed, + For tens up the safe mountains at his head. + Few would be fed, not far his course prolong, + Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong. + + --That rings of truth! More do your people thrive; + Your Many are more merrily alive + Than erewhile when I gloried in the page + Of radiant singer and anointed sage. + Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil; + Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil! + All structures built upon a narrow space + Must fall, from having not your hosts for base. + O thrice must one be you, to see them shift + Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift; + With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, + Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood! + And thrice must one be you, to wait release + From duress in the swamp of their increase. + At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, + A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed, + Philosophers behold; desponding view. + Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few; + Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, + Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains. + Belated vessels on a rising sea, + They seem: they pass! + + --But not Philosophy! + + --Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise + Nought but the coward in us! That way lies + The wisdom making passage through our slough. + Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow; + Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait. + Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate. + That photosphere of our high fountain One, + Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun, + Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, + Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid. + Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, + Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good! + Advantage to the Many: that we name + God's voice; have there the surety in our aim. + This thought unto my sister do I owe, + And irony and satire off me throw. + They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, + Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. + Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, + Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. + Who never yet of scattered lamps was born + To speed a world, a marching world to warn, + But sunward from the vivid Many springs, + Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings. + + + + +FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE + + +THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES + + + ILIAD, B. I. V. 149 + + "HEIGH me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one, + Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians, + Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen? + I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans, + Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done; + Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen; + Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests + Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome + Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. + O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice + Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed! + Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest. + Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me, + portion + Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia. + Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians + Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage. + Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat, + Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us, + Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing bore + Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed! + So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me + Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect, + I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store." + + + +V. 225 + + + "Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou! + Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, + Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia + Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a + death-stroke. + Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians, + Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against + thee. + Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects; + Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one. + Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise: + Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds + Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the + mountains, + No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped + off + Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, + Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement, + Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent; + Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia + Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish, + How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector + Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy + heart-strings, + Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of + Achaians." + + + +MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS + + + ILIAD, B. II V. 455 + + LIKE as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, + Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far, + So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the + splendour + Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault. + They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks, + Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the + wild-swans, + Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros; + Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions, + Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them + resoundeth; + So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured + forth + On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them + Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the + horse-hooves. + Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their + thousands + Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season. + Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse, + Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the + milk-pails + Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time; + Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held, + Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush + them. + Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, + know + Easily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture, + So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for + onslaught, + Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon, + He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder, + He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon. + + + +AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT + + + ILIAD, B. XI. V. 148 + + THESE, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the + thickest, + Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. + Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, + Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud, + Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering + horse-hooves) + Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon + Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives. + + Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped woodland, + This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the + scrubwood + Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing, + So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered + Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened, + Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field, + Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were + outstretched + Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates. + + + +PARIS AND DIOMEDES + + + ILIAD; B. XI V. 378 + + SO he, with a clear shout of laughter, + Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise: + "Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had + pierced thee + Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath! + Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst, + They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion." + Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes: + "Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins! + If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons, + Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. + Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole; + Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. + Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth! + Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the + slightest, + My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. + Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen + slaughtered, + Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his + blood-drops, + Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women." + + + +HYPNOS ON IDA + + + ILIAD, B. XIV. V. 283 + + THEY then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts, + Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos, + Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland. + There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant, + Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida + Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether. + There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for + concealment, + That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the + mountains, + Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis. + + + +CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS + + + ILIAD, B. XIV. V. 394 + + NOT the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle, + Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the + Northwind; + Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing, + Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland; + Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees' + Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost; + As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians', + Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict. + + + +THE HORSES OF ACHILLES + + + ILIAD, B. XVII. V. 426 + + SO now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground, + Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there, + Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector. + Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores, + Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and + oft, too, + Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten. + Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious, + Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians. + Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone, + Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under; + Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car, + Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant + Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids, + Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted, + Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the + yoke-bow. + Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook + Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom; + "Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal + Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless! + Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have + heart-grief? + 'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere + Aught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has + movement." + + + +THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE + + + FROM THE _Mireio_ OF MISTRAL + + A HUNDRED mares, all white! their manes + Like mace-reed of the marshy plains + Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears: + And when the fiery squadron rears + Bursting at speed, each mane appears + Even as the white scarf of a fay + Floating upon their necks along the heavens away. + + O race of humankind, take shame! + For never yet a hand could tame, + Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue + The mares of the Camargue. I have known, + By treason snared, some captives shown; + Expatriate from their native Rhone, + Led off, their saline pastures far from view: + + And on a day, with prompt rebound, + They have flung their riders to the ground, + And at a single gallop, scouring free, + Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice ten + Of long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then, + Back to the Vacares again, + After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea + + For of this savage race unbent, + The ocean is the element. + Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure, + Still with the white foam fleck'd are they, + And when the sea puffs black from grey, + And ships part cables, loudly neigh + The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar; + + And keen as a whip they lash and crack + Their tails that drag the dust, and back + Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he, + The God, drives deep his trident teeth, + Who in one horror, above, beneath, + Bids storm and watery deluge seethe, + And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea. + + _Cant._ iv. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A READING OF LIFE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1042-0.txt or 1042-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/4/1042 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Reading of Life + with Other Poems + + +Author: George Meredith + + + +Release Date: April 18, 2013 [eBook #1042] +[This file was first posted on September 25, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A READING OF LIFE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1901 Archibald Constable and Co. edition +by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>A READING OF LIFE<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">WITH OTHER POEMS</span></h1> +<p style="text-align: center">BY GEORGE MEREDITH</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">WESTMINSTER</span><br /> +ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO <span class="smcap">Ltd</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">2 WHITEHALL GARDENS</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">1901</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagevi"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. vi</span><span class="smcap">Butler & +Tanner</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">The Selwood Printing Works</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Frome</span>, <span class="smcap">and +London</span></p> +<h2><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Reading of Life</span></p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">The Vital +Choice</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">With the +Huntress</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">With the +Persuader</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">The Test of +Manhood</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page28">28</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Cageing of Ares</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page45">45</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Night-Walk</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page55">55</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Hueless Love</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page60">60</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Song in the Songless</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page63">63</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Union in Disseverance</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page64">64</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Burden of Strength</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Main Regret</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Alternation</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page68">68</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pageviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +viii</span><span class="smcap">Hawarden</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page69">69</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">At the Close</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Forest History</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Garden Idyl</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Foresight and Patience</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page88">88</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Fragments of the Iliad in English +Hexameters Verse</span>—</p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">The Invective of +Achilles</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page109">109</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: center">,, ,, ,, ,,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page112">112</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">Marshalling of the +Achaians</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page114">114</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">Agamemnon in the +Fight</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page117">117</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">Paris and +Diomedes</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page119">119</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">Hypnos on +Ida</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page121">121</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">Clash in Arms of the +Achaians and Trojans</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page122">122</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">The Horses of +Achilles</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Mares of the +Camargue</span>—</p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> <span class="smcap">From the +</span><span class="smcap"><i>Mirèio</i></span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page126">126</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>A +READING OF LIFE</h2> +<h3>THE VITAL CHOICE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Or</span> shall we run with +Artemis<br /> +Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?<br /> +Both are mighty;<br /> +Both give bliss;<br /> +Each can torture if divided;<br /> +Each claims worship undivided,<br /> +In her wake would have us wallow.</p> +<h4><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Youth must offer on bent knees<br /> +Homage unto one or other;<br /> +Earth, the mother,<br /> +This decrees;<br /> +And unto the pallid Scyther<br /> +Either points us shun we either<br /> +Shun or too devoutly follow.</p> +<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>WITH THE +HUNTRESS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Through</span> the +water-eye of night,<br /> +Midway between eve and dawn,<br /> +See the chase, the rout, the flight<br /> +In deep forest; oread, faun,<br /> +Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck;<br /> +Ravenous all the line for speed.<br /> +See yon wavy sparkle beck<br /> +Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead.<br /> +Down her course a serpent star<br /> +Coils and shatters at her heels;<br /> +Peals the horn exulting, peals<br /> +Plaintive, is it near or far.<br /> +<a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>Huntress, +arrowy to pursue,<br /> +In and out of woody glen,<br /> +Under cliffs that tear the blue,<br /> +Over torrent, over fen,<br /> +She and forest, where she skims<br /> +Feathery, darken and relume:<br /> +Those are her white-lightning limbs<br /> +Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.<br /> +Mountains hear her and call back,<br /> +Shrewd with night: a frosty wail<br /> +Distant: her the emerald vale<br /> +Folds, and wonders in her track.<br /> +Now her retinue is lean,<br /> +Many rearward; streams the chase<br /> +Eager forth of covert; seen<br /> +One hot tide the rapturous race.<br /> +Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,<br /> +Up on a flash the lighted mound<br /> +Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft<br /> +<a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>Strung to +barb with archer’s craft,<br /> +Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet<br /> +Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.<br /> +Fearful swiftness they outrun,<br /> +Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,<br /> +Challenge, charge of tusks elude:<br /> +Theirs the dance to tame the rude;<br /> +Beast, and beast in manhood tame,<br /> +Follow we their silver flame.<br /> +Pride of flesh from bondage free,<br /> +Reaping vigour of its waste,<br /> +Marks her servitors, and she<br /> +Sanctifies the unembraced.<br /> +Nought of perilous she reeks;<br /> +Valour clothes her open breast;<br /> +Sweet beyond the thrill of sex;<br /> +Hallowed by the sex confessed.<br /> +Huntress arrowy to pursue,<br /> +Colder she than sunless dew,<br /> +<a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>She, that +breath of upper air;<br /> +Ay, but never lyrist sang,<br /> +Draught of Bacchus never sprang<br /> +Blood the bliss of Gods to share,<br /> +High o’er sweep of eagle wings,<br /> +Like the run with her, when rings<br /> +Clear her rally, and her dart,<br /> +In the forest’s cavern heart,<br /> +Tells of her victorious aim.<br /> +Then is pause and chatter, cheer,<br /> +Laughter at some satyr lame,<br /> +Looks upon the fallen deer,<br /> +Measuring his noble crest;<br /> +Here a favourite in her train,<br /> +Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed;<br /> +All applauded. Shall she reign<br /> +Worshipped? O to be with her there!<br /> +She, that breath of nimble air,<br /> +Lifts the breast to giant power.<br /> +<a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>Maid and +man, and man and maid,<br /> +Who each other would devour<br /> +Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,<br /> +There are comrades, led by her,<br /> +Maid-preserver, man-maker.</p> +<h3><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>WITH THE +PERSUADER</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Who</span> murmurs, hither, +hither: who<br /> +Where nought is audible so fills the ear?<br /> +Where nought is visible can make appear<br /> +A veil with eyes that waver through,<br /> +Like twilight’s pledge of blessed night to come,<br /> +Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb,<br /> +She breathes, she moves, inviting flees,<br /> +Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire<br /> +To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,<br /> +Till over smiles of hyacinth seas,<br /> +Flame in a crystal vessel sails<br /> +Beneath a dome of jewelled spray,<br /> +<a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>For land +that drops the rosy day<br /> +On nights of throbbing nightingales.</p> +<p class="poetry">Landward did the wonder flit,<br /> +Or heart’s desire of her, all earth in it.<br /> +We saw the heavens fling down their rose;<br /> +On rapturous waves we saw her glide;<br /> +The pearly sea-shell half enclose;<br /> +The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;<br /> +And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more<br /> +Behold than tracks along a startled shore,<br /> +With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign<br /> +An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain.</p> +<p class="poetry">More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,<br +/> +The very she called forth by ripened blood<br /> +For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,<br /> +Allurement; she, fulfilment; she,<br /> +The stream within us urged to flood;<br /> +<a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +10</span>Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s +consent; O she,<br /> +Maid, woman and divinity;<br /> +Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate<br /> +Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit<br /> +Untasted; she our written fate<br /> +Unread; Life’s flowering, Life’s root:<br /> +Unread, divined; unseen, beheld;<br /> +The evanescent, ever-present she,<br /> +Great Nature’s stern necessity<br /> +In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;<br /> +With a sword’s edge of sweetness keen to take<br /> +Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break.</p> +<p class="poetry">The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.<br /> +Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent,<br +/> +Her form is given to pardoned sight,<br /> +And lets our mortal eyes receive<br /> +The sovereign loveliness of celestial white;<br /> +Adored by them who solitarily pace,<br /> +<a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>In dusk of +the underworld’s perpetual eve,<br /> +The paths among the meadow asphodel,<br /> +Remembering. Never there her face<br /> +Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell<br /> +Around such whiteness the enamoured air<br /> +Of noon that clothes her, never there.<br /> +Daughter of light, the joyful light,<br /> +She stands unveiled to nuptial sight,<br /> +Sweet in her disregard of aid<br /> +Divine to conquer or persuade.<br /> +A fountain jets from moss; a flower<br /> +Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower.<br /> +By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen<br /> +With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen.</p> +<p class="poetry">Shorn of attendant Graces she can use<br /> +Her natural snares to make her will supreme.<br /> +A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse<br /> +Before the leader foot shall dip in stream:<br /> +<a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>One arm at +curve along a rounded thigh;<br /> +Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way<br /> +A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,<br /> +Where innocence, not nature, signals nay.<br /> +The bud of fresh virginity awaits<br /> +The wooer, and all roseate will she burst:<br /> +She touches on the hour of happy mates;<br /> +Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.</p> +<p class="poetry">And while commanding blissful sight believe<br +/> +It holds her as a body strained to breast,<br /> +Down on the underworld’s perpetual eve<br /> +She plunges the possessor dispossessed;<br /> +And bids believe that image, heaving warm,<br /> +Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;<br /> +The phantom any breeze blows out of form;<br /> +A thirst’s delusion, a defeated aim.</p> +<p class="poetry">The rapture shed the torture weaves;<br /> +<a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>The direst +blow on human heart she deals:<br /> +The pain to know the seen deceives;<br /> +Nought true but what insufferably feels.<br /> +And stabs of her delicious note,<br /> +That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard<br /> +Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,<br /> +We answer as the midnight’s morning’s bird.</p> +<p class="poetry">She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;<br /> +In her delicious laughter part revealed;<br /> +Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,<br /> +For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.<br /> +Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless:<br /> +Yon folded couples, passing under shade,<br /> +Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,<br /> +Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed.<br /> +We dolorous complainers had a dream,<br /> +Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,<br /> +<a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>We saw +stand bare of her celestial beam<br /> +The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.</p> +<p class="poetry">Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips<br +/> +Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;<br /> +And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips<br /> +She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.<br /> +Blush of our being between birth and death:<br /> +Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath:<br /> +Her wily semblance nought of her denies;<br /> +Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,<br /> +The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm<br /> +Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;<br /> +Benevolent as Earth to feed her own.<br /> +Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.<br /> +But scorn she has for them that walk alone;<br /> +Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach.<br /> +The men as chief of criminals she disdains,<br /> +<a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>And holds +the reason in perceptive thought.<br /> +More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,<br /> +Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.<br /> +Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed,<br /> +Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed,<br /> +In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:<br /> +Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes<br /> +For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew.<br /> +Comes there a tremor of night’s forest horn<br /> +Across her garden from the insaner crew,<br /> +She darkens to malignity of scorn.<br /> +A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:<br /> +Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,<br /> +The hunter’s shouts, are heard afar, and bring<br /> +Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring.<br /> +These, the irreverent of Life’s design,<br /> +Division between natural and divine<br /> +Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,<br /> +<a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>In veins +of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest;<br /> +And these because the roses flood their cheeks,<br /> +Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks.<br /> +With them is war; and well the Goddess knows<br /> +What undermines the race who mount the rose;<br /> +How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,<br /> +Enkindled by persuasion overpowers:<br /> +Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,<br /> +The strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs,<br +/> +And timely guile unguarded finds them lie.<br /> +They who her sway withstand a sea defy,<br /> +At every point of juncture must be proof;<br /> +Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge<br /> +Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge<br /> +For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.<br /> +She, tenderness, is pitiless to them<br /> +Resisting in her godhead nature’s truth.<br /> +No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;<br /> +<a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>Their +youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.<br /> +These miserably disinclined,<br /> +The lamentably unembraced,<br /> +Insult the Pleasures Earth designed<br /> +To people and beflower the waste.<br /> +Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by:<br /> +For death they live, in life they die.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her head the Goddess from them turns,<br /> +As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns.<br /> +She views her quivering couples unconsoled,<br /> +And of her beauty mirror they become,<br /> +Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,<br /> +Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.<br /> +Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,<br /> +Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,<br /> +Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,<br /> +They play the music made of two:<br /> +Oldest of earth, earth’s youngest till earth’s +end:<br /> +<a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>Cunninger +than the numbered strings,<br /> +For melodies, for harmonies,<br /> +For mastered discords, and the things<br /> +Not vocable, whose mysteries<br /> +Are inmost Love’s, Life’s reach of Life extend.</p> +<p class="poetry">Is it an anguish overflowing shame<br /> +And the tongue’s pudency confides to her,<br /> +With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,<br /> +The woman’s marrow in some dear youth’s name,<br /> +Then is the Goddess tenderness<br /> +Maternal, and she has a sister’s tones<br /> +Benign to soothe intemperate distress,<br /> +Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans.<br /> +Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease<br /> +To those of her milk-bearer votaries<br /> +As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source<br /> +Direct; erratic but in heart’s excess;<br /> +<a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>Being +mortal and ill-matched for Love’s great force;<br /> +Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress.<br /> +And pray they under skies less overcast,<br /> +That swiftly may her star of eve descend,<br /> +Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,<br /> +To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.</p> +<p class="poetry">Unfailing her reply to woman’s voice<br +/> +In supplication instant. Is it man’s,<br /> +She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,<br /> +And him: the flowers are various, he has choice.<br /> +Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long;<br /> +Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song;<br /> +And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise<br /> +Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys.</p> +<p class="poetry">She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps<br +/> +To her invoked: distraction is implored.<br /> +<a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>A smile, +and he is up on godlike leaps<br /> +Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored.<br /> +His tales of her declare she condescends;<br /> +Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:<br /> +Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose<br /> +A queenlier gem than woman’s wayside rose.<br /> +She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs<br /> +Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse;<br /> +Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings.<br /> +’Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse<br /> +Rarely the music made of two ascends,<br /> +And Beauty’s Queen some other way is won.<br /> +Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends<br /> +Herself to all, and yields herself to none,<br /> +Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised<br /> +In hot assurance under shade of doubt:<br /> +And numerous are the images bepraised<br /> +As Beauty’s Queen, should passion head the rout.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>Be sure the ruddy hue is Love’s: to woo<br /> +Love’s Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue.<br /> +That is her garden’s precept, seen where shines<br /> +Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines.<br /> +Daughter of light, the joyful light,<br /> +She bids her couples face full East,<br /> +Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast<br /> +Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,<br /> +The lion-haunted thickets hold apart.<br /> +In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;<br /> +High confidence in her whose aid is lent<br /> +To lovers lifting the tuned instrument,<br /> +Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.<br /> +And doth the man pursue a tightened zone,<br /> +Then be it as the Laurel God he runs,<br /> +Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun’s.</p> +<p class="poetry">Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe<br +/> +<a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>He lifts +for pity, limp his offspring show.<br /> +For him requiring woman’s arts to please<br /> +Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,<br /> +No race of giants! In the woman’s veins<br /> +Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains.