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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Poems by George Meredith, Volume 1
+#3 in our series by George Meredith
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+Poems by George Meredith - Volume 1
+
+by George Meredith
+
+July, 1998  [Etext #1381]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Poems by George Meredith, Volume 1
+*****This file should be named pmgm110.txt or pmgm110.zip******
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+
+
+Poems by George Meredith--Volume 1
+
+
+
+
+CHILLIANWALLAH
+
+
+
+Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!
+Where our brothers fought and bled,
+O thy name is natural music
+And a dirge above the dead!
+Though we have not been defeated,
+Though we can't be overcome,
+Still, whene'er thou art repeated,
+I would fain that grief were dumb.
+
+Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
+'Tis a name so sad and strange,
+Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings
+Ringing many a mournful change;
+But the wildness and the sorrow
+Have a meaning of their own -
+Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow
+Can relieve the dismal tone!
+
+Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
+'Tis a village dark and low,
+By the bloody Jhelum river
+Bridged by the foreboding foe;
+And across the wintry water
+He is ready to retreat,
+When the carnage and the slaughter
+Shall have paid for his defeat.
+
+Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
+'Tis a wild and dreary plain,
+Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,
+Matted with the gory stain.
+There the murder-mouthed artillery,
+In the deadly ambuscade,
+Wrought the thunder of its treachery
+On the skeleton brigade.
+
+Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
+When the night set in with rain,
+Came the savage plundering devils
+To their work among the slain;
+And the wounded and the dying
+In cold blood did share the doom
+Of their comrades round them lying,
+Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.
+
+Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
+Thou wilt be a doleful chord,
+And a mystic note of mourning
+That will need no chiming word;
+And that heart will leap with anguish
+Who may understand thee best;
+But the hopes of all will languish
+Till thy memory is at rest.
+
+
+
+THE DOE:  A FRAGMENT (From 'WANDERING WILLIE')
+
+
+
+And--'Yonder look! yoho! yoho!
+Nancy is off!' the farmer cried,
+Advancing by the river side,
+Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;--'So,
+My girl, who else could leap like that?
+So neatly! like a lady!  'Zounds!
+Look at her how she leads the hounds!'
+And waving his dusty beaver hat,
+He cheered across the chase-filled water,
+And clapt his arm about his daughter,
+And gave to Joan a courteous hug,
+And kiss that, like a stubborn plug
+From generous vats in vastness rounded,
+The inner wealth and spirit sounded:
+Eagerly pointing South, where, lo,
+The daintiest, fleetest-footed doe
+Led o'er the fields and thro' the furze
+Beyond:  her lively delicate ears
+Prickt up erect, and in her track
+A dappled lengthy-striding pack.
+
+Scarce had they cast eyes upon her,
+When every heart was wagered on her,
+And half in dread, and half delight,
+They watched her lovely bounding flight;
+As now across the flashing green,
+And now beneath the stately trees,
+And now far distant in the dene,
+She headed on with graceful ease:
+Hanging aloft with doubled knees,
+At times athwart some hedge or gate;
+And slackening pace by slow degrees,
+As for the foremost foe to wait.
+Renewing her outstripping rate
+Whene'er the hot pursuers neared,
+By garden wall and paled estate,
+Where clambering gazers whooped and cheered.
+Here winding under elm and oak,
+And slanting up the sunny hill:
+Splashing the water here like smoke
+Among the mill-holms round the mill.
+
+And--'Let her go; she shows her game,
+My Nancy girl, my pet and treasure!'
+The farmer sighed:  his eyes with pleasure
+Brimming:  ''Tis my daughter's name,
+My second daughter lying yonder.'
+And Willie's eye in search did wander,
+And caught at once, with moist regard,
+The white gleams of a grey churchyard.
+'Three weeks before my girl had gone,
+And while upon her pillows propped,
+She lay at eve; the weakling fawn -
+For still it seems a fawn just dropt
+A se'nnight--to my Nancy's bed
+I brought to make my girl a gift:
+The mothers of them both were dead:
+And both to bless it was my drift,
+By giving each a friend; not thinking
+How rapidly my girl was sinking.
+And I remember how, to pat
+Its neck, she stretched her hand so weak,
+And its cold nose against her cheek
+Pressed fondly:  and I fetched the mat
+To make it up a couch just by her,
+Where in the lone dark hours to lie:
+For neither dear old nurse nor I
+Would any single wish deny her.
+And there unto the last it lay;
+And in the pastures cared to play
+Little or nothing:  there its meals
+And milk I brought:  and even now
+The creature such affection feels
+For that old room that, when and how,
+'Tis strange to mark, it slinks and steals
+To get there, and all day conceals.
+And once when nurse who, since that time,
+Keeps house for me, was very sick,
+Waking upon the midnight chime,
+And listening to the stair-clock's click,
+I heard a rustling, half uncertain,
+Close against the dark bed-curtain:
+And while I thrust my leg to kick,
+And feel the phantom with my feet,
+A loving tongue began to lick
+My left hand lying on the sheet;
+And warm sweet breath upon me blew,
+And that 'twas Nancy then I knew.
+So, for her love, I had good cause
+To have the creature "Nancy" christened.'
+
+He paused, and in the moment's pause,
+His eyes and Willie's strangely glistened.
+Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hung
+With face averted, near enough
+To hear, and sob unheard; the young
+And careless ones had scampered off
+Meantime, and sought the loftiest place
+To beacon the approaching chase.
+
+'Daily upon the meads to browse,
+Goes Nancy with those dairy cows
+You see behind the clematis:
+And such a favourite she is,
+That when fatigued, and helter skelter,
+Among them from her foes to shelter,
+She dashes when the chase is over,
+They'll close her in and give her cover,
+And bend their horns against the hounds,
+And low, and keep them out of bounds!
+From the house dogs she dreads no harm,
+And is good friends with all the farm,
+Man, and bird, and beast, howbeit
+Their natures seem so opposite.
+And she is known for many a mile,
+And noted for her splendid style,
+For her clear leap and quick slight hoof;
+Welcome she is in many a roof.
+And if I say, I love her, man!
+I say but little:  her fine eyes full
+Of memories of my girl, at Yule
+And May-time, make her dearer than
+Dumb brute to men has been, I think.
+So dear I do not find her dumb.
+I know her ways, her slightest wink,
+So well; and to my hand she'll come,
+Sidelong, for food or a caress,
+Just like a loving human thing.
+Nor can I help, I do confess,
+Some touch of human sorrowing
+To think there may be such a doubt
+That from the next world she'll be shut out,
+And parted from me!  And well I mind
+How, when my girl's last moments came,
+Her soft eyes very soft and kind,
+She joined her hands and prayed the same,
+That she "might meet her father, mother,
+Sister Bess, and each dear brother,
+And with them, if it might be, one
+Who was her last companion."
+Meaning the fawn--the doe you mark -
+For my bay mare was then a foal,
+And time has passed since then:- but hark!'
+
+For like the shrieking of a soul
+Shut in a tomb, a darkened cry
+Of inward-wailing agony
+Surprised them, and all eyes on each
+Fixed in the mute-appealing speech
+Of self-reproachful apprehension:
+Knowing not what to think or do:
+But Joan, recovering first, broke through
+The instantaneous suspension,
+And knelt upon the ground, and guessed
+The bitterness at a glance, and pressed
+Into the comfort of her breast
+The deep-throed quaking shape that drooped
+In misery's wilful aggravation,
+Before the farmer as he stooped,
+Touched with accusing consternation:
+Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:-
+'Not me! not me!  Oh, no, no, no!
+Not me!  God will not take me in!
+Nothing can wipe away my sin!
+I shall not see her:  you will go;
+You and all that she loves so:
+Not me! not me!  Oh, no, no, no!'
+Colourless, her long black hair,
+Like seaweed in a tempest tossed
+Tangling astray, to Joan's care
+She yielded like a creature lost:
+Yielded, drooping toward the ground,
+As doth a shape one half-hour drowned,
+And heaved from sea with mast and spar,
+All dark of its immortal star.
+And on that tender heart, inured
+To flatter basest grief, and fight
+Despair upon the brink of night,
+She suffered herself to sink, assured
+Of refuge; and her ear inclined
+To comfort; and her thoughts resigned
+To counsel; her wild hair let brush
+From off her weeping brows; and shook
+With many little sobs that took
+Deeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs,
+Long sighs, they sank; and to the 'hush!'
+Of Joan's gentle chide, she sought
+Childlike to check them as she ought,
+Looking up at her infantwise.
+And Willie, gazing on them both,
+Shivered with bliss through blood and brain,
+To see the darling of his troth
+Like a maternal angel strain
+The sinful and the sinless child
+At once on either breast, and there
+In peace and promise reconciled
+Unite them:  nor could Nature's care
+With subtler sweet beneficence
+Have fed the springs of penitence,
+Still keeping true, though harshly tried,
+The vital prop of human pride.
+
+
+
+BEAUTY ROHTRAUT (From Moricke)
+
+
+
+What is the name of King Ringang's daughter?
+Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
+And what does she do the livelong day,
+Since she dare not knit and spin alway?
+O hunting and fishing is ever her play!
+And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!
+I'd hunt and fish right merrily!
+Be silent, heart!
+
+And it chanced that, after this some time, -
+Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut, -
+The boy in the Castle has gained access,
+And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress,
+To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;
+And, O! that a king's son I might be!
+Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.
+Hush! hush! my heart.
+
+Under a grey old oak they sat,
+Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!
+She laughs:  'Why look you so slyly at me?
+If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.'
+Cried the breathless boy, 'kiss thee?'
+But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;
+And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth.
+Down! down! mad heart.
+
+Then slowly and silently they rode home, -
+Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
+The boy was lost in his delight:
+'And, wert thou Empress this very night,
+I would not heed or feel the blight;
+Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist
+How Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd.
+Hush! hush! wild heart.'
+
+
+
+THE OLIVE BRANCH
+
+
+
+A dove flew with an Olive Branch;
+It crossed the sea and reached the shore,
+And on a ship about to launch
+Dropped down the happy sign it bore.
+
+'An omen' rang the glad acclaim!
+The Captain stooped and picked it up,
+'Be then the Olive Branch her name,'
+Cried she who flung the christening cup.
+
+The vessel took the laughing tides;
+It was a joyous revelry
+To see her dashing from her sides
+The rough, salt kisses of the sea.
+
+And forth into the bursting foam
+She spread her sail and sped away,
+The rolling surge her restless home,
+Her incense wreaths the showering spray.
+
+Far out, and where the riot waves
+Run mingling in tumultuous throngs,
+She danced above a thousand graves,
+And heard a thousand briny songs.
+
+Her mission with her manly crew,
+Her flag unfurl'd, her title told,
+She took the Old World to the New,
+And brought the New World to the Old.
+
+Secure of friendliest welcomings,
+She swam the havens sheening fair;
+Secure upon her glad white wings,
+She fluttered on the ocean air.
+
+To her no more the bastioned fort
+Shot out its swarthy tongue of fire;
+From bay to bay, from port to port,
+Her coming was the world's desire.
+
+And tho' the tempest lashed her oft,
+And tho' the rocks had hungry teeth,
+And lightnings split the masts aloft,
+And thunders shook the planks beneath,
+
+And tho' the storm, self-willed and blind,
+Made tatters of her dauntless sail,
+And all the wildness of the wind
+Was loosed on her, she did not fail;
+
+But gallantly she ploughed the main,
+And gloriously her welcome pealed,
+And grandly shone to sky and plain
+The goodly bales her decks revealed;
+
+Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes
+Where blow the gusts of balm and spice,
+Or where the black blockaded ribs
+Are jammed 'mongst ghostly fleets of ice,
+
+Or where upon the curling hills
+Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,
+Or where the hand of labour drills
+The stubbornness of earth to shape;
+
+Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,
+And handicrafts and shapely wares,
+And spinnings of the hermit worms,
+And fruits that bloom by lions' lairs.
+
+Come, read the meaning of the deep!
+The use of winds and waters learn!
+'Tis not to make the mother weep
+For sons that never will return;
+
+'Tis not to make the nations show
+Contempt for all whom seas divide;
+'Tis not to pamper war and woe,
+Nor feed traditionary pride;
+
+'Tis not to make the floating bulk
+Mask death upon its slippery deck,
+Itself in turn a shattered hulk,
+A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.
+
+It is to knit with loving lip
+The interests of land to land;
+To join in far-seen fellowship
+The tropic and the polar strand.
+
+It is to make that foaming Strength
+Whose rebel forces wrestle still
+Thro' all his boundaried breadth and length
+Become a vassal to our will.
+
+It is to make the various skies,
+And all the various fruits they vaunt,
+And all the dowers of earth we prize,
+Subservient to our household want.
+
+And more, for knowledge crowns the gain
+Of intercourse with other souls,
+And Wisdom travels not in vain
+The plunging spaces of the poles.
+
+The wild Atlantic's weltering gloom,
+Earth-clasping seas of North and South,
+The Baltic with its amber spume,
+The Caspian with its frozen mouth;
+
+The broad Pacific, basking bright,
+And girdling lands of lustrous growth,
+Vast continents and isles of light,
+Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;
+
+She visits these, traversing each;
+They ripen to the common sun;
+Thro' diverse forms and different speech,
+The world's humanity is one.
+
+O may her voice have power to say
+How soon the wrecking discords cease,
+When every wandering wave is gay
+With golden argosies of peace!
+
+Now when the ark of human fate,
+Long baffled by the wayward wind,
+Is drifting with its peopled freight,
+Safe haven on the heights to find;
+
+Safe haven from the drowning slime
+Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath; -
+To plant again the foot of Time
+Upon a purer, firmer path;
+
+'Tis now the hour to probe the ground,
+To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,
+The fathoms of the deep to sound,
+And send abroad the missioned bird,
+
+On strengthened wing for evermore,
+Let Science, swiftly as she can,
+Fly seaward on from shore to shore,
+And bind the links of man to man;
+
+And like that fair propitious Dove
+Bless future fleets about to launch;
+Make every freight a freight of love,
+And every ship an Olive Branch.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Love within the lover's breast
+Burns like Hesper in the west,
+O'er the ashes of the sun,
+Till the day and night are done;
+Then when dawn drives up her car -
+Lo! it is the morning star.
+
+Love! thy love pours down on mine
+As the sunlight on the vine,
+As the snow-rill on the vale,
+As the salt breeze in the sail;
+As the song unto the bird,
+On my lips thy name is heard.
+
+As a dewdrop on the rose
+In thy heart my passion glows,
+As a skylark to the sky
+Up into thy breast I fly;
+As a sea-shell of the sea
+Ever shall I sing of thee.
+
+
+
+THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP
+
+
+
+The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;
+It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;
+And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,
+Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.
+The sun's betrothing kiss it never knows,
+Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;
+But ever in a placid, pure repose,
+More like a spirit with its look serene,
+Droops its pale cheek veined thro' with infant green.
+
+Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,
+Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;
+The year's own darling and the Summer's Queen!
+Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.
+Much of that early prophet look she shows,
+Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,
+As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;
+Like a soft evening over sunset snows,
+Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.
+
+Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair
+In all that glads the eye and charms the air;
+In all that wakes emotions in the mind
+And sows sweet sympathies for human kind.
+Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,
+They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;
+Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,
+Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!
+
+For each, fulfilling nature's law, fulfils
+Itself and its own aspirations pure;
+Living and dying; letting faith ensure
+New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.
+Each perfect in its place; and each content
+With that perfection which its being meant:
+Divided not by months that intervene,
+But linked by all the flowers that bud between.
+Forever smiling thro' its season brief,
+The one in glory and the one in grief:
+Forever painting to our museful sight,
+How lowlihead and loveliness unite.
+
+Born from the first blind yearning of the earth
+To be a mother and give happy birth,
+Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,
+Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;
+And ere the snows have melted from the grass,
+And not a strip of greensward doth appear,
+Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,
+Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass!
+While in the ripe enthronement of the year,
+Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air
+With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath, -
+Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,
+And starr'd with dews upon her forehead clear,
+Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be
+Who takes the land's devotion as her fee, -
+The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,
+Nature's most beautiful and perfect flower.
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF WINTER
+
+
+
+When April with her wild blue eye
+Comes dancing over the grass,
+And all the crimson buds so shy
+Peep out to see her pass;
+As lightly she loosens her showery locks
+And flutters her rainy wings;
+Laughingly stoops
+To the glass of the stream,
+And loosens and loops
+Her hair by the gleam,
+While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks
+Go frolicking round in rings; -
+Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,
+Turns on his back and prepares to die,
+For he cannot live longer under the sky.
+
+Down the valleys glittering green,
+Down from the hills in snowy rills,
+He melts between the border sheen
+And leaps the flowery verges!
+He cannot choose but brighten their hues,
+And tho' he would creep, he fain must leap,
+For the quick Spring spirit urges.
+Down the vale and down the dale
+He leaps and lights, till his moments fail,
+Buried in blossoms red and pale,
+While the sweet birds sing his dirges!
+
+O Winter!  I'd live that life of thine,
+With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,
+And never a song my whole life long, -
+Were such delicious burial mine!
+To die and be buried, and so remain
+A wandering brook in April's train,
+Fixing my dying eyes for aye
+On the dawning brows of maiden May.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+The moon is alone in the sky
+As thou in my soul;
+The sea takes her image to lie
+Where the white ripples roll
+All night in a dream,
+With the light of her beam,
+Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.
+The pebbles speak low
+In the ebb and the flow,
+As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:
+Nought other stirred
+Save my heart all unheard
+Beating to bliss that is past evermore.
+
+
+
+JOHN LACKLAND
+
+
+
+A wicked man is bad enough on earth;
+But O the baleful lustre of a chief
+Once pledged in tyranny!  O star of dearth
+Darkly illumining a nation's grief!
+How many men have worn thee on their brows!
+Alas for them and us!  God's precious gift
+Of gracious dispensation got by theft -
+The damning form of false unholy vows!
+The thief of God and man must have his fee:
+And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince -
+Basest of England's banes before or since!
+Thrice traitor, coward, thief!  O thou shalt be
+The historic warning, trampled and abhorr'd
+Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!
+
+
+
+THE SLEEPING CITY
+
+
+
+A Princess in the eastern tale
+Paced thro' a marble city pale,
+And saw in ghastly shapes of stone
+The sculptured life she breathed alone;
+
+Saw, where'er her eye might range,
+Herself the only child of change;
+And heard her echoed footfall chime
+Between Oblivion and Time;
+
+And in the squares where fountains played,
+And up the spiral balustrade,
+Along the drowsy corridors,
+Even to the inmost sleeping floors,
+
+Surveyed in wonder chilled with dread
+The seemingness of Death, not dead;
+Life's semblance but without its storm,
+And silence frosting every form;
+
+Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves,
+Like suddenly arrested waves
+About to sink, about to rise, -
+Strange meaning in their stricken eyes;
+
+And cloths and couches live with flame
+Of leopards fierce and lions tame,
+And hunters in the jungle reed,
+Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;
+
+Dumb chambers hushed with fold on fold,
+And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold;
+White casements o'er embroidered seats,
+Looking on solitudes of streets, -
+
+On palaces and column'd towers,
+Unconscious of the stony hours;
+Harsh gateways startled at a sound,
+With burning lamps all burnish'd round; -
+
+Surveyed in awe this wealth and state,
+Touched by the finger of a Fate,
+And drew with slow-awakening fear
+The sternness of the atmosphere; -
+
+And gradually, with stealthier foot,
+Became herself a thing as mute,
+And listened,--while with swift alarm
+Her alien heart shrank from the charm;
+
+Yet as her thoughts dilating rose,
+Took glory in the great repose,
+And over every postured form
+Spread lava-like and brooded warm, -
+
+And fixed on every frozen face
+Beheld the record of its race,
+And in each chiselled feature knew
+The stormy life that once blushed thro'; -
+
+The ever-present of the past
+There written; all that lightened last,
+Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair,
+Beauty and rage, all written there; -
+
+Enchanted Passions! whose pale doom
+Is never flushed by blight or bloom,
+But sentinelled by silent orbs,
+Whose light the pallid scene absorbs. -
+
+Like such a one I pace along
+This City with its sleeping throng;
+Like her with dread and awe, that turns
+To rapture, and sublimely yearns; -
+
+For now the quiet stars look down
+On lights as quiet as their own;
+The streets that groaned with traffic show
+As if with silence paved below;
+
+The latest revellers are at peace,
+The signs of in-door tumult cease,
+From gay saloon and low resort,
+Comes not one murmur or report:
+
+The clattering chariot rolls not by,
+The windows show no waking eye,
+The houses smoke not, and the air
+Is clear, and all the midnight fair.
+
+The centre of the striving world,
+Round which the human fate is curled,
+To which the future crieth wild, -
+Is pillowed like a cradled child.
+
+The palace roof that guards a crown,
+The mansion swathed in dreamy down,
+Hovel, court, and alley-shed,
+Sleep in the calmness of the dead.
+
+Now while the many-motived heart
+Lies hushed--fireside and busy mart,
+And mortal pulses beat the tune
+That charms the calm cold ear o' the moon
+
+Whose yellowing crescent down the West
+Leans listening, now when every breast
+Its basest or its purest heaves,
+The soul that joys, the soul that grieves; -
+
+While Fame is crowning happy brows
+That day will blindly scorn, while vows
+Of anguished love, long hidden, speak
+From faltering tongue and flushing cheek
+
+The language only known to dreams,
+Rich eloquence of rosy themes!
+While on the Beauty's folded mouth
+Disdain just wrinkles baby youth;
+
+While Poverty dispenses alms
+To outcasts, bread, and healing balms;
+While old Mammon knows himself
+The greatest beggar for his pelf;
+
+While noble things in darkness grope,
+The Statesman's aim, the Poet's hope;
+The Patriot's impulse gathers fire,
+And germs of future fruits aspire; -
+
+Now while dumb nature owns its links,
+And from one common fountain drinks,
+Methinks in all around I see
+This Picture in Eternity; -
+
+A marbled City planted there
+With all its pageants and despair;
+A peopled hush, a Death not dead,
+But stricken with Medusa's head; -
+
+And in the Gorgon's glance for aye
+The lifeless immortality
+Reveals in sculptured calmness all
+Its latest life beyond recall.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF CHAUCER
+
+
+
+Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy
+As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere.
+Tender to tearfulness--childlike, and manly, and motherly;
+Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English
+ground.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF SPENSER
+
+
+
+Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness;
+Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance:
+Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces;
+Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst ladies and
+knights.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; -
+Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays;
+Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it;
+Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great
+human heart.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF MILTON
+
+
+
+Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration,
+Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm,
+Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen
+The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright
+spheres.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY
+
+
+
+Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyrean
+Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!
+Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing Orient
+Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE
+
+
+
+A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting,
+And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed -
+Renewed thro' all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight,
+Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF SHELLEY
+
+
+
+See'st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending
+Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn?
+Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters -
+Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH
+
+
+
+A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic,
+That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky.
+The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions,
+Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.
+
+
+
+THE POETRY OF KEATS
+
+
+
+The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley,
+Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound,
+Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion
+That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.
+
+
+
+VIOLETS
+
+
+
+Violets, shy violets!
+How many hearts with you compare!
+Who hide themselves in thickest green,
+And thence, unseen,
+Ravish the enraptured air
+With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!
+
+Violets, shy violets!
+Human hearts to me shall be
+Viewless violets in the grass,
+And as I pass,
+Odours and sweet imagery
+Will wait on mine and gladden me!
+
+
+
+ANGELIC LOVE
+
+
+
+Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips
+To meet its earthly mate;
+Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse
+Can dare to join its fate
+With one beloved devoted human heart,
+And share with it the passion and the smart,
+The undying bliss
+Of its most fleeting kiss;
+The fading grace
+Of its most sweet embrace:-
+Angelic love, heroic love!
+Whose birth can only be above,
+Whose wandering must be on earth,
+Whose haven where it first had birth!
+Love that can part with all but its own worth,
+And joy in every sacrifice
+That beautifies its Paradise!
+And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,
+With earnest tenderness itself consign,
+And creeping up deliriously entwine
+Its dear delicious arms
+Round the beloved being!
+With fair unfolded charms,
+All-trusting, and all-seeing, -
+Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine!
+While to the panting heart's dry yearning drouth
+Buds the rich dewy mouth -
+Tenderly uplifted,
+Like two rose-leaves drifted
+Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South!
+Such love, such love is thine,
+Such heart is mine,
+O thou of mortal visions most divine!
+
+
+
+TWILIGHT MUSIC
+
+
+
+Know you the low pervading breeze
+That softly sings
+In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,
+As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?
+And have you marked their still degrees
+Of ebbing melody, like the strings
+Of a silver harp swept by a spirit's hand
+In some strange glimmering land,
+'Mid gushing springs,
+And glistenings
+Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!
+And have you marked in that still time
+The chariots of those shining cars
+Brighten upon the hushing dark,
+And bent to hark
+That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,
+Pause in the dilating lustre
+Of the spheral cluster;
+Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
+As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!
+And felt, despite earth's jarring wars,
+When day is done
+And dead the sun,
+Still a voice divine can sing,
+Still is there sympathy can bring
+A whisper from the stars!
+Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know
+How like a tree I tremble to the tones
+Of your sweet voice!
+How keenly I rejoice
+When in me with sweet motions slow
+The spiritual music ebbs and moans -
+Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,
+Dies in the light of its own paradise, -
+Dies, and relives eternal from its death,
+Immortal melodies in each deep breath;
+Sweeps thro' my being, bearing up to thee
+Myself, the weight of its eternity;
+Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,
+It marries music with the human lyre,
+Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.
+
+
+
+REQUIEM
+
+
+
+Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
+Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
+Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
+In patience and peace thou art gone--to thy grave!
+Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
+Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.
+
+Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
+How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
+Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
+At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
+Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
+Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!
+
+The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
+The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
+The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
+All--all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
+The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
+Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.
+
+The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
+And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
+No last loving token of wedded love broken,
+No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
+Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
+Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.
+
+
+
+THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS
+
+
+
+Take thy lute and sing
+By the ruined castle walls,
+Where the torrent-foam falls,
+And long weeds wave:
+Take thy lute and sing,
+O'er the grey ancestral grave!
+Daughter of a King,
+Tune thy string.
+
+Sing of happy hours,
+In the roar of rushing time;
+Till all the echoes chime
+To the days gone by;
+Sing of passing hours
+To the ever-present sky; -
+Weep--and let the showers
+Wake thy flowers.
+
+Sing of glories gone:-
+No more the blazoned fold
+From the banner is unrolled;
+The gold sun is set.
+Sing his glory gone,
+For thy voice may charm him yet;
+Daughter of the dawn,
+He is gone!
+
+Pour forth all thy grief!
+Passionately sweep the chords,
+Wed them quivering to thy words;
+Wild words of wail!
+Shed thy withered grief -
+But hold not Autumn to thy bale;
+The eddy of the leaf
+Must be brief!
+
+Sing up to the night:
+Hard it is for streaming tears
+To read the calmness of the spheres;
+Coldly they shine;
+Sing up to their light;
+They have views thou may'st divine -
+Gain prophetic sight
+From their light!
+
+On the windy hills
+Lo, the little harebell leans
+On the spire-grass that it queens,
+With bonnet blue;
+Trusting love instils
+Love and subject reverence true;
+Learn what love instils
+On the hills!
+
+By the bare wayside
+Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks,
+Softly touch'd with pale green streaks,
+Soon, soon, to die;
+On the clothed hedgeside
+Bands of rosy beauties vie,
+In their prophesied
+Summer pride.
+
+From the snowdrop learn;
+Not in her pale life lives she,
+But in her blushing prophecy.
+Thus be thy hopes,
+Living but to yearn
+Upwards to the hidden scopes; -
+Even within the urn
+Let them burn!
+
+Heroes of thy race -
+Warriors with golden crowns,
+Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns
+Stare thee to stone;
+Matrons of thy race
+Pass before thee making moan;
+Full of solemn grace
+Is their pace.
