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diff --git a/1042-h/1042-h.htm b/1042-h/1042-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ed26531 --- /dev/null +++ b/1042-h/1042-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2866 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>A Reading of Life, by George Meredith</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +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: 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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