<br /> +Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod,<br /> +Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;<br /> +Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss<br /> +In her high Lady’s mandate, yields the kiss;<br /> +And is it needed that Love’s daintier brute<br /> +Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.<br /> +She is great Nature’s ever intimate<br /> +In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,<br /> +Until perverted by her senseless male,<br /> +She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,<br /> +The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,<br /> +Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hence has the Goddess, Nature’s earliest +Power,<br /> +<a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>And +greatest and most present, with her dower<br /> +Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute<br /> +For meditated guile. She laughs to hear<br /> +A charge her garden’s labyrinths scarce confute,<br /> +Her garden’s histories tell of to all near.<br /> +Let it be said, But less upon her guile<br /> +Doth she rely for her immortal smile.<br /> +Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens<br /> +To push her conquests by the simplest means.<br /> +While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves<br /> +From earth’s good labours, Beauty’s Queen he +serves.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her spacious garden and her garden’s +grant<br /> +She offers in reward for handsome cheer:<br /> +Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant<br /> +The secret down a dewy leer<br /> +Of corner eyelids into haze:<br /> +Many a fair Aphrosyne<br /> +Like flower-bell to honey-bee:<br /> +<a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>And here +they flicker round the maze<br /> +Bewildering him in heart and head:<br /> +And here they wear the close demure,<br /> +With subtle peeps to reassure:<br /> +Others parade where love has bled,<br /> +And of its crimson weave their mesh:<br /> +Others to snap of fingers leap,<br /> +As bearing breast with love asleep.<br /> +These are her laughters in the flesh.<br /> +Or would she fit a warrior mood,<br /> +She lights her seeming unsubdued,<br /> +And indicates the fortress-key.<br /> +Or is it heart for heart that craves,<br /> +She flecks along a run of waves<br /> +The one to promise deeper sea.</p> +<p class="poetry">Bands of her limpid primitives,<br /> +Or patterned in the curious braid,<br /> +Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,<br /> +<a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>For what +he gives is he repaid.<br /> +Good is it if by him ’tis held<br /> +He wins the fairest ever welled<br /> +From Nature’s founts: she whispers it: Even I<br /> +Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,<br /> +Else little is he lover. Those he clasps,<br /> +Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,—<br /> +And be they doves or be they asps,—<br /> +Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;<br /> +Else counts he soon among life’s wholly tamed.<br /> +Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,<br /> +Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned<br /> +The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,<br /> +He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,<br /> +Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.<br /> +Doth man divide divine Necessity<br /> +From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s breasts<br /> +A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain<br /> +Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.<br /> +<a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>Of this he +perishes; not she, the throned<br /> +On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts.<br /> +A loftier Reason out of deeper founts<br /> +Earth’s chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned<br /> +While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,<br /> +And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;<br /> +Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s +cry,<br /> +Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.</p> +<p class="poetry">Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear,<br /> +When the wild sap at high tide smites<br /> +Within us; or benignly clear<br /> +To vision; or as the iris lights<br /> +On fluctuant waters; she is ours<br /> +Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen;<br /> +Flushing the world with odorous flowers:<br /> +A soft compulsion on terrene<br /> +<a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>By +heavenly: and the world is hers<br /> +While hunger after Beauty spurs.</p> +<p class="poetry">So is it sung in any space<br /> +She fills, with laugh at shallow laws<br /> +Forbidding love’s devised embrace,<br /> +The music Beauty from it draws.</p> +<h3><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>THE +TEST OF MANHOOD</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Like</span> a flood river +whirled at rocky banks,<br /> +An army issues out of wilderness,<br /> +With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;<br /> +Obstruction in the van; insane excess<br /> +Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress<br /> +Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,<br /> +And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,<br /> +The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay.<br /> +They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;<br /> +A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.<br /> +<a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>Then was +the gracious birth of man’s new day;<br /> +Divided from the haunted night it shone.</p> +<p class="poetry">That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof +sprang<br /> +Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide.<br /> +Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:<br /> +It was another earth unto him sang.</p> +<p class="poetry">Came Reverence from the Huntress on her +heights?<br /> +From the Persuader came it, in those vales<br /> +Whereunto she melodiously invites,<br /> +Her troops of eager servitors regales?<br /> +Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed<br /> +Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;<br /> +Nor either points for us the way of flame.<br /> +From him predestined mightier it came;<br /> +His task to hold them both in breast, and yield<br /> +Their dues to each, and of their war be field.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +30</span>The foes that in repulsion never ceased,<br /> +Must he, who once has been the goodly beast<br /> +Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,<br /> +Constrain to make him serviceable man;<br /> +Offending neither, nor the natural claim<br /> +Each pressed, denying, for his true man’s name.</p> +<p class="poetry">Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife<br +/> +To hold them fast conjoined within him still;<br /> +Submissive to his will<br /> +Along the road of life!<br /> +And marvel not he wavered if at whiles<br /> +The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles.<br /> +For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain;<br /> +Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.<br /> +Delicious licence called it Nature’s cry;<br /> +Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh;<br /> +A tread on shingle timed his lame advance<br /> +<a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>Flung as +the die of Bacchanalian Chance,<br /> +He of the troubled marching army leaned<br /> +On godhead visible, on godhead screened;<br /> +The radiant roseate, the curtained white;<br /> +Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night.</p> +<p class="poetry">He drank of fictions, till celestial aid<br /> +Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed;<br /> +Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,<br /> +To choose for grants the egregious, his elect;<br /> +And ever that imagined succour slew<br /> +The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.</p> +<p class="poetry">In fellowship religion has its founts:<br /> +The solitary his own God reveres:<br /> +Ascend no sacred Mounts<br /> +Our hungers or our fears.<br /> +<a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>As only +for the numbers Nature’s care<br /> +Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,<br /> +So to Divinity the spring of prayer<br /> +From brotherhood the one way upward leads.<br /> +Like the sustaining air<br /> +Are both for flowers and weeds.<br /> +But he who claims in spirit to be flower,<br /> +Will find them both an air that doth devour.</p> +<p class="poetry">Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored<br +/> +External gifts bestowed but on the sword;<br /> +Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,<br /> +Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,<br /> +His army’s foe, condemned to strive and fail;<br /> +See a black adversary’s ghost prevail;<br /> +Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win<br /> +While still the conflict tore his breast within.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +33</span>Out of that agony, misread for those<br /> +Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased,<br /> +The ghost of his black adversary rose,<br /> +To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.<br /> +And long with him was wrestling ere emerged<br /> +A mind to read in him the reflex shade<br /> +Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;<br /> +By craven compromises hourly swayed.</p> +<p class="poetry">Crouched as a nestling, still its wings +untried,<br /> +The man’s mind opened under weight of cloud.<br /> +To penetrate the dark was it endowed;<br /> +Stood day before a vision shooting wide.<br /> +Whereat the spectral enemy lost form;<br /> +The traversed wilderness exposed its track.<br /> +He felt the far advance in looking back;<br /> +Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +34</span>Under the low-browed tempest’s eye of ire,<br /> +That ere it lightened smote a coward heart,<br /> +Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart<br /> +All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;<br /> +A stranger still, religiously divined;<br /> +Not yet with understanding read aright.<br /> +But when the mind, the cherishable mind,<br /> +The multitude’s grave shepherd, took full flight,<br /> +Himself as mirror raised among his kind,<br /> +He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight:<br /> +Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,<br /> +His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,<br /> +Had come of many a grip in mastery,<br /> +Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,<br /> +And of his bosom made him lord, to keep<br /> +The starry roof of his unruffled frame<br /> +Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep<br /> +Below, above, aye with a wistful aim.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown,<br /> +By traitor inmates baited, upward burned;<br /> +Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,<br /> +The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.<br /> +To whom unwittingly did he aspire<br /> +In wilderness, where bitter was his need:<br /> +To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed<br /> +For light and air, he struck through crimson mire.<br /> +But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,<br /> +And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed,<br /> +All choral in its fruitful garden camp,<br /> +The spiritual the palpable illumed.</p> +<p class="poetry">This gift of penetration and embrace,<br /> +His prize from tidal battles lost or won,<br /> +Reveals the scheme to animate his race:<br /> +How that it is a warfare but begun;<br /> +Unending; with no Power to interpose;<br /> +<a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>No prayer, +save for strength to keep his ground,<br /> +Heard of the Highest; never battle’s close,<br /> +The victory complete and victor crowned:<br /> +Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense<br /> +Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed.<br /> +In manhood must he find his competence;<br /> +In his clear mind the spiritual food:<br /> +God being there while he his fight maintains;<br /> +Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,<br /> +While he rejects the suicide despair;<br /> +Accepts the spur of explicable pains;<br /> +Obedient to Nature, not her slave:<br /> +Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows;<br /> +Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave,<br /> +And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:—<br /> +Whence Evil in a world unread before;<br /> +That mystery to simple springs resolved.<br /> +His God the Known, diviner to adore,<br /> +<a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>Shows +Nature’s savage riddles kindly solved.<br /> +Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns<br /> +In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face.<br /> +Back to the primal brute shall he retrace<br /> +His path, doth he permit to force her chains<br /> +A soft Persuader coursing through his veins,<br /> +An icy Huntress stringing to the chase:<br /> +What one the flash disdains;<br /> +What one so gives it grace.</p> +<p class="poetry">But is he rightly manful in her eyes,<br /> +A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies,<br /> +A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,<br /> +Desireing and desireable he shines;<br /> +As peaches, that have caught the sun’s uprise<br /> +And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.<br /> +Earth fills him with her juices, without fear<br /> +That she will cast him drunken down the steeps.<br /> +All woman is she to this man most dear;<br /> +<a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>He sows +for bread, and she in spirit reaps:<br /> +She conscient, she sensitive, in him;<br /> +With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:<br /> +By him humaner made; by his keen spurs<br /> +Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb,<br /> +Her crazy adoration of big thews,<br /> +Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled,<br /> +Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world<br /> +In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.</p> +<p class="poetry">This man, this hero, works not to destroy;<br +/> +This godlike—as the rock in ocean stands;—<br /> +He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands<br /> +Creative; in his edifice has joy.<br /> +How strength may serve for purity is shown<br /> +When he himself can scourge to make it clean.<br /> +Withal his pitch of pride would not disown<br /> +A sober world that walks the balanced mean<br /> +Between its tempters, rarely overthrown:<br /> +<a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>And such +at times his army’s march has been.</p> +<p class="poetry">Near is he to great Nature in the thought<br /> +Each changing Season intimately saith,<br /> +That nought save apparition knows the death;<br /> +To the God-lighted mind of man ’tis nought.<br /> +She counts not loss a word of any weight;<br /> +It may befal his passions and his greeds<br /> +To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,<br /> +But life gone breathless will she reinstate.</p> +<p class="poetry">Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,<br +/> +When he the mandate lodged in it obeys,<br /> +Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze,<br /> +Strike camp, and onward, like the wind’s cloud-fleets.<br +/> +Unresting she, unresting he, from change<br /> +To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain;<br /> +She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,<br /> +<a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>Yet +skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.</p> +<p class="poetry">No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,<br /> +She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute;<br /> +But he, the flower at head and soil at root,<br /> +Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.<br /> +And that way seems he bound; that way the road,<br /> +With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone,<br /> +Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,<br /> +He travels, urged by some internal goad.</p> +<p class="poetry">Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing<br +/> +He would become is in his mind its child;<br /> +Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;<br /> +For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.<br /> +So moves he forth in faith, if he has made<br /> +His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth.<br /> +Earth’s nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,<br /> +<a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>He tastes, +as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.<br /> +Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;<br /> +The star of sky upon his footway cast;<br /> +Then match in him who holds his tempters fast,<br /> +The body’s love and mind’s, whereof the +soul’s.<br /> +Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,<br /> +To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.</p> +<p class="poetry">Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her +new mate?<br /> +Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood;<br /> +The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;<br /> +With her the barren Huntress alternate;<br /> +His rough refractory off on kicking heels<br /> +To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;<br /> +And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed,<br /> +His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?<br /> +May not his aspect, like her own so fair<br /> +<a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>Reflexively, the central force belie,<br /> +And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,<br /> +Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?</p> +<p class="poetry">’Tis that in each recovery he +preserves,<br /> +Between his upper and his nether wit,<br /> +Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;<br /> +He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;<br /> +With such a grasp upon his brute as tells<br /> +Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.<br /> +A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun<br /> +Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.</p> +<h2><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>THE +CAGEING OF ARES</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +v. V. 385</p> +<p style="text-align: center">[<i>Dedicated to the Council at The +Hague</i>.]</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">How</span> big of breast +our Mother Gaea laughed<br /> +At sight of her boy Giants on the leap<br /> +Each over other as they neighboured home,<br /> +Fronting the day’s descent across green slopes,<br /> +And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.<br /> +Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,<br /> +Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,<br /> +<a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>It +signalled some adventurous master-trick<br /> +To set Olympians buzzing in debate,<br /> +Lest it might be their godhead undermined,<br /> +The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high<br /> +On shoulders of his brother Otos waved<br /> +For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,<br /> +Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar<br /> +While Otos aped the prisoner’s wrists and knees,<br /> +With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;<br /> +Till Gaea’s lap receiving them, they stretched,<br /> +And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,<br /> +Burst the hot story out of throats of both,<br /> +Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut<br /> +The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm<br /> +Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon<br /> +A peak, a forest mound, a valley’s gleam<br /> +Of grass and the river’s crooks and snaky coils,<br /> +Signification marvellous she caught,<br /> +Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,<br /> +<a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>Which now +engulphed and now gave eye; at last<br /> +Subsided, and the serious naked deed,<br /> +With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,<br /> +Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe<br /> +That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,<br /> +These two made up of lion, bear and fox,<br /> +Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,<br /> +Still by the reckoning infants among men,<br /> +Had done the deed to strike the Titan host<br /> +In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:<br /> +These two combining strength and craft had snared,<br /> +Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged<br /> +The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;<br /> +Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;<br /> +The barren furrower of anointed fields;<br /> +The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,<br /> +<a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>Her hated +enemy, too long her scourge:<br /> +Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth<br /> +When they had seized on his implacable spear,<br /> +Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite<br /> +His godlike fury startled from amaze.<br /> +For he had eyed them nearing him in play,<br /> +The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,<br /> +Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount<br /> +Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there<br /> +On Earth’s original fisticuffs they called<br /> +For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,<br /> +Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,<br /> +Good servitors of Ares they would be,<br /> +And ply the pointed spear to dominate<br /> +Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood<br /> +Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced<br /> +Amusedly he watched them, and as one<br /> +The lusty twain were on him and they had him.<br /> +Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!<br /> +<a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>Cock of +Olympus he, superb in plumes!<br /> +Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!<br /> +Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,<br /> +Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;<br /> +A desolating fire to blind the sight<br /> +With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;<br /> +The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;<br /> +Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,<br /> +Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.<br /> +Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,<br /> +And tumbled down the cave. But rather look—<br /> +Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,<br /> +Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,<br /> +Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!<br /> +Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,<br /> +And shatter earth’s delirious holiday,<br /> +Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,<br /> +Resolving to composure on its throbs.<br /> +But see her in the Seasons through that year;<br /> +<a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>That one +glad year and the fair opening month.<br /> +Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!<br /> +War with her, gentle war with her, each day<br /> +Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,<br /> +On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength<br /> +Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,<br /> +From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,<br /> +Her ready secret: the abounding life<br /> +Returned for valiant labour: she and they<br /> +Defeated and victorious turn by turn;<br /> +By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.<br /> +Exchange of powers of this conflict came;<br /> +Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.<br /> +Is battle nature’s mandate, here it reigned,<br /> +As music unto the hand that smote the strings;<br /> +And she the rosier from their showery brows,<br /> +They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.<br /> +<a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>Back to +the primal rational of those<br /> +Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp<br /> +Stability in hatred of the insane,<br /> +Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce<br /> +The mortal mind’s concept of earth’s divorced<br /> +Above; those beautiful, those masterful,<br /> +Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend,<br /> +Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?<br /> +Earth in her happy children asked that word,<br /> +Whereto within their breast was her reply.<br /> +Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,<br /> +Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years;<br /> +Yet they (’twas the Great Mother’s voice inspired<br +/> +The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust,<br /> +Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,<br /> +To meet the certain fate of earth’s divorced,<br /> +And clap lame wings across a wintry haze,<br /> +Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still,<br /> +Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled<br /> +<a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>The +Tyranny. This her voice within them told,<br /> +When softly the Great Mother chid her sons<br /> +Not of the giant brood, who did create<br /> +Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain<br /> +Set moving by an abject blood, that waked<br /> +To wanton under elements more benign,<br /> +And planted aliens on Olympian heights;—<br /> +Imagination’s cradle poesy<br /> +Become a monstrous pressure upon men;—<br /> +Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed<br /> +By light from her, born of the love of her,<br /> +Their lordship the illumined brain rejects<br /> +For earth’s beneficent, the sons of Law,<br /> +Her other name. So spake she in their heart,<br /> +Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath<br /> +Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,<br /> +Confidently to cling. And when brown corn<br /> +Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,<br /> +With gold necks bent for any zephyr’s kiss;<br /> +<a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>When +vine-roots daily down a rubble soil<br /> +Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;<br /> +When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,<br /> +Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth;<br /> +The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,<br /> +And yet a burning lion for the spring;<br /> +Then in that time of general cherishment,<br /> +Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,<br /> +He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,<br /> +Then did good Gaea’s children gratefully<br /> +Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace,<br /> +Delightful Peace, that answers Reason’s call<br /> +Harmoniously and images her Law;<br /> +Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,<br /> +In memories made present on the brain<br /> +By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes;<br /> +The picture of an earth allied to heaven;<br /> +<a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>Between +them the known smile behind black masks;<br /> +Rightly their various moods interpreted;<br /> +And frolic because toilful children borne<br /> +With larger comprehension of Earth’s aim<br /> +At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.</p> +<h2><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>THE +NIGHT-WALK</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Awakes</span> for me and +leaps from shroud<br /> +All radiantly the moon’s own night<br /> +Of folded showers in streamer cloud;<br /> +Our shadows down the highway white<br /> +Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,<br /> +With yon and yon a stem alight.</p> +<p class="poetry">I see marauder runagates<br /> +Across us shoot their dusky wink;<br /> +I hear the parliament of chats<br /> +In haws beside the river’s brink;<br /> +<a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>And drops +the vole off alder-banks,<br /> +To push his arrow through the stream.<br /> +These busy people had our thanks<br /> +For tickling sight and sound, but theme<br /> +They were not more than breath we drew<br /> +Delighted with our world’s embrace:<br /> +The moss-root smell where beeches grew,<br /> +And watered grass in breezy space;<br /> +The silken heights, of ghostly bloom<br /> +Among their folds, by distance draped.<br /> +’Twas Youth, rapacious to consume,<br /> +That cried to have its chaos shaped:<br /> +Absorbing, little noting, still<br /> +Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;<br /> +With wistful looks on each far hill<br /> +For something hidden, something owed.<br /> +Unto his mantled sister, Day<br /> +Had given the secret things we sought<br /> +And she was grave and saintly gay;<br /> +<a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>At times +she fluttered, spoke her thought;<br /> +She flew on it, then folded wings,<br /> +In meditation passing lone,<br /> +To breathe around the secret things,<br /> +Which have no word, and yet are known;<br /> +Of thirst for them are known, as air<br /> +Is health in blood: we gained enough<br /> +By this to feel it honest fare;<br /> +Impalpable, not barren, stuff.</p> +<p class="poetry">A pride of legs in motion kept<br /> +Our spirits to their task meanwhile,<br /> +And what was deepest dreaming slept:<br /> +The posts that named the swallowed mile;<br /> +Beside the straight canal the hut<br /> +Abandoned; near the river’s source<br /> +Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;<br /> +The roadway missed; were our discourse;<br /> +<a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>At times +dear poets, whom some view<br /> +Transcendent or subdued evoked<br /> +To speak the memorable, the true,<br /> +The luminous as a moon uncloaked;<br /> +For proof that there, among earth’s dumb,<br /> +A soul had passed and said our best.<br /> +Or it might be we chimed on some<br /> +Historic favourite’s astral crest,<br /> +With part to reverence in its gleam,<br /> +And part to rivalry the shout:<br /> +So royal, unuttered, is youth’s dream<br /> +Of power within to strike without.<br /> +But most the silences were sweet,<br /> +Like mothers’ breasts, to bid it feel<br /> +It lived in such divine conceit<br /> +As envies aught we stamp for real.</p> +<p class="poetry">To either then an untold tale<br /> +Was Life, and author, hero, we.<br /> +<a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>The +chapters holding peaks to scale,<br /> +Or depths to fathom, made our glee;<br /> +For we were armed of inner fires,<br /> +Unbled in us the ripe desires;<br /> +And passion rolled a quiet sea,<br /> +Whereon was Love the phantom sail.</p> +<h2><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>THE +HUELESS LOVE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Unto</span> that love must +we through fire attain,<br /> + Which those two held as breath of common air;<br /> + The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere;<br +/> +Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.</p> +<p class="poetry">Midway the road of our life’s term they +met,<br /> + And one another knew without surprise;<br /> + Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;<br /> +Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>To them it was revealed how they had found<br /> + The kindred nature and the needed mind;<br /> + The mate by long conspiracy designed;<br /> +The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.</p> +<p class="poetry">Avowed in vigilant solicitude<br /> + For either, what most lived within each breast<br /> + They let be seen: yet every human test<br /> +Demanding righteousness approved them good.</p> +<p class="poetry">She leaned on a strong arm, and little +feared<br /> + Abandonment to help if heaved or sank<br /> + Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,<br +/> +Life rosier were she but less revered.</p> +<p class="poetry">An arm that never shook did not obscure<br /> + Her woman’s intuition of the bliss—<br +/> + Their tempter’s moment o’er the black +abyss,<br /> +Across the narrow plank—he could abjure.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,<br /> + And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,<br /> + Was all of earthly in their love untold,<br /> +Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.</p> +<p class="poetry">So has there come the gust at South-west +flung<br /> + By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,<br /> + When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,<br /> +And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.</p> +<h2><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>SONG +IN THE SONGLESS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> have no song, +the sedges dry,<br /> + And still they sing.<br /> +It is within my breast they sing,<br /> + As I pass by.<br /> +Within my breast they touch a string,<br /> + They wake a sigh.<br /> +There is but sound of sedges dry;<br /> +In me they sing.</p> +<h2><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>UNION +IN DISSEVERANCE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sunset</span> worn to its +last vermilion he;<br /> +She that star overhead in slow descent:<br /> +That white star with the front of angel she;<br /> +He undone in his rays of glory spent</p> +<p class="poetry">Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,<br /> +He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest<br /> +Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,<br /> +Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.</p> +<p class="poetry">Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;<br +/> +Life’s full throb over breathless and abased:<br /> +Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,<br /> +One, more one than the bridally embraced.</p> +<h2><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>THE +BURDEN OF STRENGTH</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">If</span> that thou hast +the gift of strength, then know<br /> +Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;<br /> +Else in a giant’s grasp until the end<br /> +A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.</p> +<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>THE +MAIN REGRET</h2> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WRITTEN FOR +THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM</span></p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">I</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Seen</span>, too clear and +historic within us, our sins of omission<br /> + Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly +bare.<br /> +They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;<br /> + Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to +repair.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">II</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Sunshine might we have been unto seed under +soil, or have scattered<br /> + Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that +shone.<br /> +<a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>Even the +limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered<br /> + Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere +human tone.</p> +<h2><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>ALTERNATION</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Between</span> the fountain +and the rill<br /> +I passed, and saw the mighty will<br /> +To leap at sky; the careless run,<br /> +As earth would lead her little son.</p> +<p class="poetry">Beneath them throbs an urgent well,<br /> +That here is play, and there is war.<br /> +I know not which had most to tell<br /> +Of whence we spring and what we are.