+
+Piteous their despair!
+Piteous their looks forlorn!
+Terrible their ghostly scorn!
+Still hold thou fast; -
+Heed not their despair! -
+Thou art thy future, not thy past;
+Let them glance and glare
+Thro' the air.
+
+Thou the ruin's bud,
+Be not that moist rich-smelling weed
+With its arras-sembled brede,
+And ruin-haunting stalk;
+Thou the ruin's bud,
+Be still the rose that lights the walk,
+Mix thy fragrant blood
+With the flood!
+
+
+
+THE RAPE OF AURORA
+
+
+
+Never, O never,
+Since dewy sweet Flora
+Was ravished by Zephyr,
+Was such a thing heard
+In the valleys so hollow!
+Till rosy Aurora,
+Uprising as ever,
+Bright Phosphor to follow,
+Pale Phoebe to sever,
+Was caught like a bird
+To the breast of Apollo!
+
+Wildly she flutters,
+And flushes all over
+With passionate mutters
+Of shame to the hush
+Of his amorous whispers:
+But O such a lover
+Must win when he utters,
+Thro' rosy red lispers,
+The pains that discover
+The wishes that gush
+From the torches of Hesperus.
+
+One finger just touching
+The Orient chamber,
+Unflooded the gushing
+Of light that illumed
+All her lustrous unveiling.
+On clouds of glow amber,
+Her limbs richly blushing,
+She lay sweetly wailing,
+In odours that gloomed
+On the God as he bloomed
+O'er her loveliness paling.
+
+Great Pan in his covert
+Beheld the rare glistening,
+The cry of the love-hurt,
+The sigh and the kiss
+Of the latest close mingling;
+But love, thought he, listening,
+Will not do a dove hurt,
+I know,--and a tingling,
+Latent with bliss,
+Prickt thro' him, I wis,
+For the Nymph he was singling.
+
+
+
+SOUTH-WEST WIND IN THE WOODLAND
+
+
+
+The silence of preluded song -
+AEolian silence charms the woods;
+Each tree a harp, whose foliaged strings
+Are waiting for the master's touch
+To sweep them into storms of joy,
+Stands mute and whispers not; the birds
+Brood dumb in their foreboding nests,
+Save here and there a chirp or tweet,
+That utters fear or anxious love,
+Or when the ouzel sends a swift
+Half warble, shrinking back again
+His golden bill, or when aloud
+The storm-cock warns the dusking hills
+And villages and valleys round:
+For lo, beneath those ragged clouds
+That skirt the opening west, a stream
+Of yellow light and windy flame
+Spreads lengthening southward, and the sky
+Begins to gloom, and o'er the ground
+A moan of coming blasts creeps low
+And rustles in the crisping grass;
+Till suddenly with mighty arms
+Outspread, that reach the horizon round,
+The great South-West drives o'er the earth,
+And loosens all his roaring robes
+Behind him, over heath and moor.
+He comes upon the neck of night,
+Like one that leaps a fiery steed
+Whose keen black haunches quivering shine
+With eagerness and haste, that needs
+No spur to make the dark leagues fly!
+Whose eyes are meteors of speed;
+Whose mane is as a flashing foam;
+Whose hoofs are travelling thunder-shocks; -
+He comes, and while his growing gusts,
+Wild couriers of his reckless course,
+Are whistling from the daggered gorse,
+And hurrying over fern and broom,
+Midway, far off, he feigns to halt
+And gather in his streaming train.
+
+Now, whirring like an eagle's wing
+Preparing for a wide blue flight;
+Now, flapping like a sail that tacks
+And chides the wet bewildered mast;
+Now, screaming like an anguish'd thing
+Chased close by some down-breathing beak;
+Now, wailing like a breaking heart,
+That will not wholly break, but hopes
+With hope that knows itself in vain;
+Now, threatening like a storm-charged cloud;
+Now, cooing like a woodland dove;
+Now, up again in roar and wrath
+High soaring and wide sweeping; now,
+With sudden fury dashing down
+Full-force on the awaiting woods.
+
+Long waited there, for aspens frail
+That tinkle with a silver bell,
+To warn the Zephyr of their love,
+When danger is at hand, and wake
+The neighbouring boughs, surrendering all
+Their prophet harmony of leaves,
+Had caught his earliest windward thought,
+And told it trembling; naked birk
+Down showering her dishevelled hair,
+And like a beauty yielding up
+Her fate to all the elements,
+Had swayed in answer; hazels close,
+Thick brambles and dark brushwood tufts,
+And briared brakes that line the dells
+With shaggy beetling brows, had sung
+Shrill music, while the tattered flaws
+Tore over them, and now the whole
+Tumultuous concords, seized at once
+With savage inspiration,--pine,
+And larch, and beech, and fir, and thorn,
+And ash, and oak, and oakling, rave
+And shriek, and shout, and whirl, and toss,
+And stretch their arms, and split, and crack,
+And bend their stems, and bow their heads,
+And grind, and groan, and lion-like
+Roar to the echo-peopled hills
+And ravenous wilds, and crake-like cry
+With harsh delight, and cave-like call
+With hollow mouth, and harp-like thrill
+With mighty melodies, sublime,
+From clumps of column'd pines that wave
+A lofty anthem to the sky,
+Fit music for a prophet's soul -
+And like an ocean gathering power,
+And murmuring deep, while down below
+Reigns calm profound;--not trembling now
+The aspens, but like freshening waves
+That fall upon a shingly beach; -
+And round the oak a solemn roll
+Of organ harmony ascends,
+And in the upper foliage sounds
+
+A symphony of distant seas.
+The voice of nature is abroad
+This night; she fills the air with balm;
+Her mystery is o'er the land;
+And who that hears her now and yields
+His being to her yearning tones,
+And seats his soul upon her wings,
+And broadens o'er the wind-swept world
+With her, will gather in the flight
+More knowledge of her secret, more
+Delight in her beneficence,
+Than hours of musing, or the lore
+That lives with men could ever give!
+Nor will it pass away when morn
+Shall look upon the lulling leaves,
+And woodland sunshine, Eden-sweet,
+Dreams o'er the paths of peaceful shade; -
+For every elemental power
+Is kindred to our hearts, and once
+Acknowledged, wedded, once embraced,
+Once taken to the unfettered sense,
+Once claspt into the naked life,
+The union is eternal.
+
+
+
+WILL O' THE WISP
+
+
+
+Follow me, follow me,
+Over brake and under tree,
+Thro' the bosky tanglery,
+Brushwood and bramble!
+Follow me, follow me,
+Laugh and leap and scramble!
+Follow, follow,
+Hill and hollow,
+Fosse and burrow,
+Fen and furrow,
+Down into the bulrush beds,
+'Midst the reeds and osier heads,
+In the rushy soaking damps,
+Where the vapours pitch their camps,
+Follow me, follow me,
+For a midnight ramble!
+O! what a mighty fog,
+What a merry night O ho!
+Follow, follow, nigher, nigher -
+Over bank, and pond, and briar,
+Down into the croaking ditches,
+Rotten log,
+Spotted frog,
+Beetle bright
+With crawling light,
+What a joy O ho!
+Deep into the purple bog -
+What a joy O ho!
+Where like hosts of puckered witches
+All the shivering agues sit
+Warming hands and chafing feet,
+By the blue marsh-hovering oils:
+O the fools for all their moans!
+Not a forest mad with fire
+Could still their teeth, or warm their bones,
+Or loose them from their chilly coils.
+What a clatter,
+How they chatter!
+Shrink and huddle,
+All a muddle!
+What a joy O ho!
+Down we go, down we go,
+What a joy O ho!
+Soon shall I be down below,
+Plunging with a grey fat friar,
+Hither, thither, to and fro,
+Breathing mists and whisking lamps,
+Plashing in the shiny swamps;
+While my cousin Lantern Jack,
+With cook ears and cunning eyes,
+Turns him round upon his back,
+Daubs him oozy green and black,
+Sits upon his rolling size,
+Where he lies, where he lies,
+Groaning full of sack -
+Staring with his great round eyes!
+What a joy O ho!
+Sits upon him in the swamps
+Breathing mists and whisking lamps!
+What a joy O ho!
+Such a lad is Lantern Jack,
+When he rides the black nightmare
+Through the fens, and puts a glare
+In the friar's track.
+Such a frolic lad, good lack!
+To turn a friar on his back,
+Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.
+Lay him sprawling, smack!
+Such a lad is Lantern Jack!
+Such a tricksy lad, good lack!
+What a joy O ho!
+Follow me, follow me,
+Where he sits, and you shall see!
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Fair and false!  No dawn will greet
+Thy waking beauty as of old;
+The little flower beneath thy feet
+Is alien to thy smile so cold;
+The merry bird flown up to meet
+Young morning from his nest i' the wheat
+Scatters his joy to wood and wold,
+But scorns the arrogance of gold.
+
+False and fair!  I scarce know why,
+But standing in the lonely air,
+And underneath the blessed sky,
+I plead for thee in my despair; -
+For thee cut off, both heart and eye
+From living truth; thy spring quite dry;
+For thee, that heaven my thought may share,
+Forget--how false! and think--how fair!
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Two wedded lovers watched the rising moon,
+That with her strange mysterious beauty glowing,
+Over misty hills and waters flowing,
+Crowned the long twilight loveliness of June:
+And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,
+The solemn secret of fist love did wake.
+
+Above the hills the blushing orb arose;
+Her shape encircled by a radiant bower,
+In which the nightingale with charmed power
+Poured forth enchantment o'er the dark repose:
+And thus in me, and thus in me, they said,
+Earth's mists did with the sweet new spirit wed.
+
+Far up the sky with ever purer beam,
+Upon the throne of night the moon was seated,
+And down the valley glens the shades retreated,
+And silver light was on the open stream.
+And thus in me, and thus in me, they sighed,
+Aspiring Love has hallowed Passion's tide.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+I cannot lose thee for a day,
+But like a bird with restless wing
+My heart will find thee far away,
+And on thy bosom fall and sing,
+My nest is here, my rest is here; -
+And in the lull of wind and rain,
+Fresh voices make a sweet refrain,
+'His rest is there, his nest is there.'
+
+With thee the wind and sky are fair,
+But parted, both are strange and dark;
+And treacherous the quiet air
+That holds me singing like a lark,
+O shield my love, strong arm above!
+Till in the hush of wind and rain,
+Fresh voices make a rich refrain,
+'The arm above will shield thy love.'
+
+
+
+DAPHNE
+
+
+
+Musing on the fate of Daphne,
+Many feelings urged my breast,
+For the God so keen desiring,
+And the Nymph so deep distrest.
+
+Never flashed thro' sylvan valley
+Visions so divinely fair!
+He with early ardour glowing,
+She with rosy anguish rare.
+
+Only still more sweet and lovely
+For those terrors on her brows,
+Those swift glances wild and brilliant,
+Those delicious panting vows.
+
+Timidly the timid shoulders
+Shrinking from the fervid hand!
+Dark the tide of hair back-flowing
+From the blue-veined temples bland!
+
+Lovely, too, divine Apollo
+In the speed of his pursuit;
+With his eye an azure lustre,
+And his voice a summer lute!
+
+Looking like some burnished eagle
+Hovering o'er a fluttered bird;
+Not unseen of silver Naiad,
+And of wistful Dryad heard!
+
+Many a morn the naked beauty
+Saw her bright reflection drown
+In the flowing smooth-faced river,
+While the god came sheening down.
+
+Down from Pindus bright Peneus
+Tells its muse-melodious source;
+Sacred is its fountained birthplace,
+And the Orient floods its course.
+
+Many a morn the sunny darling
+Saw the rising chariot-rays,
+From the winding river-reaches,
+Mellowing in amber haze.
+
+Thro' the flaming mountain gorges
+Lo, the River leaps the plain;
+Like a wild god-stridden courser,
+Tossing high its foamy mane.
+
+Then he swims thro' laurelled sunlight,
+Full of all sensations sweet,
+Misty with his morning incense,
+To the mirrored maiden's feet!
+
+Wet and bright the dinting pebbles
+Shine where oft she paused and stood;
+All her dreamy warmth revolving,
+While the chilly waters wooed.
+
+Like to rosy-born Aurora,
+Glowing freshly into view,
+When her doubtful foot she ventures
+On the first cold morning blue.
+
+White as that Thessalian lily,
+Fairest Tempe's fairest flower,
+Lo, the tall Peneian virgin
+Stands beneath her bathing bower.
+
+There the laurell'd wreaths o'erarching
+Crown'd the dainty shuddering maid;
+There the dark prophetic laurel
+Kiss'd her with its sister shade.
+
+There the young green glistening leaflets
+Hush'd with love their breezy peal;
+There the little opening flowerets
+Blush'd beneath her vermeil heel!
+
+There among the conscious arbours
+Sounds of soft tumultuous wail,
+Mysteries of love, melodious,
+Came upon the lyric gale!
+
+Breathings of a deep enchantment,
+Effluence of immortal grace,
+Flitted round her faltering footstep,
+Spread a balm about her face!
+
+Witless of the enamour'd presence,
+Like a dreamy lotus bud
+From its drowsy stem down-drooping,
+Gazed she in the glowing flood.
+
+Softly sweet with fluttering presage,
+Felt she that ethereal sense,
+Drinking charms of love delirious,
+Reaping bliss of love intense!
+
+All the air was thrill'd with sunrise,
+Birds made music of her name,
+And the god-impregnate water
+Claspt her image ere she came.
+
+Richer for that glance unconscious!
+Dearer for that soft dismay!
+And the sudden self-possession!
+And the smile as bright as day!
+
+Plunging 'mid her scattered tresses,
+With her blue invoking eyes;
+See her like a star descending!
+Like a rosebud see her rise!
+
+Like a rosebud in the morning
+Dashing off its jewell'd dews,
+Ere unfolding all its fragrance
+It is gathered by the muse!
+
+Beauteous in the foamy laughter
+Bubbling round her shrinking waist,
+Lo! from locks and lips and eyelids
+Rain the glittering pearl-drops chaste!
+
+And about the maiden rapture
+Still the ruddy ripples play'd,
+Ebbing round in startled circlets
+When her arms began to wade;
+
+Flowing in like tides attracted
+To the glowing crescent shine!
+Clasping her ambrosial whiteness
+Like an Autumn-tinted vine!
+
+Sinking low with love's emotion!
+Levying with look and tone
+All love's rosy arts to mimic
+Cytherea's magic zone!
+
+Trembling up with adoration
+To the crimson daisy tip
+Budding from the snowy bosom -
+Fainter than the rose-red lip!
+
+Rising in a storm of wavelets,
+That for shelter, feigning fright,
+Prest to those twin-heaving havens,
+Harbour'd there beneath her light;
+
+Gleaming in a whirl of eddies
+Round her lucid throat and neck;
+Eddying in a gleam of dimples
+Up against her bloomy cheek;
+
+Bribing all the breezy water
+With rich warmth, the nymph to keep
+In a self-imprison'd plaisance,
+Tempting her from deep to deep.
+
+Till at last delirious passion
+Thrill'd the god to wild excess,
+And the fervour of a moment
+Made divinity confess;
+
+And he stood in all his glory!
+But so radiant, being near,
+That her eyes were frozen on him
+In a fascinated fear!
+
+All with orient splendour shining,
+All with roseate birth aglow,
+Gleam'd the golden god before her,
+With his golden crescent bow.
+
+Soon the dazzled light subsided,
+And he seem'd a beauteous youth,
+Form'd to gain the maiden's murmurs,
+And to pledge the vows of truth.
+
+Ah! that thus he had continued!
+O, that such for her had been!
+Graceful with all godlike beauty,
+But so humanly serene!
+
+Cheeks, and mouth, and mellow ringlets,
+Bounteous as the mid-day beam;
+Pleading looks and wistful tremour,
+Tender as a maiden's dream!
+
+Palms that like a bird's throbb'd bosom
+Palpitate with eagerness,
+Lips, the bridals of the roses,
+Dewy sweet from the caress!
+
+Lips and limbs, and eyes and ringlets,
+Swaying, praying to one prayer,
+Like a lyre, swept by a spirit,
+In the still, enraptur'd air.
+
+Like a lyre in some far valley,
+Uttering ravishments divine!
+All its strings to viewless fingers
+Yearning, modulations fine!
+
+Yearning with melodious fervour!
+Like a beauteous maiden flower,
+When the young beloved three paces
+Hovers from the bridal bower.
+
+Throbbing thro' the dawning stillness!
+As a heart within a breast,
+When the young beloved is stepping
+Radiant to the nuptial nest.
+
+O for Daphne! gentle Daphne
+Ever warmer by degrees
+Whispers full of hopes and visions
+Throng her ears like honey bees!
+
+Never yet was lonely blossom
+Woo'd with such delicious voice!
+Never since hath mortal maiden
+Dwelt on such celestial choice!
+
+Love-suffused she quivers, falters -
+Falters, sighs, but never speaks,
+All her rosy blood up-gushing
+Overflows her ripe young cheeks.
+
+Blushing, sweet with virgin blushes,
+All her loveliness a-flame,
+Stands she in the orient waters,
+Stricken o'er with speechless shame!
+
+Ah! but lovelier, ever lovelier,
+As more deep the colour glows,
+And the honey-laden lily
+Changes to the fragrant rose.
+
+While the god with meek embraces,
+Whispering all his sacred charms,
+Softly folds her, gently holds her,
+In his white encircling arms!
+
+But, O Dian! veil not wholly
+Thy pale crescent from the morn!
+Vanish not, O virgin goddess,
+With that look of pallid scorn!
+
+Still thy pure protecting influence
+Shed from those fair watchful eyes! -
+Lo! her angry orb has vanished,
+And the bright sun thrones the skies!
+
+Voicelessly the forest Virgin
+Vanished! but one look she gave -
+Keen as Niobean arrow
+Thro' the maiden's heart it drave.
+
+Thus toward that throning bosom
+Where all earth is warmed,--each spot
+Nourished with autumnal blessings -
+Icy chill was Daphne caught.
+
+Icy chill! but swift revulsion
+All her gentler self renewed,
+Even as icy Winter quickens
+With bud-opening warmth imbued.
+
+Even as a torpid brooklet,
+That to the night-gleaming moon
+Flashed in turn the frozen glances,
+Melts upon the breast of noon.
+
+But no more--O never, never,
+Turns she to that bosom bright,
+Swiftly all her senses counsel,
+All her nerves are strung to flight.
+
+O'er the brows of radiant Pindus
+Rolls a shadow dark and cold,
+And a sound of lamentation
+Issues from its mournful fold.
+
+Voice of the far-sighted Muses!
+Cry of keen foreboding song!
+Every cleft of startled Tempe
+Tingles with it sharp and long.
+
+Over bourn and bosk and dingle,
+Over rivers, over rills,
+Runs the sad subservient Echo
+Toward the dim blue distant hills!
+
+And another and another!
+'Tis a cry more wild than all;
+And the hills with muffled voices
+Answer 'Daphne!' to the call.
+
+And another and another!
+'Tis a cry so wildly sweet,
+That her charmed heart turns rebel
+To the instinct of her feet;
+
+And she pauses for an instant;
+But his arms have scarcely slid
+Round her waist in cestian girdles,
+And his low voluptuous lid
+
+Lifted pleading, and the honey
+Of his mouth for hers athirst,
+Ruby glistening, raised for moisture -
+Like a bud that waits to burst
+
+In the sweet espousing showers -
+And his tongue has scarce begun
+With its inarticulate burthen,
+And the clouds scarce show the sun
+
+As it pierces thro' a crevice
+Of the mass that closed it o'er,
+When again the horror flashes -
+And she turns to flight once more!
+
+And again o'er radiant Pindus
+Rolls the shadow dark and cold,
+And the sound of lamentation
+Issues from its sable fold!
+
+And again the light winds chide her
+As she darts from his embrace -
+And again the far-voiced echoes
+Speak their tidings of the chase.
+
+Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,
+O'er the glimmering sands she speeds;
+Wildly now as in the furzes
+From the piercing spikes she bleeds.
+
+Deeply and with direful anguish,
+As above each crimson drop
+Passion checks the god Apollo,
+And love bids him weep and stop. -
+
+He above each drop of crimson
+Shadowing--like the laurel leaf
+That above himself will shadow -
+Sheds a fadeless look of grief.
+
+Then with love's remorseful discord,
+With its own desire at war,
+Sighing turns, while dimly fleeting
+Daphne flies the chase afar.
+
+But all nature is against her!
+Pan, with all his sylvan troop,
+Thro' the vista'd woodland valleys
+Blocks her course with cry and whoop!
+
+In the twilights of the thickets
+Trees bend down their gnarled boughs,
+Wild green leaves and low curved branches
+Hold her hair and beat her brows.
+
+Many a brake of brushwood covert,
+Where cold darkness slumbers mute,
+Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,
+Slides a hand to clutch her foot.
+
+Glens and glades of lushest verdure
+Toil her in their tawny mesh,
+Wilder-woofed ways and alleys
+Lock her struggling limbs in leash.
+
+Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,
+Knot themselves to make her trip;
+Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretching
+Put a bridle on her lip;
+
+Many a winding lane betrays her,
+Many a sudden bosky shoot,
+And her knee makes many a stumble
+O'er some hidden damp old root,
+
+Whose quaint face peers green and dusky
+'Mongst the matted growth of plants,
+While she rises wild and weltering,
+Speeding on with many pants.
+
+Tangles of the wild red strawberry
+Spread their freckled trammels frail;
+In the pathway creeping brambles
+Catch her in their thorny trail.
+
+All the widely sweeping greensward
+Shifts and swims from knoll to knoll;
+Grey rough-fingered oak and elm wood
+Push her by from bole to bole.
+
+Groves of lemon, groves of citron,
+Tall high-foliaged plane and palm,
+Bloomy myrtle, light-blue olive,
+Wave her back with gusts of balm.
+
+Languid jasmine, scrambling briony,
+Walls of close-festooning braid,
+Fling themselves about her, mingling
+With her wafted looks, waylaid.
+
+Twisting bindweed, honey'd woodbine,
+Cling to her, while, red and blue,
+On her rounded form ripe berries
+Dash and die in gory dew.
+
+Running ivies dark and lingering
+Round her light limbs drag and twine;
+Round her waist with languorous tendrils
+Reels and wreathes the juicy vine;
+
+Reining in the flying creature
+With its arms about her mouth;
+Bursting all its mellowing bunches
+To seduce her husky drouth;
+
+Crowning her with amorous clusters;
+Pouring down her sloping back
+Fresh-born wines in glittering rillets,
+Following her in crimson track.
+
+Buried, drenched in dewy foliage,
+Thus she glimmers from the dawn,
+Watched by every forest creature,
+Fleet-foot Oread, frolic Faun.
+
+Silver-sandalled Arethusa
+Not more swiftly fled the sands,
+Fled the plains and fled the sunlights,
+Fled the murmuring ocean strands.
+
+O, that now the earth would open!
+O, that now the shades would hide!
+O, that now the gods would shelter!
+Caverns lead and seas divide!
+
+Not more faint soft-lowing Io
+Panted in those starry eyes,
+When the sleepless midnight meadows
+Piteously implored the skies!
+
+Still her breathless flight she urges
+By the sanctuary stream,
+And the god with golden swiftness
+Follows like an eastern beam.
+
+Her the close bewildering greenery
+Darkens with its duskiest green, -
+Him each little leaflet welcomes,
+Flushing with an orient sheen.
+
+Thus he nears, and now all Tempe
+Rings with his melodious cry,
+Avenues and blue expanses
+Beam in his large lustrous eye!
+
+All the branches start to music!
+As if from a secret spring
+Thousands of sweet bills are bubbling
+In the nest and on the wing.
+
+Gleams and shines the glassy river
+And rich valleys every one;
+But of all the throbbing beauty
+Brightest! singled by the sun!
+
+Ivy round her glimmering ancle,
+Vine about her glowing brow,
+Never sure was bride so beauteous,
+Daphne, chosen nymph, as thou!
+
+Thus he nears! and now she feels him
+Breathing hot on every limb;
+And he hears her own quick pantings -
+Ah! that they might be for him.
+
+O, that like the flower he tramples,
+Bending from his golden tread,
+Full of fair celestial ardours,
+She would bow her bridal head.
+
+O, that like the flower she presses,
+Nodding from her lily touch,
+Light as in the harmless breezes,
+She would know the god for such!
+
+See! the golden arms are round her -
+To the air she grasps and clings!
+See! his glowing arms have wound her -
+To the sky she shrieks and springs!
+
+See! the flushing chace of Tempe
+Trembles with Olympian air -
+See! green sprigs and buds are shooting
+From those white raised arms of prayer!
+
+In the earth her feet are rooting! -
+Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,
+Hair and lips and stretching fingers,
+Fade away--and fadeless rise.
+
+And the god whose fervent rapture
+Clasps her finds his close embrace
+Full of palpitating branches,
+And new leaves that bud apace,
+
+Bound his wonder-stricken forehead; -
+While in ebbing measures slow
+Sounds of softly dying pulses
+Pause and quiver, pause and go;
+
+Go, and come again, and flutter
+On the verge of life,--then flee!
+All the white ambrosial beauty
+Is a lustrous Laurel Tree!
+
+Still with the great panting love-chase
+All its running sap is warmed; -
+But from head to foot the virgin
+Is transfigured and transformed.
+
+Changed!--yet the green Dryad nature
+Is instinct with human ties,
+And above its anguish'd lover
+Breathes pathetic sympathies;
+
+Sympathies of love and sorrow;
+Joy in her divine escape;
+Breathing through her bursting foliage
+Comfort to his bending shape.
+
+Vainly now the floating Naiads
+Seek to pierce the laurel maze,
+Nought but laurel meets their glances,
+Laurel glistens as they gaze.
+
+Nought but bright prophetic laurel!
+Laurel over eyes and brows,
+Over limbs and over bosom,
+Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!
+
+And in vain the listening Dryad
+Shells her hand against her ear! -
+All is silence--save the echo
+Travelling in the distance drear.
+
+
+
+LONDON BY LAMPLIGHT
+
+
+
+There stands a singer in the street,
+He has an audience motley and meet;
+Above him lowers the London night,
+And around the lamps are flaring bright.
+
+His minstrelsy may be unchaste -
+'Tis much unto that motley taste,
+And loud the laughter he provokes
+From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.
+
+But woe is many a passer by
+Who as he goes turns half an eye,
+To see the human form divine
+Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!
+
+Make up the sum of either sex
+That all our human hopes perplex,
+With those unhappy shapes that know
+The silent streets and pale cock-crow.
+
+And can I trace in such dull eyes
+Of fireside peace or country skies?
+And could those haggard cheeks presume
+To memories of a May-tide bloom?
+
+Those violated forms have been
+The pride of many a flowering green;
+And still the virgin bosom heaves
+With daisy meads and dewy leaves.
+
+But stygian darkness reigns within
+The river of death from the founts of sin;
+And one prophetic water rolls
+Its gas-lit surface for their souls.
+
+I will not hide the tragic sight -
+Those drown'd black locks, those dead lips white,
+Will rise from out the slimy flood,
+And cry before God's throne for blood!
+
+Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face, -
+Pollution's last and best embrace,
+Will call, as such a picture can,
+For retribution upon man.
+
+Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,
+While still the ballad-monger sings,
+And flatters their unhappy breasts
+With poisonous words and pungent jests.
+
+O how would every daisy blush
+To see them 'mid that earthy crush!
+O dumb would be the evening thrush,
+And hoary look the hawthorn bush!
+
+The meadows of their infancy
+Would shrink from them, and every tree,
+And every little laughing spot,
+Would hush itself and know them not.
+
+Precursor to what black despairs
+Was that child's face which once was theirs!
+And O to what a world of guile
+Was herald that young angel smile!
+
+That face which to a father's eye
+Was balm for all anxiety;
+That smile which to a mother's heart
+Went swifter than the swallow's dart!
+
+O happy homes! that still they know
+At intervals, with what a woe
+Would ye look on them, dim and strange,
+Suffering worse than winter change!
+
+And yet could I transplant them there,
+To breathe again the innocent air
+Of youth, and once more reconcile
+Their outcast looks with nature's smile;
+
+Could I but give them one clear day
+Of this delicious loving May,
+Release their souls from anguish dark,
+And stand them underneath the lark; -
+
+I think that Nature would have power
+To graft again her blighted flower
+Upon the broken stem, renew
+Some portion of its early hue; -
+
+The heavy flood of tears unlock,
+More precious than the Scriptured rock;
+At least instil a happier mood,
+And bring them back to womanhood.
+
+Alas! how many lost ones claim
+This refuge from despair and shame!
+How many, longing for the light,
+Sink deeper in the abyss this night!
+
+O, crying sin!  O, blushing thought!
+Not only unto those that wrought
+The misery and deadly blight;
+But those that outcast them this night!
+
+O, agony of grief! for who
+Less dainty than his race, will do
+Such battle for their human right,
+As shall awake this startled night?
+
+Proclaim this evil human page
+Will ever blot the Golden Age
+That poets dream and saints invite,
+If it be unredeemed this night?
+
+This night of deep solemnity,
+And verdurous serenity,
+While over every fleecy field
+The dews descend and odours yield.
+
+This night of gleaming floods and falls,
+Of forest glooms and sylvan calls,
+Of starlight on the pebbly rills,
+And twilight on the circling hills.
+
+This night! when from the paths of men
+Grey error steams as from a fen;
+As o'er this flaring City wreathes
+The black cloud-vapour that it breathes!
+
+This night from which a morn will spring
+Blooming on its orient wing;
+A morn to roll with many more
+Its ghostly foam on the twilight shore.
+
+Morn! when the fate of all mankind
+Hangs poised in doubt, and man is blind.
+His duties of the day will seem
+The fact of life, and mine the dream:
+
+The destinies that bards have sung,
+Regeneration to the young,
+Reverberation of the truth,
+And virtuous culture unto youth!
+
+Youth! in whose season let abound
+All flowers and fruits that strew the ground,
+Voluptuous joy where love consents,
+And health and pleasure pitch their tents:
+
+All rapture and all pure delight;
+A garden all unknown to blight;
+But never the unnatural sight
+That throngs the shameless song this night!
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Under boughs of breathing May,
+In the mild spring-time I lay,
+Lonely, for I had no love;
+And the sweet birds all sang for pity,
+Cuckoo, lark, and dove.
+
+Tell me, cuckoo, then I cried,
+Dare I woo and wed a bride?
+I, like thee, have no home-nest;
+And the twin notes thus tuned their ditty, -
+'Love can answer best.'
+
+Nor, warm dove with tender coo,
+Have I thy soft voice to woo,
+Even were a damsel by;
+And the deep woodland crooned its ditty, -
+'Love her first and try.'
+
+Nor have I, wild lark, thy wing,
+That from bluest heaven can bring
+Bliss, whatever fate befall;
+And the sky-lyrist trilled this ditty, -
+'Love will give thee all.'
+
+So it chanced while June was young,
+Wooing well with fervent song,
+I had won a damsel coy;
+And the sweet birds that sang for pity,
+Jubileed for joy.
+
+
+
+PASTORALS
+
+
+
+I
+
+How sweet on sunny afternoons,
+For those who journey light and well,
+To loiter up a hilly rise
+Which hides the prospect far beyond,
+And fancy all the landscape lying
+Beautiful and still;
+
+Beneath a sky of summer blue,
+Whose rounded cloudlets, folded soft,
+Gaze on the scene which we await
+And picture from their peacefulness;
+So calmly to the earth inclining
+Float those loving shapes!
+
+Like airy brides, each singling out
+A spot to love and bless with love,
+Their creamy bosoms glowing warm,
+Till distance weds them to the hills,
+And with its latest gleam the river
+Sinks in their embrace.
+
+And silverly the river runs,
+And many a graceful wind he makes,
+By fields where feed the happy flocks,
+And hedge-rows hushing pleasant lanes,
+The charms of English home reflected
+In his shining eye:
+
+Ancestral oak, broad-foliaged elm,
+Rich meadows sunned and starred with flowers,
+The cottage breathing tender smoke
+Against the brooding golden air,
+With glimpses of a stately mansion
+On a woodland sward;
+
+And circling round, as with a ring,
+The distance spreading amber haze,
+Enclosing hills and pastures sweet;
+A depth of soft and mellow light
+Which fills the heart with sudden yearning
+Aimless and serene!
+
+No disenchantment follows here,
+For nature's inspiration moves
+The dream which she herself fulfils;
+And he whose heart, like valley warmth,
+Steams up with joy at scenes like this
+Shall never be forlorn.
+
+And O for any human soul
+The rapture of a wide survey -
+A valley sweeping to the West,
+With all its wealth of loveliness,
+Is more than recompense for days
+That taught us to endure.
+
+II
+
+Yon upland slope which hides the sun
+Ascending from his eastern deeps,
+And now against the hues of dawn
+One level line of tillage rears;
+The furrowed brow of toil and time;
+To many it is but a sweep of land!
+
+To others 'tis an Autumn trust,
+But unto me a mystery; -
+An influence strange and swift as dreams;
+A whispering of old romance;
+A temple naked to the clouds;
+Or one of nature's bosoms fresh revealed,
+
+Heaving with adoration! there
+The work of husbandry is done,
+And daily bread is daily earned;
+Nor seems there ought to indicate
+The springs which move in me such thoughts,
+But from my soul a spirit calls them up.
+
+All day into the open sky,
+All night to the eternal stars,
+For ever both at morn and eve
+Men mellow distances draw near,
+And shadows lengthen in the dusk,
+Athwart the heavens it rolls its glimmering line!
+
+When twilight from the dream-hued West
+Sighs hush! and all the land is still;
+When, from the lush empurpling East,
+The twilight of the crowing cock
+Peers on the drowsy village roofs,
+Athwart the heavens that glimmering line is seen.
+
+And now beneath the rising sun,
+Whose shining chariot overpeers
+The irradiate ridge, while fetlock deep
+In the rich soil his coursers plunge -
+How grand in robes of light it looks!
+How glorious with rare suggestive grace!
+
+The ploughman mounting up the height
+Becomes a glowing shape, as though
+'Twere young Triptolemus, plough in hand,
+While Ceres in her amber scarf
+With gentle love directs him how
+To wed the willing earth and hope for fruits!
+
+The furrows running up are fraught
+With meanings; there the goddess walks,
+While Proserpine is young, and there -
+'Mid the late autumn sheaves, her voice
+Sobbing and choked with dumb despair -
+The nights will hear her wailing for her child!
+
+Whatever dim tradition tells,
+Whatever history may reveal,
+Or fancy, from her starry brows,
+Of light or dreamful lustre shed,
+Could not at this sweet time increase
+The quiet consecration of the spot.
+
+Blest with the sweat of labour, blest
+With the young sun's first vigorous beams,
+Village hope and harvest prayer, -
+The heart that throbs beneath it holds
+A bliss so perfect in itself
+Men's thoughts must borrow rather than bestow.
+
+III
+
+Now standing on this hedgeside path,
+Up which the evening winds are blowing
+Wildly from the lingering lines
+Of sunset o'er the hills;
+Unaided by one motive thought,
+My spirit with a strange impulsion
+Rises, like a fledgling,
+Whose wings are not mature, but still
+Supported by its strong desire
+Beats up its native air and leaves
+The tender mother's nest.
+
+Great music under heaven is made,
+And in the track of rushing darkness
+Comes the solemn shape of night,
+And broods above the earth.
+A thing of Nature am I now,
+Abroad, without a sense or feeling
+Born not of her bosom;
+Content with all her truths and fates;
+Ev'n as yon strip of grass that bows
+Above the new-born violet bloom,
+And sings with wood and field.
+
+IV
+
+Lo, as a tree, whose wintry twigs
+Drink in the sun with fibrous joy,
+And down into its dampest roots
+Thrills quickened with the draught of life,
+I wake unto the dawn, and leave my griefs to drowse.
+
+I rise and drink the fresh sweet air:
+Each draught a future bud of Spring;
+Each glance of blue a birth of green;
+I will not mimic yonder oak
+That dallies with dead leaves ev'n while the primrose peeps.
+
+But full of these warm-whispering beams,
+Like Memnon in his mother's eye, -
+Aurora! when the statue stone
+Moaned soft to her pathetic touch, -
+My soul shall own its parent in the founts of day!
+
+And ever in the recurring light,
+True to the primal joy of dawn,
+Forget its barren griefs; and aye
+Like aspens in the faintest breeze
+Turn all its silver sides and tremble into song.
+
+V
+
+Now from the meadow floods the wild duck clamours,
+Now the wood pigeon wings a rapid flight,
+Now the homeward rookery follows up its vanguard,
+And the valley mists are curling up the hills.
+
+Three short songs gives the clear-voiced throstle,
+Sweetening the twilight ere he fills the nest;
+While the little bird upon the leafless branches
+Tweets to its mate a tiny loving note.
+
+Deeper the stillness hangs on every motion;
+Calmer the silence follows every call;
+Now all is quiet save the roosting pheasant,
+The bell-wether's tinkle and the watch-dog's bark.
+
+Softly shine the lights from the silent kindling homestead,
+Stars of the hearth to the shepherd in the fold;
+Springs of desire to the traveller on the roadway;
+Ever breathing incense to the ever-blessing sky!
+
+VI
+
+How barren would this valley be,
+Without the golden orb that gazes
+On it, broadening to hues
+Of rose, and spreading wings of amber;
+Blessing it before it falls asleep.
+
+How barren would this valley be,
+Without the human lives now beating
+In it, or the throbbing hearts
+Far distant, who their flower of childhood
+Cherish here, and water it with tears!
+
+How barren should I be, were I
+Without above that loving splendour,
+Shedding light and warmth! without
+Some kindred natures of my kind
+To joy in me, or yearn towards me now!
+
+VII
+
+Summer glows warm on the meadows, and speedwell, and gold-cups, and
+daisies
+Darken 'mid deepening masses of sorrel, and shadowy grasses
+Show the ripe hue to the farmer, and summon the scythe and the hay-
+makers
+Down from the village; and now, even now, the air smells of the
+mowing,
+And the sharp song of the scythe whistles daily; from dawn, till the
+gloaming
+Wears its cool star, sweet and welcome to all flaming faces afield
+now;
+Heavily weighs the hot season, and drowses the darkening foliage,
+Drooping with languor; the white cloud floats, but sails not, for
+windless
+Heaven's blue tents it; no lark singing up in its fleecy white
+valleys;
+Up in its fairy white valleys, once feathered with minstrels,
+melodious
+With the invisible joy that wakes dawn o'er the green fields of
+England.
+Summer glows warm on the meadows; then come, let us roam thro' them
+gaily,
+Heedless of heat, and the hot-kissing sun, and the fear of dark
+freckles.
+Never one kiss will he give on a neck, or a lily-white forehead,
+Chin, hand, or bosom uncovered, all panting, to take the chance
+coolness,
+But full sure the fiery pressure leaves seal of espousal.
+Heed him not; come, tho' he kiss till the soft little upper-lip
+loses
+Half its pure whiteness; just speck'd where the curve of the rosy
+mouth reddens.
+
+Come, let him kiss, let him kiss, and his kisses shall make thee the
+sweeter.
+Thou art no nun, veiled and vowed; doomed to nourish a withering
+pallor!
+City exotics beside thee would show like bleached linen at mid-day,
+Hung upon hedges of eglantine!  Thou in the freedom of nature,
+Full of her beauty and wisdom, gentleness, joyance, and kindness!
+Come, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey of
+noontide;
+Deep in the sweet summer meadows, border'd by hillside and river,
+Lined with long trenches half-hidden, where smell of white meadow-
+sweet, sweetest,
+Blissfully hovers--O sweetest! but pluck it not! even in the
+tenderest
+Grasp it will lose breath and wither; like many, not made for a
+posy.
+
+See, the sun slopes down the meadows, where all the flowers are
+falling!
+Falling unhymned; for the nightingale scarce ever charms the long
+twilight:
+Mute with the cares of the nest; only known by a 'chuck, chuck,' and
+dovelike
+Call of content, but the finch and the linnet and blackcap pipe
+loudly.
+Round on the western hill-side warbles the rich-billed ouzel;
+And the shrill throstle is filling the tangled thickening copses;
+Singing o'er hyacinths hid, and most honey'd of flowers, white
+field-rose.
+Joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country;
+Revel all day, till the lark mounts at eve with his sweet 'tirra-
+lirra':
+Trilling delightfully.  See, on the river the slow-rippled surface
+Shining; the slow ripple broadens in circles; the bright surface
+smoothens;
+Now it is flat as the leaves of the yet unseen water-lily.
+There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic.
+There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the
+kingfisher
+Flashes, the fish in his beak! there the dab-chick dived, and the
+motion
+Lazily undulates all thro' the tall standing army of rushes.
+
+Joy thus to revel all day, till the twilight turns us homeward!
+Till all the lingering deep-blooming splendour of sunset is over,
+And the one star shines mildly in mellowing hues, like a spirit
+Sent to assure us that light never dieth, tho' day is now buried.
+Saying:  to-morrow, to-morrow, few hours intervening, that interval
+Tuned by the woodlark in heaven, to-morrow my semblance, far
+eastward,
+Heralds the day 'tis my mission eternal to seal and to prophecy.
+Come then, and homeward; passing down the close path of the meadows.
+Home like the bees stored with sweetness; each with a lark in the
+bosom,
+Trilling for ever, and oh! will yon lark ever cease to sing up
+there?
+
+
+
+TO A SKYLARK
+
+
+
+O skylark!  I see thee and call thee joy!
+Thy wings bear thee up to the breast of the dawn;
+I see thee no more, but thy song is still
+The tongue of the heavens to me!
+
+Thus are the days when I was a boy;
+Sweet while I lived in them, dear now they're gone:
+I feel them no longer, but still, O still
+They tell of the heavens to me.
+
+
+
+SONG--SPRING
+
+
+
+When buds of palm do burst and spread
+Their downy feathers in the lane,
+And orchard blossoms, white and red,
+Breathe Spring delight for Autumn gain;
+And the skylark shakes his wings in the rain;
+
+O then is the season to look for a bride!
+Choose her warily, woo her unseen;
+For the choicest maids are those that hide
+Like dewy violets under the green.
+
+
+
+SONG--AUTUMN
+
+
+
+When nuts behind the hazel-leaf
+Are brown as the squirrel that hunts them free,
+And the fields are rich with the sun-burnt sheaf,
+'Mid the blue cornflower and the yellowing tree;
+And the farmer glows and beams in his glee;
+
+O then is the season to wed thee a bride!
+Ere the garners are filled and the ale-cups foam;
+For a smiling hostess is the pride
+And flower of every Harvest Home.
+
+
+
+SORROWS AND JOYS
+
+
+
+Bury thy sorrows, and they shall rise
+As souls to the immortal skies,
+And there look down like mothers' eyes.
+
+But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,
+That suck the honey of the showers,
+And bloom alike on huts and towers.
+
+So shall thy days be sweet and bright;
+Solemn and sweet thy starry night,
+Conscious of love each change of light.
+
+The stars will watch the flowers asleep,
+The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,
+And both will mix sensations deep.
+
+With these below, with those above,
+Sits evermore the brooding dove,
+Uniting both in bonds of love.
+
+For both by nature are akin;
+Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,
+And joy, the juice of life within.
+
+Children of earth are these; and those
+The spirits of divine repose -
+Death radiant o'er all human woes.
+
+O, think what then had been thy doom,
+If homeless and without a tomb
+They had been left to haunt the gloom!
+
+O, think again what now they are -
+Motherly love, tho' dim and far,
+Imaged in every lustrous star.
+
+For they, in their salvation, know
+No vestige of their former woe,
+While thro' them all the heavens do flow.
+
+Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
+And watched by ever-loving eyes,
+And warned by yearning sympathies.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+The flower unfolds its dawning cup,
+And the young sun drinks the star-dews up,
+At eve it droops with the bliss of day,
+And dreams in the midnight far away.
+
+So am I in thy sole, sweet glance
+Pressed with a weight of utterance;
+Lovingly all my leaves unfold,
+And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.
+
+At eve I droop, for then the swell
+Of feeling falters forth farewell; -
+At midnight I am dreaming deep,
+Of what has been, in blissful sleep.
+
+When--ah! when will love's own fight
+Wed me alike thro' day and night,
+When will the stars with their linking charms
+Wake us in each other's arms?
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Thou to me art such a spring
+As the Arab seeks at eve,
+Thirsty from the shining sands;
+There to bathe his face and hands,
+While the sun is taking leave,
+And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.
+
+Thou to me art such a dream
+As he dreams upon the grass,
+While the bubbling coolness near
+Makes sweet music in his ear;
+And the stars that slowly pass
+In solitary grandeur o'er him gleam.
+
+Thou to me art such a dawn
+As the dawn whose ruddy kiss
+Wakes him to his darling steed;
+And again the desert speed,
+And again the desert bliss,
+Lightens thro' his veins, and he is gone!
+
+
+
+ANTIGONE
+
+
+
+The buried voice bespake Antigone.
+
+'O sister! couldst thou know, as thou wilt know,
+The bliss above, the reverence below,
+Enkindled by thy sacrifice for me;
+Thou wouldst at once with holy ecstasy
+Give thy warm limbs into the yearning earth.
+Sleep, Sister! for Elysium's dawning birth, -
+And faith will fill thee with what is to be!
+Sleep, for the Gods are watching over thee!
+Thy dream will steer thee to perform their will,
+As silently their influence they instil.
+O Sister! in the sweetness of thy prime,
+Thy hand has plucked the bitter flower of death;
+But this will dower thee with Elysian breath,
+That fade into a never-fading clime.
+Dear to the Gods are those that do like thee
+A solemn duty! for the tyranny
+Of kings is feeble to the soul that dares
+Defy them to fulfil its sacred cares:
+And weak against a mighty will are men.
+O, Torch between two brothers! in whose gleam
+Our slaughtered House doth shine as one again,
+Tho' severed by the sword; now may thy dream
+Kindle desire in thee for us, and thou,
+Forgetting not thy lover and his vow,
+Leaving no human memory forgot,
+Shalt cross, not unattended, the dark stream
+Which runs by thee in sleep and ripples not.
+The large stars glitter thro' the anxious night,
+And the deep sky broods low to look at thee:
+The air is hush'd and dark o'er land and sea,
+And all is waiting for the morrow light:
+So do thy kindred spirits wait for thee.
+O Sister! soft as on the downward rill,
+Will those first daybeams from the distant hill
+Fall on the smoothness of thy placid brow,
+Like this calm sweetness breathing thro' me now:
+And when the fated sounds shall wake thine eyes,
+Wilt thou, confiding in the supreme will,
+In all thy maiden steadfastness arise,
+Firm to obey and earnest to fulfil;
+Remembering the night thou didst not sleep,
+And this same brooding sky beheld thee creep,
+Defiant of unnatural decree,
+To where I lay upon the outcast land;
+Before the iron gates upon the plain;
+A wretched, graveless ghost, whose wailing chill
+Came to thy darkened door imploring thee;
+Yearning for burial like my brother slain; -
+And all was dared for love and piety!
+This thought will nerve again thy virgin hand
+To serve its purpose and its destiny.'
+
+She woke, they led her forth, and all was still.
+
+
+Swathed round in mist and crown'd with cloud,
+O Mountain! hid from peak to base -
+Caught up into the heavens and clasped
+In white ethereal arms that make
+Thy mystery of size sublime!
+What eye or thought can measure now
+Thy grand dilating loftiness!
+What giant crest dispute with thee
+Supremacy of air and sky!
+What fabled height with thee compare!
+Not those vine-terraced hills that seethe
+The lava in their fiery cusps;
+Nor that high-climbing robe of snow,
+Whose summits touch the morning star,
+And breathe the thinnest air of life;
+Nor crocus-couching Ida, warm
+With Juno's latest nuptial lure;
+Nor Tenedos whose dreamy eye
+Still looks upon beleaguered Troy;
+Nor yet Olympus crown'd with gods
+Can boast a majesty like thine,
+O Mountain! hid from peak to base,
+And image of the awful power
+With which the secret of all things,
+That stoops from heaven to garment earth,
+Can speak to any human soul,
+When once the earthly limits lose
+Their pointed heights and sharpened lines,
+And measureless immensity
+Is palpable to sense and sight.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+No, no, the falling blossom is no sign
+Of loveliness destroy'd and sorrow mute;
+The blossom sheds its loveliness divine; -
+Its mission is to prophecy the fruit.
+
+Nor is the day of love for ever dead,
+When young enchantment and romance are gone;
+The veil is drawn, but all the future dread
+Is lightened by the finger of the dawn.
+
+Love moves with life along a darker way,
+They cast a shadow and they call it death:
+But rich is the fulfilment of their day;
+The purer passion and the firmer faith.
+
+
+
+THE TWO BLACKBIRDS
+
+
+
+A blackbird in a wicker cage,
+That hung and swung 'mid fruits and flowers,
+Had learnt the song-charm, to assuage
+The drearness of its wingless hours.
+
+And ever when the song was heard,
+From trees that shade the grassy plot
+Warbled another glossy bird,
+Whose mate not long ago was shot.
+
+Strange anguish in that creature's breast,
+Unwept like human grief, unsaid,
+Has quickened in its lonely nest
+A living impulse from the dead.
+
+Not to console its own wild smart, -
+But with a kindling instinct strong,
+The novel feeling of its heart
+Beats for the captive bird of song.
+
+And when those mellow notes are still,
+It hops from off its choral perch,
+O'er path and sward, with busy bill,
+All grateful gifts to peck and search.
+
+Store of ouzel dainties choice
+To those white swinging bars it brings;
+And with a low consoling voice
+It talks between its fluttering wings.
+
+Deeply in their bitter grief
+Those sufferers reciprocate,
+The one sings for its woodland life,
+The other for its murdered mate.
+
+But deeper doth the secret prove,
+Uniting those sad creatures so;
+Humanity's great link of love,
+The common sympathy of woe.
+
+Well divined from day to day
+Is the swift speech between them twain;
+For when the bird is scared away,
+The captive bursts to song again.
+
+Yet daily with its flattering voice,
+Talking amid its fluttering wings,
+Store of ouzel dainties choice
+With busy bill the poor bird brings.
+
+And shall I say, till weak with age
+Down from its drowsy branch it drops,
+It will not leave that captive cage,
+Nor cease those busy searching hops?
+
+Ah, no! the moral will not strain;
+Another sense will make it range,
+Another mate will soothe its pain,
+Another season work a change.
+
+But thro' the live-long summer, tried,
+A pure devotion we may see;
+The ebb and flow of Nature's tide;
+A self-forgetful sympathy.
+
+
+
+JULY
+
+
+
+I
+
+Blue July, bright July,
+Month of storms and gorgeous blue;
+Violet lightnings o'er thy sky,
+Heavy falls of drenching dew;
+Summer crown! o'er glen and glade
+Shrinking hyacinths in their shade;
+I welcome thee with all thy pride,
+I love thee like an Eastern bride.
+Though all the singing days are done
+As in those climes that clasp the sun;
+Though the cuckoo in his throat
+Leaves to the dove his last twin note;
+Come to me with thy lustrous eye,
+Golden-dawning oriently,
+Come with all thy shining blooms,
+Thy rich red rose and rolling glooms.
+Though the cuckoo doth but sing 'cuk, cuk,'
+And the dove alone doth coo;
+Though the cushat spins her coo-r-roo, r-r-roo -
+To the cuckoo's halting 'cuk.'
+
+II
+
+Sweet July, warm July!
+Month when mosses near the stream,
+Soft green mosses thick and shy,
+Are a rapture and a dream.
+Summer Queen! whose foot the fern
+Fades beneath while chestnuts burn;
+I welcome thee with thy fierce love,
+Gloom below and gleam above.
+Though all the forest trees hang dumb,
+With dense leafiness o'ercome;
+Though the nightingale and thrush,
+Pipe not from the bough or bush;
+Come to me with thy lustrous eye,
+Azure-melting westerly,
+The raptures of thy face unfold,
+And welcome in thy robes of gold!
+Tho' the nightingale broods--'sweet-chuck-sweet' -
+And the ouzel flutes so chill,
+Tho' the throstle gives but one shrilly trill
+To the nightingale's 'sweet-sweet.'
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+I would I were the drop of rain
+That falls into the dancing rill,
+For I should seek the river then,
+And roll below the wooded hill,
+Until I reached the sea.
+
+And O, to be the river swift
+That wrestles with the wilful tide,
+And fling the briny weeds aside
+That o'er the foamy billows drift,
+Until I came to thee!
+
+I would that after weary strife,
+And storm beneath the piping wind,
+The current of my true fresh life
+Might come unmingled, unimbrined,
+To where thou floatest free.
+
+Might find thee in some amber clime,
+Where sunlight dazzles on the sail,
+And dreaming of our plighted vale
+Might seal the dream, and bless the time,
+With maiden kisses three.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Come to me in any shape!
+As a victor crown'd with vine,
+In thy curls the clustering grape, -
+Or a vanquished slave:
+'Tis thy coming that I crave,
+And thy folding serpent twine,
+Close and dumb;
+Ne'er from that would I escape;
+Come to me in any shape!
+Only come!
+
+Only come, and in my breast
+Hide thy shame or show thy pride;
+In my bosom be caressed,
+Never more to part;
+Come into my yearning heart;
+I, the serpent, golden-eyed,
+Twine round thee;
+Twine thee with no venomed test;
+Absence makes the venomed nest;
+Come to me!
+
+Come to me, my lover, come!
+Violets on the tender stem
+Die and wither in their bloom,
+Under dewy grass;
+Come, my lover, or, alas!
+I shall die, shall die like them,
+Frail and lone;
+Come to me, my lover, come!
+Let thy bosom be my tomb:
+Come, my own!
+
+
+
+THE SHIPWRECK OF IDOMENEUS
+
+
+
+Swept from his fleet upon that fatal night
+When great Poseidon's sudden-veering wrath
+Scattered the happy homeward-floating Greeks
+Like foam-flakes off the waves, the King of Crete
+Held lofty commune with the dark Sea-god.
+His brows were crowned with victory, his cheeks
+Were flushed with triumph, but the mighty joy
+Of Troy's destruction and his own great deeds
+Passed, for the thoughts of home were dearer now,
+And sweet the memory of wife and child,
+And weary now the ten long, foreign years,
+And terrible the doubt of short delay -
+More terrible, O Gods! he cried, but stopped;
+Then raised his voice upon the storm and prayed.
+O thou, if injured, injured not by me,
+Poseidon! whom sea-deities obey
+And mortals worship, hear me! for indeed
+It was our oath to aid the cause of Greece,
+Not unespoused by Gods, and most of all
+By thee, if gentle currents, havens calm,
+Fair winds and prosperous voyage, and the Shape
+Impersonate in many a perilous hour,
+Both in the stately councils of the Kings,
+And when the husky battle murmured thick,
+May testify of services performed!
+But now the seas are haggard with thy wrath,
+Thy breath is tempest! never at the shores
+Of hostile Ilium did thy stormful brows
+Betray such fierce magnificence! not even
+On that wild day when, mad with torch and glare,
+The frantic crowds with eyes like starving wolves
+Burst from their ports impregnable, a stream
+Of headlong fury toward the hissing deep;
+Where then full-armed I stood in guard, compact
+Beside thee, and alone, with brand and spear,
+We held at bay the swarming brood, and poured
+Blood of choice warriors on the foot-ploughed sands!