</p> +<h2><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +69</span>HAWARDEN</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> comes the +lighted day for men to read<br /> +Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands<br /> +Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed,<br /> +Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands<br /> +Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;<br /> +Nor they look where is darkness, but on high.<br /> +The sun that dropped down our horizon’s verge,<br /> +Illumes his labours through the travelled sky,<br /> +Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known<br /> +By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.<br /> +A splendid image built of man has flown;<br /> +His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.<br /> +Ours the great privilege to have had one<br /> +Among us who celestial tasks has done.</p> +<h2><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>AT THE +CLOSE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">To</span> Thee, dear God of +Mercy, both appeal,<br /> +Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou +know’st;<br /> +And that black spot in each embattled host,<br /> +Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal.<br /> +Now is it red artillery and white steel;<br /> +Till on a day will ring the victor’s boast,<br /> +That ’tis Thy chosen towers uppermost,<br /> +Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.<br /> +So in all times of man’s descent insane<br /> +To brute, did strength and craft combining strike,<br /> +Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.<br /> +But at the close he entered Thy domain,<br /> +Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like<br /> +He tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe.</p> +<h2><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>FOREST +HISTORY</h2> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">I</span></h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Beneath</span> the vans of +doom did men pass in.<br /> + Heroic who came out; for round them hung<br /> + A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue,<br /> +With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">II</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Old Earth’s original Dragon; there +retired<br /> + To his last fastness; overthrown by few.<br /> + Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew.<br /> +Then man to play devorant straight was fired.</p> +<h3><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span><span +class="GutSmall">III</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">More intimate became the forest fear<br /> + While pillared darkness hatched malicious life<br /> + At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife<br /> +And wary slid the glance from ear to ear.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">IV</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,<br /> + The forest’s heart of fog on mossed morass,<br +/> + On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,<br /> +Revealed where lured the swallower byway.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">V</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Dead outlook, flattened back with hard +rebound<br /> + Off walls of distance, left each mounted height.<br +/> + It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite<br /> +Of humble human being, held the ground.</p> +<h3><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span><span +class="GutSmall">VI</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Through friendless wastes, through treacherous +woodland, slow<br /> + The feet sustained by track of feet pursued<br /> + Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood<br /> +By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">VII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight,<br +/> + And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there +abode.<br /> + They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed;<br +/> +Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">VIII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">What words they taught were nails to scratch +the head.<br /> + Benignant works explained the chanting brood.<br /> + Their monastery lit black solitude,<br /> +As one might think a star that heavenward led.</p> +<h3><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span><span +class="GutSmall">IX</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,<br /> + Like some gold flower nightly inward curled,<br /> + Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,<br /> +Or played with it, and had their white retreat.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">X</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Into big books of metal clasps they pored.<br +/> + They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays.<br +/> + The treasures women are whose aim is praise,<br /> +Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XI</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,<br +/> + With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam.<br /> + For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home,<br /> +The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.</p> +<h3><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span><span +class="GutSmall">XII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Whence reverence round grey-haired story +grew:<br /> + And inmost spots of ancient horror shone<br /> + As temples under beams of trials bygone;<br /> +For in them sang brave times with God in view.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XIII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces +green,<br /> + Like night’s first little stars through +clearing showers.<br /> + Was rumoured how a castle’s falcon towers<br +/> +The wilderness commanded with fierce mien.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XIV</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;<br /> + For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout.<br +/> + Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,<br /> +Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance.</p> +<h3><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span><span +class="GutSmall">XV</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">It might be that two errant lords across<br /> + The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry<br /> + They charged forthwith, the better man to try.<br /> +One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XVI</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay +slain,<br /> + The robbers into gruesome durance drew.<br /> + Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s +blue!<br /> +She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XVII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,<br /> + Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den:<br /> + A toady cave beside an ague fen,<br /> +Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.</p> +<h3><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span><span +class="GutSmall">XVIII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">By daylight now the forest fear could read<br +/> + Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went.<br /> + Straight for the roebuck’s neck the bowman +spent<br /> +A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XIX</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate<br +/> + Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors;<br /> + And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,<br /> +But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XX</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Before the blackbird pecked the turf they +woke;<br /> + At dawn the deer’s wet nostrils blew their +last.<br /> + To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast,<br /> +With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke.</p> +<h3><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span><span +class="GutSmall">XXI</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">The city urchin mooned on forest air,<br /> + On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick<br /> + As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed +him sick<br /> +For thinking that his dearer home was there.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XXII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang<br +/> + An old-world echo, like no mortal thing.<br /> + The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund ring,<br +/> +But held in ear it had a chilly clang.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XXIII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;<br /> + Some warning haunted any sound prolonged,<br /> + As though the leagues of woodland held them +wronged<br /> +To hear an axe and see a township climb.</p> +<h3><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span><span +class="GutSmall">XXIV</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve<br +/> + Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales.<br +/> + At midnight a small people danced the dales,<br /> +So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XXV</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their +throats,<br /> + Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much.<br +/> + The pensioned forester beside his crutch,<br /> +Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XXVI</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all +heart;<br /> + Devourer, and insensibly devoured;<br /> + In whom the city over forest flowered,<br /> +The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.</p> +<h3><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span><span +class="GutSmall">XXVII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">There found he in new form that Dragon old,<br +/> + From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught<br /> + How blindly each its antidote besought;<br /> +For either’s breath the needs of either told.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XXVIII</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s +drone,<br /> + He showed what charm the human concourse works:<br +/> + Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks<br /> +Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.</p> +<h3><span class="GutSmall">XXIX</span></h3> +<p class="poetry">Our conquest these: if haply we retain<br /> + The reverence that ne’er will overrun<br /> + Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,<br /> +Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.</p> +<h2><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>A +GARDEN IDYL</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">With</span> sagest craft +Arachne worked<br /> +Her web, and at a corner lurked,<br /> +Awaiting what should plump her soon,<br /> +To case it in the death-cocoon.<br /> +Sagaciously her home she chose<br /> +For visits that would never close;<br /> +Inside my chalet-porch her feast<br /> +Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.</p> +<p class="poetry">The finished structure, bar on bar,<br /> +Had snatched from light to form a star,<br /> +And struck on sight, when quick with dews,<br /> +Like music of the very Muse.<br /> +<a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>Great +artists pass our single sense;<br /> +We hear in seeing, strung to tense;<br /> +Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,<br /> +To think such beauty means a trap.<br /> +But Nature’s genius, even man’s<br /> +At best, is practical in plans;<br /> +Subservient to the needy thought,<br /> +However rare the weapon wrought.<br /> +As long as Nature holds it good<br /> +To urge her creatures’ quest for food<br /> +Will beauty stamp the just intent<br /> +Of weapons upon service bent.<br /> +For beauty is a flower of roots<br /> +Embedded lower than our boots;<br /> +Out of the primal strata springs,<br /> +And shows for crown of useful things</p> +<p class="poetry">Arachne’s dream of prey to size<br /> +Aspired; so she could nigh despise<br /> +<a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>The puny +specks the breezes round<br /> +Supplied, and let them shake unwound;<br /> +Assured of her fat fly to come;<br /> +Perhaps a blue, the spider’s plum;<br /> +Who takes the fatal odds in fight,<br /> +And gives repast an appetite,<br /> +By plunging, whizzing, till his wings<br /> +Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,<br /> +A shrouded lump, for her to see<br /> +Her banquet in her victory.</p> +<p class="poetry">This matron of the unnumbered threads,<br /> +One day of dandelions’ heads<br /> +Distributing their gray perruques<br /> +Up every gust, I watched with looks<br /> +Discreet beside the chalet-door;<br /> +And gracefully a light wind bore,<br /> +Direct upon my webster’s wall,<br /> +A monster in the form of ball;<br /> +<a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>The +mildest captive ever snared,<br /> +That neither struggled nor despaired,<br /> +On half the net invading hung,<br /> +And plain as in her mother tongue,<br /> +While low the weaver cursed her lures,<br /> +Remarked, “You have me; I am yours.”</p> +<p class="poetry">Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,<br /> +Her dream of size she saw, agape.<br /> +Midway the vast round-raying beard<br /> +A desiccated midge appeared;<br /> +Whose body pricked the name of meal,<br /> +Whose hair had growth in earth’s unreal;<br /> +Provocative of dread and wrath,<br /> +Contempt and horror, in one froth,<br /> +Inextricable, insensible,<br /> +His poison presence there would dwell,<br /> +Declaring him her dream fulfilled,<br /> +A catch to compliment the skilled;<br /> +<a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>And she +reduced to beaky skin,<br /> +Disgraceful among kith and kin</p> +<p class="poetry">Against her corner, humped and aged,<br /> +Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,<br /> +Beyond disgust or hope in guile.<br /> +Ridiculously volatile<br /> +He seemed to her last spark of mind;<br /> +And that in pallid ash declined<br /> +Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,<br /> +Wherein throughout her frame she felt<br /> +That he, the light wind’s libertine,<br /> +Without a scoff, without a grin,<br /> +And mannered like the courtly few,<br /> +Who merely danced when light winds blew,<br /> +Impervious to beak and claws,<br /> +Tradition’s ruinous Whitebeard was;<br /> +Of whom, as actors in old scenes,<br /> +Had grannam weavers warned their weans,<br /> +<a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>With word, +that less than feather-weight,<br /> +He smote the web like bolt of Fate.</p> +<p class="poetry">This muted drama, hour by hour,<br /> +I watched amid a world in flower,<br /> +Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid<br /> +Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s blade,<br /> +And still along the garden-run<br /> +The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.<br /> +Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance<br /> +Her visitor performed a dance;<br /> +She puckered thinner; he the same<br /> +As when on that light wind he came.</p> +<p class="poetry">Next day was told what deeds of night<br /> +Were done; the web had vanished quite;<br /> +<a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>With it +the strange opposing pair;<br /> +And listless waved on vacant air,<br /> +For her adieu to heart’s content,<br /> +A solitary filament.</p> +<h2><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sprung</span> of the father +blood, the mother brain,<br /> +Are they who point our pathway and sustain.<br /> +They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.<br /> +When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.</p> +<p class="poetry">To see Life’s formless offspring and +subdue<br /> +Desire of times unripe, we have these two,<br /> +Whose union is right reason: join they hands,<br /> +The world shall know itself and where it stands;<br /> +What cowering angel and what upright beast<br /> +Make man, behold, nor count the low the least,<br /> +Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.<br /> +When these two meet, a point of time is ours.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>As in a land of waterfalls, that flow<br /> +Smooth for the leap on their great voice below,<br /> +Some eddies near the brink borne swift along,<br /> +Will capture hearing with the liquid song,<br /> +So, while the headlong world’s imperious force<br /> +Resounded under, heard I these discourse.</p> +<p class="poetry">First words, where down my woodland walk she +led,<br /> +To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said:</p> +<p class="poetry">—Your faith in me appals, to shake my +own,<br /> +When still I find you in this mire alone.</p> +<p class="poetry">—The few steps taken at a funeral pace<br +/> +By men had slain me but for those you trace.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Look I once back, a broken pinion I:<br +/> +Black as the rebel angels rained from sky!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>—Needs must you drink of me while here you +live,<br /> +And make me rich in feeling I can give.</p> +<p class="poetry">—A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:<br +/> +Yet must I read my sister for the How.<br /> +My daisy better knows her God of beams<br /> +Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems.<br /> +She hath the secret never fieriest reach<br /> +Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Liker the clod flaked by the driving +plough,<br /> +My semblance when I have you not as now.<br /> +The quiet creatures who escape mishap<br /> +Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap:<br /> +A picture of the settled peace desired<br /> +By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.<br /> +I listen at their breasts: is there no jar<br /> +<a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>Of +wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are,<br /> +And such a picture as the piercing mind<br /> +Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned<br /> +Are my true pupils while the world is brute.<br /> +What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,<br /> +Stronger impels the motion of my heart.<br /> +I am not Resignation’s counterpart.<br /> +If that I teach, ’tis little the dry word,<br /> +Content, but how to savour hope deferred.<br /> +We come of earth, and rich of earth may be;<br /> +Soon carrion if very earth are we!<br /> +The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use<br /> +Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce;<br /> +Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,<br /> +And pass despised; “a-cold for lack of heat,”<br /> +Like other corpses, but without death’s plea.</p> +<p class="poetry">—My sister calls for battle; is it +she?</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>—Rather a world of pressing men in arms,<br /> +Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms<br /> +Each drowsy malady and coiling vice<br /> +With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!<br /> +No home is here for peace while evil breeds,<br /> +While error governs, none; and must the seeds<br /> +You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,<br /> +Lie barren at the doorway of the brain,<br /> +Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood<br /> +Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!</p> +<p class="poetry">—My sober little maid, when we meet +first,<br /> +Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst.<br /> +So can I not of her till circumstance<br /> +Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance<br /> +A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred,<br /> +Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word<br /> +<a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>Prompting +their hungers, and they grandly march,<br /> +As to band-music under Victory’s arch.<br /> +Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then<br /> +The beauty of frank animals had men.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Observe them, and down rearward for a +term,<br /> +Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm.<br /> +Thence look this way, across the fields that show<br /> +Men’s early form of speech for Yes and No.<br /> +My sister a bruised infant’s utterance had;<br /> +And issuing stronger, to mankind ’twas mad.<br /> +I knew my home where I had choice to feel<br /> +The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Speak of this Age.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> —When +you it shall discern<br /> +Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +94</span>—For neither of us has it any care;<br /> +Its learning is through Science to despair.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Despair lies down and grovels, grapples +not<br /> +With evil, casts the burden of its lot.<br /> +This Age climbs earth.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> —To +challenge heaven.</p> +<p +class="poetry"> —Not +less<br /> +The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!<br /> +That know I, though the echoes of it wail,<br /> +For one step upward on the crags you scale.<br /> +Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,<br /> +Which means our soul asleep or body’s lust,<br /> +Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat<br /> +A temperate common music, sunlike heat<br /> +The happiness not predatory sheds!</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +95</span>—But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads,<br +/> +Now rages to outdo a horny Past.<br /> +Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast<br /> +Are thrown by every novel light upraised.<br /> +The world’s whole round smokes ominously, amazed<br /> +And trembling as its pregnant Ætna swells.<br /> +Combustibles on hot combustibles<br /> +Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire<br /> +The mountain-torrent of infernal ire<br /> +And leave the track of devils where men built.<br /> +Perceptive of a doom, the sinner’s guilt<br /> +Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud,<br /> +If drops the chillness of a passing cloud,<br /> +To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:<br /> +None save they but the souls which them contain.<br /> +No extramural God, the God within<br /> +Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.<br /> +<a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>A world +that for the spur of fool and knave,<br /> +Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save?<br /> +But men who ply their wits in such a school,<br /> +Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Much have I studied hard Necessity!<br +/> +To know her Wisdom’s mother, and that we<br /> +May deem the harshness of her later cries<br /> +In labour a sure goad to prick the wise,<br /> +If men among the warnings which convulse,<br /> +Can gravely dread without the craven’s pulse.<br /> +Long ere the rising of this Age of ours,<br /> +The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers.<br /> +Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,<br /> +And are as lasting as the parent thing.<br /> +Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill,<br /> +They might o’ermatch and have mankind at will.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>Behold such army gathering: ours the spur,<br /> +No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer.<br /> +Not fool or knave is now the enemy<br /> +O’ershadowing men, ’tis Folly, Knavery!<br /> +A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach.<br /> +Now must the brother soul alive in each,<br /> +His traitorous individual devildom<br /> +Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.<br /> +Dimly men see it menacing apace<br /> +To overthrow, perchance uproot the race.<br /> +Within, without, they are a field of tares:<br /> +Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares,<br /> +And wherefore warrior service they must yield,<br /> +Shines visible as life on either field.<br /> +That is my comfort, following shock on shock,<br /> +Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.<br /> +Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night,<br /> +Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight,<br /> +Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,<br /> +<a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>The human +and Satanic intellect,<br /> +Determined for their uses to control<br /> +What forces on the earth and under roll,<br /> +Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand<br /> +Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.<br /> +They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:<br /> +Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war.</p> +<p class="poetry">—My sister, as I read them in my +glass,<br /> +Their field of tares they take for pasture grass.<br /> +How waken them that have not any bent<br /> +Save browsing—the concrete indifferent!<br /> +Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff:<br /> +They fear not for the race when full the trough.<br /> +They have much fear of giving up the ghost;<br /> +And these are of mankind the unnumbered host.</p> +<p class="poetry">—If I could see with you, and did not +faint<br /> +In beating wing, the future I would paint.<br /> +<a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>Those +massed indifferents will learn to quake:<br /> +Now meanwhile is another mass awake,<br /> +Once denser than the grunters of the sty.<br /> +If I could see with you! Could I but fly!</p> +<p class="poetry">—The length of days that you with them +have housed,<br /> +An outcast else, approves their cause espoused.</p> +<p class="poetry">—O true, they have a cause, and woe for +us,<br /> +While still they have a cause too piteous!<br /> +Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,<br /> +They walk no longer with a stumbler blind,<br /> +And quicken in the virtue of their cause,<br /> +To think me a poor mouther of old saws!<br /> +I wait the issue of a battling Age;<br /> +The toilers with your “troughsters” now engage;<br /> +Instructing them through their acutest sense,<br /> +How close the dangers of indifference!<br /> +<a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>Already +have my people shown their worth,<br /> +More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.<br /> +That love to love of labour leads: thence love<br /> +Of humankind—earth’s incense flung above.</p> +<p class="poetry">—Admit some other features: Faithless, +mean;<br /> +Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene;<br /> +Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells<br /> +On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;<br /> +And if I bid it face what <i>I</i> observe,<br /> +Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!</p> +<p class="poetry">—Oft has your prophet, for reward of +toil,<br /> +Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil:<br /> +Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,<br /> +Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime.<br /> +Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry:<br /> +As little as Time’s earliest knew the sky.<br /> +<a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +101</span>Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame<br /> +At intervals, in proof of whom they came.<br /> +To strengthen our foundations is the task<br /> +Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,<br /> +Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves<br /> +The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves.<br /> +My sister sees no round beyond her mood;<br /> +To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.<br /> +Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves,<br /> +It moves: O much for me to say it moves!<br /> +About his Æthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,<br /> +Though not the stream of the paternal smile:<br /> +And where his tide of nourishment he drives,<br /> +An Abyssinian wantonness revives.<br /> +Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims;<br /> +He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,<br /> +The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills;<br /> +Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,<br /> +He is the vast Insensate who devours<br /> +His golden promise over leagues of seed,<br /> +Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.<br /> +The races which on barbarous force begin,<br /> +Inherit onward of their origin,<br /> +And cancelled blessings will the current length<br /> +Reveal till they know need of shaping strength.<br /> +’Tis not in men to recognize the need<br /> +Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.<br /> +Then may sharp suffering their nature grind;<br /> +Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.<br /> +Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,<br /> +For tens up the safe mountains at his head.<br /> +Few would be fed, not far his course prolong,<br /> +Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>—That rings of truth! More do your people +thrive;<br /> +Your Many are more merrily alive<br /> +Than erewhile when I gloried in the page<br /> +Of radiant singer and anointed sage.<br /> +Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil;<br /> +Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil!<br /> +All structures built upon a narrow space<br /> +Must fall, from having not your hosts for base.<br /> +O thrice must one be you, to see them shift<br /> +Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;<br /> +With faith, that of privations and spilt blood,<br /> +Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood!<br /> +And thrice must one be you, to wait release<br /> +From duress in the swamp of their increase.<br /> +At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest,<br /> +A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed,<br /> +Philosophers behold; desponding view.<br /> +<a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>Your +Many nourished, starved my brilliant few;<br /> +Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,<br /> +Dive down the fumy Ætna of their brains.<br /> +Belated vessels on a rising sea,<br /> +They seem: they pass!</p> +<p +class="poetry"> —But +not Philosophy!</p> +<p class="poetry">—Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: +despise<br /> +Nought but the coward in us! That way lies<br /> +The wisdom making passage through our slough.<br /> +Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;<br /> +Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait.<br /> +Philosophy is Life’s one match for Fate.<br /> +That photosphere of our high fountain One,<br /> +Our spirit’s Lord and Reason’s fostering sun,<br /> +Philosophy, shall light us in the shade,<br /> +Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid.<br /> +<a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,<br /> +Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good!<br /> +Advantage to the Many: that we name<br /> +God’s voice; have there the surety in our aim.<br /> +This thought unto my sister do I owe,<br /> +And irony and satire off me throw.<br /> +They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds,<br /> +Where numbers crave their sustenance in words.<br /> +Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,<br /> +Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene.<br /> +Who never yet of scattered lamps was born<br /> +To speed a world, a marching world to warn,<br /> +But sunward from the vivid Many springs,<br /> +Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings.</p> +<h2><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +109</span>FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE</h2> +<h3>THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +B. I. V. 149</p> +<p class="poetry">“<span class="smcap">Heigh</span> me! +brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one,<br /> +Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,<br /> +Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?<br +/> +I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armèd +Trojans,<br /> +Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm +done;<br /> +Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;<br +/> +<a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>Never in +deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests<br /> +Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome<br +/> +Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy +sea-waters.<br /> +O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, +justice<br /> +Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou +dog-eyed!<br /> +Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest.<br +/> +Worse, it is thou whose threat ’tis to ravish my prize from +me, portion<br /> +Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of +Achaia.<br /> +Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when +Achaians<br /> +Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage.<br /> +Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the +combat,<br /> +<a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>Yet when +came peradventure share of the booty amongst us,<br /> +Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessèd +thing bore<br /> +Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the +bloodshed!<br /> +So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me<br /> +Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in +prospect,<br /> +I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and +wealth-store.”</p> +<h3><a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>V. +225</h3> +<p class="poetry">“Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, +having heart of a deer, thou!<br /> +Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the +conflict,<br /> +Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia<br /> +Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a +death-stroke.<br /> +Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of +Achaians,<br /> +Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted +against thee.<br /> +Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over +abjects;<br /> +Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.<br +/> +Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it +likewise:<br /> +<a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>Yea, by +the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds<br +/> +Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the +mountains,<br /> +No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal +clipped off<br /> +Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,<br /> +Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the +judgement,<br /> +Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its +portent;<br /> +Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia<br +/> +Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an +anguish,<br /> +How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying +Hector<br /> +Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy +heart-strings,<br /> +Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of +Achaians.”</p> +<h3><a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +114</span>MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +B. II V. 455</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Like</span> as a terrible +fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,<br /> +Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round +far,<br /> +So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the +splendour<br /> +Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the +sky-vault.<br /> +They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged +flocks,<br /> +Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the +wild-swans,<br /> +Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of +Kaïstros;<br /> +Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their +pinions,<br /> +<a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>Clamour, +shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them resoundeth;<br +/> +So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings +poured forth<br /> +On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them<br +/> +Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the +horse-hooves.