+Thou, meantime, dark with conflict, as a cloud
+That thickens in the bosom of the West
+Over quenched sunset, circled round with flame,
+Huge as a billow running from the winds
+Long distances, till with black shipwreck swoln,
+It flings its angry mane about the sky.
+And like that billow heaving ere it burst;
+And like that cloud urged by impulsive storm
+With charge of thunder, lightning, and the drench
+Of torrents, thou in all thy majesty
+Of mightiness didst fall upon the war!
+Remember that great moment!  Nor forget
+The aid I gave thee; how my ready spear
+Flew swiftly seconding thy mortal stroke,
+Where'er the press was hottest; never slacked
+My arm its duty, nor mine eye its aim,
+Though terribly they compassed us, and stood
+Thick as an Autumn forest, whose brown hair,
+Lustrous with sunlight, by the still increase
+Of heat to glowing heat conceives like zeal
+Of radiance, till at the pitch of noon
+'Tis seized with conflagration and distends
+Horridly over leagues of doom'd domain;
+Mingling the screams of birds, the cries of brutes,
+The wail of creatures in the covert pent,
+Howls, yells, and shrieks of agony, the hiss
+Of seething sap, and crash of falling boughs
+Together in its dull voracious roar.
+So closely and so fearfully they throng'd,
+Savage with phantasies of victory,
+A sea of dusky shapes; for day had passed
+And night fell on their darkened faces, red
+With fight and torchflare; shrill the resonant air
+With eager shouts, and hoarse with angry groans;
+While over all the dense and sullen boom,
+The din and murmur of the myriads,
+Rolled with its awful intervals, as though
+The battle breathed, or as against the shore
+Waves gather back to heave themselves anew.
+That night sleep dropped not from the dreary skies,
+Nor could the prowess of our chiefs oppose
+That sea of raging men.  But what were they?
+Or what is man opposed to thee?  Its hopes
+Are wrecks, himself the drowning, drifting weed
+That wanders on thy waters; such as I
+Who see the scattered remnants of my fleet,
+Remembering the day when first we sailed,
+Each glad ship shining like the morning star
+With promise for the world.  Oh! such as I
+Thus darkly drifting on the drowning waves.
+O God of waters! 'tis a dreadful thing
+To suffer for an evil unrevealed;
+Dreadful it is to hear the perishing cry
+Of those we love; the silence that succeeds
+How dreadful!  Still my trust is fixed on thee
+For those that still remain and for myself.
+And if I hear thy swift foam-snorting steeds
+Drawing thy dusky chariot, as in
+The pauses of the wind I seem to hear,
+Deaf thou art not to my entreating prayer!
+Haste then to give us help, for closely now
+Crete whispers in my ears, and all my blood
+Runs keen and warm for home, and I have yearning,
+Such yearning as I never felt before,
+To see again my wife, my little son,
+My Queen, my pretty nursling of five years,
+The darling of my hopes, our dearest pledge
+Of marriage, and our brightest prize of love,
+Whose parting cry rings clearest in my heart.
+O lay this horror, much-offended God!
+And making all as fair and firm as when
+We trusted to thy mighty depths of old, -
+I vow to sacrifice the first whom Zeus
+Shall prompt to hail us from the white seashore
+And welcome our return to royal Crete,
+An offering, Poseidon, unto thee!
+
+Amid the din of elemental strife,
+No voice may pierce but Deity supreme:
+And Deity supreme alone can hear,
+Above the hurricane's discordant shrieks,
+The cry of agonized humanity.
+
+Not unappeased was He who smites the waves,
+When to his stormy ears the warrior's vow
+Entered, and from his foamy pinnacle
+Tumultuous he beheld the prostrate form,
+And knew the mighty heart.  Awhile he gazed,
+As doubtful of his purpose, and the storm,
+Conscious of that divine debate, withheld
+Its fierce emotion, in the luminous gloom
+Of those so dark irradiating eyes!
+Beneath whose wavering lustre shone revealed
+The tumult of the purpling deeps, and all
+The throbbing of the tempest, as it paused,
+Slowly subsiding, seeming to await
+The sudden signal, as a faithful hound
+Pants with the forepaws stretched before its nose,
+Athwart the greensward, after an eager chase;
+Its hot tongue thrust to cool, its foamy jaws
+Open to let the swift breath come and go,
+Its quick interrogating eyes fixed keen
+Upon the huntsman's countenance, and ever
+Lashing its sharp impatient tail with haste:
+Prompt at the slightest sign to scour away,
+And hang itself afresh by the bleeding fangs,
+Upon the neck of some death-singled stag,
+Whose royal antlers, eyes, and stumbling knees
+Will supplicate the Gods in mute despair.
+This time not mute, nor yet in vain this time!
+For still the burden of the earnest voice
+And all the vivid glories it revoked
+Sank in the God, with that absorbed suspense
+Felt only by the Olympians, whose minds
+Unbounded like our mortal brain, perceive
+All things complete, the end, the aim of all;
+To whom the crown and consequence of deeds
+Are ever present with the deed itself.
+
+And now the pouring surges, vast and smooth,
+Grew weary of restraint, and heaved themselves
+Headlong beneath him, breaking at his feet
+With wild importunate cries and angry wail;
+Like crowds that shout for bread and hunger more.
+And now the surface of their rolling backs
+Was ridged with foam-topt furrows, rising high
+And dashing wildly, like to fiery steeds,
+Fresh from the Thracian or Thessalian plains,
+High-blooded mares just tempering to the bit,
+Whose manes at full-speed stream upon the winds,
+And in whose delicate nostrils when the gust
+Breathes of their native plains, they ramp and rear,
+Frothing the curb, and bounding from the earth,
+As though the Sun-god's chariot alone
+Were fit to follow in their flashing track.
+Anon with gathering stature to the height
+Of those colossal giants, doomed long since
+To torturous grief and penance, that assailed
+The sky-throned courts of Zeus, and climbing, dared
+For once in a world the Olympic wrath, and braved
+The electric spirit which from his clenching hand
+Pierces the dark-veined earth, and with a touch
+Is death to mortals, fearfully they grew!
+And with like purpose of audacity
+Threatened Titanic fury to the God.
+Such was the agitation of the sea
+Beneath Poseidon's thought-revolving brows,
+Storming for signal.  But no signal came.
+And as when men, who congregate to hear
+Some proclamation from the regal fount,
+With eager questioning and anxious phrase
+Betray the expectation of their hearts,
+Till after many hours of fretful sloth,
+Weary with much delay, they hold discourse
+In sullen groups and cloudy masses, stirred
+With rage irresolute and whispering plot,
+Known more by indication than by word,
+And understood alone by those whose minds
+Participate;--even so the restless waves
+Began to lose all sense of servitude,
+And worked with rebel passions, bursting, now
+To right, and now to left, but evermore
+Subdued with influence, and controlled with dread
+Of that inviolate Authority.
+Then, swiftly as he mused, the impetuous God
+Seized on the pausing reins, his coursers plunged,
+His brows resumed the grandeur of their ire;
+Throughout his vast divinity the deeps
+Concurrent thrilled with action, and away,
+As sweeps a thunder-cloud across the sky
+In harvest-time, preluded by dull blasts;
+Or some black-visaged whirlwind, whose wide folds
+Rush, wrestling on with all 'twixt heaven and earth,
+Darkling he hurried, and his distant voice,
+Not softened by delay, was heard in tones
+Distinctly terrible, still following up
+Its rapid utterance of tremendous wrath
+With hoarse reverberations; like the roar
+Of lions when they hunger, and awake
+The sullen echoes from their forest sleep,
+To speed the ravenous noise from hill to hill
+And startle victims; but more awful, He,
+Scudding across the hills that rise and sink,
+With foam, and splash, and cataracts of spray,
+Clothed in majestic splendour; girt about
+With Sea-gods and swift creatures of the sea;
+Their briny eyes blind with the showering drops;
+Their stormy locks, salt tongues, and scaly backs,
+Quivering in harmony with the tempest, fierce
+And eager with tempestuous delight; -
+He like a moving rock above them all
+Solemnly towering while fitful gleams
+Brake from his dense black forehead, which display'd
+The enduring chiefs as their distracted fleets
+Tossed, toiling with the waters, climbing high,
+And plunging downward with determined beaks,
+In lurid anguish; but the Cretan king
+And all his crew were 'ware of under-tides,
+That for the groaning vessel made a path,
+On which the impending and precipitous waves
+Fell not, nor suck'd to their abysmal gorge.
+
+O, happy they to feel the mighty God,
+Without his whelming presence near:  to feel
+Safety and sweet relief from such despair,
+And gushing of their weary hopes once more
+Within their fond warm hearts, tired limbs, and eyes
+Heavy with much fatigue and want of sleep!
+Prayers did not lack; like mountain springs they came,
+After the earth has drunk the drenching rains,
+And throws her fresh-born jets into the sun
+With joyous sparkles;--for there needed not
+Evidence more serene of instant grace,
+Immortal mercy! and the sense which follows
+Divine interposition, when the shock
+Of danger hath been thwarted by the Gods,
+Visibly, and through supplication deep, -
+Rose in them, chiefly in the royal mind
+Of him whose interceding vow had saved.
+Tears from that great heroic soul sprang up;
+Not painful as in grief, nor smarting keen
+With shame of weeping; but calm, fresh, and sweet;
+Such as in lofty spirits rise, and wed
+The nature of the woman to the man;
+A sight most lovely to the Gods!  They fell
+Like showers of starlight from his steadfast eyes,
+As ever towards the prow he gazed, nor moved
+One muscle, with firm lips and level lids,
+Motionless; while the winds sang in his ears,
+And took the length of his brown hair in streams
+Behind him.  Thus the hours passed, and the oars
+Plied without pause, and nothing but the sound
+Of the dull rowlocks and still watery sough,
+Far off, the carnage of the storm, was heard.
+For nothing spake the mariners in their toil,
+And all the captains of the war were dumb:
+Too much oppressed with wonder, too much thrilled
+By their great chieftain's silence, to disturb
+Such meditation with poor human speech.
+Meantime the moon through slips of driving cloud
+Came forth, and glanced athwart the seas a path
+Of dusky splendour, like the Hadean brows,
+When with Elysian passion they behold
+Persephone's complacent hueless cheeks.
+Soon gathering strength and lustre, as a ship
+That swims into some blue and open bay
+With bright full-bosomed sails, the radiant car
+Of Artemis advanced, and on the waves
+Sparkled like arrows from her silver bow
+The keenness of her pure and tender gaze.
+
+Then, slowly, one by one the chiefs sought rest;
+The watches being set, and men to relieve
+The rowers at midseason.  Fair it was
+To see them as they lay!  Some up the prow,
+Some round the helm, in open-handed sleep;
+With casques unloosed, and bucklers put aside;
+The ten years' tale of war upon their cheeks,
+Where clung the salt wet locks, and on their breasts
+Beards, the thick growth of many a proud campaign;
+And on their brows the bright invisible crown
+Victory sheds from her own radiant form,
+As o'er her favourites' heads she sings and soars.
+But dreams came not so calmly; as around
+Turbulent shores wild waves and swamping surf
+Prevail, while seaward, on the tranquil deeps,
+Reign placid surfaces and solemn peace,
+So, from the troubled strands of memory, they
+Launched and were tossed, long ere they found the tides
+That lead to the gentle bosoms of pure rest.
+And like to one who from a ghostly watch
+In a lone house where murder hath been done,
+And secret violations, pale with stealth
+Emerges, staggering on the first chill gust
+Wherewith the morning greets him, feeling not
+Its balmy freshness on his bloodless cheek, -
+But swift to hide his midnight face afar,
+'Mongst the old woods and timid-glancing flowers
+Hastens, till on the fresh reviving breasts
+Of tender Dryads folded he forgets
+The pallid witness of those nameless things,
+In renovated senses lapt, and joins
+The full, keen joyance of the day, so they
+From sights and sounds of battle smeared with blood,
+And shrieking souls on Acheron's bleak tides,
+And wail of execrating kindred, slid
+Into oblivious slumber and a sense
+Of satiate deliciousness complete.
+
+Leave them, O Muse, in that so happy sleep!
+Leave them to reap the harvest of their toil,
+While fast in moonlight the glad vessel glides,
+As if instinctive to its forest home.
+O Muse, that in all sorrows and all joys,
+Rapturous bliss and suffering divine,
+Dwellest with equal fervour, in the calm
+Of thy serene philosophy, albeit
+Thy gentle nature is of joy alone,
+And loves the pipings of the happy fields,
+Better than all the great parade and pomp
+Which forms the train of heroes and of kings,
+And sows, too frequently, the tragic seeds
+That choke with sobs thy singing,--turn away
+Thy lustrous eyes back to the oath-bound man!
+For as a shepherd stands above his flock,
+The lofty figure of the king is seen,
+Standing above his warriors as they sleep:
+And still as from a rock grey waters gush,
+While still the rock is passionless and dark,
+Nor moves one feature of its giant face,
+The tears fall from his eyes, and he stirs not.
+
+And O, bright Muse! forget not thou to fold
+In thy prophetic sympathy the thought
+Of him whose destiny has heard its doom:
+The Sacrifice thro' whom the ship is saved.
+Haply that Sacrifice is sleeping now,
+And dreams of glad tomorrows.  Haply now,
+His hopes are keenest, and his fervent blood
+Richest with youth, and love, and fond regard!
+Round him the circle of affections blooms,
+And in some happy nest of home he lives,
+One name oft uttering in delighted ears,
+Mother! at which the heart of men are kin
+With reverence and yearning.  Haply, too,
+That other name, twin holy, twin revered,
+He whispers often to the passing winds
+That blow toward the Asiatic coasts;
+For Crete has sent her bravest to the war,
+And multitudes pressed forward to that rank,
+Men with sad weeping wives and little ones.
+That other name--O Father! who art thou,
+Thus doomed to lose the star of thy last days?
+It may be the sole flower of thy life,
+And that of all who now look up to thee!
+O Father, Father! unto thee even now
+Fate cries; the future with imploring voice
+Cries 'Save me,' 'Save me,' though thou hearest not.
+And O thou Sacrifice, foredoomed by Zeus;
+Even now the dark inexorable deed
+Is dealing its relentless stroke, and vain
+Are prayers, and tears, and struggles, and despair!
+The mother's tears, the nation's stormful grief,
+The people's indignation and revenge!
+Vain the last childlike pleading voice for life,
+The quick resolve, the young heroic brow,
+So like, so like, and vainly beautiful!
+Oh! whosoe'er ye are the Muse says not,
+And sees not, but the Gods look down on both.
+
+
+
+THE LONGEST DAY
+
+
+
+On yonder hills soft twilight dwells
+And Hesper burns where sunset dies,
+Moist and chill the woodland smells
+From the fern-covered hollows uprise;
+Darkness drops not from the skies,
+But shadows of darkness are flung o'er the vale
+From the boughs of the chestnut, the oak, and the elm,
+While night in yon lines of eastern pines
+Preserves alone her inviolate realm
+Against the twilight pale.
+
+Say, then say, what is this day,
+That it lingers thus with half-closed eyes,
+When the sunset is quenched and the orient ray
+Of the roseate moon doth rise,
+Like a midnight sun o'er the skies!
+'Tis the longest, the longest of all the glad year,
+The longest in life and the fairest in hue,
+When day and night, in bridal light,
+Mingle their beings beneath the sweet blue,
+And bless the balmy air!
+
+Upward to this starry height
+The culminating seasons rolled;
+On one slope green with spring delight,
+The other with harvest gold,
+And treasures of Autumn untold:
+And on this highest throne of the midsummer now
+The waning but deathless day doth dream,
+With a rapturous grace, as tho' from the face
+Of the unveiled infinity, lo, a far beam
+Had fall'n on her dim-flushed brow!
+
+Prolong, prolong that tide of song,
+O leafy nightingale and thrush!
+Still, earnest-throated blackcap, throng
+The woods with that emulous gush
+Of notes in tumultuous rush.
+Ye summer souls, raise up one voice!
+A charm is afloat all over the land;
+The ripe year doth fall to the Spirit of all,
+Who blesses it with outstretched hand;
+Ye summer souls, rejoice!
+
+
+
+TO ROBIN REDBREAST
+
+
+
+Merrily 'mid the faded leaves,
+O Robin of the bright red breast!
+Cheerily over the Autumn eaves,
+Thy note is heard, bonny bird;
+Sent to cheer us, and kindly endear us
+To what would be a sorrowful time
+Without thee in the weltering clime:
+Merry art thou in the boughs of the lime,
+While thy fadeless waistcoat glows on thy breast,
+In Autumn's reddest livery drest.
+
+A merry song, a cheery song!
+In the boughs above, on the sward below,
+Chirping and singing the live day long,
+While the maple in grief sheds its fiery leaf,
+And all the trees waning, with bitter complaining,
+Chestnut, and elm, and sycamore,
+Catch the wild gust in their arms, and roar
+Like the sea on a stormy shore,
+Till wailfully they let it go,
+And weep themselves naked and weary with woe.
+
+Merrily, cheerily, joyously still
+Pours out the crimson-crested tide.
+The set of the season burns bright on the hill,
+Where the foliage dead falls yellow and red,
+Picturing vainly, but foretelling plainly
+The wealth of cottage warmth that comes
+When the frost gleams and the blood numbs,
+And then, bonny Robin, I'll spread thee out crumbs
+In my garden porch for thy redbreast pride,
+The song and the ensign of dear fireside.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+The daisy now is out upon the green;
+And in the grassy lanes
+The child of April rains,
+The sweet fresh-hearted violet, is smelt and loved unseen.
+
+Along the brooks and meads, the daffodil
+Its yellow richness spreads,
+And by the fountain-heads
+Of rivers, cowslips cluster round, and over every hill.
+
+The crocus and the primrose may have gone,
+The snowdrop may be low,
+But soon the purple glow
+Of hyacinths will fill the copse, and lilies watch the dawn.
+
+And in the sweetness of the budding year,
+The cuckoo's woodland call,
+The skylark over all,
+And then at eve, the nightingale, is doubly sweet and dear.
+
+My soul is singing with the happy birds,
+And all my human powers
+Are blooming with the flowers,
+My foot is on the fields and downs, among the flocks and herds.
+
+Deep in the forest where the foliage droops,
+I wander, fill'd with joy.
+Again as when a boy,
+The sunny vistas tempt me on with dim delicious hopes.
+
+The sunny vistas, dim with hurrying shade,
+And old romantic haze:-
+Again as in past days,
+The spirit of immortal Spring doth every sense pervade.
+
+Oh! do not say that this will ever cease; -
+This joy of woods and fields,
+This youth that nature yields,
+Will never speak to me in vain, tho' soundly rapt in peace.
+
+
+
+SUNRISE
+
+
+
+The clouds are withdrawn
+And their thin-rippled mist,
+That stream'd o'er the lawn
+To the drowsy-eyed west.
+Cold and grey
+They slept in the way,
+And shrank from the ray
+Of the chariot East:
+But now they are gone,
+And the bounding light
+Leaps thro' the bars
+Of doubtful dawn;
+Blinding the stars,
+And blessing the sight;
+Shedding delight
+On all below;
+Glimmering fields,
+And wakening wealds,
+And rising lark,
+And meadows dark,
+And idle rills,
+And labouring mills,
+And far-distant hills
+Of the fawn and the doe.
+The sun is cheered
+And his path is cleared,
+As he steps to the air
+From his emerald cave,
+His heel in the wave,
+Most bright and bare;
+In the tide of the sky
+His radiant hair
+From his temples fair
+Blown back on high;
+As forward he bends,
+And upward ascends,
+Timely and true,
+To the breast of the blue;
+His warm red lips
+Kissing the dew,
+Which sweetened drips
+On his flower cupholders;
+Every hue
+From his gleaming shoulders
+Shining anew
+With colour sky-born,
+As it washes and dips
+In the pride of the morn.
+Robes of azure,
+Fringed with amber,
+Fold upon fold
+Of purple and gold,
+Vine-leaf bloom,
+And the grape's ripe gloom,
+When season deep
+In noontide leisure,
+With clustering heap
+The tendrils clamber
+Full in the face
+Of his hot embrace,
+Fill'd with the gleams
+Of his firmest beams.
+Autumn flushes,
+Roseate blushes,
+Vermeil tinges,
+Violet fringes,
+Every hue
+Of his flower cupholders,
+O'er the clear ether
+Mingled together,
+Shining anew
+From his gleaming shoulders!
+Circling about
+In a coronal rout,
+And floating behind,
+The way of the wind,
+As forward he bends,
+And upward ascends,
+Timely and true,
+To the breast of the blue.
+His bright neck curved,
+His clear limbs nerved,
+Diamond keen
+On his front serene,
+While each white arm strains
+To the racing reins,
+As plunging, eyes flashing,
+Dripping, and dashing,
+His steeds triple grown
+Rear up to his throne,
+Ruffling the rest
+Of the sea's blue breast,
+From his flooding, flaming crimson crest!
+
+
+
+PICTURES OF THE RHINE
+
+
+
+I
+
+The spirit of Romance dies not to those
+Who hold a kindred spirit in their souls:
+Even as the odorous life within the rose
+Lives in the scattered leaflets and controls
+Mysterious adoration, so there glows
+Above dead things a thing that cannot die;
+Faint as the glimmer of a tearful eye,
+Ere the orb fills and all the sorrow flows.
+Beauty renews itself in many ways;
+The flower is fading while the new bud blows;
+And this dear land as true a symbol shows,
+While o'er it like a mellow sunset strays
+The legendary splendour of old days,
+In visible, inviolate repose.
+
+II
+
+About a mile behind the viny banks,
+How sweet it was, upon a sloping green,
+Sunspread, and shaded with a branching screen,
+To lie in peace half-murmuring words of thanks!
+To see the mountains on each other climb,
+With spaces for rich meadows flowery bright;
+The winding river freshening the sight
+At intervals, the trees in leafy prime;
+The distant village-roofs of blue and white,
+With intersections of quaint-fashioned beams
+All slanting crosswise, and the feudal gleams
+Of ruined turrets, barren in the light; -
+To watch the changing clouds, like clime in clime;
+Oh sweet to lie and bless the luxury of time.
+
+III
+
+Fresh blows the early breeze, our sail is full;
+A merry morning and a mighty tide.
+Cheerily O! and past St. Goar we glide,
+Half hid in misty dawn and mountain cool.
+The river is our own! and now the sun
+In saffron clothes the warming atmosphere;
+The sky lifts up her white veil like a nun,
+And looks upon the landscape blue and clear; -
+The lark is up; the hills, the vines in sight;
+The river broadens with his waking bliss
+And throws up islands to behold the light;
+Voices begin to rise, all hues to kiss; -
+Was ever such a happy morn as this!
+Birds sing, we shout, flowers breathe, trees shine with one delight!
+
+IV
+
+Between the two white breasts of her we love,
+A dewy blushing rose will sometimes spring;
+Thus Nonnenwerth like an enchanted thing
+Rises mid-stream the crystal depths above.
+On either side the waters heave and swell,
+But all is calm within the little Isle;
+Content it is to give its holy smile,
+And bless with peace the lives that in it dwell.
+Most dear on the dark grass beneath its bower
+Of kindred trees embracing branch and bough,
+To dream of fairy foot and sudden flower;
+Or haply with a twilight on the brow,
+To muse upon the legendary hour,
+And Roland's lonely love and Hildegard's sad vow.
+
+V
+
+Hark! how the bitter winter breezes blow
+Round the sharp rocks and o'er the half-lifted wave,
+While all the rocky woodland branches rave
+Shrill with the piercing cold, and every cave,
+Along the icy water-margin low,
+Rings bubbling with the whirling overflow;
+And sharp the echoes answer distant cries
+Of dawning daylight and the dim sunrise,
+And the gloom-coloured clouds that stain the skies
+With pictures of a warmth, and frozen glow
+Spread over endless fields of sheeted snow;
+And white untrodden mountains shining cold,
+And muffled footpaths winding thro' the wold,
+O'er which those wintry gusts cease not to howl and blow.
+
+VI
+
+Rare is the loveliness of slow decay!
+With youth and beauty all must be desired,
+But 'tis the charm of things long past away,
+They leave, alone, the light they have inspired:
+The calmness of a picture; Memory now
+Is the sole life among the ruins grey,
+And like a phantom in fantastic play
+She wanders with rank weeds stuck on her brow,
+Over grass-hidden caves and turret-tops,
+Herself almost as tottering as they;
+While, to the steps of Time, her latest props
+Fall stone by stone, and in the Sun's hot ray
+All that remains stands up in rugged pride,
+And bridal vines drink in his juices on each side.
+
+
+
+TO A NIGHTINGALE
+
+
+
+O nightingale! how hast thou learnt
+The note of the nested dove?
+While under thy bower the fern hangs burnt
+And no cloud hovers above!
+Rich July has many a sky
+With splendour dim, that thou mightst hymn,
+And make rejoice with thy wondrous voice,
+And the thrill of thy wild pervading tone!
+But instead of to woo, thou hast learnt to coo:
+Thy song is mute at the mellowing fruit,
+And the dirge of the flowers is sung by the hours
+In silence and twilight alone.
+
+O nightingale! 'tis this, 'tis this
+That makes thee mock the dove!
+That thou hast past thy marriage bliss,
+To know a parent's love.
+The waves of fern may fade and burn,
+The grasses may fall, the flowers and all,
+And the pine-smells o'er the oak dells
+Float on their drowsy and odorous wings,
+But thou wilt do nothing but coo,
+Brimming the nest with thy brooding breast,
+'Midst that young throng of future song,
+Round whom the Future sings!
+
+
+
+INVITATION TO THE COUNTRY
+
+
+
+Now 'tis Spring on wood and wold,
+Early Spring that shivers with cold,
+But gladdens, and gathers, day by day,
+A lovelier hue, a warmer ray,
+A sweeter song, a dearer ditty;
+Ouzel and throstle, new-mated and gay,
+Singing their bridals on every spray -
+Oh, hear them, deep in the songless City!
+Cast off the yoke of toil and smoke,
+As Spring is casting winter's grey,
+As serpents cast their skins away:
+And come, for the Country awaits thee with pity
+And longs to bathe thee in her delight,
+And take a new joy in thy kindling sight;
+And I no less, by day and night,
+Long for thy coming, and watch for, and wait thee,
+And wonder what duties can thus berate thee.
+
+Dry-fruited firs are dropping their cones,
+And vista'd avenues of pines
+Take richer green, give fresher tones,
+As morn after morn the glad sun shines.
+
+Primrose tufts peep over the brooks,
+Fair faces amid moist decay!
+The rivulets run with the dead leaves at play,
+The leafless elms are alive with the rooks.
+
+Over the meadows the cowslips are springing,
+The marshes are thick with king-cup gold,
+Clear is the cry of the lambs in the fold,
+The skylark is singing, and singing, and singing.
+
+Soon comes the cuckoo when April is fair,
+And her blue eye the brighter the more it may weep:
+The frog and the butterfly wake from their sleep,
+Each to its element, water and air.
+
+Mist hangs still on every hill,
+And curls up the valleys at eve; but noon
+Is fullest of Spring; and at midnight the moon
+Gives her westering throne to Orion's bright zone,
+As he slopes o'er the darkened world's repose;
+And a lustre in eastern Sirius glows.
+
+Come, in the season of opening buds;
+Come, and molest not the otter that whistles
+Unlit by the moon, 'mid the wet winter bristles
+Of willow, half-drowned in the fattening floods.
+Let him catch his cold fish without fear of a gun,
+And the stars shall shield him, and thou wilt shun!
+And every little bird under the sun
+Shall know that the bounty of Spring doth dwell
+In the winds that blow, in the waters that run,
+And in the breast of man as well.
+
+
+
+THE SWEET O' THE YEAR
+
+
+
+Now the frog, all lean and weak,
+Yawning from his famished sleep,
+Water in the ditch doth seek,
+Fast as he can stretch and leap:
+Marshy king-cups burning near
+Tell him 'tis the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now the ant works up his mound
+In the mouldered piny soil,
+And above the busy ground
+Takes the joy of earnest toil:
+Dropping pine-cones, dry and sere,
+Warn him 'tis the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now the chrysalis on the wall
+Cracks, and out the creature springs,
+Raptures in his body small,
+Wonders on his dusty wings:
+Bells and cups, all shining clear,
+Show him 'tis the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now the brown bee, wild and wise,
+Hums abroad, and roves and roams,
+Storing in his wealthy thighs
+Treasure for the golden combs:
+Dewy buds and blossoms dear
+Whisper 'tis the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now the merry maids so fair
+Weave the wreaths and choose the queen,
+Blooming in the open air,
+Like fresh flowers upon the green;
+Spring, in every thought sincere,
+Thrills them with the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now the lads, all quick and gay,
+Whistle to the browsing herds,
+Or in the twilight pastures grey
+Learn the use of whispered words:
+First a blush, and then a tear,
+And then a smile, i' the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now the May-fly and the fish
+Play again from noon to night;
+Every breeze begets a wish,
+Every motion means delight:
+Heaven high over heath and mere
+Crowns with blue the sweet o' the year.
+
+Now all Nature is alive,
+Bird and beetle, man and mole;
+Bee-like goes the human hive,
+Lark-like sings the soaring soul:
+Hearty faith and honest cheer
+Welcome in the sweet o' the year.
+
+
+
+AUTUMN EVEN-SONG
+
+
+
+The long cloud edged with streaming grey
+Soars from the West;
+The red leaf mounts with it away,
+Showing the nest
+A blot among the branches bare:
+There is a cry of outcasts in the air.
+
+Swift little breezes, darting chill,
+Pant down the lake;
+A crow flies from the yellow hill,
+And in its wake
+A baffled line of labouring rooks:
+Steel-surfaced to the light the river looks.
+
+Pale on the panes of the old hall
+Gleams the lone space
+Between the sunset and the squall;
+And on its face
+Mournfully glimmers to the last:
+Great oaks grow mighty minstrels in the blast.
+
+Pale the rain-rutted roadways shine
+In the green light
+Behind the cedar and the pine:
+Come, thundering night!
+Blacken broad earth with hoards of storm:
+For me yon valley-cottage beckons warm.
+
+
+
+THE SONG OF COURTESY
+
+
+
+I
+
+When Sir Gawain was led to his bridal-bed,
+By Arthur's knights in scorn God-sped:-
+How think you he felt?
+O the bride within
+Was yellow and dry as a snake's old skin;
+Loathly as sin!
+Scarcely faceable,
+Quite unembraceable;
+With a hog's bristle on a hag's chin! -
+Gentle Gawain felt as should we,
+Little of Love's soft fire knew he:
+But he was the Knight of Courtesy.
+
+II
+
+When that evil lady he lay beside
+Bade him turn to greet his bride,
+What think you he did?
+O, to spare her pain,
+And let not his loathing her loathliness vain
+Mirror too plain,
+Sadly, sighingly,
+Almost dyingly,
+Turned he and kissed her once and again.
+Like Sir Gawain, gentles, should we?
+SILENT, ALL!  But for pattern agree
+There's none like the Knight of Courtesy.
+
+III
+
+Sir Gawain sprang up amid laces and curls:
+Kisses are not wasted pearls:-
+What clung in his arms?
+O, a maiden flower,
+Burning with blushes the sweet bride-bower,
+Beauty her dower!
+Breathing perfumingly;
+Shall I live bloomingly,
+Said she, by day, or the bridal hour?
+Thereat he clasped her, and whispered he,
+Thine, rare bride, the choice shall be.
+Said she, Twice blest is Courtesy!
+
+IV
+
+Of gentle Sir Gawain they had no sport,
+When it was morning in Arthur's court;
+What think you they cried?
+Now, life and eyes!
+This bride is the very Saint's dream of a prize,
+Fresh from the skies!
+See ye not, Courtesy
+Is the true Alchemy,
+Turning to gold all it touches and tries?
+Like the true knight, so may we
+Make the basest that there be
+Beautiful by Courtesy!
+
+
+
+THE THREE MAIDENS
+
+
+
+There were three maidens met on the highway;
+The sun was down, the night was late:
+And two sang loud with the birds of May,
+O the nightingale is merry with its mate.
+
+Said they to the youngest, Why walk you there so still?
+The land is dark, the night is late:
+O, but the heart in my side is ill,
+And the nightingale will languish for its mate.
+
+Said they to the youngest, Of lovers there is store;
+The moon mounts up, the night is late:
+O, I shall look on man no more,
+And the nightingale is dumb without its mate.
+
+Said they to the youngest, Uncross your arms and sing;
+The moon mounts high, the night is late:
+O my dear lover can hear no thing,
+And the nightingale sings only to its mate.
+
+They slew him in revenge, and his true-love was his lure;
+The moon is pale, the night is late:
+His grave is shallow on the moor;
+O the nightingale is dying for its mate.
+
+His blood is on his breast, and the moss-roots at his hair;
+The moon is chill, the night is late:
+But I will lie beside him there:
+O the nightingale is dying for its mate.
+
+
+
+OVER THE HILLS
+
+
+
+The old hound wags his shaggy tail,
+And I know what he would say:
+It's over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
+Over the hills, and away.
+
+There's nought for us here save to count the clock,
+And hang the head all day:
+But over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+Here among men we're like the deer
+That yonder is our prey:
+So, over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+The hypocrite is master here,
+But he's the cock of clay:
+So, over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+The women, they shall sigh and smile,
+And madden whom they may:
+It's over the hills we'll bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+Let silly lads in couples run
+To pleasure, a wicked fay:
+'Tis ours on the heather to bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+The torrent glints under the rowan red,
+And shakes the bracken spray:
+What joy on the heather to bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+The sun bursts broad, and the heathery bed
+Is purple, and orange, and gray:
+Away, and away, we'll bound, old hound,
+Over the hills and away.
+
+
+
+JUGGLING JERRY
+
+
+
+I
+
+Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
+By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
+It's nigh my last above the daisies:
+My next leaf 'll be man's blank page.
+Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:
+Juggler, constable, king, must bow.
+One that outjuggles all's been spying
+Long to have me, and he has me now.
+
+II
+
+We've travelled times to this old common:
+Often we've hung our pots in the gorse.
+We've had a stirring life, old woman!
+You, and I, and the old grey horse.
+Races, and fairs, and royal occasions,
+Found us coming to their call:
+Now they'll miss us at our stations:
+There's a Juggler outjuggles all!
+
+III
+
+Up goes the lark, as if all were jolly!
+Over the duck-pond the willow shakes.
+Easy to think that grieving's folly,
+When the hand's firm as driven stakes!
+Ay, when we're strong, and braced, and manful,
+Life's a sweet fiddle:  but we're a batch
+Born to become the Great Juggler's han'ful:
+Balls he shies up, and is safe to catch.
+
+IV
+
+Here's where the lads of the village cricket:
+I was a lad not wide from here:
+Couldn't I whip off the bail from the wicket?
+Like an old world those days appear!
+Donkey, sheep, geese, and thatched ale-house -
+I know them!
+They are old friends of my halts, and seem,
+Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them:
+Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem.
+
+V
+
+Juggling's no sin, for we must have victual:
+Nature allows us to bait for the fool.
+Holding one's own makes us juggle no little;
+But, to increase it, hard juggling's the rule.
+You that are sneering at my profession,
+Haven't you juggled a vast amount?
+There's the Prime Minister, in one Session,
+Juggles more games than my sins 'll count.
+
+VI
+
+I've murdered insects with mock thunder:
+Conscience, for that, in men don't quail.
+I've made bread from the bump of wonder:
+That's my business, and there's my tale.
+Fashion and rank all praised the professor:
+Ay! and I've had my smile from the Queen:
+Bravo, Jerry! she meant:  God bless her!
+Ain't this a sermon on that scene?
+
+VII
+
+I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
+Close, and, I reckon, rather true.
+Some are fine fellows:  some, right scurvy:
+Most, a dash between the two.
+But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me
+Think more kindly of the race:
+And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me
+When the Great Juggler I must face.
+
+VIII
+
+We two were married, due and legal:
+Honest we've lived since we've been one.
+Lord!  I could then jump like an eagle:
+You danced bright as a bit o' the sun.
+Birds in a May-bush we were! right merry!
+All night we kiss'd, we juggled all day.
+Joy was the heart of Juggling Jerry!
+Now from his old girl he's juggled away.
+
+IX
+
+It's past parsons to console us:
+No, nor no doctor fetch for me:
+I can die without my bolus;
+Two of a trade, lass, never agree!
+Parson and Doctor!--don't they love rarely,
+Fighting the devil in other men's fields!
+Stand up yourself and match him fairly:
+Then see how the rascal yields!
+
+X
+
+I, lass, have lived no gipsy, flaunting
+Finery while his poor helpmate grubs:
+Coin I've stored, and you won't be wanting:
+You shan't beg from the troughs and tubs.
+Nobly you've stuck to me, though in his kitchen
+Many a Marquis would hail you Cook!
+Palaces you could have ruled and grown rich in,
+But our old Jerry you never forsook.
+
+XI
+
+Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it;
+Let's have comfort and be at peace.
+Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet.
+Cheer up! the Lord must have his lease.
+May be--for none see in that black hollow -
+It's just a place where we're held in pawn,
+And, when the Great Juggler makes as to swallow,
+It's just the sword-trick--I ain't quite gone!
+
+XII
+
+Yonder came smells of the gorse, so nutty,
+Gold-like and warm:  it's the prime of May.
+Better than mortar, brick and putty,
+Is God's house on a blowing day.
+Lean me more up the mound; now I feel it:
+All the old heath-smells!  Ain't it strange?
+There's the world laughing, as if to conceal it,
+But He's by us, juggling the change.
+
+XIII
+
+I mind it well, by the sea-beach lying,
+Once--it's long gone--when two gulls we beheld,
+Which, as the moon got up, were flying
+Down a big wave that sparked and swelled.
+Crack, went a gun:  one fell:  the second
+Wheeled round him twice, and was off for new luck:
+There in the dark her white wing beckon'd:-
+Drop me a kiss--I'm the bird dead-struck!
+
+
+
+THE CROWN OF LOVE
+
+
+
+O might I load my arms with thee,
+Like that young lover of Romance
+Who loved and gained so gloriously
+The fair Princess of France!
+
+Because he dared to love so high,
+He, bearing her dear weight, shall speed
+To where the mountain touched on sky:
+So the proud king decreed.
+
+Unhalting he must bear her on,
+Nor pause a space to gather breath,
+And on the height she will be won;
+And she was won in death!
+
+Red the far summit flames with morn,
+While in the plain a glistening Court
+Surrounds the king who practised scorn
+Through such a mask of sport.
+
+She leans into his arms; she lets
+Her lovely shape be clasped:  he fares.
+God speed him whole!  The knights make bets:
+The ladies lift soft prayers.
+
+O have you seen the deer at chase?
+O have you seen the wounded kite?
+So boundingly he runs the race,
+So wavering grows his flight.
+
+- My lover! linger here, and slake
+Thy thirst, or me thou wilt not win.
+- See'st thou the tumbled heavens? they break!
+They beckon us up and in.
+
+- Ah, hero-love! unloose thy hold:
+O drop me like a cursed thing.
+- See'st thou the crowded swards of gold?
+They wave to us Rose and Ring.
+
+- O death-white mouth!  O cast me down!
+Thou diest?  Then with thee I die.
+- See'st thou the angels with their Crown?
+We twain have reached the sky.
+
+
+
+THE HEAD OF BRAN THE BLEST
+
+
+
+I
+
+When the Head of Bran
+Was firm on British shoulders,
+God made a man!
+Cried all beholders.
+
+Steel could not resist
+The weight his arm would rattle;
+He, with naked fist,
+Has brain'd a knight in battle.
+
+He marched on the foe,
+And never counted numbers;
+Foreign widows know
+The hosts he sent to slumbers.
+
+As a street you scan,
+That's towered by the steeple,
+So the Head of Bran
+Rose o'er his people.
+
+II
+
+'Death's my neighbour,'
+Quoth Bran the Blest;
+'Christian labour
+Brings Christian rest.
+From the trunk sever
+The Head of Bran,
+That which never
+Has bent to man!
+'That which never
+To men has bowed
+Shall live ever
+To shame the shroud:
+Shall live ever
+To face the foe;
+Sever it, sever,
+And with one blow.
+
+'Be it written,
+That all I wrought
+Was for Britain,
+In deed and thought:
+Be it written,
+That while I die,
+Glory to Britain!
+Is my last cry.
+
+'Glory to Britain!
+Death echoes me round.
+Glory to Britain!
+The world shall resound.
+Glory to Britain!
+In ruin and fall,
+Glory to Britain!
+Is heard over all.'
+
+IIII
+
+Burn, Sun, down the sea!
+Bran lies low with thee.
+
+Burst, Morn, from the main!
+Bran so shall rise again.
+
+Blow, Wind, from the field!
+Bran's Head is the Briton's shield.
+
+Beam, Star, in the West!
+Bright burns the Head of Bran the Blest.
+
+IV
+
+Crimson-footed, like the stork,
+From great ruts of slaughter,
+Warriors of the Golden Torque
+Cross the lifting water.
+Princes seven, enchaining hands,
+Bear the live head homeward.
+Lo! it speaks, and still commands:
+Gazing out far foamward.
+
+Fiery words of lightning sense
+Down the hollows thunder;
+Forest hostels know not whence
+Comes the speech, and wonder.
+City-Castles, on the steep,
+Where the faithful Seven
+House at midnight, hear, in sleep,
+Laughter under heaven.
+
+Lilies, swimming on the mere,
+In the castle shadow,
+Under draw their heads, and Fear
+Walks the misty meadow.
+Tremble not! it is not Death
+Pledging dark espousal:
+'Tis the Head of endless breath,
+Challenging carousal!
+
+Brim the horn! a health is drunk,
+Now, that shall keep going:
+Life is but the pebble sunk;
+Deeds, the circle growing!
+Fill, and pledge the Head of Bran!
+While his lead they follow,
+Long shall heads in Britain plan
+Speech Death cannot swallow!
+
+
+
+THE MEETING
+
+
+
+The old coach-road through a common of furze,
+With knolls of pine, ran white;
+Berries of autumn, with thistles, and burrs,
+And spider-threads, droop'd in the light.
+
+The light in a thin blue veil peered sick;
+The sheep grazed close and still;
+The smoke of a farm by a yellow rick
+Curled lazily under a hill.
+
+No fly shook the round of the silver net;
+No insect the swift bird chased;
+Only two travellers moved and met
+Across that hazy waste.
+
+One was a girl with a babe that throve,
+Her ruin and her bliss;
+One was a youth with a lawless love,
+Who clasped it the more for this.
+
+The girl for her babe hummed prayerful speech;
+The youth for his love did pray;
+Each cast a wistful look on each,
+And either went their way.
+
+
+
+THE BEGGAR'S SOLILOQUY
+
+
+
+I
+
+Now, this, to my notion, is pleasant cheer,
+To lie all alone on a ragged heath,
+Where your nose isn't sniffing for bones or beer,
+But a peat-fire smells like a garden beneath.
+The cottagers bustle about the door,
+And the girl at the window ties her strings.
+She's a dish for a man who's a mind to be poor;
+Lord! women are such expensive things.
+
+II
+
+We don't marry beggars, says she:  why, no:
+It seems that to make 'em is what you do;
+And as I can cook, and scour, and sew,
+I needn't pay half my victuals for you.
+A man for himself should be able to scratch,
+But tickling's a luxury:- love, indeed!
+Love burns as long as the lucifer match,
+Wedlock's the candle!  Now, that's my creed.
+
+III
+
+The church-bells sound water-like over the wheat;
+And up the long path troop pair after pair.
+The man's well-brushed, and the woman looks neat:
+It's man and woman everywhere!
+Unless, like me, you lie here flat,
+With a donkey for friend, you must have a wife:
+She pulls out your hair, but she brushes your hat.
+Appearances make the best half of life.
+
+IV
+
+You nice little madam! you know you're nice.
+I remember hearing a parson say
+You're a plateful of vanity pepper'd with vice;
+You chap at the gate thinks t' other way.
+On his waistcoat you read both his head and his heart:
+There's a whole week's wages there figured in gold!
+Yes! when you turn round you may well give a start:
+It's fun to a fellow who's getting old.
+
+V
+
+Now, that's a good craft, weaving waistcoats and flowers,
+And selling of ribbons, and scenting of lard:
+It gives you a house to get in from the showers,
+And food when your appetite jockeys you hard.
+You live a respectable man; but I ask
+If it's worth the trouble?  You use your tools,
+And spend your time, and what's your task?
+Why, to make a slide for a couple of fools.
+
+VI
+
+You can't match the colour o' these heath mounds,
+Nor better that peat-fire's agreeable smell.
+I'm clothed-like with natural sights and sounds;
+To myself I'm in tune:  I hope you're as well.
+You jolly old cot! though you don't own coal:
+It's a generous pot that's boiled with peat.
+Let the Lord Mayor o' London roast oxen whole:
+His smoke, at least, don't smell so sweet.
+
+VII
+
+I'm not a low Radical, hating the laws,
+Who'd the aristocracy rebuke.
+I talk o' the Lord Mayor o' London because
+I once was on intimate terms with his cook.
+I served him a turn, and got pensioned on scraps,
+And, Lord, Sir! didn't I envy his place,
+Till Death knock'd him down with the softest of taps,
+And I knew what was meant by a tallowy face!
+
+VIII
+
+On the contrary, I'm Conservative quite;
+There's beggars in Scripture 'mongst Gentiles and Jews:
+It's nonsense, trying to set things right,
+For if people will give, why, who'll refuse?
+That stopping old custom wakes my spleen:
+The poor and the rich both in giving agree:
+Your tight-fisted shopman's the Radical mean:
+There's nothing in common 'twixt him and me.
+
+IX
+
+He says I'm no use! but I won't reply.
+You're lucky not being of use to him!
+On week-days he's playing at Spider and Fly,
+And on Sundays he sings about Cherubim!
+Nailing shillings to counters is his chief work:
+He nods now and then at the name on his door:
+But judge of us two, at a bow and a smirk,
+I think I'm his match:  and I'm honest--that's more.
+
+X
+
+No use! well, I mayn't be.  You ring a pig's snout,
+And then call the animal glutton!  Now, he,
+Mr. Shopman, he's nought but a pipe and a spout
+Who won't let the goods o' this world pass free.
+This blazing blue weather all round the brown crop,
+He can't enjoy! all but cash he hates.
+He's only a snail that crawls under his shop;
+Though he has got the ear o' the magistrates.
+
+XI
+
+Now, giving and taking's a proper exchange,
+Like question and answer:  you're both content.
+But buying and selling seems always strange;
+You're hostile, and that's the thing that's meant.
+It's man against man--you're almost brutes;
+There's here no thanks, and there's there no pride.
+If Charity's Christian, don't blame my pursuits,
+I carry a touchstone by which you're tried.
+
+XII
+
+- 'Take it,' says she, 'it's all I've got':
+I remember a girl in London streets:
+She stood by a coffee-stall, nice and hot,
+My belly was like a lamb that bleats.
+Says I to myself, as her shilling I seized,
+You haven't a character here, my dear!
+But for making a rascal like me so pleased,
+I'll give you one, in a better sphere!
+
+XIII
+
+And that's where it is--she made me feel
+I was a rascal:  but people who scorn,
+And tell a poor patch-breech he isn't genteel,
+Why, they make him kick up--and he treads on a corn.
+It isn't liking, it's curst ill-luck,
+Drives half of us into the begging-trade:
+If for taking to water you praise a duck,
+For taking to beer why a man upbraid?
+
+XIV
+
+The sermon's over:  they're out of the porch,
+And it's time for me to move a leg;
+But in general people who come from church,
+And have called themselves sinners, hate chaps to beg.
+I'll wager they'll all of 'em dine to-day!
+I was easy half a minute ago.
+If that isn't pig that's baking away,
+May I perish!--we're never contented--heigho!
+
+
+
+BY THE ROSANNA--TO F. M.  STANZER THAL, TYROL
+
+
+
+The old grey Alp has caught the cloud,
+And the torrent river sings aloud;
+The glacier-green Rosanna sings
+An organ song of its upper springs.
+Foaming under the tiers of pine,
+I see it dash down the dark ravine,
+And it tumbles the rocks in boisterous play,
+With an earnest will to find its way.
+Sharp it throws out an emerald shoulder,
+And, thundering ever of the mountain,
+Slaps in sport some giant boulder,
+And tops it in a silver fountain.
+A chain of foam from end to end,
+And a solitude so deep, my friend,
+You may forget that man abides
+Beyond the great mute mountain-sides.
+Yet to me, in this high-walled solitude
+Of river and rock and forest rude,
+The roaring voice through the long white chain
+Is the voice of the world of bubble and brain.
+
+
+
+PHANTASY
+
+
+
+I
+
+Within a Temple of the Toes,
+Where twirled the passionate Wili,
+I saw full many a market rose,
+And sighed for my village lily.
+
+II
+
+With cynical Adrian then I took flight
+To that old dead city whose carol
+Bursts out like a reveller's loud in the night,
+As he sits astride his barrel.
+
+III
+
+We two were bound the Alps to scale,
+Up the rock-reflecting river;
+Old times blew thro' me like a gale,
+And kept my thoughts in a quiver.
+
+IV
+
+Hawking ruin, wood-slope, and vine
+Reeled silver-laced under my vision,
+And into me passed, with the green-eyed wine
+Knocking hard at my head for admission.
+
+V
+
+I held the village lily cheap,
+And the dream around her idle:
+Lo, quietly as I lay to sleep,
+The bells led me off to a bridal.
+
+VI
+
+My bride wore the hood of a Beguine,
+And mine was the foot to falter;
+Three cowled monks, rat-eyed, were seen;
+The Cross was of bones o'er the altar.
+
+VII
+
+The Cross was of bones; the priest that read,
+A spectacled necromancer:
+But at the fourth word, the bride I led
+Changed to an Opera dancer.
+
+VIII
+
+A young ballet-beauty, who perked in her place,
+A darling of pink and spangles;
+One fair foot level with her face,
+And the hearts of men at her ankles.
+
+IX
+
+She whirled, she twirled, the mock-priest grinned,
+And quickly his mask unriddled;
+'Twas Adrian! loud his old laughter dinned;
+Then he seized a fiddle, and fiddled.
+
+X
+
+He fiddled, he glowed with the bottomless fire,
+Like Sathanas in feature:
+All through me he fiddled a wolfish desire
+To dance with that bright creature.
+
+XI
+
+And gathering courage I said to my soul,
+Throttle the thing that hinders!
+When the three cowled monks, from black as coal,
+Waxed hot as furnace-cinders.
+
+XII
+
+They caught her up, twirling:  they leapt between-whiles:
+The fiddler flickered with laughter:
+Profanely they flew down the awful aisles,
+Where I went sliding after.
+
+XIII
+
+Down the awful aisles, by the fretted walls,
+Beneath the Gothic arches:-
+King Skull in the black confessionals
+Sat rub-a-dub-dubbing his marches.
+
+XIV
+
+Then the silent cold stone warriors frowned,
+The pictured saints strode forward:
+A whirlwind swept them from holy ground;
+A tempest puffed them nor'ward.
+
+XV
+
+They shot through the great cathedral door;
+Like mallards they traversed ocean:
+And gazing below, on its boiling floor,
+I marked a horrid commotion.
+
+XVI
+
+Down a forest's long alleys they spun like tops:
+It seemed that for ages and ages,
+Thro' the Book of Life bereft of stops,
+They waltzed continuous pages.
+
+XVII
+
+And ages after, scarce awake,
+And my blood with the fever fretting,
+I stood alone by a forest-lake,
+Whose shadows the moon were netting.
+
+XVIII
+
+Lilies, golden and white, by the curls
+Of their broad flat leaves hung swaying.
+A wreath of languid twining girls
+Streamed upward, long locks disarraying.
+
+XIX
+
+Their cheeks had the satin frost-glow of the moon;
+Their eyes the fire of Sirius.
+They circled, and droned a monotonous tune,
+Abandoned to love delirious.
+
+XX
+
+Like lengths of convolvulus torn from the hedge,
+And trailing the highway over,
+The dreamy-eyed mistresses circled the sedge,
+And called for a lover, a lover!
+
+XXI
+
+I sank, I rose through seas of eyes,
+In odorous swathes delicious:
+They fanned me with impetuous sighs,
+They hit me with kisses vicious.
+
+XXII
+
+My ears were spelled, my neck was coiled,
+And I with their fury was glowing,
+When the marbly waters bubbled and boiled
+At a watery noise of crowing.
+
+XXIII
+
+They dragged me low and low to the lake:
+Their kisses more stormily showered;
+On the emerald brink, in the white moon's wake,
+An earthly damsel cowered.
+
+XXIV
+
+Fresh heart-sobs shook her knitted hands
+Beneath a tiny suckling,
+As one by one of the doleful bands
+Dived like a fairy duckling.
+
+XXV
+
+And now my turn had come--O me!
+What wisdom was mine that second!
+I dropped on the adorer's knee;
+To that sweet figure I beckoned.
+
+XXVI
+
+Save me! save me! for now I know
+The powers that Nature gave me,
+And the value of honest love I know:-
+My village lily! save me!
+
+XXVII
+
+Come 'twixt me and the sisterhood,
+While the passion-born phantoms are fleeing!
+Oh, he that is true to flesh and blood
+Is true to his own being!
+
+XXVIII
+
+And he that is false to flesh and blood
+Is false to the star within him:
+And the mad and hungry sisterhood
+All under the tides shall win him!
+
+XXIX
+
+My village lily! save me! save!
+For strength is with the holy:-
+Already I shuddered to feel the wave,
+As I kept sinking slowly:-
+
+XXX
+
+I felt the cold wave and the under-tug
+Of the Brides, when--starting and shrinking -
+Lo, Adrian tilts the water-jug!
+And Bruges with morn is blinking.
+
+XXXI
+
+Merrily sparkles sunny prime
+On gabled peak and arbour:
+Merrily rattles belfry-chime
+The song of Sevilla's Barber.
+
+
+
+THE OLD CHARTIST
+
+
+
+Whate'er I be, old England is my dam!
+So there's my answer to the judges, clear.
+I'm nothing of a fox, nor of a lamb;
+I don't know how to bleat nor how to leer:
+I'm for the nation!
+That's why you see me by the wayside here,
+Returning home from transportation.
+
+II
+
+It's Summer in her bath this morn, I think.
+I'm fresh as dew, and chirpy as the birds:
+And just for joy to see old England wink
+Thro' leaves again, I could harangue the herds:
+Isn't it something
+To speak out like a man when you've got words,
+And prove you're not a stupid dumb thing?
+
+III
+
+They shipp'd me of for it; I'm here again.
+Old England is my dam, whate'er I be!
+Says I, I'll tramp it home, and see the grain:
+If you see well, you're king of what you see:
+Eyesight is having,
+If you're not given, I said, to gluttony.
+Such talk to ignorance sounds as raving.
+
+IV
+
+You dear old brook, that from his Grace's park
+Come bounding! on you run near my old town:
+My lord can't lock the water; nor the lark,
+Unless he kills him, can my lord keep down.