<br /> +Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d field of Scamander, +their thousands<br /> +Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season.<br +/> +Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes +traverse,<br /> +Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s wonning, where then +are the milk-pails<br /> +Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of +spring-time;<br /> +Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held,<br +/> +Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush +them.<br /> +<a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>Those, +likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, +know<br /> +Easily one from the other when all get mixed o’er the +pasture,<br /> +So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for +onslaught,<br /> +Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,<br +/> +He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his +thunder,<br /> +He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.</p> +<h3><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +117</span>AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +B. XI. V. 148</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">These</span>, then, he +left, and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest,<br /> +Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved +Achaians.<br /> +Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful +compulsion,<br /> +Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the +dust-cloud,<br /> +Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering +horse-hooves)<br /> +Hewed with the sword’s sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord +Agamemnon<br /> +Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the +Argives.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +118</span>Now, as when fire voracious catches the +unclippèd woodland,<br /> +This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the +scrubwood<br /> +Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire’s fury +rageing,<br /> +So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered<br /> +Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,<br +/> +Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the +war-field,<br /> +Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were +outstretched<br /> +Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their +home-mates.</p> +<h3><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>PARIS AND DIOMEDES</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>; +B. XI V. 378</p> +<p class="poetry"> <span +class="smcap">So</span> he, with a clear shout of laughter,<br /> +Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering +thiswise:<br /> +“Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it +had pierced thee<br /> +Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of +life-breath!<br /> +Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their +direst,<br /> +They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a +lion.”<br /> +Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:<br /> +“Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at +virgins!<br /> +<a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>If that +thou dared’st face me here out in the open with weapons,<br +/> +Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of +arrows.<br /> +Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my +footsole;<br /> +Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish +infant.<br /> +Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, +noughtworth!<br /> +Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the +slightest,<br /> +My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen +straightway.<br /> +Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen +slaughtered,<br /> +Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his +blood-drops,<br /> +Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the +women.”</p> +<h3><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>HYPNOS ON IDA</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +B. XIV. V. 283</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> then to +fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,<br /> +Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at +Lektos,<br /> +Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the +woodland.<br /> +There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,<br +/> +Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida<br /> +Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.<br /> +There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for +concealment,<br /> +That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the +mountains,<br /> +Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as +Kymindis.</p> +<h3><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +B. XIV. V. 394</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Not</span> the sea-wave so +bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,<br /> +Whipped from the sea’s deeps up by the terrible blast of +the Northwind;<br /> +Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire’s rush so +arousing,<br /> +Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a +woodland;<br /> +Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the +oak-trees’<br /> +Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;<br /> +As rose then stupendous the Trojan’s cry and +Achaians’,<br /> +Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the +conflict.</p> +<h3><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>THE +HORSES OF ACHILLES</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">Iliad</span>, +B. XVII. V. 426</p> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">So</span> now the horses of +Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,<br /> +Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown +there,<br /> +Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying +Hector.<br /> +Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,<br /> +Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, +and oft, too,<br /> +Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.<br +/> +Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont +spacious,<br /> +Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the +Achaians.<br /> +Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,<br /> +<a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>Haply, +of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under;<br /> +Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious +war-car,<br /> +Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting +incessant<br /> +Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their +eyelids,<br /> +Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes +dusty-clotted,<br /> +Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of +the yoke-bow.<br /> +Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head +shook<br /> +Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his +bosom;<br /> +“Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal<br /> +Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!<br /> +Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have +heart-grief?<br /> +<a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +125</span>’Tis most true, than the race of these men is +there wretcheder nowhere<br /> +Aught over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath +and has movement.”</p> +<h3><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>THE +MARES OF THE CAMARGUE</h3> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">From the</span> +<i>Mirèio</i> <span class="smcap">of Mistral</span></p> +<p class="poetry"> A <span +class="smcap">hundred</span> mares, all white! their manes<br /> + Like mace-reed of the marshy +plains<br /> + Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ +the shears:<br /> + And when the fiery squadron +rears<br /> + Bursting at speed, each mane +appears<br /> + Even as the white scarf of a +fay<br /> +Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a +name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>O race of +humankind, take shame!<br /> + For never yet a hand could +tame,<br /> +Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue<br /> + The mares of the Camargue. I +have known,<br /> + By treason snared, some captives +shown;<br /> + Expatriate from their native +Rhone,<br /> +Led off, their saline pastures far from view:</p> +<p class="poetry"> And on a +day, with prompt rebound,<br /> + They have flung their riders to +the ground,<br /> +And at a single gallop, scouring free,<br /> + Wide-nostril’d to the wind, +twice ten<br /> + Of long marsh-leagues +devour’d, and then,<br /> + Back to the Vacarés +again,<br /> +After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea</p> +<p class="poetry"> <a +name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>For of this +savage race unbent,<br /> + The ocean is the element.<br /> +Of old escaped from Neptune’s car, full sure,<br /> + Still with the white foam +fleck’d are they,<br /> + And when the sea puffs black from +grey,<br /> + And ships part cables, loudly +neigh<br /> +The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;</p> +<p class="poetry"> And keen as +a whip they lash and crack<br /> + Their tails that drag the dust, +and back<br /> +Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where +he,<br /> + The God, drives deep his trident +teeth,<br /> + Who in one horror, above, +beneath,<br /> + Bids storm and watery deluge +seethe,<br /> +And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Cant.</i> iv.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">Butler and Tanner, The Selwood +Printing Works, Frome, and London.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A READING OF LIFE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1042-h.htm or 1042-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/4/1042 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3604815 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #1042 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1042) diff --git a/old/rdlif10.txt b/old/rdlif10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..74b41e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rdlif10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2471 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Reading of Life, and Other Poems +by George Meredith + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: A Reading of Life, and Other Poems + +Author: George Meredith + +Release Date: September, 1997 [EBook #1042] +[This file was first posted on September 25, 1997] +[Most recently updated: June 24, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A READING OF LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS *** + + + + +Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +A Reading Of Life + + + + +Contents: + + +A Reading of Life--The Vital Choice +A Reading of Life--With The Huntress +A Reading of Life--With The Persuader +A Reading of Life--The Test of Manhood +The Cageing of Ares +The Night-Walk +The Hueless Love +Song In The Songless +Union In Disseverance +The Burden of Strength +The Main Regret +Alternation +Hawarden +At the Close +Forest History +A Garden Idyl +Foresight And Patience +The Invective of Achilles +The Invective of Achilles--V. 225 +Marshalling of the Achaians +Agamemnon in the Fight +Paris and Diomedes +Hypnos on Ida +Clash in Arms of the Achaians And Trojans +The Horses of Achilles +The Mares of the Camargue + + + +Poem: A Reading of Life--The Vital Choice + + + +I. + +Or shall we run with Artemis +Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? +Both are mighty; +Both give bliss; +Each can torture if divided; +Each claims worship undivided, +In her wake would have us wallow. + +II. + +Youth must offer on bent knees +Homage unto one or other; +Earth, the mother, +This decrees; +And unto the pallid Scyther +Either points us shun we either +Shun or too devoutly follow. + + + +Poem: A Reading of Life--With The Huntress + + + +Through the water-eye of night, +Midway between eve and dawn, +See the chase, the rout, the flight +In deep forest; oread, faun, +Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; +Ravenous all the line for speed. +See yon wavy sparkle beck +Sign of the Virgin Lady's lead. +Down her course a serpent star +Coils and shatters at her heels; +Peals the horn exulting, peals +Plaintive, is it near or far. +Huntress, arrowy to pursue, +In and out of woody glen, +Under cliffs that tear the blue, +Over torrent, over fen, +She and forest, where she skims +Feathery, darken and relume: +Those are her white-lightning limbs +Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. +Mountains hear her and call back, +Shrewd with night: a frosty wail +Distant: her the emerald vale +Folds, and wonders in her track. +Now her retinue is lean, +Many rearward; streams the chase +Eager forth of covert; seen +One hot tide the rapturous race. +Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, +Up on a flash the lighted mound +Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft +Strung to barb with archer's craft, +Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet +Songs to see, past pitch of sweet. +Fearful swiftness they outrun, +Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, +Challenge, charge of tusks elude: +Theirs the dance to tame the rude; +Beast, and beast in manhood tame, +Follow we their silver flame. +Pride of flesh from bondage free, +Reaping vigour of its waste, +Marks her servitors, and she +Sanctifies the unembraced. +Nought of perilous she reeks; +Valour clothes her open breast; +Sweet beyond the thrill of sex; +Hallowed by the sex confessed. +Huntress arrowy to pursue, +Colder she than sunless dew, +She, that breath of upper air; +Ay, but never lyrist sang, +Draught of Bacchus never sprang +Blood the bliss of Gods to share, +High o'er sweep of eagle wings, +Like the run with her, when rings +Clear her rally, and her dart, +In the forest's cavern heart, +Tells of her victorious aim. +Then is pause and chatter, cheer, +Laughter at some satyr lame, +Looks upon the fallen deer, +Measuring his noble crest; +Here a favourite in her train, +Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; +All applauded. Shall she reign +Worshipped? O to be with her there! +She, that breath of nimble air, +Lifts the breast to giant power. +Maid and man, and man and maid, +Who each other would devour +Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, +There are comrades, led by her, +Maid-preserver, man-maker. + + + +Poem: A Reading of Life--With The Persuader + + + +Who murmurs, hither, hither: who +Where nought is audible so fills the ear? +Where nought is visible can make appear +A veil with eyes that waver through, +Like twilight's pledge of blessed night to come, +Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, +She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, +Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire +To clasp and strike a slackened lyre, +Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, +Flame in a crystal vessel sails +Beneath a dome of jewelled spray, +For land that drops the rosy day +On nights of throbbing nightingales. + +Landward did the wonder flit, +Or heart's desire of her, all earth in it. +We saw the heavens fling down their rose; +On rapturous waves we saw her glide; +The pearly sea-shell half enclose; +The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; +And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more +Behold than tracks along a startled shore, +With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign +An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain. + +More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, +The very she called forth by ripened blood +For its next breath of being, murmurs; she, +Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, +The stream within us urged to flood; +Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent; O she, +Maid, woman and divinity; +Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate +Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit +Untasted; she our written fate +Unread; Life's flowering, Life's root: +Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; +The evanescent, ever-present she, +Great Nature's stern necessity +In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; +With a sword's edge of sweetness keen to take +Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break. + +The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. +Man's cry, earth's answer, heaven's consent, +Her form is given to pardoned sight, +And lets our mortal eyes receive +The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; +Adored by them who solitarily pace, +In dusk of the underworld's perpetual eve, +The paths among the meadow asphodel, +Remembering. Never there her face +Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell +Around such whiteness the enamoured air +Of noon that clothes her, never there. +Daughter of light, the joyful light, +She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, +Sweet in her disregard of aid +Divine to conquer or persuade. +A fountain jets from moss; a flower +Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower. +By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen +With eyelids unabashed the passion's Queen. + +Shorn of attendant Graces she can use +Her natural snares to make her will supreme. +A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse +Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: +One arm at curve along a rounded thigh; +Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way +A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, +Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. +The bud of fresh virginity awaits +The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: +She touches on the hour of happy mates; +Still is she unaware she wakens thirst. + +And while commanding blissful sight believe +It holds her as a body strained to breast, +Down on the underworld's perpetual eve +She plunges the possessor dispossessed; +And bids believe that image, heaving warm, +Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame; +The phantom any breeze blows out of form; +A thirst's delusion, a defeated aim. + +The rapture shed the torture weaves; +The direst blow on human heart she deals: +The pain to know the seen deceives; +Nought true but what insufferably feels. +And stabs of her delicious note, +That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard +Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, +We answer as the midnight's morning's bird. + +She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; +In her delicious laughter part revealed; +Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, +For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. +Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: +Yon folded couples, passing under shade, +Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, +Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. +We dolorous complainers had a dream, +Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, +We saw stand bare of her celestial beam +The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire. + +Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips +Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; +And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips +She nods: at once that creature wears her lure. +Blush of our being between birth and death: +Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: +Her wily semblance nought of her denies; +Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, +The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm +Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; +Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. +Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. +But scorn she has for them that walk alone; +Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. +The men as chief of criminals she disdains, +And holds the reason in perceptive thought. +More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, +Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought. +Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, +Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, +In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths: +Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes +For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew. +Comes there a tremor of night's forest horn +Across her garden from the insaner crew, +She darkens to malignity of scorn. +A shiver courses through her garden-grounds: +Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, +The hunter's shouts, are heard afar, and bring +Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. +These, the irreverent of Life's design, +Division between natural and divine +Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, +In veins of gathered strength Life's tide arrest; +And these because the roses flood their cheeks, +Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. +With them is war; and well the Goddess knows +What undermines the race who mount the rose; +How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, +Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: +Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, +The strong when Beauty gleams o'er Nature's needs, +And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. +They who her sway withstand a sea defy, +At every point of juncture must be proof; +Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge +Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge +For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. +She, tenderness, is pitiless to them +Resisting in her godhead nature's truth. +No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; +Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. +These miserably disinclined, +The lamentably unembraced, +Insult the Pleasures Earth designed +To people and beflower the waste. +Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: +For death they live, in life they die. + +Her head the Goddess from them turns, +As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. +She views her quivering couples unconsoled, +And of her beauty mirror they become, +Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, +Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. +Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, +Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, +Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, +They play the music made of two: +Oldest of earth, earth's youngest till earth's end: +Cunninger than the numbered strings, +For melodies, for harmonies, +For mastered discords, and the things +Not vocable, whose mysteries +Are inmost Love's, Life's reach of Life extend. + +Is it an anguish overflowing shame +And the tongue's pudency confides to her, +With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, +The woman's marrow in some dear youth's name, +Then is the Goddess tenderness +Maternal, and she has a sister's tones +Benign to soothe intemperate distress, +Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. +Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease +To those of her milk-bearer votaries +As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source +Direct; erratic but in heart's excess; +Being mortal and ill-matched for Love's great force; +Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. +And pray they under skies less overcast, +That swiftly may her star of eve descend, +Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, +To lengthen blissful night will she befriend. + +Unfailing her reply to woman's voice +In supplication instant. Is it man's, +She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, +And him: the flowers are various, he has choice. +Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; +Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; +And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise +Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys. + +She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps +To her invoked: distraction is implored. +A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps +Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored. +His tales of her declare she condescends; +Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: +Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose +A queenlier gem than woman's wayside rose. +She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs +Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; +Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings. +'Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse +Rarely the music made of two ascends, +And Beauty's Queen some other way is won. +Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends +Herself to all, and yields herself to none, +Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised +In hot assurance under shade of doubt: +And numerous are the images bepraised +As Beauty's Queen, should passion head the rout. + +Be sure the ruddy hue is Love's: to woo +Love's Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. +That is her garden's precept, seen where shines +Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines. +Daughter of light, the joyful light, +She bids her couples face full East, +Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast +Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, +The lion-haunted thickets hold apart. +In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; +High confidence in her whose aid is lent +To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, +Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone. +And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, +Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, +Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun's. + +Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe +He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show. +For him requiring woman's arts to please +Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, +No race of giants! In the woman's veins +Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains. +Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, +Aspiring blends the Titan with the God; +Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss +In her high Lady's mandate, yields the kiss; +And is it needed that Love's daintier brute +Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. +She is great Nature's ever intimate +In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, +Until perverted by her senseless male, +She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, +The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, +Elusive to allure, since he grew tame. + +Hence has the Goddess, Nature's earliest Power, +And greatest and most present, with her dower +Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute +For meditated guile. She laughs to hear +A charge her garden's labyrinths scarce confute, +Her garden's histories tell of to all near. +Let it be said, But less upon her guile +Doth she rely for her immortal smile. +Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens +To push her conquests by the simplest means. +While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves +From earth's good labours, Beauty's Queen he serves. + +Her spacious garden and her garden's grant +She offers in reward for handsome cheer: +Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant +The secret down a dewy leer +Of corner eyelids into haze: +Many a fair Aphrosyne +Like flower-bell to honey-bee: +And here they flicker round the maze +Bewildering him in heart and head: +And here they wear the close demure, +With subtle peeps to reassure: +Others parade where love has bled, +And of its crimson weave their mesh: +Others to snap of fingers leap, +As bearing breast with love asleep. +These are her laughters in the flesh. +Or would she fit a warrior mood, +She lights her seeming unsubdued, +And indicates the fortress-key. +Or is it heart for heart that craves, +She flecks along a run of waves +The one to promise deeper sea. + +Bands of her limpid primitives, +Or patterned in the curious braid, +Are the blest man's; and whatsoever he gives, +For what he gives is he repaid. +Good is it if by him 'tis held +He wins the fairest ever welled +From Nature's founts: she whispers it: Even I +Not fairer! and forbids him to deny, +Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, +Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, - +And be they doves or be they asps, - +Must seem to him the sovereignty fair; +Else counts he soon among life's wholly tamed. +Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, +Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned +The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, +He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, +Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. +Doth man divide divine Necessity +From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty's breasts +A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain +Present her; armed to bless and to constrain. +Of this he perishes; not she, the throned +On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts. +A loftier Reason out of deeper founts +Earth's chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned +While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, +And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky; +Earth's answer, heaven's consent unto man's cry, +Uplifted by the innumerable hosts. + +Quickened of Nature's eye and ear, +When the wild sap at high tide smites +Within us; or benignly clear +To vision; or as the iris lights +On fluctuant waters; she is ours +Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen; +Flushing the world with odorous flowers: +A soft compulsion on terrene +By heavenly: and the world is hers +While hunger after Beauty spurs. + +So is it sung in any space +She fills, with laugh at shallow laws +Forbidding love's devised embrace, +The music Beauty from it draws. + + + +Poem: A Reading of Life--The Test Of Manhood + + + +Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks, +An army issues out of wilderness, +With battle plucking round its ragged flanks; +Obstruction in the van; insane excess +Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress +Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, +And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, +The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. +They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone; +A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. +Then was the gracious birth of man's new day; +Divided from the haunted night it shone. + +That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang +Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide. +Another sun had risen to clasp his bride: +It was another earth unto him sang. + +Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights? +From the Persuader came it, in those vales +Whereunto she melodiously invites, +Her troops of eager servitors regales? +Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed +Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead; +Nor either points for us the way of flame. +From him predestined mightier it came; +His task to hold them both in breast, and yield +Their dues to each, and of their war be field. + +The foes that in repulsion never ceased, +Must he, who once has been the goodly beast +Of one or other, at whose beck he ran, +Constrain to make him serviceable man; +Offending neither, nor the natural claim +Each pressed, denying, for his true man's name. + +Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife +To hold them fast conjoined within him still; +Submissive to his will +Along the road of life! +And marvel not he wavered if at whiles +The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles. +For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain; +Repentance offered ecstasy in pain. +Delicious licence called it Nature's cry; +Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh; +A tread on shingle timed his lame advance +Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance, +He of the troubled marching army leaned +On godhead visible, on godhead screened; +The radiant roseate, the curtained white; +Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night. + +He drank of fictions, till celestial aid +Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed; +Sagely the generous Giver circumspect, +To choose for grants the egregious, his elect; +And ever that imagined succour slew +The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew. + +In fellowship religion has its founts: +The solitary his own God reveres: +Ascend no sacred Mounts +Our hungers or our fears. +As only for the numbers Nature's care +Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, +So to Divinity the spring of prayer +From brotherhood the one way upward leads. +Like the sustaining air +Are both for flowers and weeds. +But he who claims in spirit to be flower, +Will find them both an air that doth devour. + +Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored +External gifts bestowed but on the sword; +Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, +Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, +His army's foe, condemned to strive and fail; +See a black adversary's ghost prevail; +Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win +While still the conflict tore his breast within. + +Out of that agony, misread for those +Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased, +The ghost of his black adversary rose, +To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased. +And long with him was wrestling ere emerged +A mind to read in him the reflex shade +Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged; +By craven compromises hourly swayed. + +Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, +The man's mind opened under weight of cloud. +To penetrate the dark was it endowed; +Stood day before a vision shooting wide. +Whereat the spectral enemy lost form; +The traversed wilderness exposed its track. +He felt the far advance in looking back; +Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm. + +Under the low-browed tempest's eye of ire, +That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, +Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart +All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire; +A stranger still, religiously divined; +Not yet with understanding read aright. +But when the mind, the cherishable mind, +The multitude's grave shepherd, took full flight, +Himself as mirror raised among his kind, +He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight: +Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, +His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, +Had come of many a grip in mastery, +Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, +And of his bosom made him lord, to keep +The starry roof of his unruffled frame +Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep +Below, above, aye with a wistful aim. + +The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, +By traitor inmates baited, upward burned; +Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, +The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown. +To whom unwittingly did he aspire +In wilderness, where bitter was his need: +To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed +For light and air, he struck through crimson mire. +But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp, +And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed, +All choral in its fruitful garden camp, +The spiritual the palpable illumed. + +This gift of penetration and embrace, +His prize from tidal battles lost or won, +Reveals the scheme to animate his race: +How that it is a warfare but begun; +Unending; with no Power to interpose; +No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, +Heard of the Highest; never battle's close, +The victory complete and victor crowned: +Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense +Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed. +In manhood must he find his competence; +In his clear mind the spiritual food: +God being there while he his fight maintains; +Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, +While he rejects the suicide despair; +Accepts the spur of explicable pains; +Obedient to Nature, not her slave: +Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows; +Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave, +And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:- +Whence Evil in a world unread before; +That mystery to simple springs resolved. +His God the Known, diviner to adore, +Shows Nature's savage riddles kindly solved. +Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns +In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face. +Back to the primal brute shall he retrace +His path, doth he permit to force her chains +A soft Persuader coursing through his veins, +An icy Huntress stringing to the chase: +What one the flash disdains; +What one so gives it grace. + +But is he rightly manful in her eyes, +A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies, +A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs, +Desireing and desireable he shines; +As peaches, that have caught the sun's uprise +And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines. +Earth fills him with her juices, without fear +That she will cast him drunken down the steeps. +All woman is she to this man most dear; +He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps: +She conscient, she sensitive, in him; +With him enwound, his brave ambition hers: +By him humaner made; by his keen spurs +Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb, +Her crazy adoration of big thews, +Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled, +Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world +In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse. + +This man, this hero, works not to destroy; +This godlike--as the rock in ocean stands; - +He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands +Creative; in his edifice has joy. +How strength may serve for purity is shown +When he himself can scourge to make it clean. +Withal his pitch of pride would not disown +A sober world that walks the balanced mean +Between its tempters, rarely overthrown: +And such at times his army's march has been. + +Near is he to great Nature in the thought +Each changing Season intimately saith, +That nought save apparition knows the death; +To the God-lighted mind of man 'tis nought. +She counts not loss a word of any weight; +It may befal his passions and his greeds +To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, +But life gone breathless will she reinstate. + +Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, +When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, +Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, +Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets. +Unresting she, unresting he, from change +To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; +She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, +Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range. + +No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, +She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; +But he, the flower at head and soil at root, +Is miracle, guides he the brute to God. +And that way seems he bound; that way the road, +With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, +Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, +He travels, urged by some internal goad. + +Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing +He would become is in his mind its child; +Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; +For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled. +So moves he forth in faith, if he has made +His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth. +Earth's nourishing delights, no more gainsaid, +He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. +Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; +The star of sky upon his footway cast; +Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, +The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's. +Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, +To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. + +Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate? +Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; +The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; +With her the barren Huntress alternate; +His rough refractory off on kicking heels +To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; +And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, +His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels? +May not his aspect, like her own so fair +Reflexively, the central force belie, +And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, +Be rebel at the core? What hope is there? + +'Tis that in each recovery he preserves, +Between his upper and his nether wit, +Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; +He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves; +With such a grasp upon his brute as tells +Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. +A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun +Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels. + + + +Poem: The Cageing Of Ares + + + +[Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.] + +How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed +At sight of her boy Giants on the leap +Each over other as they neighboured home, +Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, +And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced. +Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, +Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, +It signalled some adventurous master-trick +To set Olympians buzzing in debate, +Lest it might be their godhead undermined, +The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high +On shoulders of his brother Otos waved +For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, +Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar +While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, +With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; +Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, +And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, +Burst the hot story out of throats of both, +Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut +The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm +Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon +A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam +Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, +Signification marvellous she caught, +Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, +Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last +Subsided, and the serious naked deed, +With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, +Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe +That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, +These two made up of lion, bear and fox, +Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, +Still by the reckoning infants among men, +Had done the deed to strike the Titan host +In envy dumb, in envious heart elate: +These two combining strength and craft had snared, +Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged +The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War; +Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes; +The barren furrower of anointed fields; +The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, +Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: +Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth +When they had seized on his implacable spear, +Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite +His godlike fury startled from amaze. +For he had eyed them nearing him in play, +The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, +Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount +Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there +On Earth's original fisticuffs they called +For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God, +Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, +Good servitors of Ares they would be, +And ply the pointed spear to dominate +Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood +Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced +Amusedly he watched them, and as one +The lusty twain were on him and they had him. +Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud! +Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes! +Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes! +Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, +Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; +A desolating fire to blind the sight +With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; +The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; +Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, +Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. +Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, +And tumbled down the cave. But rather look - +Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, +Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, +Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! +Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, +And shatter earth's delirious holiday, +Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, +Resolving to composure on its throbs. +But see her in the Seasons through that year; +That one glad year and the fair opening month. +Had never our Great Mother such sweet face! +War with her, gentle war with her, each day +Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, +On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength +Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won, +From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, +Her ready secret: the abounding life +Returned for valiant labour: she and they +Defeated and victorious turn by turn; +By loss enriched, by overthrow restored. +Exchange of powers of this conflict came; +Defacement none, nor ever squandered force. +Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned, +As music unto the hand that smote the strings; +And she the rosier from their showery brows, +They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast. +Back to the primal rational of those +Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp +Stability in hatred of the insane, +Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce +The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced +Above; those beautiful, those masterful, +Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, +Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just? +Earth in her happy children asked that word, +Whereto within their breast was her reply. +Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, +Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years; +Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired +The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, +Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, +To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced, +And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, +Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, +Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled +The Tyranny. This her voice within them told, +When softly the Great Mother chid her sons +Not of the giant brood, who did create +Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain +Set moving by an abject blood, that waked +To wanton under elements more benign, +And planted aliens on Olympian heights; - +Imagination's cradle poesy +Become a monstrous pressure upon men; - +Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed +By light from her, born of the love of her, +Their lordship the illumined brain rejects +For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, +Her other name. So spake she in their heart, +Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath +Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, +Confidently to cling. And when brown corn +Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, +With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss; +When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil +Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; +When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, +Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth; +The very eye of passion drowsed by excess, +And yet a burning lion for the spring; +Then in that time of general cherishment, +Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, +He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, +Then did good Gaea's children gratefully +Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace, +Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call +Harmoniously and images her Law; +Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, +In memories made present on the brain +By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes; +The picture of an earth allied to heaven; +Between them the known smile behind black masks; +Rightly their various moods interpreted; +And frolic because toilful children borne +With larger comprehension of Earth's aim +At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid. + + + +Poem: The Night-Walk + + + +Awakes for me and leaps from shroud +All radiantly the moon's own night +Of folded showers in streamer cloud; +Our shadows down the highway white +Or deep in woodland woven-boughed, +With yon and yon a stem alight. + +I see marauder runagates +Across us shoot their dusky wink; +I hear the parliament of chats +In haws beside the river's brink; +And drops the vole off alder-banks, +To push his arrow through the stream. +These busy people had our thanks +For tickling sight and sound, but theme +They were not more than breath we drew +Delighted with our world's embrace: +The moss-root smell where beeches grew, +And watered grass in breezy space; +The silken heights, of ghostly bloom +Among their folds, by distance draped. +'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, +That cried to have its chaos shaped: +Absorbing, little noting, still +Enriched, and thinking it bestowed; +With wistful looks on each far hill +For something hidden, something owed. +Unto his mantled sister, Day +Had given the secret things we sought +And she was grave and saintly gay; +At times she fluttered, spoke her thought; +She flew on it, then folded wings, +In meditation passing lone, +To breathe around the secret things, +Which have no word, and yet are known; +Of thirst for them are known, as air +Is health in blood: we gained enough +By this to feel it honest fare; +Impalpable, not barren, stuff. + +A pride of legs in motion kept +Our spirits to their task meanwhile, +And what was deepest dreaming slept: +The posts that named the swallowed mile; +Beside the straight canal the hut +Abandoned; near the river's source +Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; +The roadway missed; were our discourse; +At times dear poets, whom some view +Transcendent or subdued evoked +To speak the memorable, the true, +The luminous as a moon uncloaked; +For proof that there, among earth's dumb, +A soul had passed and said our best. +Or it might be we chimed on some +Historic favourite's astral crest, +With part to reverence in its gleam, +And part to rivalry the shout: +So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream +Of power within to strike without. +But most the silences were sweet, +Like mothers' breasts, to bid it feel +It lived in such divine conceit +As envies aught we stamp for real. + +To either then an untold tale +Was Life, and author, hero, we. +The chapters holding peaks to scale, +Or depths to fathom, made our glee; +For we were armed of inner fires, +Unbled in us the ripe desires; +And passion rolled a quiet sea, +Whereon was Love the phantom sail. + + + +Poem: The Hueless Love + + + +Unto that love must we through fire attain, +Which those two held as breath of common air; +The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; +Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain. + +Midway the road of our life's term they met, +And one another knew without surprise; +Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; +Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret. + +To them it was revealed how they had found +The kindred nature and the needed mind; +The mate by long conspiracy designed; +The flower to plant in sanctuary ground. + +Avowed in vigilant solicitude +For either, what most lived within each breast +They let be seen: yet every human test +Demanding righteousness approved them good. + +She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared +Abandonment to help if heaved or sank +Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, +Life rosier were she but less revered. + +An arm that never shook did not obscure +Her woman's intuition of the bliss - +Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, +Across the narrow plank--he could abjure. + +Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, +And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, +Was all of earthly in their love untold, +Beyond all earthly known to them who wed. + +So has there come the gust at South-west flung +By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, +When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, +And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung. + + + +Poem: Song In The Songless + + + +They have no song, the sedges dry, +And still they sing. +It is within my breast they sing, +As I pass by. +Within my breast they touch a string, +They wake a sigh. +There is but sound of sedges dry; +In me they sing. + + + +Poem: Union In Disseverance + + + +Sunset worn to its last vermilion he; +She that star overhead in slow descent: +That white star with the front of angel she; +He undone in his rays of glory spent + +Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, +He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest +Incomplete, were the light for which he dies, +Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest. + +Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks; +Life's full throb over breathless and abased: +Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, +One, more one than the bridally embraced. + + + +Poem: The Burden Of Strength + + + +If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know +Thy part is to uplift the trodden low; +Else in a giant's grasp until the end +A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend. + + + +Poem: The Main Regret + + + +[Written for the Charing Cross Album] + +I. + +Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission +Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. +They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician; +Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair. + +II. + +Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered +Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. +Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered +Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone. + + + +Poem: Alternation + + + +Between the fountain and the rill +I passed, and saw the mighty will +To leap at sky; the careless run, +As earth would lead her little son. + +Beneath them throbs an urgent well, +That here is play, and there is war. +I know not which had most to tell +Of whence we spring and what we are. + + + +Poem: Hawarden + + + +When comes the lighted day for men to read +Life's meaning, with the work before their hands +Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed, +Earth will not hear her children's wailful bands +Deplore the chieftain fall'n in sob and dirge; +Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. +The sun that dropped down our horizon's verge, +Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, +Now seen in sum, most glorious; and 'tis known +By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. +A splendid image built of man has flown; +His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. +Ours the great privilege to have had one +Among us who celestial tasks has done. + + + +Poem: At The Close + + + +To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, +Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st; +And that black spot in each embattled host, +Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. +Now is it red artillery and white steel; +Till on a day will ring the victor's boast, +That 'tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, +Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. +So in all times of man's descent insane +To brute, did strength and craft combining strike, +Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. +But at the close he entered Thy domain, +Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like +He tore the fall'n, the Eternal was his Foe. + + + +Poem: Forest History + + + +I. + +Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in. +Heroic who came out; for round them hung +A wavering phantom's red volcano tongue, +With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin: + +II. + +Old Earth's original Dragon; there retired +To his last fastness; overthrown by few. +Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. +Then man to play devorant straight was fired. + +III. + +More intimate became the forest fear +While pillared darkness hatched malicious life +At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife +And wary slid the glance from ear to ear. + +IV. + +In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, +The forest's heart of fog on mossed morass, +On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, +Revealed where lured the swallower byway. + +V. + +Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound +Off walls of distance, left each mounted height. +It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite +Of humble human being, held the ground. + +VI. + +Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow +The feet sustained by track of feet pursued +Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood +By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe. + +VII. + +Anon a mason's work amazed the sight, +And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode. +They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed; +Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight. + +VIII. + +What words they taught were nails to scratch the head. +Benignant works explained the chanting brood. +Their monastery lit black solitude, +As one might think a star that heavenward led. + +IX. + +Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet, +Like some gold flower nightly inward curled, +Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world, +Or played with it, and had their white retreat. + +X. + +Into big books of metal clasps they pored. +They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays. +The treasures women are whose aim is praise, +Was shown in them: the Garden half restored. + +XI. + +A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, +With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. +For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, +The lesser savage offered bogs and trees. + +XII. + +Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew: +And inmost spots of ancient horror shone +As temples under beams of trials bygone; +For in them sang brave times with God in view. + +XIII. + +Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green, +Like night's first little stars through clearing showers. +Was rumoured how a castle's falcon towers +The wilderness commanded with fierce mien. + +XIV. + +Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance; +For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. +Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, +Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance. + +XV. + +It might be that two errant lords across +The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry +They charged forthwith, the better man to try. +One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss. + +XVI. + +Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain, +The robbers into gruesome durance drew. +Swift should her hero come, like lightning's blue! +She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain. + +XVII. + +As we, that ere the worst her hero haps, +Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den: +A toady cave beside an ague fen, +Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps. + +XVIII. + +By daylight now the forest fear could read +Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went. +Straight for the roebuck's neck the bowman spent +A dart that laughed at distance and at speed. + +XIX. + +Right loud the bugle's hallali elate +Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors; +And deftest hand was he from foreign wars, +But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate. + +XX. + +Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke; +At dawn the deer's wet nostrils blew their last. +To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast, +With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke. + +XXI. + +The city urchin mooned on forest air, +On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick +As swallows o'er smooth streams, and sighed him sick +For thinking that his dearer home was there. + +XXII. + +Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang +An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. +The hunter's horn might wind a jocund ring, +But held in ear it had a chilly clang. + +XXIII. + +Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time; +Some warning haunted any sound prolonged, +As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged +To hear an axe and see a township climb. + +XXIV. + +The forest's erewhile emperor at eve +Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. +At midnight a small people danced the dales, +So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve + +XXV. + +Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats, +Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. +The pensioned forester beside his crutch, +Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes. + +XXVI. + +Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart; +Devourer, and insensibly devoured; +In whom the city over forest flowered, +The forest wreathed the city's drama-mart. + +XXVII. + +There found he in new form that Dragon old, +From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught +How blindly each its antidote besought; +For either's breath the needs of either told. + +XXVIII. + +Now deep in woods, with song no sermon's drone, +He showed what charm the human concourse works: +Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks +Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone. + +XXIX. + +Our conquest these: if haply we retain +The reverence that ne'er will overrun +Due boundaries of realms from Nature won, +Nor let the poet's awe in rapture wane. + + + +Poem: A Garden Idyl + + + +With sagest craft Arachne worked +Her web, and at a corner lurked, +Awaiting what should plump her soon, +To case it in the death-cocoon. +Sagaciously her home she chose +For visits that would never close; +Inside my chalet-porch her feast +Plucked all the winds but chill North-east. + +The finished structure, bar on bar, +Had snatched from light to form a star, +And struck on sight, when quick with dews, +Like music of the very Muse. +Great artists pass our single sense; +We hear in seeing, strung to tense; +Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, +To think such beauty means a trap. +But Nature's genius, even man's +At best, is practical in plans; +Subservient to the needy thought, +However rare the weapon wrought. +As long as Nature holds it good +To urge her creatures' quest for food +Will beauty stamp the just intent +Of weapons upon service bent. +For beauty is a flower of roots +Embedded lower than our boots; +Out of the primal strata springs, +And shows for crown of useful things + +Arachne's dream of prey to size +Aspired; so she could nigh despise +The puny specks the breezes round +Supplied, and let them shake unwound; +Assured of her fat fly to come; +Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; +Who takes the fatal odds in fight, +And gives repast an appetite, +By plunging, whizzing, till his wings +Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, +A shrouded lump, for her to see +Her banquet in her victory. + +This matron of the unnumbered threads, +One day of dandelions' heads +Distributing their gray perruques +Up every gust, I watched with looks +Discreet beside the chalet-door; +And gracefully a light wind bore, +Direct upon my webster's wall, +A monster in the form of ball; +The mildest captive ever snared, +That neither struggled nor despaired, +On half the net invading hung, +And plain as in her mother tongue, +While low the weaver cursed her lures, +Remarked, "You have me; I am yours." + +Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, +Her dream of size she saw, agape. +Midway the vast round-raying beard +A desiccated midge appeared; +Whose body pricked the name of meal, +Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal; +Provocative of dread and wrath, +Contempt and horror, in one froth, +Inextricable, insensible, +His poison presence there would dwell, +Declaring him her dream fulfilled, +A catch to compliment the skilled; +And she reduced to beaky skin, +Disgraceful among kith and kin + +Against her corner, humped and aged, +Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, +Beyond disgust or hope in guile. +Ridiculously volatile +He seemed to her last spark of mind; +And that in pallid ash declined +Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, +Wherein throughout her frame she felt +That he, the light wind's libertine, +Without a scoff, without a grin, +And mannered like the courtly few, +Who merely danced when light winds blew, +Impervious to beak and claws, +Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was; +Of whom, as actors in old scenes, +Had grannam weavers warned their weans, +With word, that less than feather-weight, +He smote the web like bolt of Fate. + +This muted drama, hour by hour, +I watched amid a world in flower, +Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid +Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade, +And still along the garden-run +The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. +Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance +Her visitor performed a dance; +She puckered thinner; he the same +As when on that light wind he came. + +Next day was told what deeds of night +Were done; the web had vanished quite; +With it the strange opposing pair; +And listless waved on vacant air, +For her adieu to heart's content, +A solitary filament. + + + +Poem: Foresight And Patience + + + +Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain, +Are they who point our pathway and sustain. +They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired. +When they do meet, it is our earth inspired. + +To see Life's formless offspring and subdue +Desire of times unripe, we have these two, +Whose union is right reason: join they hands, +The world shall know itself and where it stands; +What cowering angel and what upright beast +Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, +Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers. +When these two meet, a point of time is ours. + +As in a land of waterfalls, that flow +Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, +Some eddies near the brink borne swift along, +Will capture hearing with the liquid song, +So, while the headlong world's imperious force +Resounded under, heard I these discourse. + +First words, where down my woodland walk she led, +To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said: + +- Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, +When still I find you in this mire alone. + +- The few steps taken at a funeral pace +By men had slain me but for those you trace. + +- Look I once back, a broken pinion I: +Black as the rebel angels rained from sky! + +- Needs must you drink of me while here you live, +And make me rich in feeling I can give. + +- A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: +Yet must I read my sister for the How. +My daisy better knows her God of beams +Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems. +She hath the secret never fieriest reach +Of wing shall master till men hear her teach. + +- Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, +My semblance when I have you not as now. +The quiet creatures who escape mishap +Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap: +A picture of the settled peace desired +By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired. +I listen at their breasts: is there no jar +Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, +And such a picture as the piercing mind +Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned +Are my true pupils while the world is brute. +What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, +Stronger impels the motion of my heart. +I am not Resignation's counterpart. +If that I teach, 'tis little the dry word, +Content, but how to savour hope deferred. +We come of earth, and rich of earth may be; +Soon carrion if very earth are we! +The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use +Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce; +Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, +And pass despised; "a-cold for lack of heat," +Like other corpses, but without death's plea. + +- My sister calls for battle; is it she? + +- Rather a world of pressing men in arms, +Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms +Each drowsy malady and coiling vice +With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price! +No home is here for peace while evil breeds, +While error governs, none; and must the seeds +You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, +Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, +Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood +Moisten, and make new channels of its flood! + +- My sober little maid, when we meet first, +Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst. +So can I not of her till circumstance +Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance +A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, +Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word +Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march, +As to band-music under Victory's arch. +Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then +The beauty of frank animals had men. + +- Observe them, and down rearward for a term, +Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm. +Thence look this way, across the fields that show +Men's early form of speech for Yes and No. +My sister a bruised infant's utterance had; +And issuing stronger, to mankind 'twas mad. +I knew my home where I had choice to feel +The toad beneath a harrow or a heel. + +- Speak of this Age. + +- When you it shall discern +Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn. + +- For neither of us has it any care; +Its learning is through Science to despair. + +- Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not +With evil, casts the burden of its lot. +This Age climbs earth. + +- To challenge heaven. + +- Not less +The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness! +That know I, though the echoes of it wail, +For one step upward on the crags you scale. +Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, +Which means our soul asleep or body's lust, +Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat +A temperate common music, sunlike heat +The happiness not predatory sheds! + +- But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads, +Now rages to outdo a horny Past. +Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast +Are thrown by every novel light upraised. +The world's whole round smokes ominously, amazed +And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells. +Combustibles on hot combustibles +Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire +The mountain-torrent of infernal ire +And leave the track of devils where men built. +Perceptive of a doom, the sinner's guilt +Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud, +If drops the chillness