+Up, is the song-note!
+I've tried it, too:- for comfort and renown,
+I rather pitch'd upon the wrong note.
+
+V
+
+I'm not ashamed:  Not beaten's still my boast:
+Again I'll rouse the people up to strike.
+But home's where different politics jar most.
+Respectability the women like.
+This form, or that form, -
+The Government may be hungry pike,
+But don't you mount a Chartist platform!
+
+VI
+
+Well, well!  Not beaten--spite of them, I shout;
+And my estate is suffering for the Cause. -
+No,--what is yon brown water-rat about,
+Who washes his old poll with busy paws?
+What does he mean by't?
+It's like defying all our natural laws,
+For him to hope that he'll get clean by't.
+
+VII
+
+His seat is on a mud-bank, and his trade
+Is dirt:- he's quite contemptible; and yet
+The fellow's all as anxious as a maid
+To show a decent dress, and dry the wet.
+Now it's his whisker,
+And now his nose, and ear:  he seems to get
+Each moment at the motion brisker!
+
+VIII
+
+To see him squat like little chaps at school,
+I could let fly a laugh with all my might.
+He peers, hangs both his fore-paws:- bless that fool,
+He's bobbing at his frill now!--what a sight!
+Licking the dish up,
+As if he thought to pass from black to white,
+Like parson into lawny bishop.
+
+IX
+
+The elms and yellow reed-flags in the sun,
+Look on quite grave:- the sunlight flecks his side;
+And links of bindweed-flowers round him run,
+And shine up doubled with him in the tide.
+I'M nearly splitting,
+But nature seems like seconding his pride,
+And thinks that his behaviour's fitting.
+
+X
+
+That isle o' mud looks baking dry with gold.
+His needle-muzzle still works out and in.
+It really is a wonder to behold,
+And makes me feel the bristles of my chin.
+Judged by appearance,
+I fancy of the two I'm nearer Sin,
+And might as well commence a clearance.
+
+XI
+
+And that's what my fine daughter said:- she meant:
+Pray, hold your tongue, and wear a Sunday face.
+Her husband, the young linendraper, spent
+Much argument thereon:- I'm their disgrace.
+Bother the couple!
+I feel superior to a chap whose place
+Commands him to be neat and supple.
+
+XII
+
+But if I go and say to my old hen:
+I'll mend the gentry's boots, and keep discreet,
+Until they grow TOO violent,--why, then,
+A warmer welcome I might chance to meet:
+Warmer and better.
+And if she fancies her old cock is beat,
+And drops upon her knees--so let her!
+
+XIII
+
+She suffered for me:- women, you'll observe,
+Don't suffer for a Cause, but for a man.
+When I was in the dock she show'd her nerve:
+I saw beneath her shawl my old tea-can
+Trembling . . . she brought it
+To screw me for my work:  she loath'd my plan,
+And therefore doubly kind I thought it.
+
+XIV
+
+I've never lost the taste of that same tea:
+That liquor on my logic floats like oil,
+When I state facts, and fellows disagree.
+For human creatures all are in a coil;
+All may want pardon.
+I see a day when every pot will boil
+Harmonious in one great Tea-garden!
+
+XV
+
+We wait the setting of the Dandy's day,
+Before that time!--He's furbishing his dress, -
+He WILL be ready for it!--and I say,
+That yon old dandy rat amid the cress, -
+Thanks to hard labour! -
+If cleanliness is next to godliness,
+The old fat fellow's heaven's neighbour!
+
+XVI
+
+You teach me a fine lesson, my old boy!
+I've looked on my superiors far too long,
+And small has been my profit as my joy.
+You've done the right while I've denounced the wrong.
+Prosper me later!
+Like you I will despise the sniggering throng,
+And please myself and my Creator.
+
+XVII
+
+I'll bring the linendraper and his wife
+Some day to see you; taking off my hat.
+Should they ask why, I'll answer:  in my life
+I never found so true a democrat.
+Base occupation
+Can't rob you of your own esteem, old rat!
+I'll preach you to the British nation.
+
+
+
+SONG
+
+
+
+Should thy love die;
+O bury it not under ice-blue eyes!
+And lips that deny,
+With a scornful surprise,
+The life it once lived in thy breast when it wore no disguise.
+
+Should thy love die;
+O bury it where the sweet wild-flowers blow!
+And breezes go by,
+With no whisper of woe;
+And strange feet cannot guess of the anguish that slumbers below.
+
+Should thy love die;
+O wander once more to the haunt of the bee!
+Where the foliaged sky
+Is most sacred to see,
+And thy being first felt its wild birth like a wind-wakened tree.
+
+Should thy love die;
+O dissemble it! smile! let the rose hide the thorn!
+While the lark sings on high,
+And no thing looks forlorn,
+Bury it, bury it, bury it where it was born.
+
+
+
+TO ALEX. SMITH, THE 'GLASGOW POET,' ON HIS SONNET TO 'FAME'
+
+
+
+Not vainly doth the earnest voice of man
+Call for the thing that is his pure desire!
+Fame is the birthright of the living lyre!
+To noble impulse Nature puts no ban.
+Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised!
+Tho' all thy great emotions like a sea,
+Against her stony immortality,
+Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed.
+Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse:
+Yet if in her cold eyes the end of all
+Be visible, as on her large closed lips
+Hangs dumb the awful riddle of the earth; -
+She sees, and she might speak, since that wild call,
+The mighty warning of a Poet's birth.
+
+
+
+GRANDFATHER BRIDGEMAN
+
+
+
+I
+
+'Heigh, boys!' cried Grandfather Bridgeman, 'it's time before dinner
+to-day.'
+He lifted the crumpled letter, and thumped a surprising 'Hurrah!'
+Up jumped all the echoing young ones, but John, with the starch in
+his throat,
+Said, 'Father, before we make noises, let's see the contents of the
+note.'
+The old man glared at him harshly, and twinkling made answer:  'Too
+bad!
+John Bridgeman, I'm always the whisky, and you are the water, my
+lad!'
+
+II
+
+But soon it was known thro' the house, and the house ran over for
+joy,
+That news, good news, great marvels, had come from the soldier boy;
+Young Tom, the luckless scapegrace, offshoot of Methodist John;
+His grandfather's evening tale, whom the old man hailed as his son.
+And the old man's shout of pride was a shout of his victory, too;
+For he called his affection a method:  the neighbours' opinions he
+knew.
+
+III
+
+Meantime, from the morning table removing the stout breakfast cheer,
+The drink of the three generations, the milk, the tea, and the beer
+(Alone in its generous reading of pints stood the Grandfather's
+jug),
+The women for sight of the missive came pressing to coax and to hug.
+He scattered them quick, with a buss and a smack; thereupon he began
+Diversions with John's little Sarah:  on Sunday, the naughty old
+man!
+
+IV
+
+Then messengers sped to the maltster, the auctioneer, miller, and
+all
+The seven sons of the farmer who housed in the range of his call.
+Likewise the married daughters, three plentiful ladies, prime cooks,
+Who bowed to him while they condemned, in meek hope to stand high in
+his books.
+'John's wife is a fool at a pudding,' they said, and the light carts
+up hill
+Went merrily, flouting the Sabbath:  for puddings well made mend a
+will.
+
+V
+
+The day was a van-bird of summer:  the robin still piped, but the
+blue,
+As a warm and dreamy palace with voices of larks ringing thro',
+Looked down as if wistfully eyeing the blossoms that fell from its
+lap:
+A day to sweeten the juices:  a day to quicken the sap.
+All round the shadowy orchard sloped meadows in gold, and the dear
+Shy violets breathed their hearts out:  the maiden breath of the
+year!
+
+VI
+
+Full time there was before dinner to bring fifteen of his blood,
+To sit at the old man's table:  they found that the dinner was good.
+But who was she by the lilacs and pouring laburnums concealed,
+When under the blossoming apple the chair of the Grandfather
+wheeled?
+She heard one little child crying, 'Dear brave Cousin Tom!' as it
+leapt;
+Then murmured she:  'Let me spare them!' and passed round the
+walnuts, and wept.
+
+VII
+
+Yet not from sight had she slipped ere feminine eyes could detect
+The figure of Mary Charlworth.  'It's just what we all might
+expect,'
+Was uttered:  and:  'Didn't I tell you?'  Of Mary the rumour
+resounds,
+That she is now her own mistress, and mistress of five thousand
+pounds.
+'Twas she, they say, who cruelly sent young Tom to the war.
+Miss Mary, we thank you now!  If you knew what we're thanking you
+for!
+
+VIII
+
+But, 'Have her in:  let her hear it,' called Grandfather Bridgeman,
+elate,
+While Mary's black-gloved fingers hung trembling with flight on the
+gate.
+Despite the women's remonstrance, two little ones, lighter than
+deer,
+Were loosed, and Mary, imprisoned, her whole face white as a tear,
+Came forward with culprit footsteps.  Her punishment was to
+commence:
+The pity in her pale visage they read in a different sense.
+
+IX
+
+'You perhaps may remember a fellow, Miss Charlworth, a sort of black
+sheep,'
+The old man turned his tongue to ironical utterance deep:
+'He came of a Methodist dad, so it wasn't his fault if he kicked.
+He earned a sad reputation, but Methodists are mortal strict.
+His name was Tom, and, dash me! but Bridgeman! I think you might
+add:
+Whatever he was, bear in mind that he came of a Methodist dad.'
+
+X
+
+This prelude dismally lengthened, till Mary, starting, exclaimed,
+'A letter, Sir, from your grandson?'  'Tom Bridgeman that rascal is
+named,'
+The old man answered, and further, the words that sent Tom to the
+ranks
+Repeated as words of a person to whom they all owed mighty thanks.
+But Mary never blushed:  with her eyes on the letter, she sate,
+And twice interrupting him faltered, 'The date, may I ask, Sir, the
+date?'
+
+XI
+
+'Why, that's what I never look at in a letter,' the farmer replied:
+'Facts first! and now I'll be parson.'  The Bridgeman women descried
+A quiver on Mary's eyebrows.  One turned, and while shifting her
+comb,
+Said low to a sister:  'I'm certain she knows more than we about
+Tom.
+She wants him now he's a hero!'  The same, resuming her place,
+Begged Mary to check them the moment she found it a tedious case.
+
+XII
+
+Then as a mastiff swallows the snarling noises of cats,
+The voice of the farmer opened.  '"Three cheers, and off with your
+hats!"
+- That's Tom.  "We've beaten them, Daddy, and tough work it was, to
+be sure!
+A regular stand-up combat:  eight hours smelling powder and gore.
+I entered it Serjeant-Major,"--and now he commands a salute,
+And carries the flag of old England!  Heigh! see him lift foes on
+his foot!
+
+XIII
+
+'--An officer! ay, Miss Charlworth, he is, or he is so to be;
+You'll own war isn't such humbug:  and Glory means something, you
+see.
+"But don't say a word," he continues, "against the brave French any
+more."
+- That stopt me:  we'll now march together.  I couldn't read further
+before.
+That "brave French" I couldn't stomach.  He can't see their cunning
+to get
+Us Britons to fight their battles, while best half the winnings they
+net!'
+
+XIV
+
+The old man sneered, and read forward.  It was of that desperate
+fight; -
+The Muscovite stole thro' the mist-wreaths that wrapped the chill
+Inkermann height,
+Where stood our silent outposts:  old England was in them that day!
+O sharp worked his ruddy wrinkles, as if to the breath of the fray
+They moved!  He sat bareheaded:  his long hair over him slow
+Swung white as the silky bog-flowers in purple heath-hollows that
+grow.
+
+XV
+
+And louder at Tom's first person:  acute and in thunder the 'I'
+Invaded the ear with a whinny of triumph, that seem'd to defy
+The hosts of the world.  All heated, what wonder he little could
+brook
+To catch the sight of Mary's demure puritanical look?
+And still as he led the onslaught, his treacherous side-shots he
+sent
+At her who was fighting a battle as fierce, and who sat there
+unbent.
+
+XVI
+
+'"We stood in line, and like hedgehogs the Russians rolled under us
+thick.
+They frightened me there."--He's no coward; for when, Miss, they
+came at the quick,
+The sight, he swears, was a breakfast.--"My stomach felt tight:  in
+a glimpse
+I saw you snoring at home with the dear cuddled-up little imps.
+And then like the winter brickfields at midnight, hot fire
+lengthened out.
+Our fellows were just leashed bloodhounds:  no heart of the lot
+faced about.
+
+XVII
+
+'"And only that grumbler, Bob Harris, remarked that we stood one to
+ten:
+'Ye fool,' says Mick Grady, 'just tell 'em they know to compliment
+men!'
+And I sang out your old words:  'If the opposite side isn't God's,
+Heigh! after you've counted a dozen, the pluckiest lads have the
+odds.'
+Ping-ping flew the enemies' pepper:  the Colonel roared, Forward,
+and we
+Went at them.  'Twas first like a blanket:  and then a long plunge
+in the sea.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+'"Well, now about me and the Frenchman:  it happened I can't tell
+you how:
+And, Grandfather, hear, if you love me, and put aside prejudice
+now":
+He never says "Grandfather"--Tom don't--save it's a serious thing.
+"Well, there were some pits for the rifles, just dug on our French-
+leaning wing:
+And backwards, and forwards, and backwards we went, and at last I
+was vexed,
+And swore I would never surrender a foot when the Russians charged
+next.
+
+XIX
+
+'"I know that life's worth keeping."--Ay, so it is, lad; so it is! -
+"But my life belongs to a woman."--Does that mean Her Majesty, Miss?
+-
+"These Russians came lumping and grinning:  they're fierce at it,
+though they are blocks.
+Our fellows were pretty well pumped, and looked sharp for the little
+French cocks.
+Lord, didn't we pray for their crowing! when over us, on the hill-
+top,
+Behold the first line of them skipping, like kangaroos seen on the
+hop.
+
+XX
+
+'"That sent me into a passion, to think of them spying our flight!"
+Heigh, Tom! you've Bridgeman blood, boy!  And, "'Face them!' I
+shouted:  'All right;
+Sure, Serjeant, we'll take their shot dacent, like gentlemen,' Grady
+replied.
+A ball in his mouth, and the noble old Irishman dropped by my side.
+Then there was just an instant to save myself, when a short wheeze
+Of bloody lungs under the smoke, and a red-coat crawled up on his
+knees.
+
+XXI
+
+'"'Twas Ensign Baynes of our parish."--Ah, ah, Miss Charlworth, the
+one
+Our Tom fought for a young lady?  Come, now we've got into the fun!
+-
+"I shouldered him:  he primed his pistol, and I trailed my musket,
+prepared."
+Why, that's a fine pick-a-back for ye, to make twenty Russians look
+scared!
+"They came--never mind how many:  we couldn't have run very well,
+We fought back to back:  'face to face, our last time!' he said,
+smiling, and fell.
+
+XXII
+
+'"Then I strove wild for his body:  the beggars saw glittering
+rings,
+Which I vowed to send to his mother.  I got some hard knocks and
+sharp stings,
+But felt them no more than angel, or devil, except in the wind.
+I know that I swore at a Russian for showing his teeth, and he
+grinned
+The harder:  quick, as from heaven, a man on a horse rode between,
+And fired, and swung his bright sabre:  I can't write you more of
+the scene.
+
+XXIII
+
+'"But half in his arms, and half at his stirrup, he bore me right
+forth,
+And pitched me among my old comrades:  before I could tell south
+from north,
+He caught my hand up, and kissed it!  Don't ever let any man speak
+A word against Frenchmen, I near him!  I can't find his name, tho' I
+seek.
+But French, and a General, surely he was, and, God bless him! thro'
+him
+I've learnt to love a whole nation."'  The ancient man paused,
+winking dim.
+
+XXIV
+
+A curious look, half woeful, was seen on his face as he turned
+His eyes upon each of his children, like one who but faintly
+discerned
+His old self in an old mirror.  Then gathering sense in his fist,
+He sounded it hard on his knee-cap.  'Your hand, Tom, the French
+fellow kissed!
+He kissed my boy's old pounder!  I say he's a gentleman!'  Straight
+The letter he tossed to one daughter; bade her the remainder relate.
+
+XXV
+
+Tom properly stated his praises in facts, but the lady preferred
+To deck the narration with brackets, and drop her additional word.
+What nobler Christian natures these women could boast, who, 'twas
+known,
+Once spat at the name of their nephew, and now made his praises
+their own!
+The letter at last was finished, the hearers breathed freely, and
+sign
+Was given, 'Tom's health!'--Quoth the farmer:  'Eh, Miss? are you
+weak in the spine?'
+
+XXVI
+
+For Mary had sunk, and her body was shaking, as if in a fit.
+Tom's letter she held, and her thumb-nail the month when the letter
+was writ
+Fast-dinted, while she hung sobbing:  'O, see, Sir, the letter is
+old!
+O, do not be too happy!'--'If I understand you, I'm bowled!'
+Said Grandfather Bridgeman, 'and down go my wickets!--not happy!
+when here,
+Here's Tom like to marry his General's daughter--or widow--I'll
+swear!
+
+XXVII
+
+'I wager he knows how to strut, too!  It's all on the cards that the
+Queen
+Will ask him to Buckingham Palace, to say what he's done and he's
+seen.
+Victoria's fond of her soldiers:  and she's got a nose for a fight.
+If Tom tells a cleverish story--there is such a thing as a knight!
+And don't he look roguish and handsome!--To see a girl snivelling
+there -
+By George, Miss, it's clear that you're jealous'--'I love him!' she
+answered his stare.
+
+XXVIII
+
+'Yes! now!' breathed the voice of a woman.--'Ah! now!' quiver'd low
+the reply.
+'And "now"'s just a bit too late, so it's no use your piping your
+eye,'
+The farmer added bluffly:  'Old Lawyer Charlworth was rich;
+You followed his instructions in kicking Tom into the ditch.
+If you're such a dutiful daughter, that doesn't prove Tom is a fool.
+Forgive and forget's my motto! and here's my grog growing cool!'
+
+XXIX
+
+'But, Sir,' Mary faintly repeated:  'for four long weeks I have
+failed
+To come and cast on you my burden; such grief for you always
+prevailed!
+My heart has so bled for you!'  The old man burst on her speech:
+'You've chosen a likely time, Miss! a pretty occasion to preach!'
+And was it not outrageous, that now, of all times, one should come
+With incomprehensible pity!  Far better had Mary been dumb.
+
+XXX
+
+But when again she stammered in this bewildering way,
+The farmer no longer could bear it, and begged her to go, or to
+stay,
+But not to be whimpering nonsense at such a time.  Pricked by a
+goad,
+'Twas you who sent him to glory:- you've come here to reap what you
+sowed.
+Is that it?' he asked; and the silence the elders preserved plainly
+said,
+On Mary's heaving bosom this begging-petition was read.
+
+XXXI
+
+And that it was scarcely a bargain that she who had driven him wild
+Should share now the fruits of his valour, the women expressed, as
+they smiled.
+The family pride of the Bridgemans was comforted; still, with
+contempt,
+They looked on a monied damsel of modesty quite so exempt.
+'O give me force to tell them!' cried Mary, and even as she spoke,
+A shout and a hush of the children:  a vision on all of them broke.
+
+XXXII
+
+Wheeled, pale, in a chair, and shattered, the wreck of their hero
+was seen;
+The ghost of Tom drawn slow o'er the orchard's shadowy green.
+Could this be the martial darling they joyed in a moment ago?
+'He knows it?' to Mary Tom murmured, and closed his weak lids at her
+'No.'
+'Beloved!' she said, falling by him, 'I have been a coward:  I
+thought
+You lay in the foreign country, and some strange good might be
+wrought.
+
+XXXIII
+
+'Each day I have come to tell him, and failed, with my hand on the
+gate.
+I bore the dreadful knowledge, and crushed my heart with its weight.
+The letter brought by your comrade--he has but just read it aloud!
+It only reached him this morning!'  Her head on his shoulder she
+bowed.
+Then Tom with pity's tenderest lordliness patted her arm,
+And eyed the old white-head fondly, with something of doubt and
+alarm.
+
+XXXIV
+
+O, take to your fancy a sculptor whose fresh marble offspring
+appears
+Before him, shiningly perfect, the laurel-crown'd issue of years:
+Is heaven offended? for lightning behold from its bosom escape,
+And those are mocking fragments that made the harmonious shape!
+He cannot love the ruins, till, feeling that ruins alone
+Are left, he loves them threefold.  So passed the old grandfather's
+moan.
+
+XXXV
+
+John's text for a sermon on Slaughter he heard, and he did not
+protest.
+All rigid as April snowdrifts, he stood, hard and feeble; his chest
+Just showing the swell of the fire as it melted him.  Smiting a rib,
+'Heigh! what have we been about, Tom!  Was this all a terrible fib?'
+He cried, and the letter forth-trembled.  Tom told what the cannon
+had done.
+Few present but ached to see falling those aged tears on his heart's
+son!
+
+XXXVI
+
+Up lanes of the quiet village, and where the mill-waters rush red
+Thro' browning summer meadows to catch the sun's crimsoning head,
+You meet an old man and a maiden who has the soft ways of a wife
+With one whom they wheel, alternate; whose delicate flush of new
+life
+Is prized like the early primrose.  Then shake his right hand, in
+the chair -
+The old man fails never to tell you:  'You've got the French
+General's there!'
+
+
+
+THE PROMISE IN DISTURBANCE
+
+
+
+How low when angels fall their black descent,
+Our primal thunder tells:  known is the pain
+Of music, that nigh throning wisdom went,
+And one false note cast wailful to the insane.
+Now seems the language heard of Love as rain
+To make a mire where fruitfulness was meant.
+The golden harp gives out a jangled strain,
+Too like revolt from heaven's Omnipotent.
+But listen in the thought; so may there come
+Conception of a newly-added chord,
+Commanding space beyond where ear has home.
+In labour of the trouble at its fount,
+Leads Life to an intelligible Lord
+The rebel discords up the sacred mount.
+
+
+
+MODERN LOVE
+
+
+
+I
+
+By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
+That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
+The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
+Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
+And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,
+Dreadfully venomous to him.  She lay
+Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
+With muffled pulses.  Then, as midnight makes
+Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
+Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
+Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
+Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
+By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
+Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
+Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
+Each wishing for the sword that severs all.
+
+II
+
+It ended, and the morrow brought the task.
+Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in
+By shutting all too zealous for their sin:
+Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask.
+But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had!
+He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers:
+A languid humour stole among the hours,
+And if their smiles encountered, he went mad,
+And raged deep inward, till the light was brown
+Before his vision, and the world, forgot,
+Looked wicked as some old dull murder-spot.
+A star with lurid beams, she seemed to crown
+The pit of infamy:  and then again
+He fainted on his vengefulness, and strove
+To ape the magnanimity of love,
+And smote himself, a shuddering heap of pain.
+
+III
+
+This was the woman; what now of the man?
+But pass him.  If he comes beneath a heel,
+He shall be crushed until he cannot feel,
+Or, being callous, haply till he can.
+But he is nothing:- nothing?  Only mark
+The rich light striking out from her on him!
+Ha! what a sense it is when her eyes swim
+Across the man she singles, leaving dark
+All else!  Lord God, who mad'st the thing so fair,
+See that I am drawn to her even now!
+It cannot be such harm on her cool brow
+To put a kiss?  Yet if I meet him there!
+But she is mine!  Ah, no!  I know too well
+I claim a star whose light is overcast:
+I claim a phantom-woman in the Past.
+The hour has struck, though I heard not the bell!
+
+IV
+
+All other joys of life he strove to warm,
+And magnify, and catch them to his lip:
+But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
+And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
+Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
+The coming minute mock the one that went.
+Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent,
+Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe:
+Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,
+Is always watching with a wondering hate.
+Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
+Look we for any kinship with the stars.
+Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,
+And the great price we pay for it full worth:
+We have it only when we are half earth.
+Little avails that coinage to the old!
+
+V
+
+A message from her set his brain aflame.
+A world of household matters filled her mind,
+Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed:
+She treated him as something that is tame,
+And but at other provocation bites.
+Familiar was her shoulder in the glass,
+Through that dark rain:  yet it may come to pass
+That a changed eye finds such familiar sights
+More keenly tempting than new loveliness.
+The 'What has been' a moment seemed his own:
+The splendours, mysteries, dearer because known,
+Nor less divine:  Love's inmost sacredness
+Called to him, 'Come!'--In his restraining start,
+Eyes nurtured to be looked at scarce could see
+A wave of the great waves of Destiny
+Convulsed at a checked impulse of the heart.
+
+VI
+
+It chanced his lips did meet her forehead cool.
+She had no blush, but slanted down her eye.
+Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die:
+And most she punishes the tender fool
+Who will believe what honours her the most!
+Dead! is it dead?  She has a pulse, and flow
+Of tears, the price of blood-drops, as I know,
+For whom the midnight sobs around Love's ghost,
+Since then I heard her, and so will sob on.
+The love is here; it has but changed its aim.
+O bitter barren woman! what's the name?
+The name, the name, the new name thou hast won?
+Behold me striking the world's coward stroke!
+That will I not do, though the sting is dire.
+- Beneath the surface this, while by the fire
+They sat, she laughing at a quiet joke.
+
+VII
+
+She issues radiant from her dressing-room,
+Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere:
+- By stirring up a lower, much I fear!
+How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom!
+That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls
+Can make known women torturingly fair;
+The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair
+Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls.
+His art can take the eyes from out my head,
+Until I see with eyes of other men;
+While deeper knowledge crouches in its den,
+And sends a spark up:- is it true we are wed?
+Yea! filthiness of body is most vile,
+But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse.
+The former, it were not so great a curse
+To read on the steel-mirror of her smile.
+
+VIII
+
+Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt
+Of righteous feeling made her pitiful.
+Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful!
+Where came the cleft between us? whose the fault?
+My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped
+As balm for any bitter wound of mine:
+My breast will open for thee at a sign!
+But, no:  we are two reed-pipes, coarsely stopped:
+The God once filled them with his mellow breath;
+And they were music till he flung them down,
+Used! used!  Hear now the discord-loving clown
+Puff his gross spirit in them, worse than death!
+I do not know myself without thee more:
+In this unholy battle I grow base:
+If the same soul be under the same face,
+Speak, and a taste of that old time restore!
+
+IX
+
+He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles
+So masterfully rude, that he would grieve
+To see the helpless delicate thing receive
+His guardianship through certain dark defiles.
+Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too?
+But still he spared her.  Once:  'Have you no fear?'
+He said:  'twas dusk; she in his grasp; none near.
+She laughed:  'No, surely; am I not with you?'
+And uttering that soft starry 'you,' she leaned
+Her gentle body near him, looking up;
+And from her eyes, as from a poison-cup,
+He drank until the flittering eyelids screened.
+Devilish malignant witch! and oh, young beam
+Of heaven's circle-glory!  Here thy shape
+To squeeze like an intoxicating grape -
+I might, and yet thou goest safe, supreme.
+
+X
+
+But where began the change; and what's my crime?
+The wretch condemned, who has not been arraigned,
+Chafes at his sentence.  Shall I, unsustained,
+Drag on Love's nerveless body thro' all time?
+I must have slept, since now I wake.  Prepare,
+You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods:
+Not, like hard life, of laws.  In Love's deep woods,
+I dreamt of loyal Life:- the offence is there!
+Love's jealous woods about the sun are curled;
+At least, the sun far brighter there did beam. -
+My crime is, that the puppet of a dream,
+I plotted to be worthy of the world.
+Oh, had I with my darling helped to mince
+The facts of life, you still had seen me go
+With hindward feather and with forward toe,
+Her much-adored delightful Fairy Prince!
+
+XI
+
+Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee
+Hums by us with the honey of the Spring,
+And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing
+Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we.