of a passing cloud, +To conscience, reason, human love; in vain: +None save they but the souls which them contain. +No extramural God, the God within +Alone gives aid to city charged with sin. +A world that for the spur of fool and knave, +Sweats in its laboratory, what shall save? +But men who ply their wits in such a school, +Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool. + +- Much have I studied hard Necessity! +To know her Wisdom's mother, and that we +May deem the harshness of her later cries +In labour a sure goad to prick the wise, +If men among the warnings which convulse, +Can gravely dread without the craven's pulse. +Long ere the rising of this Age of ours, +The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers. +Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring, +And are as lasting as the parent thing. +Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill, +They might o'ermatch and have mankind at will. + +Behold such army gathering: ours the spur, +No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer. +Not fool or knave is now the enemy +O'ershadowing men, 'tis Folly, Knavery! +A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach. +Now must the brother soul alive in each, +His traitorous individual devildom +Hold subject lest the grand destruction come. +Dimly men see it menacing apace +To overthrow, perchance uproot the race. +Within, without, they are a field of tares: +Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares, +And wherefore warrior service they must yield, +Shines visible as life on either field. +That is my comfort, following shock on shock, +Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock. +Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night, +Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight, +Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect, +The human and Satanic intellect, +Determined for their uses to control +What forces on the earth and under roll, +Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand +Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land. +They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are: +Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war. + +- My sister, as I read them in my glass, +Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. +How waken them that have not any bent +Save browsing--the concrete indifferent! +Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff: +They fear not for the race when full the trough. +They have much fear of giving up the ghost; +And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. + +- If I could see with you, and did not faint +In beating wing, the future I would paint. +Those massed indifferents will learn to quake: +Now meanwhile is another mass awake, +Once denser than the grunters of the sty. +If I could see with you! Could I but fly! + +- The length of days that you with them have housed, +An outcast else, approves their cause espoused. + +- O true, they have a cause, and woe for us, +While still they have a cause too piteous! +Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined, +They walk no longer with a stumbler blind, +And quicken in the virtue of their cause, +To think me a poor mouther of old saws! +I wait the issue of a battling Age; +The toilers with your "troughsters" now engage; +Instructing them through their acutest sense, +How close the dangers of indifference! +Already have my people shown their worth, +More love they light, which folds the love of Earth. +That love to love of labour leads: thence love +Of humankind--earth's incense flung above. + +- Admit some other features: Faithless, mean; +Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene; +Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells +On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles; +And if I bid it face what _I_ observe, +Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve! + +- Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil, +Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil: +Disowned them as the unholiest of Time, +Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime. +Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry: +As little as Time's earliest knew the sky. +Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame +At intervals, in proof of whom they came. +To strengthen our foundations is the task +Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask, +Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves +The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves. +My sister sees no round beyond her mood; +To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood. +Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves, +It moves: O much for me to say it moves! +About his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile, +Though not the stream of the paternal smile: +And where his tide of nourishment he drives, +An Abyssinian wantonness revives. +Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims; +He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs, +The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills; +Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills. + +To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers, +He is the vast Insensate who devours +His golden promise over leagues of seed, +Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed. +The races which on barbarous force begin, +Inherit onward of their origin, +And cancelled blessings will the current length +Reveal till they know need of shaping strength. +'Tis not in men to recognize the need +Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed. +Then may sharp suffering their nature grind; +Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind. +Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed, +For tens up the safe mountains at his head. +Few would be fed, not far his course prolong, +Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong. + +- That rings of truth! More do your people thrive; +Your Many are more merrily alive +Than erewhile when I gloried in the page +Of radiant singer and anointed sage. +Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil; +Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil! +All structures built upon a narrow space +Must fall, from having not your hosts for base. +O thrice must one be you, to see them shift +Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift; +With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, +Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood! +And thrice must one be you, to wait release +From duress in the swamp of their increase. +At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, +A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed, +Philosophers behold; desponding view. +Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few; +Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, +Dive down the fumy AEtna of their brains. +Belated vessels on a rising sea, +They seem: they pass! + +- But not Philosophy! + +- Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise +Nought but the coward in us! That way lies +The wisdom making passage through our slough. +Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow; +Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait. +Philosophy is Life's one match for Fate. +That photosphere of our high fountain One, +Our spirit's Lord and Reason's fostering sun, +Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, +Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid. +Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, +Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good! +Advantage to the Many: that we name +God's voice; have there the surety in our aim. +This thought unto my sister do I owe, +And irony and satire off me throw. +They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, +Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. +Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, +Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. +Who never yet of scattered lamps was born +To speed a world, a marching world to warn, +But sunward from the vivid Many springs, +Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings. + + + + +Fragments of the Iliad in English Hexameter Verse + + + + +Poem: The Invective of Achilles + + + +[Iliad, B. I. V. 149] + +"Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one, +Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians, +Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen? +I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armed Trojans, +Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done; +Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen; +Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests +Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome +Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. +O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice +Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed! +Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest. +Worse, it is thou whose threat 'tis to ravish my prize from me, portion +Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia. +Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians +Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage. +Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat, +Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us, +Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessed thing bore +Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed! +So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me +Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect, +I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store." + + + +Poem: The Invective of Achilles--V. 225 + + + +"Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou! +Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, +Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia +Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death-stroke. +Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians, +Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against thee. +Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects; +Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one. +Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise: +Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds +Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the mountains, +No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped off +Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, +Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement, +Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent; +Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia +Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish, +How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector +Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-strings, +Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of Achaians." + + + +Poem: Marshalling Of The Achaians + + + +[Iliad, B. II V. 455] + +Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, +Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far, +So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the splendour +Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault. +They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks, +Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-swans, +Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaistros; +Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions, +Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them resoundeth; +So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured forth +On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them +Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the horse-hooves. +Stopped they then on the fair-flower'd field of Scamander, their thousands +Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season. +Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse, +Clouds of them, under some herdsman's wonning, where then are the milk-pails +Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time; +Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held, +Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush them. +Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, know +Easily one from the other when all get mixed o'er the pasture, +So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for onslaught, +Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon, +He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder, +He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon. + + + +Poem: Agamemnon In The Fight + + + +[Iliad, B. XI. V. 148] + +These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest, +Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. +Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, +Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud, +Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse-hooves) +Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon +Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives. + +Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclipped woodland, +This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the scrubwood +Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire's fury rageing, +So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered +Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened, +Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field, +Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were outstretched +Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates. + + + +Poem: Paris And Diomedes + + + +[Iliad; B. XI V. 378] + +So he, with a clear shout of laughter, +Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise: +"Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had pierced thee +Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath! +Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst, +They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion." +Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes: +"Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins! +If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons, +Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. +Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole; +Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. +Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth! +Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest, +My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. +Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen slaughtered, +Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops, +Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women." + + + +Poem: Hypnos On Ida + + + +[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283] + +They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts, +Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos, +Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland. +There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant, +Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida +Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether. +There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for concealment, +That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the mountains, +Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis. + + + +Poem: Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans + + + +[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 394] + +Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle, +Whipped from the sea's deeps up by the terrible blast of the Northwind; +Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire's rush so arousing, +Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland; +Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees' +Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost; +As rose then stupendous the Trojan's cry and Achaians', +Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict. + + + +Poem: The Horses Of Achilles + + + +[Iliad, B. XVII. V. 426] + +So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground, +Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there, +Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector. +Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores, +Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and oft, too, +Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten. +Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious, +Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians. +Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone, +Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under; +Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car, +Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant +Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids, +Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted, +Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the yoke-bow. +Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook +Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom; +"Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal +Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless! +Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have heart-grief? +'Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere +Aught over earth's range found that is gifted with breath and has movement." + + + +Poem: The Mares Of The Camargue + + + +[From the Mireio of Mistral] + +A hundred mares, all white! their manes +Like mace-reed of the marshy plains +Thick-tufted, wavy, free o' the shears: +And when the fiery squadron rears +Bursting at speed, each mane appears +Even as the white scarf of a fay +Floating upon their necks along the heavens away. + +O race of humankind, take shame! +For never yet a hand could tame, +Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue +The mares of the Camargue. I have known, +By treason snared, some captives shown; +Expatriate from their native Rhone, +Led off, their saline pastures far from view: + +And on a day, with prompt rebound, +They have flung their riders to the ground, +And at a single gallop, scouring free, +Wide-nostril'd to the wind, twice ten +Of long marsh-leagues devour'd, and then, +Back to the Vacares again, +After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea + +For of this savage race unbent, +The ocean is the element. +Of old escaped from Neptune's car, full sure, +Still with the white foam fleck'd are they, +And when the sea puffs black from grey, +And ships part cables, loudly neigh +The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar; + +And keen as a whip they lash and crack +Their tails that drag the dust, and back +Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he, +The God, drives deep his trident teeth, +Who in one horror, above, beneath, +Bids storm and watery deluge seethe, +And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea. + +Cant. iv. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A READING OF LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS *** + +This file should be named rdlif10.txt or rdlif10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, rdlif11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rdlif10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/rdlif10.zip b/old/rdlif10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..058d527 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rdlif10.zip diff --git a/old/rdlif10h.htm b/old/rdlif10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f33eed5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rdlif10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1692 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>A Reading of Life, and Other Poems</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">A Reading of Life, and Other Poems, by George Meredith</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Reading of Life, and Other Poems +by George Meredith + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: A Reading of Life, and Other Poems + +Author: George Meredith + +Release Date: September, 1997 [EBook #1042] +[This file was first posted on September 25, 1997] +[Most recently updated: June 24, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<h1>A Reading Of Life</h1> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<p>Contents:</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>A Reading of Life—The Vital Choice<br />A Reading of Life—With +The Huntress<br />A Reading of Life—With The Persuader<br />A +Reading of Life—The Test of Manhood<br />The Cageing of Ares<br />The +Night-Walk<br />The Hueless Love<br />Song In The Songless<br />Union +In Disseverance<br />The Burden of Strength<br />The Main Regret<br />Alternation<br />Hawarden<br />At +the Close<br />Forest History<br />A Garden Idyl<br />Foresight And +Patience<br />The Invective of Achilles<br />The Invective of Achilles—V. +225<br />Marshalling of the Achaians<br />Agamemnon in the Fight<br />Paris +and Diomedes<br />Hypnos on Ida<br />Clash in Arms of the Achaians And +Trojans<br />The Horses of Achilles<br />The Mares of the Camargue</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: A Reading of Life—The Vital Choice</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>I.</p> +<p>Or shall we run with Artemis<br />Or yield the breast to Aphrodite?<br />Both +are mighty;<br />Both give bliss;<br />Each can torture if divided;<br />Each +claims worship undivided,<br />In her wake would have us wallow.</p> +<p>II.</p> +<p>Youth must offer on bent knees<br />Homage unto one or other;<br />Earth, +the mother,<br />This decrees;<br />And unto the pallid Scyther<br />Either +points us shun we either<br />Shun or too devoutly follow.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: A Reading of Life—With The Huntress</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Through the water-eye of night,<br />Midway between eve and dawn,<br />See +the chase, the rout, the flight<br />In deep forest; oread, faun,<br />Goat-foot, +antlers laid on neck;<br />Ravenous all the line for speed.<br />See +yon wavy sparkle beck<br />Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead.<br />Down +her course a serpent star<br />Coils and shatters at her heels;<br />Peals +the horn exulting, peals<br />Plaintive, is it near or far.<br />Huntress, +arrowy to pursue,<br />In and out of woody glen,<br />Under cliffs that +tear the blue,<br />Over torrent, over fen,<br />She and forest, where +she skims<br />Feathery, darken and relume:<br />Those are her white-lightning +limbs<br />Cleaving loads of leafy gloom.<br />Mountains hear her and +call back,<br />Shrewd with night: a frosty wail<br />Distant: her the +emerald vale<br />Folds, and wonders in her track.<br />Now her retinue +is lean,<br />Many rearward; streams the chase<br />Eager forth of covert; +seen<br />One hot tide the rapturous race.<br />Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned,<br />Up +on a flash the lighted mound<br />Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft<br />Strung +to barb with archer’s craft,<br />Legs like plaited lyre-chords, +feet<br />Songs to see, past pitch of sweet.<br />Fearful swiftness +they outrun,<br />Shaggy wildness, grey or dun,<br />Challenge, charge +of tusks elude:<br />Theirs the dance to tame the rude;<br />Beast, +and beast in manhood tame,<br />Follow we their silver flame.<br />Pride +of flesh from bondage free,<br />Reaping vigour of its waste,<br />Marks +her servitors, and she<br />Sanctifies the unembraced.<br />Nought of +perilous she reeks;<br />Valour clothes her open breast;<br />Sweet +beyond the thrill of sex;<br />Hallowed by the sex confessed.<br />Huntress +arrowy to pursue,<br />Colder she than sunless dew,<br />She, that breath +of upper air;<br />Ay, but never lyrist sang,<br />Draught of Bacchus +never sprang<br />Blood the bliss of Gods to share,<br />High o’er +sweep of eagle wings,<br />Like the run with her, when rings<br />Clear +her rally, and her dart,<br />In the forest’s cavern heart,<br />Tells +of her victorious aim.<br />Then is pause and chatter, cheer,<br />Laughter +at some satyr lame,<br />Looks upon the fallen deer,<br />Measuring +his noble crest;<br />Here a favourite in her train,<br />Foremost mid +her nymphs, caressed;<br />All applauded. Shall she reign<br />Worshipped? +O to be with her there!<br />She, that breath of nimble air,<br />Lifts +the breast to giant power.<br />Maid and man, and man and maid,<br />Who +each other would devour<br />Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed,<br />There +are comrades, led by her,<br />Maid-preserver, man-maker.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: A Reading of Life—With The Persuader</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Who murmurs, hither, hither: who<br />Where nought is audible so +fills the ear?<br />Where nought is visible can make appear<br />A veil +with eyes that waver through,<br />Like twilight’s pledge of blessed +night to come,<br />Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb,<br />She +breathes, she moves, inviting flees,<br />Is lost, and leaves the thrilled +desire<br />To clasp and strike a slackened lyre,<br />Till over smiles +of hyacinth seas,<br />Flame in a crystal vessel sails<br />Beneath +a dome of jewelled spray,<br />For land that drops the rosy day<br />On +nights of throbbing nightingales.</p> +<p>Landward did the wonder flit,<br />Or heart’s desire of her, +all earth in it.<br />We saw the heavens fling down their rose;<br />On +rapturous waves we saw her glide;<br />The pearly sea-shell half enclose;<br />The +shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide;<br />And we, afire to kiss her feet, +no more<br />Behold than tracks along a startled shore,<br />With brightened +edges of dark leaves that feign<br />An ambush hoped, as heartless night +remain.</p> +<p>More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she,<br />The very she called +forth by ripened blood<br />For its next breath of being, murmurs; she,<br />Allurement; +she, fulfilment; she,<br />The stream within us urged to flood;<br />Man’s +cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O she,<br />Maid, +woman and divinity;<br />Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate<br />Unmated; +she, our hunger and our fruit<br />Untasted; she our written fate<br />Unread; +Life’s flowering, Life’s root:<br />Unread, divined; unseen, +beheld;<br />The evanescent, ever-present she,<br />Great Nature’s +stern necessity<br />In radiance clothed, to softness quelled;<br />With +a sword’s edge of sweetness keen to take<br />Our breath for bliss, +our hearts for fulness break.</p> +<p>The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent.<br />Man’s cry, earth’s +answer, heaven’s consent,<br />Her form is given to pardoned sight,<br />And +lets our mortal eyes receive<br />The sovereign loveliness of celestial +white;<br />Adored by them who solitarily pace,<br />In dusk of the +underworld’s perpetual eve,<br />The paths among the meadow asphodel,<br />Remembering. +Never there her face<br />Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell<br />Around +such whiteness the enamoured air<br />Of noon that clothes her, never +there.<br />Daughter of light, the joyful light,<br />She stands unveiled +to nuptial sight,<br />Sweet in her disregard of aid<br />Divine to +conquer or persuade.<br />A fountain jets from moss; a flower<br />Bends +gently where her sunset tresses shower.<br />By guerdon of her brilliance +may be seen<br />With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen.</p> +<p>Shorn of attendant Graces she can use<br />Her natural snares to +make her will supreme.<br />A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse<br />Before +the leader foot shall dip in stream:<br />One arm at curve along a rounded +thigh;<br />Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way<br />A knee +half bent to shade its fellow shy,<br />Where innocence, not nature, +signals nay.<br />The bud of fresh virginity awaits<br />The wooer, +and all roseate will she burst:<br />She touches on the hour of happy +mates;<br />Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.</p> +<p>And while commanding blissful sight believe<br />It holds her as +a body strained to breast,<br />Down on the underworld’s perpetual +eve<br />She plunges the possessor dispossessed;<br />And bids believe +that image, heaving warm,<br />Is lost to float like torch-smoke after +flame;<br />The phantom any breeze blows out of form;<br />A thirst’s +delusion, a defeated aim.</p> +<p>The rapture shed the torture weaves;<br />The direst blow on human +heart she deals:<br />The pain to know the seen deceives;<br />Nought +true but what insufferably feels.<br />And stabs of her delicious note,<br />That +is as heavenly light to hearing, heard<br />Through shelter leaves, +the laughter from her throat,<br />We answer as the midnight’s +morning’s bird.</p> +<p>She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;<br />In her delicious laughter +part revealed;<br />Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,<br />For +longings unappeased and wounds unhealed.<br />Yet would she bless, it +is her task to bless:<br />Yon folded couples, passing under shade,<br />Are +her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,<br />Consume the fruit in bloom; +not disobeyed.<br />We dolorous complainers had a dream,<br />Wrought +on the vacant air from inner fire,<br />We saw stand bare of her celestial +beam<br />The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.</p> +<p>Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips<br />Of upward curl +to meanings half obscure;<br />And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly +skips<br />She nods: at once that creature wears her lure.<br />Blush +of our being between birth and death:<br />Sob of our ripened blood +for its next breath:<br />Her wily semblance nought of her denies;<br />Seems +it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,<br />The generous Goddess yields. +And she can arm<br />Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;<br />Benevolent +as Earth to feed her own.<br />Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech.<br />But +scorn she has for them that walk alone;<br />Blanched men, starved women, +whom no arts can pleach.<br />The men as chief of criminals she disdains,<br />And +holds the reason in perceptive thought.<br />More pitiable, like rivers +lacking rains,<br />Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought.<br />Those +faceless discords, out of nature strayed,<br />Rank of the putrefaction +ere decayed,<br />In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths:<br />Their +lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes<br />For couples crowned +with flowers that burn in dew.<br />Comes there a tremor of night’s +forest horn<br />Across her garden from the insaner crew,<br />She darkens +to malignity of scorn.<br />A shiver courses through her garden-grounds:<br />Grunt +of the tusky boar, the baying hounds,<br />The hunter’s shouts, +are heard afar, and bring<br />Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower +of Spring.<br />These, the irreverent of Life’s design,<br />Division +between natural and divine<br />Would cast; these vaunting barrenness +for best,<br />In veins of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest;<br />And +these because the roses flood their cheeks,<br />Vow them in nature +wise as when Love speaks.<br />With them is war; and well the Goddess +knows<br />What undermines the race who mount the rose;<br />How the +ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,<br />Enkindled by persuasion +overpowers:<br />Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,<br />The +strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs,<br />And +timely guile unguarded finds them lie.<br />They who her sway withstand +a sea defy,<br />At every point of juncture must be proof;<br />Nor +look for mercy from the incessant surge<br />Her forces mixed of craft +and passion urge<br />For the one whelming wave to spring aloof.<br />She, +tenderness, is pitiless to them<br />Resisting in her godhead nature’s +truth.<br />No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;<br />Their +youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth.<br />These miserably disinclined,<br />The +lamentably unembraced,<br />Insult the Pleasures Earth designed<br />To +people and beflower the waste.<br />Wherefore the Pleasures pass them +by:<br />For death they live, in life they die.</p> +<p>Her head the Goddess from them turns,<br />As from grey mounds of +ashes in bronze urns.<br />She views her quivering couples unconsoled,<br />And +of her beauty mirror they become,<br />Like orchard blossoms, apple, +pear and plum,<br />Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold.<br />Crowned +with wreaths that burn in dew,<br />Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,<br />Athirst +for shade, they sigh, they wed,<br />They play the music made of two:<br />Oldest +of earth, earth’s youngest till earth’s end:<br />Cunninger +than the numbered strings,<br />For melodies, for harmonies,<br />For +mastered discords, and the things<br />Not vocable, whose mysteries<br />Are +inmost Love’s, Life’s reach of Life extend.</p> +<p>Is it an anguish overflowing shame<br />And the tongue’s pudency +confides to her,<br />With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,<br />The +woman’s marrow in some dear youth’s name,<br />Then is the +Goddess tenderness<br />Maternal, and she has a sister’s tones<br />Benign +to soothe intemperate distress,<br />Divide despair from hope, and sighs +from moans.<br />Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease<br />To those +of her milk-bearer votaries<br />As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the +source<br />Direct; erratic but in heart’s excess;<br />Being +mortal and ill-matched for Love’s great force;<br />Like green +leaves caught with flames by his impress.<br />And pray they under skies +less overcast,<br />That swiftly may her star of eve descend,<br />Her +lustrous morning star fly not too fast,<br />To lengthen blissful night +will she befriend.</p> +<p>Unfailing her reply to woman’s voice<br />In supplication instant. +Is it man’s,<br />She hears, approves his words, her garden scans,<br />And +him: the flowers are various, he has choice.<br />Perchance his wound +is deep; she listens long;<br />Enjoys what music fills the plaintive +song;<br />And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise<br />Above the +bird, his plaintive song enjoys.</p> +<p>She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps<br />To her invoked: +distraction is implored.<br />A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps<br />Above, +with his bright Goddess owned the adored.<br />His tales of her declare +she condescends;<br />Can share his fires, not always goads and rends:<br />Moreover, +quits a throne, and must enclose<br />A queenlier gem than woman’s +wayside rose.<br />She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs<br />Enraptured; +low she laughs, his woes disperse;<br />Aloud she laughs and sweeps +his varied strings.<br />’Tis taught him how for touch of mournful +verse<br />Rarely the music made of two ascends,<br />And Beauty’s +Queen some other way is won.<br />Or it may solve the riddle, that she +lends<br />Herself to all, and yields herself to none,<br />Save heavenliest: +though claims by men are raised<br />In hot assurance under shade of +doubt:<br />And numerous are the images bepraised<br />As Beauty’s +Queen, should passion head the rout.</p> +<p>Be sure the ruddy hue is Love’s: to woo<br />Love’s Fountain +we must mount the ruddy hue.<br />That is her garden’s precept, +seen where shines<br />Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour +pines.<br />Daughter of light, the joyful light,<br />She bids her couples +face full East,<br />Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast<br />Their +outstretched arms brown deserts disunite,<br />The lion-haunted thickets +hold apart.<br />In love the ruddy hue declares great heart;<br />High +confidence in her whose aid is lent<br />To lovers lifting the tuned +instrument,<br />Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone.<br />And +doth the man pursue a tightened zone,<br />Then be it as the Laurel +God he runs,<br />Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun’s.