+Or is it now? or was it then? for now,
+As then, the larks from running rings pour showers:
+The golden foot of May is on the flowers,
+And friendly shadows dance upon her brow.
+What's this, when Nature swears there is no change
+To challenge eyesight?  Now, as then, the grace
+Of heaven seems holding earth in its embrace.
+Nor eyes, nor heart, has she to feel it strange?
+Look, woman, in the West.  There wilt thou see
+An amber cradle near the sun's decline:
+Within it, featured even in death divine,
+Is lying a dead infant, slain by thee.
+
+XII
+
+Not solely that the Future she destroys,
+And the fair life which in the distance lies
+For all men, beckoning out from dim rich skies:
+Nor that the passing hour's supporting joys
+Have lost the keen-edged flavour, which begat
+Distinction in old times, and still should breed
+Sweet Memory, and Hope,--earth's modest seed,
+And heaven's high-prompting:  not that the world is flat
+Since that soft-luring creature I embraced
+Among the children of Illusion went:
+Methinks with all this loss I were content,
+If the mad Past, on which my foot is based,
+Were firm, or might be blotted:  but the whole
+Of life is mixed:  the mocking Past will stay:
+And if I drink oblivion of a day,
+So shorten I the stature of my soul.
+
+XIII
+
+'I play for Seasons; not Eternities!'
+Says Nature, laughing on her way.  'So must
+All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!'
+And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies
+She is full sure!  Upon her dying rose
+She drops a look of fondness, and goes by,
+Scarce any retrospection in her eye;
+For she the laws of growth most deeply knows,
+Whose hands bear, here, a seed-bag--there, an urn.
+Pledged she herself to aught, 'twould mark her end!
+This lesson of our only visible friend
+Can we not teach our foolish hearts to learn?
+Yes! yes!--but, oh, our human rose is fair
+Surpassingly!  Lose calmly Love's great bliss,
+When the renewed for ever of a kiss
+Whirls life within the shower of loosened hair!
+
+XIV
+
+What soul would bargain for a cure that brings
+Contempt the nobler agony to kill?
+Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
+And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
+It seems there is another veering fit,
+Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure
+I looked with little prospect of a cure,
+The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit.
+Just heaven! can it be true that jealousy
+Has decked the woman thus? and does her head
+Swim somewhat for possessions forfeited?
+Madam, you teach me many things that be.
+I open an old book, and there I find
+That 'Women still may love whom they deceive.'
+Such love I prize not, madam:  by your leave,
+The game you play at is not to my mind.
+
+XV
+
+I think she sleeps:  it must be sleep, when low
+Hangs that abandoned arm toward the floor;
+The face turned with it.  Now make fast the door.
+Sleep on:  it is your husband, not your foe.
+The Poet's black stage-lion of wronged love
+Frights not our modern dames:- well if he did!
+Now will I pour new light upon that lid,
+Full-sloping like the breasts beneath.  'Sweet dove,
+Your sleep is pure.  Nay, pardon:  I disturb.
+I do not? good!'  Her waking infant-stare
+Grows woman to the burden my hands bear:
+Her own handwriting to me when no curb
+Was left on Passion's tongue.  She trembles through;
+A woman's tremble--the whole instrument:-
+I show another letter lately sent.
+The words are very like:  the name is new.
+
+XVI
+
+In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour,
+When in the firelight steadily aglow,
+Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow
+Among the clicking coals.  Our library-bower
+That eve was left to us:  and hushed we sat
+As lovers to whom Time is whispering.
+From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing:
+The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat.
+Well knew we that Life's greatest treasure lay
+With us, and of it was our talk.  'Ah, yes!
+Love dies!' I said:  I never thought it less.
+She yearned to me that sentence to unsay.
+Then when the fire domed blackening, I found
+Her cheek was salt against my kiss, and swift
+Up the sharp scale of sobs her breast did lift:-
+Now am I haunted by that taste! that sound!
+
+XVII
+
+At dinner, she is hostess, I am host.
+Went the feast ever cheerfuller?  She keeps
+The Topic over intellectual deeps
+In buoyancy afloat.  They see no ghost.
+With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:
+It is in truth a most contagious game:
+HIDING THE SKELETON, shall be its name.
+Such play as this the devils might appal!
+But here's the greater wonder; in that we,
+Enamoured of an acting nought can tire,
+Each other, like true hypocrites, admire;
+Warm-lighted looks, Love's ephemerioe,
+Shoot gaily o'er the dishes and the wine.
+We waken envy of our happy lot.
+Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot.
+Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine.
+
+XVIII
+
+Here Jack and Tom are paired with Moll and Meg.
+Curved open to the river-reach is seen
+A country merry-making on the green.
+Fair space for signal shakings of the leg.
+That little screwy fiddler from his booth,
+Whence flows one nut-brown stream, commands the joints
+Of all who caper here at various points.
+I have known rustic revels in my youth:
+The May-fly pleasures of a mind at ease.
+An early goddess was a country lass:
+A charmed Amphion-oak she tripped the grass.
+What life was that I lived?  The life of these?
+Heaven keep them happy!  Nature they seem near.
+They must, I think, be wiser than I am;
+They have the secret of the bull and lamb.
+'Tis true that when we trace its source, 'tis beer.
+
+XIX
+
+No state is enviable.  To the luck alone
+Of some few favoured men I would put claim.
+I bleed, but her who wounds I will not blame.
+Have I not felt her heart as 'twere my own
+Beat thro' me? could I hurt her? heaven and hell!
+But I could hurt her cruelly!  Can I let
+My Love's old time-piece to another set,
+Swear it can't stop, and must for ever swell?
+Sure, that's one way Love drifts into the mart
+Where goat-legged buyers throng.  I see not plain:-
+My meaning is, it must not be again.
+Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart.
+If any state be enviable on earth,
+'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by,
+Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly,
+In a queer sort of meditative mirth.
+
+XX
+
+I am not of those miserable males
+Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
+Do therefore hope for heaven.  I take the hap
+Of all my deeds.  The wind that fills my sails
+Propels; but I am helmsman.  Am I wrecked,
+I know the devil has sufficient weight
+To bear:  I lay it not on him, or fate.
+Besides, he's damned.  That man I do suspect
+A coward, who would burden the poor deuce
+With what ensues from his own slipperiness.
+I have just found a wanton-scented tress
+In an old desk, dusty for lack of use.
+Of days and nights it is demonstrative,
+That, like some aged star, gleam luridly.
+If for those times I must ask charity,
+Have I not any charity to give?
+
+XXI
+
+We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn;
+My friend being third.  He who at love once laughed
+Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft
+Struck through, and tells his passion's bashful dawn
+And radiant culmination, glorious crown,
+When 'this' she said:  went 'thus':  most wondrous she.
+Our eyes grow white, encountering:  that we are three,
+Forgetful; then together we look down.
+But he demands our blessing; is convinced
+That words of wedded lovers must bring good.
+We question; if we dare! or if we should!
+And pat him, with light laugh.  We have not winced.
+Next, she has fallen.  Fainting points the sign
+To happy things in wedlock.  When she wakes,
+She looks the star that thro' the cedar shakes:
+Her lost moist hand clings mortally to mine.
+
+XXII
+
+What may the woman labour to confess?
+There is about her mouth a nervous twitch.
+'Tis something to be told, or hidden:- which?
+I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess.
+She has desires of touch, as if to feel
+That all the household things are things she knew.
+She stops before the glass.  What sight in view?
+A face that seems the latest to reveal!
+For she turns from it hastily, and tossed
+Irresolute steals shadow-like to where
+I stand; and wavering pale before me there,
+Her tears fall still as oak-leaves after frost.
+She will not speak.  I will not ask.  We are
+League-sundered by the silent gulf between.
+You burly lovers on the village green,
+Yours is a lower, and a happier star!
+
+XXIII
+
+'Tis Christmas weather, and a country house
+Receives us:  rooms are full:  we can but get
+An attic-crib.  Such lovers will not fret
+At that, it is half-said.  The great carouse
+Knocks hard upon the midnight's hollow door,
+But when I knock at hers, I see the pit.
+Why did I come here in that dullard fit?
+I enter, and lie couched upon the floor.
+Passing, I caught the coverlet's quick beat:-
+Come, Shame, burn to my soul! and Pride, and Pain -
+Foul demons that have tortured me, enchain!
+Out in the freezing darkness the lambs bleat.
+The small bird stiffens in the low starlight.
+I know not how, but shuddering as I slept,
+I dreamed a banished angel to me crept:
+My feet were nourished on her breasts all night.
+
+XXIV
+
+The misery is greater, as I live!
+To know her flesh so pure, so keen her sense,
+That she does penance now for no offence,
+Save against Love.  The less can I forgive!
+The less can I forgive, though I adore
+That cruel lovely pallor which surrounds
+Her footsteps; and the low vibrating sounds
+That come on me, as from a magic shore.
+Low are they, but most subtle to find out
+The shrinking soul.  Madam, 'tis understood
+When women play upon their womanhood,
+It means, a Season gone.  And yet I doubt
+But I am duped.  That nun-like look waylays
+My fancy.  Oh!  I do but wait a sign!
+Pluck out the eyes of pride! thy mouth to mine!
+Never! though I die thirsting.  Go thy ways!
+
+XXV
+
+You like not that French novel?  Tell me why.
+You think it quite unnatural.  Let us see.
+The actors are, it seems, the usual three:
+Husband, and wife, and lover.  She--but fie!
+In England we'll not hear of it.  Edmond,
+The lover, her devout chagrin doth share;
+Blanc-mange and absinthe are his penitent fare,
+Till his pale aspect makes her over-fond:
+So, to preclude fresh sin, he tries rosbif.
+Meantime the husband is no more abused:
+Auguste forgives her ere the tear is used.
+Then hangeth all on one tremendous IF:-
+IF she will choose between them.  She does choose;
+And takes her husband, like a proper wife.
+Unnatural?  My dear, these things are life:
+And life, some think, is worthy of the Muse.
+
+XXVI
+
+Love ere he bleeds, an eagle in high skies,
+Has earth beneath his wings:  from reddened eve
+He views the rosy dawn.  In vain they weave
+The fatal web below while far he flies.
+But when the arrow strikes him, there's a change.
+He moves but in the track of his spent pain,
+Whose red drops are the links of a harsh chain,
+Binding him to the ground, with narrow range.
+A subtle serpent then has Love become.
+I had the eagle in my bosom erst:
+Henceforward with the serpent I am cursed.
+I can interpret where the mouth is dumb.
+Speak, and I see the side-lie of a truth.
+Perchance my heart may pardon you this deed:
+But be no coward:- you that made Love bleed,
+You must bear all the venom of his tooth!
+
+XXVII
+
+Distraction is the panacea, Sir!
+I hear my oracle of Medicine say.
+Doctor! that same specific yesterday
+I tried, and the result will not deter
+A second trial.  Is the devil's line
+Of golden hair, or raven black, composed?
+And does a cheek, like any sea-shell rosed,
+Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine?
+No matter, so I taste forgetfulness.
+And if the devil snare me, body and mind,
+Here gratefully I score:- he seemed kind,
+When not a soul would comfort my distress!
+O sweet new world, in which I rise new made!
+O Lady, once I gave love:  now I take!
+Lady, I must be flattered.  Shouldst thou wake
+The passion of a demon, be not afraid.
+
+XXVIII
+
+I must be flattered.  The imperious
+Desire speaks out.  Lady, I am content
+To play with you the game of Sentiment,
+And with you enter on paths perilous;
+But if across your beauty I throw light,
+To make it threefold, it must be all mine.
+First secret; then avowed.  For I must shine
+Envied,--I, lessened in my proper sight!
+Be watchful of your beauty, Lady dear!
+How much hangs on that lamp you cannot tell.
+Most earnestly I pray you, tend it well:
+And men shall see me as a burning sphere;
+And men shall mark you eyeing me, and groan
+To be the God of such a grand sunflower!
+I feel the promptings of Satanic power,
+While you do homage unto me alone.
+
+XXIX
+
+Am I failing?  For no longer can I cast
+A glory round about this head of gold.
+Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
+Not like the consecration of the Past!
+Is my soul beggared?  Something more than earth
+I cry for still:  I cannot be at peace
+In having Love upon a mortal lease.
+I cannot take the woman at her worth!
+Where is the ancient wealth wherewith I clothed
+Our human nakedness, and could endow
+With spiritual splendour a white brow
+That else had grinned at me the fact I loathed?
+A kiss is but a kiss now! and no wave
+Of a great flood that whirls me to the sea.
+But, as you will! we'll sit contentedly,
+And eat our pot of honey on the grave.
+
+XXX
+
+What are we first?  First, animals; and next
+Intelligences at a leap; on whom
+Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb,
+And all that draweth on the tomb for text.
+Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun:
+Beneath whose light the shadow loses form.
+We are the lords of life, and life is warm.
+Intelligence and instinct now are one.
+But nature says:  'My children most they seem
+When they least know me:  therefore I decree
+That they shall suffer.'  Swift doth young Love flee,
+And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.
+Then if we study Nature we are wise.
+Thus do the few who live but with the day:
+The scientific animals are they. -
+Lady, this is my sonnet to your eyes.
+
+XXXI
+
+This golden head has wit in it.  I live
+Again, and a far higher life, near her.
+Some women like a young philosopher;
+Perchance because he is diminutive.
+For woman's manly god must not exceed
+Proportions of the natural nursing size.
+Great poets and great sages draw no prize
+With women:  but the little lap-dog breed,
+Who can be hugged, or on a mantel-piece
+Perched up for adoration, these obtain
+Her homage.  And of this we men are vain?
+Of this!  'Tis ordered for the world's increase!
+Small flattery!  Yet she has that rare gift
+To beauty, Common Sense.  I am approved.
+It is not half so nice as being loved,
+And yet I do prefer it.  What's my drift?
+
+XXXII
+
+Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift
+To beauty, Common Sense.  To see her lie
+With her fair visage an inverted sky
+Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift,
+Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth
+(Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address
+The inner me that thirsts for her no less,
+And has so long been languishing in drouth,
+I feel that I am matched; that I am man!
+One restless corner of my heart or head,
+That holds a dying something never dead,
+Still frets, though Nature giveth all she can.
+It means, that woman is not, I opine,
+Her sex's antidote.  Who seeks the asp
+For serpent's bites?  'Twould calm me could I clasp
+Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine!
+
+XXXIII
+
+'In Paris, at the Louvre, there have I seen
+The sumptuously-feathered angel pierce
+Prone Lucifer, descending.  Looked he fierce,
+Showing the fight a fair one?  Too serene!
+The young Pharsalians did not disarray
+Less willingly their locks of floating silk:
+That suckling mouth of his upon the milk
+Of heaven might still be feasting through the fray.
+Oh, Raphael! when men the Fiend do fight,
+They conquer not upon such easy terms.
+Half serpent in the struggle grow these worms.
+And does he grow half human, all is right.'
+This to my Lady in a distant spot,
+Upon the theme:  WHILE MIND IS MASTERING CLAY,
+GROSS CLAY INVADES IT.  If the spy you play,
+My wife, read this!  Strange love talk, is it not?
+
+XXXIV
+
+Madam would speak with me.  So, now it comes:
+The Deluge or else Fire!  She's well; she thanks
+My husbandship.  Our chain on silence clanks.
+Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs.
+Am I quite well?  Most excellent in health!
+The journals, too, I diligently peruse.
+Vesuvius is expected to give news:
+Niagara is no noisier.  By stealth
+Our eyes dart scrutinizing snakes.  She's glad
+I'm happy, says her quivering under-lip.
+'And are not you?'  'How can I be?'  'Take ship!
+For happiness is somewhere to be had.'
+'Nowhere for me!'  Her voice is barely heard.
+I am not melted, and make no pretence.
+With commonplace I freeze her, tongue and sense.
+Niagara or Vesuvius is deferred.
+
+XXXV
+
+It is no vulgar nature I have wived.
+Secretive, sensitive, she takes a wound
+Deep to her soul, as if the sense had swooned,
+And not a thought of vengeance had survived.
+No confidences has she:  but relief
+Must come to one whose suffering is acute.
+O have a care of natures that are mute!
+They punish you in acts:  their steps are brief.
+What is she doing?  What does she demand
+From Providence or me?  She is not one
+Long to endure this torpidly, and shun
+The drugs that crowd about a woman's hand.
+At Forfeits during snow we played, and I
+Must kiss her.  'Well performed!' I said:  then she:
+"Tis hardly worth the money, you agree?'
+Save her?  What for?  To act this wedded lie!
+
+XXXVI
+
+My Lady unto Madam makes her bow.
+The charm of women is, that even while
+You're probed by them for tears, you yet may smile,
+Nay, laugh outright, as I have done just now.
+The interview was gracious:  they anoint
+(To me aside) each other with fine praise:
+Discriminating compliments they raise,
+That hit with wondrous aim on the weak point:
+My Lady's nose of Nature might complain.
+It is not fashioned aptly to express
+Her character of large-browed steadfastness.
+But Madam says:  Thereof she may be vain!
+Now, Madam's faulty feature is a glazed
+And inaccessible eye, that has soft fires,
+Wide gates, at love-time, only.  This admires
+My Lady.  At the two I stand amazed.
+
+XXXVII
+
+Along the garden terrace, under which
+A purple valley (lighted at its edge
+By smoky torch-flame on the long cloud-ledge
+Whereunder dropped the chariot) glimmers rich,
+A quiet company we pace, and wait
+The dinner-bell in prae-digestive calm.
+So sweet up violet banks the Southern balm
+Breathes round, we care not if the bell be late:
+Though here and there grey seniors question Time
+In irritable coughings.  With slow foot
+The low rosed moon, the face of Music mute,
+Begins among her silent bars to climb.
+As in and out, in silvery dusk, we thread,
+I hear the laugh of Madam, and discern
+My Lady's heel before me at each turn.
+Our tragedy, is it alive or dead?
+
+XXXVIII
+
+Give to imagination some pure light
+In human form to fix it, or you shame
+The devils with that hideous human game:-
+Imagination urging appetite!
+Thus fallen have earth's greatest Gogmagogs,
+Who dazzle us, whom we can not revere:
+Imagination is the charioteer
+That, in default of better, drives the hogs.
+So, therefore, my dear Lady, let me love!
+My soul is arrowy to the light in you.
+You know me that I never can renew
+The bond that woman broke:  what would you have?
+'Tis Love, or Vileness! not a choice between,
+Save petrifaction!  What does Pity here?
+She killed a thing, and now it's dead, 'tis dear.
+Oh, when you counsel me, think what you mean!
+
+XXXIX
+
+She yields:  my Lady in her noblest mood
+Has yielded:  she, my golden-crowned rose!
+The bride of every sense! more sweet than those
+Who breathe the violet breath of maidenhood.
+O visage of still music in the sky!
+Soft moon!  I feel thy song, my fairest friend!
+True harmony within can apprehend
+Dumb harmony without.  And hark! 'tis nigh!
+Belief has struck the note of sound:  a gleam
+Of living silver shows me where she shook
+Her long white fingers down the shadowy brook,
+That sings her song, half waking, half in dream.
+What two come here to mar this heavenly tune?
+A man is one:  the woman bears my name,
+And honour.  Their hands touch!  Am I still tame?
+God, what a dancing spectre seems the moon!
+
+XL
+
+I bade my Lady think what she might mean.
+Know I my meaning, I?  Can I love one,
+And yet be jealous of another?  None
+Commits such folly.  Terrible Love, I ween,
+Has might, even dead, half sighing to upheave
+The lightless seas of selfishness amain:
+Seas that in a man's heart have no rain
+To fall and still them.  Peace can I achieve,
+By turning to this fountain-source of woe,
+This woman, who's to Love as fire to wood?
+She breathed the violet breath of maidenhood
+Against my kisses once! but I say, No!
+The thing is mocked at!  Helplessly afloat,
+I know not what I do, whereto I strive.
+The dread that my old love may be alive
+Has seized my nursling new love by the throat.
+
+XLI
+
+How many a thing which we cast to the ground,
+When others pick it up becomes a gem!
+We grasp at all the wealth it is to them;
+And by reflected light its worth is found.
+Yet for us still 'tis nothing! and that zeal
+Of false appreciation quickly fades.
+This truth is little known to human shades,
+How rare from their own instinct 'tis to feel!
+They waste the soul with spurious desire,
+That is not the ripe flame upon the bough.
+We two have taken up a lifeless vow
+To rob a living passion:  dust for fire!
+Madam is grave, and eyes the clock that tells
+Approaching midnight.  We have struck despair
+Into two hearts.  O, look we like a pair
+Who for fresh nuptials joyfully yield all else?
+
+XLII
+
+I am to follow her.  There is much grace
+In woman when thus bent on martyrdom.
+They think that dignity of soul may come,
+Perchance, with dignity of body.  Base!
+But I was taken by that air of cold
+And statuesque sedateness, when she said
+'I'm going'; lit a taper, bowed her head,
+And went, as with the stride of Pallas bold.
+Fleshly indifference horrible!  The hands
+Of Time now signal:  O, she's safe from me!
+Within those secret walls what do I see?
+Where first she set the taper down she stands:
+Not Pallas:  Hebe shamed!  Thoughts black as death
+Like a stirred pool in sunshine break.  Her wrists
+I catch:  she faltering, as she half resists,
+'You love . . .? love . . .? love . . .?' all on an indrawn breath.
+
+XLIII
+
+Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like
+Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave!
+Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave;
+Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
+And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand:
+In hearing of the ocean, and in sight
+Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white.
+If I the death of Love had deeply planned,
+I never could have made it half so sure,
+As by the unblest kisses which upbraid
+The full-waked sense; or failing that, degrade!
+'Tis morning:  but no morning can restore
+What we have forfeited.  I see no sin:
+The wrong is mixed.  In tragic life, God wot,
+No villain need be!  Passions spin the plot:
+We are betrayed by what is false within.
+
+XLIV
+
+They say, that Pity in Love's service dwells,
+A porter at the rosy temple's gate.
+I missed him going:  but it is my fate
+To come upon him now beside his wells;
+Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,
+And that the purple doors have closed behind.
+Poor soul! if, in those early days unkind,
+Thy power to sting had been but power to grieve,
+We now might with an equal spirit meet,
+And not be matched like innocence and vice.
+She for the Temple's worship has paid price,
+And takes the coin of Pity as a cheat.
+She sees through simulation to the bone:
+What's best in her impels her to the worst:
+Never, she cries, shall Pity soothe Love's thirst,
+Or foul hypocrisy for truth atone!
+
+XLV
+
+It is the season of the sweet wild rose,
+My Lady's emblem in the heart of me!
+So golden-crowned shines she gloriously,
+And with that softest dream of blood she glows;
+Mild as an evening heaven round Hesper bright!
+I pluck the flower, and smell it, and revive
+The time when in her eyes I stood alive.
+I seem to look upon it out of Night.
+Here's Madam, stepping hastily.  Her whims
+Bid her demand the flower, which I let drop.
+As I proceed, I feel her sharply stop,
+And crush it under heel with trembling limbs.
+She joins me in a cat-like way, and talks
+Of company, and even condescends
+To utter laughing scandal of old friends.
+These are the summer days, and these our walks.
+
+XLVI
+
+At last we parley:  we so strangely dumb
+In such a close communion!  It befell
+About the sounding of the Matin-bell,
+And lo! her place was vacant, and the hum
+Of loneliness was round me.  Then I rose,
+And my disordered brain did guide my foot
+To that old wood where our first love-salute
+Was interchanged:  the source of many throes!
+There did I see her, not alone.  I moved
+Toward her, and made proffer of my arm.
+She took it simply, with no rude alarm;
+And that disturbing shadow passed reproved.
+I felt the pained speech coming, and declared
+My firm belief in her, ere she could speak.
+A ghastly morning came into her cheek,
+While with a widening soul on me she stared.
+
+XLVII
+
+We saw the swallows gathering in the sky,
+And in the osier-isle we heard them noise.
+We had not to look back on summer joys,
+Or forward to a summer of bright dye:
+But in the largeness of the evening earth
+Our spirits grew as we went side by side.
+The hour became her husband and my bride.
+Love, that had robbed us so, thus blessed our dearth!
+The pilgrims of the year waxed very loud
+In multitudinous chatterings, as the flood
+Full brown came from the West, and like pale blood
+Expanded to the upper crimson cloud.
+Love, that had robbed us of immortal things,
+This little moment mercifully gave,
+Where I have seen across the twilight wave
+The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.
+
+XLVIII
+
+Their sense is with their senses all mixed in,
+Destroyed by subtleties these women are!
+More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar
+Utterly this fair garden we might win.
+Behold!  I looked for peace, and thought it near.
+Our inmost hearts had opened, each to each.
+We drank the pure daylight of honest speech.
+Alas! that was the fatal draught, I fear.
+For when of my lost Lady came the word,
+This woman, O this agony of flesh!
+Jealous devotion bade her break the mesh,
+That I might seek that other like a bird.
+I do adore the nobleness! despise
+The act!  She has gone forth, I know not where.
+Will the hard world my sentience of her share
+I feel the truth; so let the world surmise.
+
+XLIX
+
+He found her by the ocean's moaning verge,
+Nor any wicked change in her discerned;
+And she believed his old love had returned,
+Which was her exultation, and her scourge.
+She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed
+The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry.
+She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh,
+And tell her loudly she no longer dreamed.
+She dared not say, 'This is my breast:  look in.'
+But there's a strength to help the desperate weak.
+That night he learned how silence best can speak
+The awful things when Pity pleads for Sin.
+About the middle of the night her call
+Was heard, and he came wondering to the bed.
+'Now kiss me, dear! it may be, now!' she said.
+Lethe had passed those lips, and he knew all.
+
+L
+
+Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
+The union of this ever-diverse pair!
+These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
+Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
+Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,
+They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers:
+But they fed not on the advancing hours:
+Their hearts held cravings for the buried day.
+Then each applied to each that fatal knife,
+Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.
+Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
+When hot for certainties in this our life! -
+In tragic hints here see what evermore
+Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force,
+Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,
+To throw that faint thin fine upon the shore!
+
+
+
+THE PATRIOT ENGINEER
+
+
+
+'Sirs! may I shake your hands?
+My countrymen, I see!
+I've lived in foreign lands
+Till England's Heaven to me.
+A hearty shake will do me good,
+And freshen up my sluggish blood.'
+
+Into his hard right hand we struck,
+Gave the shake, and wish'd him luck.
+
+'--From Austria I come,
+An English wife to win,
+And find an English home,
+And live and die therein.
+Great Lord! how many a year I've pined
+To drink old ale and speak my mind!'
+
+Loud rang our laughter, and the shout
+Hills round the Meuse-boat echoed about.
+
+'--Ay, no offence:  laugh on,
+Young gentlemen:  I'll join.
+Had you to exile gone,
+Where free speech is base coin,
+You'd sigh to see the jolly nose
+Where Freedom's native liquor flows!'
+
+He this time the laughter led,
+Dabbling his oily bullet head.
+
+'--Give me, to suit my moods,
+An ale-house on a heath,
+I'll hand the crags and woods
+To B'elzebub beneath.
+A fig for scenery! what scene
+Can beat a Jackass on a green?'
+
+Gravely he seem'd, with gaze intense,
+Putting the question to common sense.
+
+'--Why, there's the ale-house bench:
+The furze-flower shining round:
+And there's my waiting-wench,
+As lissome as a hound.
+With "hail Britannia!" ere I drink,
+I'll kiss her with an artful wink.'
+
+Fair flash'd the foreign landscape while
+We breath'd again our native Isle.
+
+'--The geese may swim hard-by;
+They gabble, and you talk:
+You're sure there's not a spy
+To mark your name with chalk.
+My heart's an oak, and it won't grow
+In flower-pots, foreigners must know.'