</p> +<p>Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe<br />He lifts for pity, +limp his offspring show.<br />For him requiring woman’s arts to +please<br />Infantile tastes with babe reluctances,<br />No race of +giants! In the woman’s veins<br />Persuasion ripely runs, +through hers the pains.<br />Her choice of him, should kind occasion +nod,<br />Aspiring blends the Titan with the God;<br />Yet unto dwarf +and mortal, she, submiss<br />In her high Lady’s mandate, yields +the kiss;<br />And is it needed that Love’s daintier brute<br />Be +snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit.<br />She is great Nature’s +ever intimate<br />In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,<br />Until +perverted by her senseless male,<br />She plays the winding snake, the +shrinking snail,<br />The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,<br />Elusive +to allure, since he grew tame.</p> +<p>Hence has the Goddess, Nature’s earliest Power,<br />And greatest +and most present, with her dower<br />Of the transcendent beauty, gained +repute<br />For meditated guile. She laughs to hear<br />A charge +her garden’s labyrinths scarce confute,<br />Her garden’s +histories tell of to all near.<br />Let it be said, But less upon her +guile<br />Doth she rely for her immortal smile.<br />Still let the +rumour spread, and terror screens<br />To push her conquests by the +simplest means.<br />While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves<br />From +earth’s good labours, Beauty’s Queen he serves.</p> +<p>Her spacious garden and her garden’s grant<br />She offers +in reward for handsome cheer:<br />Choice of the nymphs whose looks +will slant<br />The secret down a dewy leer<br />Of corner eyelids into +haze:<br />Many a fair Aphrosyne<br />Like flower-bell to honey-bee:<br />And +here they flicker round the maze<br />Bewildering him in heart and head:<br />And +here they wear the close demure,<br />With subtle peeps to reassure:<br />Others +parade where love has bled,<br />And of its crimson weave their mesh:<br />Others +to snap of fingers leap,<br />As bearing breast with love asleep.<br />These +are her laughters in the flesh.<br />Or would she fit a warrior mood,<br />She +lights her seeming unsubdued,<br />And indicates the fortress-key.<br />Or +is it heart for heart that craves,<br />She flecks along a run of waves<br />The +one to promise deeper sea.</p> +<p>Bands of her limpid primitives,<br />Or patterned in the curious +braid,<br />Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,<br />For +what he gives is he repaid.<br />Good is it if by him ’tis held<br />He +wins the fairest ever welled<br />From Nature’s founts: she whispers +it: Even I<br />Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,<br />Else little +is he lover. Those he clasps,<br />Intent as tempest, worshipful +as prayer, -<br />And be they doves or be they asps, -<br />Must seem +to him the sovereignty fair;<br />Else counts he soon among life’s +wholly tamed.<br />Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,<br />Half +savage must he stay, would he be crowned<br />The lover. Else, +past ripeness, deathward bound,<br />He reasons; and the totterer Earth +detests,<br />Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he.<br />Doth +man divide divine Necessity<br />From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s +breasts<br />A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain<br />Present +her; armed to bless and to constrain.<br />Of this he perishes; not +she, the throned<br />On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred +mounts.<br />A loftier Reason out of deeper founts<br />Earth’s +chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned<br />While red blood runs to +swell the pulse, she boasts,<br />And Beauty, like her star, descends +the sky;<br />Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s +cry,<br />Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.</p> +<p>Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear,<br />When the wild sap at +high tide smites<br />Within us; or benignly clear<br />To vision; or +as the iris lights<br />On fluctuant waters; she is ours<br />Till set +of man: the dreamed, the seen;<br />Flushing the world with odorous +flowers:<br />A soft compulsion on terrene<br />By heavenly: and the +world is hers<br />While hunger after Beauty spurs.</p> +<p>So is it sung in any space<br />She fills, with laugh at shallow +laws<br />Forbidding love’s devised embrace,<br />The music Beauty +from it draws.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: A Reading of Life—The Test Of Manhood</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,<br />An army issues out +of wilderness,<br />With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;<br />Obstruction +in the van; insane excess<br />Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward +stress<br />Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,<br />And rise +hushed temples built of shapely stone,<br />The work of hands not pledged +to grind or slay.<br />They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;<br />A +tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they.<br />Then was the gracious +birth of man’s new day;<br />Divided from the haunted night it +shone.</p> +<p>That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang<br />Ethereal Beauty +in full morningtide.<br />Another sun had risen to clasp his bride:<br />It +was another earth unto him sang.</p> +<p>Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights?<br />From the Persuader +came it, in those vales<br />Whereunto she melodiously invites,<br />Her +troops of eager servitors regales?<br />Not far those two great Powers +of Nature speed<br />Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead;<br />Nor +either points for us the way of flame.<br />From him predestined mightier +it came;<br />His task to hold them both in breast, and yield<br />Their +dues to each, and of their war be field.</p> +<p>The foes that in repulsion never ceased,<br />Must he, who once has +been the goodly beast<br />Of one or other, at whose beck he ran,<br />Constrain +to make him serviceable man;<br />Offending neither, nor the natural +claim<br />Each pressed, denying, for his true man’s name.</p> +<p>Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife<br />To hold them fast +conjoined within him still;<br />Submissive to his will<br />Along the +road of life!<br />And marvel not he wavered if at whiles<br />The forward +step met frowns, the backward smiles.<br />For Pleasure witched him +her sweet cup to drain;<br />Repentance offered ecstasy in pain.<br />Delicious +licence called it Nature’s cry;<br />Ascetic rigours crushed the +fleshly sigh;<br />A tread on shingle timed his lame advance<br />Flung +as the die of Bacchanalian Chance,<br />He of the troubled marching +army leaned<br />On godhead visible, on godhead screened;<br />The radiant +roseate, the curtained white;<br />Yet sharp his battle strained through +day, through night.</p> +<p>He drank of fictions, till celestial aid<br />Might seem accorded +when he fawned and prayed;<br />Sagely the generous Giver circumspect,<br />To +choose for grants the egregious, his elect;<br />And ever that imagined +succour slew<br />The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew.</p> +<p>In fellowship religion has its founts:<br />The solitary his own +God reveres:<br />Ascend no sacred Mounts<br />Our hungers or our fears.<br />As +only for the numbers Nature’s care<br />Is shown, and she the +personal nothing heeds,<br />So to Divinity the spring of prayer<br />From +brotherhood the one way upward leads.<br />Like the sustaining air<br />Are +both for flowers and weeds.<br />But he who claims in spirit to be flower,<br />Will +find them both an air that doth devour.</p> +<p>Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored<br />External gifts bestowed +but on the sword;<br />Beheld himself, with less and less disguise,<br />Through +those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes,<br />His army’s foe, +condemned to strive and fail;<br />See a black adversary’s ghost +prevail;<br />Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win<br />While +still the conflict tore his breast within.</p> +<p>Out of that agony, misread for those<br />Imprisoned Powers warring +unappeased,<br />The ghost of his black adversary rose,<br />To smother +light, shut heaven, show earth diseased.<br />And long with him was +wrestling ere emerged<br />A mind to read in him the reflex shade<br />Of +its fierce torment; this way, that way urged;<br />By craven compromises +hourly swayed.</p> +<p>Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried,<br />The man’s +mind opened under weight of cloud.<br />To penetrate the dark was it +endowed;<br />Stood day before a vision shooting wide.<br />Whereat +the spectral enemy lost form;<br />The traversed wilderness exposed +its track.<br />He felt the far advance in looking back;<br />Thence +trust in his foot forward through the storm.</p> +<p>Under the low-browed tempest’s eye of ire,<br />That ere it +lightened smote a coward heart,<br />Earth nerved her chastened son +to hail athwart<br />All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire;<br />A +stranger still, religiously divined;<br />Not yet with understanding +read aright.<br />But when the mind, the cherishable mind,<br />The +multitude’s grave shepherd, took full flight,<br />Himself as +mirror raised among his kind,<br />He saw, and first of brotherhood +had sight:<br />Knew that his force to fly, his will to see,<br />His +heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain,<br />Had come of many a grip +in mastery,<br />Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain,<br />And +of his bosom made him lord, to keep<br />The starry roof of his unruffled +frame<br />Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep<br />Below, +above, aye with a wistful aim.</p> +<p>The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown,<br />By traitor inmates +baited, upward burned;<br />Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned,<br />The +Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown.<br />To whom unwittingly did +he aspire<br />In wilderness, where bitter was his need:<br />To whom +in blindness, as an earthy seed<br />For light and air, he struck through +crimson mire.<br />But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp,<br />And viewed +an army, once the seeming doomed,<br />All choral in its fruitful garden +camp,<br />The spiritual the palpable illumed.</p> +<p>This gift of penetration and embrace,<br />His prize from tidal battles +lost or won,<br />Reveals the scheme to animate his race:<br />How that +it is a warfare but begun;<br />Unending; with no Power to interpose;<br />No +prayer, save for strength to keep his ground,<br />Heard of the Highest; +never battle’s close,<br />The victory complete and victor crowned:<br />Nor +solace in defeat, save from that sense<br />Of strength well spent, +which is the strength renewed.<br />In manhood must he find his competence;<br />In +his clear mind the spiritual food:<br />God being there while he his +fight maintains;<br />Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there,<br />While +he rejects the suicide despair;<br />Accepts the spur of explicable +pains;<br />Obedient to Nature, not her slave:<br />Her lord, if to +her rigid laws he bows;<br />Her dust, if with his conscience he plays +knave,<br />And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:-<br />Whence +Evil in a world unread before;<br />That mystery to simple springs resolved.<br />His +God the Known, diviner to adore,<br />Shows Nature’s savage riddles +kindly solved.<br />Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns<br />In iron +laws, though rapturous fair her face.<br />Back to the primal brute +shall he retrace<br />His path, doth he permit to force her chains<br />A +soft Persuader coursing through his veins,<br />An icy Huntress stringing +to the chase:<br />What one the flash disdains;<br />What one so gives +it grace.</p> +<p>But is he rightly manful in her eyes,<br />A splendid bloodless knight +to gain the skies,<br />A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs,<br />Desireing +and desireable he shines;<br />As peaches, that have caught the sun’s +uprise<br />And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines.<br />Earth +fills him with her juices, without fear<br />That she will cast him +drunken down the steeps.<br />All woman is she to this man most dear;<br />He +sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps:<br />She conscient, she sensitive, +in him;<br />With him enwound, his brave ambition hers:<br />By him +humaner made; by his keen spurs<br />Pricked to race past the pride +in giant limb,<br />Her crazy adoration of big thews,<br />Proud in +her primal sons, when crags they hurled,<br />Were thunder spitting +lightnings on the world<br />In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse.</p> +<p>This man, this hero, works not to destroy;<br />This godlike—as +the rock in ocean stands; -<br />He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands<br />Creative; +in his edifice has joy.<br />How strength may serve for purity is shown<br />When +he himself can scourge to make it clean.<br />Withal his pitch of pride +would not disown<br />A sober world that walks the balanced mean<br />Between +its tempters, rarely overthrown:<br />And such at times his army’s +march has been.</p> +<p>Near is he to great Nature in the thought<br />Each changing Season +intimately saith,<br />That nought save apparition knows the death;<br />To +the God-lighted mind of man ’tis nought.<br />She counts not loss +a word of any weight;<br />It may befal his passions and his greeds<br />To +lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds,<br />But life gone +breathless will she reinstate.</p> +<p>Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats,<br />When he the mandate +lodged in it obeys,<br />Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze,<br />Strike +camp, and onward, like the wind’s cloud-fleets.<br />Unresting +she, unresting he, from change<br />To change, as rain of cloud, as +fruit of rain;<br />She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain,<br />Yet +skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.</p> +<p>No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod,<br />She knows, nor growth +of man in grisly brute;<br />But he, the flower at head and soil at +root,<br />Is miracle, guides he the brute to God.<br />And that way +seems he bound; that way the road,<br />With his dark-lantern mind, +unled, alone,<br />Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,<br />He +travels, urged by some internal goad.</p> +<p>Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing<br />He would become +is in his mind its child;<br />Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;<br />For +battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.<br />So moves he forth in faith, +if he has made<br />His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth.<br />Earth’s +nourishing delights, no more gainsaid,<br />He tastes, as doth the bridegroom +rich in youth.<br />Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;<br />The +star of sky upon his footway cast;<br />Then match in him who holds +his tempters fast,<br />The body’s love and mind’s, whereof +the soul’s.<br />Then Earth her man for woman finds at last,<br />To +speed the pair unto her goal of goals.</p> +<p>Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her new mate?<br />Seen +has she virulent days of heat in flood;<br />The sly Persuader snaky +in his blood;<br />With her the barren Huntress alternate;<br />His +rough refractory off on kicking heels<br />To rear; the man dragged +rearward, shamed, amazed;<br />And as a torrent stream where cattle +grazed,<br />His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?<br />May +not his aspect, like her own so fair<br />Reflexively, the central force +belie,<br />And he, the once wild ocean storming sky,<br />Be rebel +at the core? What hope is there?</p> +<p>’Tis that in each recovery he preserves,<br />Between his upper +and his nether wit,<br />Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;<br />He +less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves;<br />With such a grasp upon +his brute as tells<br />Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.<br />A +Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun<br />Resplendent springs, to faith +refreshed compels.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: The Cageing Of Ares</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, v. V. 385—Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]</p> +<p>How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed<br />At sight of her boy +Giants on the leap<br />Each over other as they neighboured home,<br />Fronting +the day’s descent across green slopes,<br />And up fired mountain +crags their shadows danced.<br />Close with them in their fun, she scarce +could guess,<br />Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,<br />It +signalled some adventurous master-trick<br />To set Olympians buzzing +in debate,<br />Lest it might be their godhead undermined,<br />The +Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high<br />On shoulders of his brother +Otos waved<br />For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,<br />Compact, +complexioned in his gleeful roar<br />While Otos aped the prisoner’s +wrists and knees,<br />With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;<br />Till +Gaea’s lap receiving them, they stretched,<br />And both upon +her bosom shaken to speech,<br />Burst the hot story out of throats +of both,<br />Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut<br />The +hurried spout. And as when drifting storm<br />Disburdened loses +clasp of here and yon<br />A peak, a forest mound, a valley’s +gleam<br />Of grass and the river’s crooks and snaky coils,<br />Signification +marvellous she caught,<br />Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,<br />Which +now engulphed and now gave eye; at last<br />Subsided, and the serious +naked deed,<br />With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,<br />Stood +in her sight confirmed: she could believe<br />That these, her sprouts +of promise, her most prized,<br />These two made up of lion, bear and +fox,<br />Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,<br />Still +by the reckoning infants among men,<br />Had done the deed to strike +the Titan host<br />In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:<br />These +two combining strength and craft had snared,<br />Enmeshed, bound fast +with thongs, discreetly caged<br />The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord +of War;<br />Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;<br />The barren furrower +of anointed fields;<br />The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,<br />Her +hated enemy, too long her scourge:<br />Great Ares. And they gagged +his trumpet mouth<br />When they had seized on his implacable spear,<br />Hugged +him to reedy helplessness despite<br />His godlike fury startled from +amaze.<br />For he had eyed them nearing him in play,<br />The giant +cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,<br />Unheeding his fell presence, +by the mount<br />Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there<br />On Earth’s +original fisticuffs they called<br />For ease of sharp dispute: whereat +the God,<br />Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,<br />Good +servitors of Ares they would be,<br />And ply the pointed spear to dominate<br />Their +rebel restless fellows, villain brood<br />Vowed to defy Immortals. +So it chanced<br />Amusedly he watched them, and as one<br />The lusty +twain were on him and they had him.<br />Breath to us, Powers of air, +for laughter loud!<br />Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!<br />Bound +like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!<br />Because they knew our +Mother Gaea loathed him,<br />Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;<br />A +desolating fire to blind the sight<br />With splendour built of fruitful +things in ashes;<br />The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;<br />Her +deepest planted and her liveliest voice,<br />Heard from the babe as +from the broken crone.<br />Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,<br />And +tumbled down the cave. But rather look -<br />Ah, that the woman +tattler had not sought,<br />Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,<br />Hermes, +after the thirteen songful months!<br />Prompting the Dexterous to work +his arts,<br />And shatter earth’s delirious holiday,<br />Then +first, as where the fountain runs a stream,<br />Resolving to composure +on its throbs.<br />But see her in the Seasons through that year;<br />That +one glad year and the fair opening month.<br />Had never our Great Mother +such sweet face!<br />War with her, gentle war with her, each day<br />Her +sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,<br />On the morrow stood +to challenge; in their strength<br />Renewed, indomitable; whereof they +won,<br />From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,<br />Her ready +secret: the abounding life<br />Returned for valiant labour: she and +they<br />Defeated and victorious turn by turn;<br />By loss enriched, +by overthrow restored.<br />Exchange of powers of this conflict came;<br />Defacement +none, nor ever squandered force.<br />Is battle nature’s mandate, +here it reigned,<br />As music unto the hand that smote the strings;<br />And +she the rosier from their showery brows,<br />They fruitful from her +ploughed and harrowed breast.<br />Back to the primal rational of those<br />Who +suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp<br />Stability in hatred of +the insane,<br />Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce<br />The +mortal mind’s concept of earth’s divorced<br />Above; those +beautiful, those masterful,<br />Those lawless. High they sit, +and if descend,<br />Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?<br />Earth +in her happy children asked that word,<br />Whereto within their breast +was her reply.<br />Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless,<br />Enjoy +the life prolonged, outleap the years;<br />Yet they (’twas the +Great Mother’s voice inspired<br />The audacious thought), they, +glorious over dust,<br />Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar,<br />To +meet the certain fate of earth’s divorced,<br />And clap lame +wings across a wintry haze,<br />Up to the farthest bourne: immortal +still,<br />Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled<br />The +Tyranny. This her voice within them told,<br />When softly the +Great Mother chid her sons<br />Not of the giant brood, who did create<br />Those +lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain<br />Set moving by an abject +blood, that waked<br />To wanton under elements more benign,<br />And +planted aliens on Olympian heights; -<br />Imagination’s cradle +poesy<br />Become a monstrous pressure upon men; -<br />Foes of good +Gaea; until dispossessed<br />By light from her, born of the love of +her,<br />Their lordship the illumined brain rejects<br />For earth’s +beneficent, the sons of Law,<br />Her other name. So spake she +in their heart,<br />Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath<br />Young +vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth,<br />Confidently to cling. +And when brown corn<br />Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song,<br />With +gold necks bent for any zephyr’s kiss;<br />When vine-roots daily +down a rubble soil<br />Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape;<br />When +swelled the grape, and in it held a ray,<br />Rich issue of the embrace +of heaven and earth;<br />The very eye of passion drowsed by excess,<br />And +yet a burning lion for the spring;<br />Then in that time of general +cherishment,<br />Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side,<br />He +the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged,<br />Then did good Gaea’s +children gratefully<br />Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised +for peace,<br />Delightful Peace, that answers Reason’s call<br />Harmoniously +and images her Law;<br />Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives,<br />In +memories made present on the brain<br />By natural yearnings, all the +happy scenes;<br />The picture of an earth allied to heaven;<br />Between +them the known smile behind black masks;<br />Rightly their various +moods interpreted;<br />And frolic because toilful children borne<br />With +larger comprehension of Earth’s aim<br />At loftier, clearer, +sweeter, by their aid.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: The Night-Walk</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Awakes for me and leaps from shroud<br />All radiantly the moon’s +own night<br />Of folded showers in streamer cloud;<br />Our shadows +down the highway white<br />Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,<br />With +yon and yon a stem alight.</p> +<p>I see marauder runagates<br />Across us shoot their dusky wink;<br />I +hear the parliament of chats<br />In haws beside the river’s brink;<br />And +drops the vole off alder-banks,<br />To push his arrow through the stream.<br />These +busy people had our thanks<br />For tickling sight and sound, but theme<br />They +were not more than breath we drew<br />Delighted with our world’s +embrace:<br />The moss-root smell where beeches grew,<br />And watered +grass in breezy space;<br />The silken heights, of ghostly bloom<br />Among +their folds, by distance draped.<br />’Twas Youth, rapacious to +consume,<br />That cried to have its chaos shaped:<br />Absorbing, little +noting, still<br />Enriched, and thinking it bestowed;<br />With wistful +looks on each far hill<br />For something hidden, something owed.<br />Unto +his mantled sister, Day<br />Had given the secret things we sought<br />And +she was grave and saintly gay;<br />At times she fluttered, spoke her +thought;<br />She flew on it, then folded wings,<br />In meditation +passing lone,<br />To breathe around the secret things,<br />Which have +no word, and yet are known;<br />Of thirst for them are known, as air<br />Is +health in blood: we gained enough<br />By this to feel it honest fare;<br />Impalpable, +not barren, stuff.</p> +<p>A pride of legs in motion kept<br />Our spirits to their task meanwhile,<br />And +what was deepest dreaming slept:<br />The posts that named the swallowed +mile;<br />Beside the straight canal the hut<br />Abandoned; near the +river’s source<br />Its infant chirp; the shortest cut;<br />The +roadway missed; were our discourse;<br />At times dear poets, whom some +view<br />Transcendent or subdued evoked<br />To speak the memorable, +the true,<br />The luminous as a moon uncloaked;<br />For proof that +there, among earth’s dumb,<br />A soul had passed and said our +best.<br />Or it might be we chimed on some<br />Historic favourite’s +astral crest,<br />With part to reverence in its gleam,<br />And part +to rivalry the shout:<br />So royal, unuttered, is youth’s dream<br />Of +power within to strike without.<br />But most the silences were sweet,<br />Like +mothers’ breasts, to bid it feel<br />It lived in such divine +conceit<br />As envies aught we stamp for real.</p> +<p>To either then an untold tale<br />Was Life, and author, hero, we.<br />The +chapters holding peaks to scale,<br />Or depths to fathom, made our +glee;<br />For we were armed of inner fires,<br />Unbled in us the ripe +desires;<br />And passion rolled a quiet sea,<br />Whereon was Love +the phantom sail.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: The Hueless Love</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Unto that love must we through fire attain,<br />Which those two +held as breath of common air;<br />The hands of whom were given in bond +elsewhere;<br />Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.</p> +<p>Midway the road of our life’s term they met,<br />And one another +knew without surprise;<br />Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes;<br />Nor +at their tardy meeting nursed regret.</p> +<p>To them it was revealed how they had found<br />The kindred nature +and the needed mind;<br />The mate by long conspiracy designed;<br />The +flower to plant in sanctuary ground.</p> +<p>Avowed in vigilant solicitude<br />For either, what most lived within +each breast<br />They let be seen: yet every human test<br />Demanding +righteousness approved them good.</p> +<p>She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared<br />Abandonment to +help if heaved or sank<br />Her heart at intervals while Love looked +blank,<br />Life rosier were she but less revered.</p> +<p>An arm that never shook did not obscure<br />Her woman’s intuition +of the bliss -<br />Their tempter’s moment o’er the black +abyss,<br />Across the narrow plank—he could abjure.</p> +<p>Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,<br />And their first +touch of lips, as he lay cold,<br />Was all of earthly in their love +untold,<br />Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.</p> +<p>So has there come the gust at South-west flung<br />By sudden volt +on eves of freezing mist,<br />When sister snowflake sister snowdrop +kissed,<br />And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: Song In The Songless</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>They have no song, the sedges dry,<br />And still they sing.<br />It +is within my breast they sing,<br />As I pass by.<br />Within my breast +they touch a string,<br />They wake a sigh.<br />There is but sound +of sedges dry;<br />In me they sing.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: Union In Disseverance</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;<br />She that star overhead +in slow descent:<br />That white star with the front of angel she;<br />He +undone in his rays of glory spent</p> +<p>Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,<br />He casts round her, +and knows his hour of rest<br />Incomplete, were the light for which +he dies,<br />Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.</p> +<p>Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;<br />Life’s full +throb over breathless and abased:<br />Yet stand they, though impalpable +the links,<br />One, more one than the bridally embraced.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: The Burden Of Strength</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know<br />Thy part is +to uplift the trodden low;<br />Else in a giant’s grasp until +the end<br />A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: The Main Regret</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Written for the Charing Cross Album]</p> +<p>I.</p> +<p>Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission<br />Frown +when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare.<br />They of our +mortal diseases find never healing physician;<br />Errors they of the +soul, past the one hope to repair.</p> +<p>II.</p> +<p>Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered<br />Seed +to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone.<br />Even the limp-legged +beggar a sick desperado has flattered<br />Back to a half-sloughed life +cheered by the mere human tone.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: Alternation</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Between the fountain and the rill<br />I passed, and saw the mighty +will<br />To leap at sky; the careless run,<br />As earth would lead +her little son.</p> +<p>Beneath them throbs an urgent well,<br />That here is play, and there +is war.<br />I know not which had most to tell<br />Of whence we spring +and what we are.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: Hawarden</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>When comes the lighted day for men to read<br />Life’s meaning, +with the work before their hands<br />Till this good gift of breath +from debt is freed,<br />Earth will not hear her children’s wailful +bands<br />Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge;<br />Nor +they look where is darkness, but on high.<br />The sun that dropped +down our horizon’s verge,<br />Illumes his labours through the +travelled sky,<br />Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known<br />By +what our warrior wrought we hold him fast.<br />A splendid image built +of man has flown;<br />His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past.<br />Ours +the great privilege to have had one<br />Among us who celestial tasks +has done.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: At The Close</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,<br />Who straightway sound +the call to arms. Thou know’st;<br />And that black spot +in each embattled host,<br />Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt +reveal.<br />Now is it red artillery and white steel;<br />Till on a +day will ring the victor’s boast,<br />That ’tis Thy chosen +towers uppermost,<br />Where Thy rejected grovels under heel.<br />So +in all times of man’s descent insane<br />To brute, did strength +and craft combining strike,<br />Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow.<br />But +at the close he entered Thy domain,<br />Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like<br />He +tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: Forest History</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>I.</p> +<p>Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in.<br />Heroic who came out; +for round them hung<br />A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue,<br />With +league-long lizard tail and fishy fin:</p> +<p>II.</p> +<p>Old Earth’s original Dragon; there retired<br />To his last +fastness; overthrown by few.<br />Him a laborious thrust of roadway +slew.<br />Then man to play devorant straight was fired.</p> +<p>III.</p> +<p>More intimate became the forest fear<br />While pillared darkness +hatched malicious life<br />At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife<br />And +wary slid the glance from ear to ear.</p> +<p>IV.</p> +<p>In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray,<br />The forest’s +heart of fog on mossed morass,<br />On purple pool and silky cotton-grass,<br />Revealed +where lured the swallower byway.</p> +<p>V.</p> +<p>Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound<br />Off walls of +distance, left each mounted height.<br />It seemed a giant hag-fiend, +churning spite<br />Of humble human being, held the ground.</p> +<p>VI.</p> +<p>Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow<br />The +feet sustained by track of feet pursued<br />Pained steps, and found +the common brotherhood<br />By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe.</p> +<p>VII.</p> +<p>Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight,<br />And long-frocked +men, called Brothers, there abode.<br />They pointed up, bowed head, +and dug and sowed;<br />Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight.</p> +<p>VIII.</p> +<p>What words they taught were nails to scratch the head.<br />Benignant +works explained the chanting brood.<br />Their monastery lit black solitude,<br />As +one might think a star that heavenward led.</p> +<p>IX.</p> +<p>Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet,<br />Like some gold flower nightly +inward curled,<br />Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world,<br />Or +played with it, and had their white retreat.</p> +<p>X.</p> +<p>Into big books of metal clasps they pored.<br />They governed, even +as men; they welcomed lays.<br />The treasures women are whose aim is +praise,<br />Was shown in them: the Garden half restored.</p> +<p>XI.</p> +<p>A deluge billow scoured the land off seas,<br />With widened jaws, +and slaughter was its foam.<br />For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, +home,<br />The lesser savage offered bogs and trees.</p> +<p>XII.</p> +<p>Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew:<br />And inmost spots +of ancient horror shone<br />As temples under beams of trials bygone;<br />For +in them sang brave times with God in view.</p> +<p>XIII.</p> +<p>Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green,<br />Like night’s +first little stars through clearing showers.<br />Was rumoured how a +castle’s falcon towers<br />The wilderness commanded with fierce +mien.</p> +<p>XIV.</p> +<p>Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance;<br />For minstrel songs +a beauteous Dame would pout.<br />Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout,<br />Pricked +onward, bound for their unsung romance.</p> +<p>XV.</p> +<p>It might be that two errant lords across<br />The block of each came +edged, and at sharp cry<br />They charged forthwith, the better man +to try.<br />One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss.</p> +<p>XVI.</p> +<p>Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain,<br />The robbers into +gruesome durance drew.<br />Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s +blue!<br />She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain.</p> +<p>XVII.</p> +<p>As we, that ere the worst her hero haps,<br />Of Angels guided, nigh +that loathly den:<br />A toady cave beside an ague fen,<br />Where long +forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps.</p> +<p>XVIII.</p> +<p>By daylight now the forest fear could read<br />Itself, and at new +wonders chuckling went.<br />Straight for the roebuck’s neck the +bowman spent<br />A dart that laughed at distance and at speed.</p> +<p>XIX.</p> +<p>Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate<br />Rang forth of merry +dingles round the tors;<br />And deftest hand was he from foreign wars,<br />But +soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate.</p> +<p>XX.</p> +<p>Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke;<br />At dawn the +deer’s wet nostrils blew their last.<br />To forest, haunt of +runs and prime repast,<br />With paying blows, the yokel strained his +yoke.</p> +<p>XXI.</p> +<p>The city urchin mooned on forest air,<br />On grassy sweeps and flying +arrows, thick<br />As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed +him sick<br />For thinking that his dearer home was there.</p> +<p>XXII.</p> +<p>Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang<br />An old-world echo, +like no mortal thing.<br />The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund +ring,<br />But held in ear it had a chilly clang.</p> +<p>XXIII.</p> +<p>Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time;<br />Some warning haunted +any sound prolonged,<br />As though the leagues of woodland held them +wronged<br />To hear an axe and see a township climb.</p> +<p>XXIV.</p> +<p>The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve<br />Had voice when lowered +heavens drummed for gales.<br />At midnight a small people danced the +dales,<br />So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve</p> +<p>XXV.</p> +<p>Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats,<br />Old wives +that gathered herbs and knew too much.<br />The pensioned forester beside +his crutch,<br />Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes.</p> +<p>XXVI.</p> +<p>Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart;<br />Devourer, and +insensibly devoured;<br />In whom the city over forest flowered,<br />The +forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart.</p> +<p>XXVII.</p> +<p>There found he in new form that Dragon old,<br />From tangled solitudes +expelled; and taught<br />How blindly each its antidote besought;<br />For +either’s breath the needs of either told.</p> +<p>XXVIII.</p> +<p>Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone,<br />He showed +what charm the human concourse works:<br />Amid the press of men, what +virtue lurks<br />Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone.</p> +<p>XXIX.</p> +<p>Our conquest these: if haply we retain<br />The reverence that ne’er +will overrun<br />Due boundaries of realms from Nature won,<br />Nor +let the poet’s awe in rapture wane.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: A Garden Idyl</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>With sagest craft Arachne worked<br />Her web, and at a corner lurked,<br />Awaiting +what should plump her soon,<br />To case it in the death-cocoon.<br />Sagaciously +her home she chose<br />For visits that would never close;<br />Inside +my chalet-porch her feast<br />Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.</p> +<p>The finished structure, bar on bar,<br />Had snatched from light +to form a star,<br />And struck on sight, when quick with dews,<br />Like +music of the very Muse.<br />Great artists pass our single sense;<br />We +hear in seeing, strung to tense;<br />Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,<br />To +think such beauty means a trap.<br />But Nature’s genius, even +man’s<br />At best, is practical in plans;<br />Subservient to +the needy thought,<br />However rare the weapon wrought.<br />As long +as Nature holds it good<br />To urge her creatures’ quest for +food<br />Will beauty stamp the just intent<br />Of weapons upon service +bent.<br />For beauty is a flower of roots<br />Embedded lower than +our boots;<br />Out of the primal strata springs,<br />And shows for +crown of useful things</p> +<p>Arachne’s dream of prey to size<br />Aspired; so she could +nigh despise<br />The puny specks the breezes round<br />Supplied, and +let them shake unwound;<br />Assured of her fat fly to come;<br />Perhaps +a blue, the spider’s plum;<br />Who takes the fatal odds in fight,<br />And +gives repast an appetite,<br />By plunging, whizzing, till his wings<br />Are +webbed, and in the lists he swings,<br />A shrouded lump, for her to +see<br />Her banquet in her victory.</p> +<p>This matron of the unnumbered threads,<br />One day of dandelions’ +heads<br />Distributing their gray perruques<br />Up every gust, I watched +with looks<br />Discreet beside the chalet-door;<br />And gracefully +a light wind bore,<br />Direct upon my webster’s wall,<br />A +monster in the form of ball;<br />The mildest captive ever snared,<br />That +neither struggled nor despaired,<br />On half the net invading hung,<br />And +plain as in her mother tongue,<br />While low the weaver cursed her +lures,<br />Remarked, “You have me; I am yours.”</p> +<p>Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,<br />Her dream of size she saw, +agape.<br />Midway the vast round-raying beard<br />A desiccated midge +appeared;<br />Whose body pricked the name of meal,<br />Whose hair +had growth in earth’s unreal;<br />Provocative of dread and wrath,<br />Contempt +and horror, in one froth,<br />Inextricable, insensible,<br />His poison +presence there would dwell,<br />Declaring him her dream fulfilled,<br />A +catch to compliment the skilled;<br />And she reduced to beaky skin,<br />Disgraceful +among kith and kin</p> +<p>Against her corner, humped and aged,<br />Arachne wrinkled, past +enraged,<br />Beyond disgust or hope in guile.<br />Ridiculously volatile<br />He +seemed to her last spark of mind;<br />And that in pallid ash declined<br />Beneath +the blow by knowledge dealt,<br />Wherein throughout her frame she felt<br />That +he, the light wind’s libertine,<br />Without a scoff, without +a grin,<br />And mannered like the courtly few,<br />Who merely danced +when light winds blew,<br />Impervious to beak and claws,<br />Tradition’s +ruinous Whitebeard was;<br />Of whom, as actors in old scenes,<br />Had +grannam weavers warned their weans,<br />With word, that less than feather-weight,<br />He +smote the web like bolt of Fate.</p> +<p>This muted drama, hour by hour,<br />I watched amid a world in flower,<br />Ere +yet Autumnal threads had laid<br />Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s +blade,<br />And still along the garden-run<br />The blindworm stretched +him, drunk of sun.<br />Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance<br />Her +visitor performed a dance;<br />She puckered thinner; he the same<br />As +when on that light wind he came.</p> +<p>Next day was told what deeds of night<br />Were done; the web had +vanished quite;<br />With it the strange opposing pair;<br />And listless +waved on vacant air,<br />For her adieu to heart’s content,<br />A +solitary filament.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Poem: Foresight And Patience</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,<br />Are they who point +our pathway and sustain.<br />They rarely meet; one soars, one walks +retired.<br />When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.</p> +<p>To see Life’s formless offspring and subdue<br />Desire of +times unripe, we have these two,<br />Whose union is right reason: join +they hands,<br />The world shall know itself and where it stands;<br />What +cowering angel and what upright beast<br />Make man, behold, nor count +the low the least,<br />Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers.<br />When +these two meet, a point of time is ours.</p> +<p>As in a land of waterfalls, that flow<br />Smooth for the leap on +their great voice below,<br />Some eddies near the brink borne swift +along,<br />Will capture hearing with the liquid song,<br />So, while +the headlong world’s imperious force<br />Resounded under, heard +I these discourse.</p> +<p>First words, where down my woodland walk she led,<br />To her blind +sister Patience, Foresight said:</p> +<p>- Your faith in me appals, to shake my own,<br />When still I find +you in this mire alone.</p> +<p>- The few steps taken at a funeral pace<br />By men had slain me +but for those you trace.</p> +<p>- Look I once back, a broken pinion I:<br />Black as the rebel angels +rained from sky!</p> +<p>- Needs must you drink of me while here you live,<br />And make me +rich in feeling I can give.</p> +<p>- A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow:<br />Yet must I read my sister +for the How.<br />My daisy better knows her God of beams<br />Than doth +an eagle that to mount him seems.<br />She hath the secret never fieriest +reach<br />Of wing shall master till men hear her teach.</p> +<p>- Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough,<br />My semblance +when I have you not as now.<br />The quiet creatures who escape mishap<br />Bear +likeness to pure growths of the green sap:<br />A picture of the settled +peace desired<br />By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired.<br />I +listen at their breasts: is there no jar<br />Of wrestlings and of stranglings, +dead they are,<br />And such a picture as the piercing mind<br />Ranks +beneath vegetation. Not resigned<br />Are my true pupils while +the world is brute.<br />What edict of the stronger keeps me mute,<br />Stronger +impels the motion of my heart.<br />I am not Resignation’s counterpart.<br />If +that I teach, ’tis little the dry word,<br />Content, but how +to savour hope deferred.<br />We come of earth, and rich of earth may +be;<br />Soon carrion if very earth are we!<br />The coursing veins, +the constant breath, the use<br />Of sleep, declare that strife allows +short truce;<br />Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat,<br />And pass +despised; “a-cold for lack of heat,”<br />Like other corpses, +but without death’s plea.</p> +<p>- My sister calls for battle; is it she?</p> +<p>- Rather a world of pressing men in arms,<br />Than stagnant, where +the sensual piper charms<br />Each drowsy malady and coiling vice<br />With +dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price!<br />No home is here for +peace while evil breeds,<br />While error governs, none; and must the +seeds<br />You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain,<br />Lie +barren at the doorway of the brain,<br />Let stout contention drive +deep furrows, blood<br />Moisten, and make new channels of its flood!</p> +<p>- My sober little maid, when we meet first,<br />Drinks of me ever +with an eager thirst.<br />So can I not of her till circumstance<br />Drugs +cravings. Here we see how men advance<br />A doubtful foot, but +circle if much stirred,<br />Like dead weeds on whipped waters. +Shout the word<br />Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march,<br />As +to band-music under Victory’s arch.<br />Thus was it, and thus +is it; save that then<br />The beauty of frank animals had men.</p> +<p>- Observe them, and down rearward for a term,<br />Gaze to the primal +twistings of the worm.<br />Thence look this way, across the fields +that show<br />Men’s early form of speech for Yes and No.<br />My +sister a bruised infant’s utterance had;<br />And issuing stronger, +to mankind ’twas mad.<br />I knew my home where I had choice to +feel<br />The toad beneath a harrow or a heel.</p> +<p>- Speak of this Age.</p> +<p>- When you it shall discern<br />Bright as you are, to me the Age +will turn.</p> +<p>- For neither of us has it any care;<br />Its learning is through +Science to despair.</p> +<p>- Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not<br />With evil, casts +the burden of its lot.<br />This Age climbs earth.</p> +<p>- To challenge heaven.</p> +<p>- Not less<br />The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness!<br />That +know I, though the echoes of it wail,<br />For one step upward on the +crags you scale.<br />Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust,<br />Which +means our soul asleep or body’s lust,<br />Until from warmth of +many breasts, that beat<br />A temperate common music, sunlike heat<br />The +happiness not predatory sheds!</p> +<p>- But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads,<br />Now rages to +outdo a horny Past.<br />Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast<br />Are +thrown by every novel light upraised.<br />The world’s whole round +smokes ominously, amazed<br />And trembling as its pregnant AEtna swells.<br />Combustibles +on hot combustibles<br />Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire<br />The +mountain-torrent of infernal ire<br />And leave the track of devils +where men built.<br />Perceptive of a doom, the sinner’s guilt<br />Confesses +in a cry for help shrill loud,<br />If drops the chillness of a passing +cloud,<br />To conscience, reason, human love; in vain:<br />None save +they but the souls which them contain.<br />No extramural God, the God +within<br />Alone gives aid to city charged with sin.<br />A world that +for the spur of fool and knave,<br />Sweats in its laboratory, what +shall save?<br />But men who ply their wits in such a school,<br />Must +pray the mercy of the knave and fool.</p> +<p>- Much have I studied hard Necessity!<br />To know her Wisdom’s +mother, and that we<br />May deem the harshness of her later cries<br />In +labour a sure goad to prick the wise,<br />If men among the warnings +which convulse,<br />Can gravely dread without the craven’s pulse.<br />Long +ere the rising of this Age of ours,<br />The knave and fool were stamped +as monstrous Powers.<br />Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring,<br />And +are as lasting as the parent thing.<br />Yet numbering locust hosts, +bent they to drill,<br />They might o’ermatch and have mankind +at will.</p> +<p>Behold such army gathering: ours the spur,<br />No scattered foe +to face, but Lucifer.<br />Not fool or knave is now the enemy<br />O’ershadowing +men, ’tis Folly, Knavery!<br />A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned +beach.<br />Now must the brother soul alive in each,<br />His traitorous +individual devildom<br />Hold subject lest the grand destruction come.<br />Dimly +men see it menacing apace<br />To overthrow, perchance uproot the race.<br />Within, +without, they are a field of tares:<br />Fruitfuller for them when the +contest squares,<br />And wherefore warrior service they must yield,<br />Shines +visible as life on either field.<br />That is my comfort, following +shock on shock,<br />Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock.<br />Since +with his weapons, all the arms of Night,<br />Frail men have challenged +Lucifer to fight,<br />Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect,<br />The +human and Satanic intellect,<br />Determined for their uses to control<br />What +forces on the earth and under roll,<br />Their granite rock runs igneous; +now they stand<br />Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land.<br />They +cannot learn save grossly, gross that are:<br />Through fear they learn +whose aid is good in war.</p> +<p>- My sister, as I read them in my glass,<br />Their field of tares +they take for pasture grass.<br />How waken them that have not any bent<br />Save +browsing—the concrete indifferent!<br />Friend Lucifer supplies +them solid stuff:<br />They fear not for the race when full the trough.<br />They +have much fear of giving up the ghost;<br />And these are of mankind +the unnumbered host.</p> +<p>- If I could see with you, and did not faint<br />In beating wing, +the future I would paint.<br />Those massed indifferents will learn +to quake:<br />Now meanwhile is another mass awake,<br />Once denser +than the grunters of the sty.<br />If I could see with you! Could +I but fly!</p> +<p>- The length of days that you with them have housed,<br />An outcast +else, approves their cause espoused.</p> +<p>- O true, they have a cause, and woe for us,<br />While still they +have a cause too piteous!<br />Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined,<br />They +walk no longer with a stumbler blind,<br />And quicken in the virtue +of their cause,<br />To think me a poor mouther of old saws!<br />I +wait the issue of a battling Age;<br />The toilers with your “troughsters” +now engage;<br />Instructing them through their acutest sense,<br />How +close the dangers of indifference!<br />Already have my people shown +their worth,<br />More love they light, which folds the love of Earth.<br />That +love to love of labour leads: thence love<br />Of humankind—earth’s +incense flung above.</p> +<p>- Admit some other features: Faithless, mean;<br />Encased in matter; +vowed to Gods obscene;<br />Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells<br />On +Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles;<br />And if I bid it face what +<i>I</i> observe,<br />Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve!</p> +<p>- Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil,<br />Seen nests of seeming +cockatrices coil:<br />Disowned them as the unholiest of Time,<br />Which +were his offspring, born of flame on slime.<br />Nor him, their sire, +have known the filial fry:<br />As little as Time’s earliest knew +the sky.<br />Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame<br />At intervals, +in proof of whom they came.<br />To strengthen our foundations is the +task<br />Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask,<br />Though, +lighted by your beams, down mining caves<br />The rock it blasts, the +hoarded foulness braves.<br />My sister sees no round beyond her mood;<br />To +hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood.<br />Out of the course of +ancient ruts and grooves,<br />It moves: O much for me to say it moves!<br />About +his AEthiop Highlands Nile is Nile,<br />Though not the stream of the +paternal smile:<br />And where his tide of nourishment he drives,<br />An +Abyssinian wantonness revives.<br />Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he +swims;<br />He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs,<br />The Past +yet flowing, the fair time that fills;<br />Breath of all mouths and +grist of many mills.</p> +<p>To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers,<br />He is the vast +Insensate who devours<br />His golden promise over leagues of seed,<br />Then +sits in a smooth lake upon the deed.<br />The races which on barbarous +force begin,<br />Inherit onward of their origin,<br />And cancelled +blessings will the current length<br />Reveal till they know need of +shaping strength.<br />’Tis not in men to recognize the need<br />Before +they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed.<br />Then may sharp suffering +their nature grind;<br />Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind.<br />Yet +mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed,<br />For tens up the +safe mountains at his head.<br />Few would be fed, not far his course +prolong,<br />Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong.</p> +<p>- That rings of truth! More do your people thrive;<br />Your +Many are more merrily alive<br />Than erewhile when I gloried in the +page<br />Of radiant singer and anointed sage.<br />Greece was my lamp: +burnt out for lack of oil;<br />Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber +spoil!<br />All structures built upon a narrow space<br />Must fall, +from having not your hosts for base.<br />O thrice must one be you, +to see them shift<br />Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift;<br />With +faith, that of privations and spilt blood,<br />Comes Reason armed to +clear or bank the flood!<br />And thrice must one be you, to wait release<br />From +duress in the swamp of their increase.<br />At which oppressive scene, +beyond arrest,<br />A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed,<br />Philosophers +behold; desponding view.<br />Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant +few;<br />Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins,<br />Dive down +the fumy AEtna of their brains.<br />Belated vessels on a rising sea,<br />They +seem: they pass!</p> +<p>- But not Philosophy!</p> +<p>- Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise<br />Nought but the coward +in us! That way lies<br />The wisdom making passage through our +slough.<br />Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow;<br />Like her, +shall wait to see, and seeing wait.<br />Philosophy is Life’s +one match for Fate.<br />That photosphere of our high fountain One,<br />Our +spirit’s Lord and Reason’s fostering sun,<br />Philosophy, +shall light us in the shade,<br />Warm in the frost, make Good our aim +and aid.<br />Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed,<br />Unconquerable, +whose aim for aid is Good!<br />Advantage to the Many: that we name<br />God’s +voice; have there the surety in our aim.<br />This thought unto my sister +do I owe,<br />And irony and satire off me throw.<br />They crack a +childish whip, drive puny herds,<br />Where numbers crave their sustenance +in words.<br />Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen,<br />Your Chieftain +Mind mounts over them serene.<br />Who never yet of scattered lamps +was born<br />To speed a world, a marching world to warn,<br />But sunward +from the vivid Many springs,<br />Counts conquest but a step, and through +disaster sings.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<h2>Fragments of the Iliad in English Hexameter Verse</h2> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: The Invective of Achilles</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, B. I. V. 149]</p> +<p>“Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can +one,<br />Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians,<br />Either +the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen?<br />I, not +hither I fared on account of the spear-armèd Trojans,<br />Pledged +to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done;<br />Never have +they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen;<br />Never in deep-soiled +Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests<br />Ravaged, they; for between +us is numbered full many a darksome<br />Mountain, ay, therewith too +the stretch of the windy sea-waters.<br />O hugely shameless! thee did +we follow to hearten thee, justice<br />Pluck from the Dardans for him, +Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed!<br />Whereof little thy thought is, +nought whatever thou reckest.<br />Worse, it is thou whose threat ’tis +to ravish my prize from me, portion<br />Won with much labour, the which +my gift from the sons of Achaia.<br />Never, in sooth, have I known +my prize equal thine when Achaians<br />Gave some flourishing populous +Trojan town up to pillage.<br />Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most +in the storm of the combat,<br />Yet when came peradventure share of +the booty amongst us,<br />Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some +small blessèd thing bore<br />Off to the ships, my share of reward +for my toil in the bloodshed!<br />So now go I to Phthia, for better +by much it beseems me<br />Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and +I hold not in prospect,<br />I being outraged, thou mayst gather here +plunder and wealth-store.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: The Invective of Achilles—V. 225</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>“Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, +thou!<br />Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the +conflict,<br />Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia<br />Dared +thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a death-stroke.<br />Sooth, +more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians,<br />Snatch +at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against thee.<br />Ravening +king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects;<br />Else, +son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one.<br />Nay, but +I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise:<br />Yea, by +the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds<br />Never +again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the mountains,<br />No +more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped off<br />Leaves +and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia,<br />Guardian hands +of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement,<br />Hold it aloft; +so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent;<br />Loud will the +cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia<br />Throughout the army, +and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish,<br />How to give succour +when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector<br />Tumble expiring; +and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy heart-strings,<br />Rage-wrung, +thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of Achaians.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: Marshalling Of The Achaians</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, B. II V. 455]</p> +<p>Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous,<br />Up +on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far,<br />So +on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the splendour<br />Gleam +wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault.<br />They, +now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks,<br />Be +it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the wild-swans,<br />Off +that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaïstros;<br />Hither +and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions,<br />Clamour, +shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them resoundeth;<br />So +those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured +forth<br />On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath +them<br />Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of +the horse-hooves.<br />Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d +field of Scamander, their thousands<br />Many as leaves and the blossoms +born of the flowerful season.<br />Even as countless hot-pressed flies +in their multitudes traverse,<br />Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s +wonning, where then are the milk-pails<br />Also, full of their milk, +in the bountiful season of spring-time;<br />Even so thickly the long-haired +sons of Achaia the plain held,<br />Prompt for the dash at the Trojan +host, with the passion to crush them.<br />Those, likewise, as the goatherds, +eyeing their vast flocks of goats, know<br />Easily one from the other +when all get mixed o’er the pasture,<br />So did the chieftains +rank them here there in their places for onslaught,<br />Hard on the +push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon,<br />He, for his eyes +and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder,<br />He with the +girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: Agamemnon In The Fight</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, B. XI. V. 148]</p> +<p>These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the +thickest,<br />Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved +Achaians.<br />Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful +compulsion,<br />Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted +the dust-cloud,<br />Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the +thundering horse-hooves)<br />Hewed with the sword’s sharp edge; +and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon<br />Followed, chasing and slaughtering +aye, on-urgeing the Argives.</p> +<p>Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclippèd woodland,<br />This +way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the scrubwood<br />Stretches +uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire’s fury rageing,<br />So +beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered<br />Trojans fell; +and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened,<br />Rattled their +vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field,<br />Missing the +blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were outstretched<br />Flat +upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: Paris And Diomedes</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad; B. XI V. 378]</p> +<p>So he, with a clear shout of laughter,<br />Forth of his ambush leapt, +and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise:<br />“Hit thou art! not +in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had pierced thee<br />Into +the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath!<br />Following +that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst,<br />They +all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion.”<br />Then +unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes:<br />“Bow-puller, +jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins!<br />If that thou +dared’st face me here out in the open with weapons,<br />Nothing +then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows.<br />Now +thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole;<br />Reck +I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant.<br />Aye +flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, noughtworth!<br />Otherwise +hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest,<br />My +keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway.<br />Torn, +troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen slaughtered,<br />Orphans +his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops,<br />Rotting, +round him the birds, more numerous they than the women.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: Hypnos On Ida</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283]</p> +<p>They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,<br />Came, +and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,<br />Where +underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland.<br />There +hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,<br />Mounted +upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida<br />Lustily spring +off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.<br />There did he sit well-cloaked +by the wide-branched pine for concealment,<br />That loud bird, in his +form like, that perched high up in the mountains,<br />Chalkis is named +by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: Clash In Arms Of The Achaians And Trojans</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 394]</p> +<p>Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle,<br />Whipped +from the sea’s deeps up by the terrible blast of the Northwind;<br />Nay, +nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire’s rush so arousing,<br />Down +along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland;<br />Nay, +nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees’<br />Foliage-tresses +high, when it rages to raveing its utmost;<br />As rose then stupendous +the Trojan’s cry and Achaians’,<br />Dread upshouting as +one when together they clashed in the conflict.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: The Horses Of Achilles</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[Iliad, B. XVII. V. 426]</p> +<p>So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground,<br />Wept, +since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there,<br />Cast +down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector.<br />Sooth, +meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores,<br />Oft, on the +one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and oft, too,<br />Coax +entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten.<br />Vainly, +for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious,<br />Backward +turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians.<br />Nay, as +a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone,<br />Haply, of some +dead man or it may be a woman there-under;<br />Even like hard stood +they there attached to the glorious war-car,<br />Earthward bowed with +their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant<br />Ran the hot teardrops +downward on to the earth from their eyelids,<br />Mourning their charioteer; +all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted,<br />Right side and left of +the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the yoke-bow.<br />Now when +the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook<br />Pitying +them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom;<br />“Why, +ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal<br />Master; ye that +are ageless both, ye both of you deathless!<br />Was it that ye among +men most wretched should come to have heart-grief?<br />’Tis most +true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere<br />Aught +over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath and has movement.”</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<h3>Poem: The Mares Of The Camargue</h3> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div> +<p>[From the <i>Mirèio</i> of Mistral]</p> +<p>A hundred mares, all white! their manes<br />Like mace-reed of the +marshy plains<br />Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ the shears:<br />And +when the fiery squadron rears<br />Bursting at speed, each mane appears<br />Even +as the white scarf of a fay<br />Floating upon their necks along the +heavens away.</p> +<p>O race of humankind, take shame!<br />For never yet a hand could +tame,<br />Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue<br />The mares +of the Camargue. I have known,<br />By treason snared, some captives +shown;<br />Expatriate from their native Rhone,<br />Led off, their +saline pastures far from view:</p> +<p>And on a day, with prompt rebound,<br />They have flung their riders +to the ground,<br />And at a single gallop, scouring free,<br />Wide-nostril’d +to the wind, twice ten<br />Of long marsh-leagues devour’d, and +then,<br />Back to the Vacarés again,<br />After ten years of +slavery just to breathe salt sea</p> +<p>For of this savage race unbent,<br />The ocean is the element.<br />Of +old escaped from Neptune’s car, full sure,<br />Still with the +white foam fleck’d are they,<br />And when the sea puffs black +from grey,<br />And ships part cables, loudly neigh<br />The stallions +of Camargue, all joyful in the roar;</p> +<p>And keen as a whip they lash and crack<br />Their tails that drag +the dust, and back<br />Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their +flesh, where he,<br />The God, drives deep his trident teeth,<br />Who +in one horror, above, beneath,<br />Bids storm and watery deluge seethe,<br />And +shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea.</p> +<p>Cant. iv.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A READING OF LIFE, AND OTHER POEMS ***</p> +<pre> + +******This file should be named rdlif10h.htm or rdlif10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, rdlif11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rdlif10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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