+
+Pensive he stood:  then shook his head
+Sadly; held out his fist, and said:
+
+'--You've heard that Hungary's floor'd?
+They've got her on the ground.
+A traitor broke her sword:
+Two despots held her bound.
+I've seen her gasping her last hope:
+I've seen her sons strung up b' the rope.
+
+'Nine gallant gentlemen
+In Arad they strung up!
+I work'd in peace till then:-
+That poison'd all my cup.
+A smell of corpses haunted me:
+My nostril sniff'd like life for sea.
+
+'Take money for my hire
+From butchers?--not the man!
+I've got some natural fire,
+And don't flash in the pan; -
+A few ideas I reveal'd:-
+'Twas well old England stood my shield!
+
+'Said I, "The Lord of Hosts
+Have mercy on your land!
+I see those dangling ghosts, -
+And you may keep command,
+And hang, and shoot, and have your day:
+They hold your bill, and you must pay.
+
+'"You've sent them where they're strong,
+You carrion Double-Head!
+I hear them sound a gong
+In Heaven above!"--I said.
+"My God, what feathers won't you moult
+For this!" says I:  and then I bolt.
+
+'The Bird's a beastly Bird,
+And what is more, a fool.
+I shake hands with the herd
+That flock beneath his rule.
+They're kindly; and their land is fine.
+I thought it rarer once than mine.
+
+'And rare would be its lot,
+But that he baulks its powers:
+It's just an earthen pot
+For hearts of oak like ours.
+Think!  Think!--four days from those frontiers,
+And I'm a-head full fifty years.
+
+'It tingles to your scalps,
+To think of it, my boys!
+Confusion on their Alps,
+And all their baby toys!
+The mountains Britain boasts are men:
+And scale you them, my brethren!'
+
+Cluck, went his tongue; his fingers, snap.
+Britons were proved all heights to cap.
+
+And we who worshipp'd crags,
+Where purple splendours burn'd,
+Our idol saw in rags,
+And right about were turn'd.
+Horizons rich with trembling spires
+On violet twilights lost their fires.
+
+And heights where morning wakes
+With one cheek over snow; -
+And iron-walled lakes
+Where sits the white moon low; -
+For us on youthful travel bent,
+The robing picturesque was rent.
+
+Wherever Beauty show'd
+The wonders of her face,
+This man his Jackass rode,
+High despot of the place.
+
+Fair dreams of our enchanted life
+Fled fast from his shrill island fife.
+
+And yet we liked him well;
+We laugh'd with honest hearts:-
+He shock'd some inner spell,
+And rous'd discordant parts.
+We echoed what we half abjured:
+And hating, smilingly endured.
+
+Moreover, could we be
+To our dear land disloyal?
+And were not also we
+Of History's blood-Royal?
+We glow'd to think how donkeys graze
+In England, thrilling at their brays.
+
+For there a man may view
+An aspect more sublime
+Than Alps against the blue:-
+The morning eyes of Time!
+The very Ass participates
+The glory Freedom radiates!
+
+
+
+CASSANDRA
+
+
+
+I
+
+Captive on a foreign shore,
+Far from Ilion's hoary wave,
+Agamemnon's bridal slave
+Speaks Futurity no more:
+Death is busy with her grave.
+
+II
+
+Thick as water, bursts remote
+Round her ears the alien din,
+While her little sullen chin
+Fills the hollows of her throat:
+Silent lie her slaughter'd kin.
+
+III
+
+Once to many a pealing shriek,
+Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower,
+Ilion's fierce prophetic flower
+Cried the coming of the Greek!
+Black in Hades sits the hour.
+
+IV
+
+Eyeing phantoms of the Past,
+Folded like a prophet's scroll,
+In the deep's long shoreward roll
+Here she sees the anchor cast:
+Backward moves her sunless soul.
+
+V
+
+Chieftains, brethren of her joy,
+Shades, the white light in their eyes
+Slanting to her lips, arise,
+Crowding quick the plains of Troy:
+Now they tell her not she lies.
+
+VI
+
+O the bliss upon the plains,
+Where the joining heroes clashed
+Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
+Challenged with hot chariot-reins
+Gods!--they glimmer ocean-washed.
+
+VII
+
+Alien voices round the ships,
+Thick as water, shouting Home.
+Argives, pale as midnight foam,
+Wax before her awful lips:
+White as stars that front the gloom.
+
+VIII
+
+Like a torch-flame that by day
+Up the daylight twists, and, pale,
+Catches air in leaps that fail,
+Crushed by the inveterate ray,
+Through her shines the Ten-Years' Tale.
+
+IX
+
+Once to many a pealing shriek,
+Lo, from Ilion's topmost tower,
+Ilion's fierce prophetic flower
+Cried the coming of the Greek!
+Black in Hades sits the hour.
+
+X
+
+Still upon her sunless soul
+Gleams the narrow hidden space
+Forward, where her fiery race
+Falters on its ashen goal:
+Still the Future strikes her face.
+
+XI
+
+See toward the conqueror's car
+Step the purple Queen whose hate
+Wraps red-armed her royal mate
+With his Asian tempest-star:
+Now Cassandra views her Fate.
+
+XII
+
+King of men! the blinded host
+Shout:- she lifts her brooding chin:
+Glad along the joyous din
+Smiles the grand majestic ghost:
+Clytemnestra leads him in.
+
+XIII
+
+Lo, their smoky limbs aloof,
+Shadowing heaven and the seas,
+Fates and Furies, tangling Threes,
+Tear and mix above the roof:
+Fates and fierce Eumenides.
+
+XIV
+
+Is the prophetess with rods
+Beaten, that she writhes in air?
+With the Gods who never spare,
+Wrestling with the unsparing Gods,
+Lone, her body struggles there.
+
+XV
+
+Like the snaky torch-flame white,
+Levelled as aloft it twists,
+She, her soaring arms, and wrists
+Drooping, struggles with the light,
+Helios, bright above all mists!
+
+XVI
+
+In his orb she sees the tower,
+Dusk against its flaming rims,
+Where of old her wretched limbs
+Twisted with the stolen power:
+Ilium all the lustre dims!
+
+XVII
+
+O the bliss upon the plains,
+Where the joining heroes clashed
+Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
+Challenged with hot chariot-reins
+Gods!--they glimmer ocean-washed.
+
+XVIII
+
+Thrice the Sun-god's name she calls;
+Shrieks the deed that shames the sky;
+Like a fountain leaping high,
+Falling as a fountain falls:
+Lo, the blazing wheels go by!
+
+XIX
+
+Captive on a foreign shore,
+Far from Ilion's hoary wave,
+Agamemnon's bridal slave
+Speaks Futurity no more:
+Death is busy with her grave.
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG USURPER
+
+
+
+On my darling's bosom
+Has dropped a living rosy bud,
+Fair as brilliant Hesper
+Against the brimming flood.
+She handles him,
+She dandles him,
+She fondles him and eyes him:
+And if upon a tear he wakes,
+With many a kiss she dries him:
+She covets every move he makes,
+And never enough can prize him.
+Ah, the young Usurper!
+I yield my golden throne:
+Such angel bands attend his hands
+To claim it for his own.
+
+
+
+MARGARET'S BRIDAL EVE
+
+
+
+I
+
+The old grey mother she thrummed on her knee:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+And which of the handsome young men shall it be?
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+My daughter, come hither, come hither to me:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Come, point me your finger on him that you see:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+O mother, my mother, it never can be:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+For I shall bring shame on the man marries me:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+Now let your tongue be deep as the sea:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+And the man'll jump for you, right briskly will he:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+Tall Margaret wept bitterly:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+And as her parent bade did she:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+O the handsome young man dropped down on his knee:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Pale Margaret gave him her hand, woe's me!
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+II
+
+O mother, my mother, this thing I must say:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+Ere he lies on the breast where that other lay:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+Now, folly, my daughter, for men are men:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+You marry them blindfold, I tell you again:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O mother, but when he kisses me!
+There is a rose in the garden;
+My child, 'tis which shall sweetest be!
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O mother, but when I awake in the morn!
+There is a rose in the garden;
+My child, you are his, and the ring is worn:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+Tall Margaret sighed and loosened a tress:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+Poor comfort she had of her comeliness
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+My mother will sink if this thing be said:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+That my first betrothed came thrice to my bed;
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+He died on my shoulder the third cold night:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+I dragged his body all through the moonlight:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+But when I came by my father's door:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+I fell in a lump on the stiff dead floor:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O neither to heaven, nor yet to hell:
+There is a rose in the garden;
+Could I follow the lover I loved so well!
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+III
+
+The bridesmaids slept in their chambers apart:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Tall Margaret walked with her thumping heart:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+The frill of her nightgown below the left breast:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Had fall'n like a cloud of the moonlighted West:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+But where the West-cloud breaks to a star:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Pale Margaret's breast showed a winding scar:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+O few are the brides with such a sign!
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Though I went mad the fault was mine:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+I must speak to him under this roof to-night:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+I shall burn to death if I speak in the light:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+O my breast!  I must strike you a bloodier wound:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Than when I scored you red and swooned:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+I will stab my honour under his eye:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Though I bleed to the death, I shall let out the lie:
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+O happy my bridesmaids! white sleep is with you!
+There is a rose that's ready;
+Had he chosen among you he might sleep too!
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+O happy my bridesmaids! your breasts are clean:
+There is a rose that's ready;
+You carry no mark of what has been!
+There's a rose that's ready for clipping.
+
+IV
+
+An hour before the chilly beam:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+The bridegroom started out of a dream:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+He went to the door, and there espied:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+The figure of his silent bride:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+He went to the door, and let her in:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+Whiter looked she than a child of sin:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+She looked so white, she looked so sweet:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+She looked so pure he fell at her feet:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+He fell at her feet with love and awe:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+A stainless body of light he saw:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O Margaret, say you are not of the dead!
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+My bride! by the angels at night are you led?
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+I am not led by the angels about:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+But I have a devil within to let out:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O Margaret! my bride and saint!
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+There is on you no earthly taint:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+I am no saint, and no bride can I be:
+Red rose and while in the garden;
+Until I have opened my bosom to thee:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+To catch at her heart she laid one hand:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+She told the tale where she did stand:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+She stood before him pale and tall:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+Her eyes between his, she told him all:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+She saw how her body grow freckled and foul:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+She heard from the woods the hooting owl:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+With never a quiver her mouth did speak:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+O when she had done she stood so meek!
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+The bridegroom stamped and called her vile:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+He did but waken a little smile:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+The bridegroom raged and called her foul:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+She heard from the woods the hooting owl:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+He muttered a name full bitter and sore:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+She fell in a lump on the still dead floor:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O great was the wonder, and loud the wail:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+When through the household flew the tale:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+The old grey mother she dressed the bier:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+With a shivering chin and never a tear:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O had you but done as I bade you, my child!
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+You would not have died and been reviled:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+The bridegroom he hung at midnight by the bier:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+He eyed the white girl thro' a dazzling tear:
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+O had you been false as the women who stray:
+Red rose and white in the garden;
+You would not be now with the Angels of Day!
+And the bird sings over the roses.
+
+
+
+MARIAN
+
+
+
+I
+
+She can be as wise as we,
+And wiser when she wishes;
+She can knit with cunning wit,
+And dress the homely dishes.
+She can flourish staff or pen,
+And deal a wound that lingers;
+She can talk the talk of men,
+And touch with thrilling fingers.
+
+II
+
+Match her ye across the sea,
+Natures fond and fiery;
+Ye who zest the turtle's nest
+With the eagle's eyrie.
+Soft and loving is her soul,
+Swift and lofty soaring;
+Mixing with its dove-like dole
+Passionate adoring.
+
+III
+
+Such a she who'll match with me?
+In flying or pursuing,
+Subtle wiles are in her smiles
+To set the world a-wooing.
+She is steadfast as a star,
+And yet the maddest maiden:
+She can wage a gallant war,
+And give the peace of Eden.
+
+
+
+BY MORNING TWILIGHT
+
+
+
+Night, like a dying mother,
+Eyes her young offspring, Day.
+The birds are dreamily piping.
+And O, my love, my darling!
+The night is life ebb'd away:
+Away beyond our reach!
+A sea that has cast us pale on the beach;
+Weeds with the weeds and the pebbles
+That hear the lone tamarisk rooted in sand
+Sway
+With the song of the sea to the land.
+
+
+
+UNKNOWN FAIR FACES
+
+
+
+Though I am faithful to my loves lived through,
+And place them among Memory's great stars,
+Where burns a face like Hesper:  one like Mars:
+Of visages I get a moment's view,
+Sweet eyes that in the heaven of me, too,
+Ascend, tho' virgin to my life they passed.
+Lo, these within my destiny seem glassed
+At times so bright, I wish that Hope were new.
+A gracious freckled lady, tall and grave,
+Went, in a shawl voluminous and white,
+Last sunset by; and going sow'd a glance.
+Earth is too poor to hold a second chance;
+I will not ask for more than Fortune gave:
+My heart she goes from--never from my sight!
+
+
+
+SHEMSELNIHAR
+
+
+
+O my lover! the night like a broad smooth wave
+Bears us onward, and morn, a black rock, shines wet.
+How I shuddered--I knew not that I was a slave,
+Till I looked on thy face:- then I writhed in the net.
+Then I felt like a thing caught by fire, that her star
+Glowed dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.
+
+And he came, whose I am:  O my lover! he came:
+And his slave, still so envied of women, was I:
+And I turned as a hissing leaf spits from the flame,
+Yes, I shrivelled to dust from him, haggard and dry.
+O forgive her:- she was but as dead lilies are:
+The life of her heart fled from Shemselnihar.
+
+Yet with thee like a full throbbing rose how I bloom!
+Like a rose by the fountain whose showering we hear,
+As we lie, O my lover! in this rich gloom,
+Smelling faint the cool breath of the lemon-groves near.
+As we lie gazing out on that glowing great star -
+Ah! dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.
+
+Yet with thee am I not as an arm of the vine,
+Firm to bind thee, to cherish thee, feed thee sweet?
+Swear an oath on my lip to let none disentwine
+The life that here fawns to give warmth to thy feet.
+I on thine, thus! no more shall that jewelled Head jar
+The music thou breathest on Shemselnihar.
+
+Far away, far away, where the wandering scents
+Of all flowers are sweetest, white mountains among,
+There my kindred abide in their green and blue tents:
+Bear me to them, my lover! they lost me so young.
+Let us slip down the stream and leap steed till afar
+None question thy claim upon Shemselnihar.
+
+O that long note the bulbul gave out--meaning love!
+O my lover, hark to him and think it my voice!
+The blue night like a great bell-flower from above
+Drooping low and gold-eyed:  O, but hear him rejoice!
+Can it be?  'twas a flash! that accurst scimiter
+In thought even cuts thee from Shemselnihar.
+
+Yes, I would that, less generous, he would oppress,
+He would chain me, upbraid me, burn deep brands for hate,
+Than with this mask of freedom and gorgeousness
+Bespangle my slavery, mock my strange fate.
+Would, would, would, O my lover, he knew--dared debar
+Thy coming, and earn curse of Shemselnihar!
+
+
+
+A ROAR THROUGH THE TALL TWIN ELM-TREES
+
+
+
+A roar thro' the tall twin elm-trees
+The mustering storm betrayed:
+The South-wind seized the willow
+That over the water swayed.
+
+Then fell the steady deluge
+In which I strove to doze,
+Hearing all night at my window
+The knock of the winter rose.
+
+The rainy rose of winter!
+An outcast it must pine.
+And from thy bosom outcast
+Am I, dear lady mine.
+
+
+
+WHEN I WOULD IMAGE
+
+
+
+When I would image her features,
+Comes up a shrouded head:
+I touch the outlines, shrinking;
+She seems of the wandering dead.
+
+But when love asks for nothing,
+And lies on his bed of snow,
+The face slips under my eyelids,
+All in its living glow.
+
+Like a dark cathedral city,
+Whose spires, and domes, and towers
+Quiver in violet lightnings,
+My soul basks on for hours.
+
+
+
+THE SPIRIT OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+
+Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth; unsoured
+He knew thy sons.  He probed from hell to hell
+Of human passions, but of love deflowered
+His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.
+Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips,
+The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails
+Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips,
+Yet full of speech and intershifting tales,
+Close mirrors of us:  thence had he the laugh
+We feel is thine:  broad as ten thousand beeves
+At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff
+From grain, bid sick Philosophy's last leaves
+Whirl, if they have no response--they enforced
+To fatten Earth when from her soul divorced.
+
+
+
+CONTINUED
+
+
+
+How smiles he at a generation ranked
+In gloomy noddings over life!  They pass.
+Not he to feed upon a breast unthanked,
+Or eye a beauteous face in a cracked glass.
+But he can spy that little twist of brain
+Which moved some weighty leader of the blind,
+Unwitting 'twas the goad of personal pain,
+To view in curst eclipse our Mother's mind,
+And show us of some rigid harridan
+The wretched bondmen till the end of time.
+O lived the Master now to paint us Man,
+That little twist of brain would ring a chime
+Of whence it came and what it caused, to start
+Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart.
+
+
+
+ODE TO THE SPIRIT OF EARTH IN AUTUMN
+
+
+
+Fair Mother Earth lay on her back last night,
+To gaze her fill on Autumn's sunset skies,
+When at a waving of the fallen light
+Sprang realms of rosy fruitage o'er her eyes.
+A lustrous heavenly orchard hung the West,
+Wherein the blood of Eden bloomed again:
+Red were the myriad cherub-mouths that pressed,
+Among the clusters, rich with song, full fain,
+But dumb, because that overmastering spell
+Of rapture held them dumb:  then, here and there,
+A golden harp lost strings; a crimson shell
+Burnt grey; and sheaves of lustre fell to air.
+The illimitable eagerness of hue
+Bronzed, and the beamy winged bloom that flew
+'Mid those bunched fruits and thronging figures failed.
+A green-edged lake of saffron touched the blue,
+With isles of fireless purple lying through:
+And Fancy on that lake to seek lost treasures sailed.
+
+Not long the silence followed:
+The voice that issues from thy breast,
+O glorious South-west,
+Along the gloom-horizon holloa'd;
+Warning the valleys with a mellow roar
+Through flapping wings; then sharp the woodland bore
+A shudder and a noise of hands:
+A thousand horns from some far vale
+In ambush sounding on the gale.
+Forth from the cloven sky came bands
+Of revel-gathering spirits; trooping down,
+Some rode the tree-tops; some on torn cloud-strips
+Burst screaming thro' the lighted town:
+And scudding seaward, some fell on big ships:
+Or mounting the sea-horses blew
+Bright foam-flakes on the black review
+Of heaving hulls and burying beaks.
+
+Still on the farthest line, with outpuffed cheeks,
+'Twixt dark and utter dark, the great wind drew
+From heaven that disenchanted harmony
+To join earth's laughter in the midnight blind:
+Booming a distant chorus to the shrieks
+Preluding him:  then he,
+His mantle streaming thunderingly behind,
+Across the yellow realm of stiffened Day,
+Shot thro' the woodland alleys signals three;
+And with the pressure of a sea
+Plunged broad upon the vale that under lay.
+
+Night on the rolling foliage fell:
+But I, who love old hymning night,
+And know the Dryad voices well,
+Discerned them as their leaves took flight,
+Like souls to wander after death:
+Great armies in imperial dyes,
+And mad to tread the air and rise,
+The savage freedom of the skies
+To taste before they rot.  And here,
+Like frail white-bodied girls in fear,
+The birches swung from shrieks to sighs;
+The aspens, laughers at a breath,
+In showering spray-falls mixed their cries,
+Or raked a savage ocean-strand
+With one incessant drowning screech.
+Here stood a solitary beech,
+That gave its gold with open hand,
+And all its branches, toning chill,
+Did seem to shut their teeth right fast,
+To shriek more mercilessly shrill,
+And match the fierceness of the blast.
+
+But heard I a low swell that noised
+Of far-off ocean, I was 'ware
+Of pines upon their wide roots poised,
+Whom never madness in the air
+Can draw to more than loftier stress
+Of mournfulness, not mournfulness
+For melancholy, but Joy's excess,
+That singing on the lap of sorrow faints:
+And Peace, as in the hearts of saints
+Who chant unto the Lord their God;
+Deep Peace below upon the muffled sod,
+The stillness of the sea's unswaying floor,
+Could I be sole there not to see
+The life within the life awake;
+The spirit bursting from the tree,
+And rising from the troubled lake?
+Pour, let the wines of Heaven pour!
+The Golden Harp is struck once more,
+And all its music is for me!
+Pour, let the wines of Heaven pour!
+And, ho, for a night of Pagan glee!
+
+There is a curtain o'er us.
+For once, good souls, we'll not pretend
+To be aught better than her who bore us,
+And is our only visible friend.
+Hark to her laughter! who laughs like this,
+Can she be dead, or rooted in pain?
+She has been slain by the narrow brain,
+But for us who love her she lives again.
+Can she die?  O, take her kiss!
+
+The crimson-footed nymph is panting up the glade,
+With the wine-jar at her arm-pit, and the drunken ivy-braid
+Round her forehead, breasts, and thighs:  starts a Satyr, and they
+speed:
+Hear the crushing of the leaves:  hear the cracking of the bough!
+And the whistling of the bramble, the piping of the weed!
+
+But the bull-voiced oak is battling now:
+The storm has seized him half-asleep,
+And round him the wild woodland throngs
+To hear the fury of his songs,
+The uproar of an outraged deep.
+He wakes to find a wrestling giant
+Trunk to trunk and limb to limb,
+And on his rooted force reliant
+He laughs and grasps the broadened giant,
+And twist and roll the Anakim;
+And multitudes, acclaiming to the cloud,
+Cry which is breaking, which is bowed.
+
+Away, for the cymbals clash aloft
+In the circles of pine, on the moss-floor soft.
+The nymphs of the woodland are gathering there.
+They huddle the leaves, and trample, and toss;
+They swing in the branches, they roll in the moss,
+They blow the seed on the air.
+Back to back they stand and blow
+The winged seed on the cradling air,
+A fountain of leaves over bosom and back.
+
+The pipe of the Faun comes on their track
+And the weltering alleys overflow
+With musical shrieks and wind-wedded hair.
+The riotous companies melt to a pair.
+Bless them, mother of kindness!
+
+A star has nodded through
+The depths of the flying blue.
+Time only to plant the light
+Of a memory in the blindness.
+But time to show me the sight
+Of my life thro' the curtain of night;
+Shining a moment, and mixed
+With the onward-hurrying stream,
+Whose pressure is darkness to me;
+Behind the curtain, fixed,
+Beams with endless beam
+That star on the changing sea.
+
+Great Mother Nature! teach me, like thee,
+To kiss the season and shun regrets.
+And am I more than the mother who bore,
+Mock me not with thy harmony!
+Teach me to blot regrets,
+Great Mother! me inspire
+With faith that forward sets
+But feeds the living fire,
+Faith that never frets
+For vagueness in the form.
+In life, O keep me warm!
+For, what is human grief?
+And what do men desire?
+Teach me to feel myself the tree,
+And not the withered leaf.
+Fixed am I and await the dark to-be
+And O, green bounteous Earth!
+Bacchante Mother! stern to those
+Who live not in thy heart of mirth;
+Death shall I shrink from, loving thee?
+Into the breast that gives the rose,
+Shall I with shuddering fall?
+
+Earth, the mother of all,
+Moves on her stedfast way,
+Gathering, flinging, sowing.
+Mortals, we live in her day,
+She in her children is growing.
+
+She can lead us, only she,
+Unto God's footstool, whither she reaches:
+Loved, enjoyed, her gifts must be,
+Reverenced the truths she teaches,
+Ere a man may hope that he
+Ever can attain the glee
+Of things without a destiny!
+
+She knows not loss:
+She feels but her need,
+Who the winged seed
+With the leaf doth toss.
+
+And may not men to this attain?
+That the joy of motion, the rapture of being,
+Shall throw strong light when our season is fleeing,
+Nor quicken aged blood in vain,
+At the gates of the vault, on the verge of the plain?
+Life thoroughly lived is a fact in the brain,
+While eyes are left for seeing.
+Behold, in yon stripped Autumn, shivering grey,
+Earth knows no desolation.
+She smells regeneration
+In the moist breath of decay.
+
+Prophetic of the coming joy and strife,
+Like the wild western war-chief sinking
+Calm to the end he eyes unblinking,
+Her voice is jubilant in ebbing life.
+
+He for his happy hunting-fields
+Forgets the droning chant, and yields
+His numbered breaths to exultation
+In the proud anticipation:
+Shouting the glories of his nation,
+Shouting the grandeur of his race,
+Shouting his own great deeds of daring:
+And when at last death grasps his face,
+And stiffened on the ground in peace
+He lies with all his painted terrors glaring;
+Hushed are the tribe to hear a threading cry:
+Not from the dead man;
+Not from the standers-by:
+The spirit of the red man
+Is welcomed by his fathers up on high.
+
+
+
+MARTIN'S PUZZLE
+
+
+
+I
+
+There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,
+And her Good morning, Martin!  Ay, lass, how d'ye do?
+Very well, thank you, Martin!--I can't understand!
+I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!
+I can't understand it.  She talks like a song;
+Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;
+She seems to give gladness while limping along,
+Yet sinner ne'er suffer'd like that little lass.
+
+II
+
+First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
+Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade -
+Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart?
+His heart!--where's the leg of the poor little maid!
+Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs,
+To make her go crooked:  but why count the list?
+If it's right to suppose that our human affairs
+Are all order'd by heaven--there, bang goes my fist!
+
+III
+
+For if angels can look on such sights--never mind!
+When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be mum.
+The parson declares that her woes weren't designed;
+But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come.
+Lose a leg, save a soul--a convenient text;
+I call it Tea doctrine, not savouring of God.
+When poor little Molly wants 'chastening,' why, next
+The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.
+
+IV
+
+But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles
+To read books to sick people!--and just of an age
+When girls learn the meaning of ribands and smiles!
+Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.
+The more I push thinking the more I revolve:
+I never get farther:- and as to her face,
+It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,
+And says, 'This crush'd body seems such a sad case.'
+
+V
+
+Not that she's for complaining:  she reads to earn pence;
+And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough.
+Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?
+Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff.
+Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;
+She sings little hymns at the close of the day,
+Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,
+And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.
+
+VI
+
+What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
+If there's Law above all?  Answer that if you can!
+Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere
+As a place where a man should just think like a man.
+It isn't fair dealing!  But, contrariwise,
+Do bullets in battle the wicked select?
+Why, then it's all chance-work!  And yet, in her eyes,
+She holds a fixed something by which I am checked.
+
+VII
+
+Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall,
+If you eye it a minute 'll have the same look:
+So kind! and so merciful!  God of us all!
+It's the very same lesson we get from the Book.
+Then, is Life but a trial?  Is that what is meant?
+Some must toil, and some perish, for others below:
+The injustice to each spreads a common content;
+Ay!  I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.
+
+VIII
+
+She's the victim of fools:  that seems nearer the mark.
+On earth there are engines and numerous fools.
+Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;
+He does, and in some sort of way they're His tools.
+It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
+If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
+But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;
+In that case we'll bow down our heads,--as we ought.
+
+IX
+
+But the worst of ME is, that when I bow my head,
+I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,
+And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead
+Of humble acceptance:  for, question I must!
+Here's a creature made carefully--carefully made!
+Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and why?
+The answer seems nowhere:  it's discord that's played.
+The sky's a blue dish!--an implacable sky!
+
+X
+
+Stop a moment.  I seize an idea from the pit.
+They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
+Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
+Am I judging all things from a single false tone?
+Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls
+From devils to angels?  I'm blind with the sight.
+It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls!
+I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Poems by George Meredith, Volume 1
+
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