diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-0.txt | 10700 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-0.zip | bin | 0 -> 121805 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 631010 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/1382-h.htm | 9326 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/images/coverb.jpg | bin | 0 -> 171609 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/images/covers.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39364 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/images/fpb.jpg | bin | 0 -> 182368 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/images/fps.jpg | bin | 0 -> 40959 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/images/p272b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 49887 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 1382-h/images/p272s.jpg | bin | 0 -> 19684 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/pmgm210.txt | 9147 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/pmgm210.zip | bin | 0 -> 112169 bytes |
15 files changed, 29189 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1382-0.txt b/1382-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a12c97 --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10700 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poems, Volume 2 [of 3], by George Meredith + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Poems, Volume 2 [of 3] + + +Author: George Meredith + + + +Release Date: January 2, 2015 [eBook #1382] +[This file was first posted on May 7, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 2 [OF 3]*** + + +Transcribed from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + [Picture: The Châlet, Box Hill] + + + + + + POEMS + VOL. II + + + BY + GEORGE MEREDITH + + * * * * * + + SURREY EDITION + + * * * * * + + LONDON + THE TIMES BOOK CLUB + 376–384 OXFORD STREET, W. + 1912 + + * * * * * + + Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to his Majesty + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +TO J. M., 1 + + Let Fate or Insufficiency provide +LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA, 2 + + Now farewell to you! you are +TIME AND SENTIMENT, 11 + + I see a fair young couple in a wood, +LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT, 12 + + On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose +THE STAR SIRIUS, 12 + + Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales +SENSE AND SPIRIT, 13 + + The senses loving Earth or well or ill +EARTH’S SECRET, 13 + + Not solitarily in fields we find +INTERNAL HARMONY, 14 + + Assured of worthiness we do not dread +GRACE AND LOVE, 14 + + Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she +APPRECIATION, 15 + + Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, +THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM, 15 + + Rich labour is the struggle to be wise +THE STATE OF AGE, 16 + + Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg +PROGRESS, 16 + + In Progress you have little faith, say you: +THE WORLD’S ADVANCE, 17 + + Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline +A CERTAIN PEOPLE, 17 + + As Puritans they prominently wax, +THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS, 18 + + That Garden of sedate Philosophy +A LATER ALEXANDRIAN, 18 + + An inspiration caught from dubious hues +AN ORSON OF THE MUSE, 19 + + Her son, albeit the Muse’s livery +THE POINT OF TASTE, 19 + + Unhappy poets of a sunken prime! +CAMELUS SALTAT, 20 + + What say you, critic, now you have become +CONTINUED, 20 + + Oracle of the market! thence you drew +MY THEME, 21 + + Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt: +CONTINUED, 21 + + ’Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts +ON THE DANGER OF WAR, 22 + + Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, +TO CARDINAL MANNING, 23 + + I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men, +TO COLONEL CHARLES, 24 + + An English heart, my commandant, +TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS, 27 + + Strike not thy dog with a stick! + Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth +THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN, 33 + + Enter these enchanted woods, +A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN, 48 + + Last night returning from my twilight walk +THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES, 49 + + He who has looked upon Earth +THE LARK ASCENDING, 67 + + He rises and begins to round, +PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS, 71 + + When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, +MELAMPUS, 75 + + With love exceeding a simple love of the things +LOVE IN THE VALLEY, 80 + + Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, +THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD, 88 + + Carols nature, counsel men, +THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH, 90 + + I chanced upon an early walk to spy +EARTH AND MAN, 92 + + On her great venture, Man, +A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT, 100 + + See the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath + Ballads and poems of Tragic Life +THE TWO MASKS, 115 + + Melpomene among her livid people, +ARCHDUCHESS ANNE, 116 + I. In middle age an evil thing + II. Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost + III. Old Kraken read a missive penned +THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA, 133 + + Queen Theodolind has built +A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD, 139 + + Ladies who in chains of wedlock +THE YOUNG PRINCESS, 144 + I. When the South sang like a nightingale + II. The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick, + III. Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire; + IV. The soft night-wind went laden to death +KING HARALD’S TRANCE, 154 + + Sword in length a reaping-hook amain +WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY, 158 + + Hawk or shrike has done this deed +YOUNG REYNARD, 159 + + Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub +MANFRED, 160 + + Projected from the bilious Childe, +HERNANI, 161 + + Cistercians might crack their sides +THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA, 162 + + Flat as to an eagle’s eye, +ANEURIN’S HARP, 180 + + Prince of Bards was old Aneurin; +MEN AND MAN, 186 + + Men the Angels eyed; +THE LAST CONTENTION, 187 + + Young captain of a crazy bark! +PERIANDER, 190 + + How died Melissa none dares shape in words. +SOLON, 195 + + The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye +BELLEROPHON, 197 + + Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod +PHAÉTHÔN, 200 + + At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous + charioteer, + A Reading of Earth +SEED-TIME, 209 + + Flowers of the willow-herb are wool; +HARD WEATHER, 211 + + Bursts from a rending East in flaws +THE SOUTH-WESTER, 215 + + Day of the cloud in fleets! O day +THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY, 220 + + I know him, February’s thrush, +THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER, 226 + + Demeter devastated our good land, +EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN, 231 + + The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, +MOTHER TO BABE, 234 + + Fleck of sky you are, +WOODLAND PEACE, 235 + + Sweet as Eden is the air, +THE QUESTION WHITHER, 236 + + When we have thrown off this old suit, +OUTER AND INNER, 237 + + From twig to twig the spider weaves +NATURE AND LIFE, 239 + + Leave the uproar: at a leap +DIRGE IN WOODS, 240 + + A wind sways the pines, +A FAITH ON TRIAL, 241 + + On the morning of May, +CHANGE IN RECURRENCE, 260 + + I stood at the gate of the cot +HYMN TO COLOUR, 261 + + With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, +MEDITATION UNDER STARS, 265 + + What links are ours with orbs that are +WOODMAN AND ECHO, 268 + + Close Echo hears the woodman’s axe, +THE WISDOM OF ELD, 270 + + We spend our lives in learning pilotage, +EARTH’S PREFERENCE, 270 + + Earth loves her young: a preference manifest: +SOCIETY, 271 + + Historic be the survey of our kind, +WINTER HEAVENS, 271 + + Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive +NOTES 272 + + + + +TO J. M. + + + LET Fate or Insufficiency provide + Mean ends for men who what they are would be: + Penned in their narrow day no change they see + Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. + Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide: + And whether Earth’s great offspring, by decree, + Must rot if they abjure rapacity, + Not argument but effort shall decide. + They number many heads in that hard flock: + Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel. + Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel + The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew + A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, + And bring the army of the faithful through. + + + + +LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA + + +I + + + NOW farewell to you! you are + One of my dearest, whom I trust: + Now follow you the Western star, + And cast the old world off as dust. + + + +II + + + From many friends adieu! adieu! + The quick heart of the word therein. + Much that we hope for hangs with you: + We lose you, but we lose to win. + + + +III + + + The beggar-king, November, frets: + His tatters rich with Indian dyes + Goes hugging: we our season’s debts + Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise. + + + +IV + + + We send our worthiest; can no less, + If we would now be read aright,— + To that great people who may bless + Or curse mankind: they have the might. + + + +V + + + The proudest seasons find their graves, + And we, who would not be wooed, must court. + We have let the blunderers and the waves + Divide us, and the devil had sport. + + + +VI + + + The blunderers and the waves no more + Shall sever kindred sending forth + Their worthiest from shore to shore + For welcome, bent to prove their worth. + + + +VII + + + Go you and such as you afloat, + Our lost kinsfellowship to revive. + The battle of the antidote + Is tough, though silent: may you thrive! + + + +VIII + + + I, when in this North wind I see + The straining red woods blown awry, + Feel shuddering like the winter tree, + All vein and artery on cold sky. + + + +IX + + + The leaf that clothed me is torn away; + My friend is as a flying seed. + Ay, true; to bring replenished day + Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed. + + + +X + + + What husky habitations seem + These comfortable sayings! they fell, + In some rich year become a dream:— + So cries my heart, the infidel! . . . + + + +XI + + + Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest, + Arabian visions could not vie + With those broad wonders of the West, + And would I bid you stay? Not I! + + + +XII + + + The strange experimental land + Where men continually dare take + Niagara leaps;—unshattered stand + ’Twixt fall and fall;—for conscience’ sake, + + + +XIII + + + Drive onward like a flood’s increase;— + Fresh rapids and abysms engage;— + (We live—we die) scorn fireside peace, + And, as a garment, put on rage, + + + +XIV + + + Rather than bear God’s reprimand, + By rearing on a full fat soil + Concrete of sin and sloth;—this land, + You will observe it coil in coil. + + + +XV + + + The land has been discover’d long, + The people we have yet to know; + Themselves they know not, save that strong + For good and evil still they grow. + + + +XVI + + + Nor know they us. Yea, well enough + In that inveterate machine + Through which we speak the printed stuff + Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien + + + +XVII + + + Tremendous:—as a lion’s show + The grand menagerie paintings hide: + Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow! + The poor old Lion lies inside! . . . + + + +XVIII + + + It is not England that they hear, + But mighty Mammon’s pipers, trained + To trumpet out his moods, and stir + His sluggish soul: _her_ voice is chained: + + + +XIX + + + Almost her spirit seems moribund! + O teach them, ’tis not she displays + The panic of a purse rotund, + Eternal dread of evil days,— + + + +XX + + + That haunting spectre of success + Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths: + Not England answers nobleness,— + ‘Live for thyself: thou art not earth’s.’ + + + +XXI + + + Not she, when struggling manhood tries + For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate, + Points out the planet, Compromise, + And shakes a mild reproving pate: + + + +XXII + + + Says never: ‘I am well at ease, + My sneers upon the weak I shed: + The strong have my cajoleries: + And those beneath my feet I tread.’ + + + +XXIII + + + Nay, but ’tis said for her, great Lord! + The misery’s there! The shameless one + Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword, + Herself not yielding what it won:— + + + +XXIV + + + Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach, + On sweet Prosperity—or greed. + ‘Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each, + God’s blessings let us take, and feed!’ + + + +XXV + + + Ungrateful creatures crave a part— + She tells them firmly she is full; + Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart + With bleating, stops her ears with wool:— + + + +XXVI + + + Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms + (Nightmares of bankruptcy and death),— + Showers down in lumps a load of alms, + Then pants as one who has lost a breath; + + + +XXVII + + + Believes high heaven, whence favours flow, + Too kind to ask a sacrifice + For what it specially doth bestow;— + Gives _she_, ’tis generous, cheese to mice. + + + +XXVIII + + + She saw the young Dominion strip + For battle with a grievous wrong, + And curled a noble Norman lip, + And looked with half an eye sidelong; + + + +XXIX + + + And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers, + Denounced the waste of blood and coin, + Implored the combatants, with tears, + Never to think they could rejoin. + + + +XXX + + + Oh! was it England that, alas! + Turned sharp the victor to cajole? + Behold her features in the glass: + A monstrous semblance mocks her soul! + + + +XXXI + + + A false majority, by stealth, + Have got her fast, and sway the rod: + A headless tyrant built of wealth, + The hypocrite, the belly-God. + + + +XXXII + + + To him the daily hymns they raise: + His tastes are sought: his will is done: + He sniffs the putrid steam of praise, + Place for true England here is none! + + + +XXXIII + + + But can a distant race discern + The difference ’twixt her and him? + My friend, that will you bid them learn. + He shames and binds her, head and limb. + + + +XXXIV + + + Old wood has blossoms of this sort. + Though sound at core, she is old wood. + If freemen hate her, one retort + She has; but one!—‘You are my blood.’ + + + +XXXV + + + A poet, half a prophet, rose + In recent days, and called for power. + I love him; but his mountain prose— + His Alp and valley and wild flower— + + + +XXXVI + + + Proclaimed our weakness, not its source. + What medicine for disease had he? + Whom summoned for a show of force? + Our titular aristocracy! + + + +XXXVII + + + Why, these are great at City feasts; + From City riches mainly rise: + ’Tis well to hear them, when the beasts + That die for us they eulogize! + + + +XXXVIII + + + But these, of all the liveried crew + Obeisant in Mammon’s walk, + Most deferent ply the facial screw, + The spinal bend, submissive talk. + + + +XXXIX + + + Small fear that they will run to books + (At least the better form of seed)! + I, too, have hoped from their good looks, + And fables of their Northman breed;— + + + +XL + + + Have hoped that they the land would head + In acts magnanimous; but, lo, + When fainting heroes beg for bread + They frown: where they are driven they go. + + + +XLI + + + Good health, my friend! and may your lot + Be cheerful o’er the Western rounds. + This butter-woman’s market-trot + Of verse is passing market-bounds. + + + +XLII + + + Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone. + On banks of fog faint lines extend: + Adieu! bring back a braver dawn + To England, and to me my friend. + +_November_ 15_th_, 1867. + + + + +TIME AND SENTIMENT + + + I SEE a fair young couple in a wood, + And as they go, one bends to take a flower, + That so may be embalmed their happy hour, + And in another day, a kindred mood, + Haply together, or in solitude, + Recovered what the teeth of Time devour, + The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power, + Wherewith by their young blood they are endued + To move all enviable, framed in May, + And of an aspect sisterly with Truth: + Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed: + Who will be prompted on some pallid day + To lift the hueless flower and show that dead, + Even such, and by this token, is their youth. + + + + +LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT + + + ON a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. + Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend + Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, + Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. + Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. + And now upon his western wing he leaned, + Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened, + Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. + Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars + With memory of the old revolt from Awe, + He reached a middle height, and at the stars, + Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. + Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, + The army of unalterable law. + + + + +THE STAR SIRIUS + + + BRIGHT Sirius! that when Orion pales + To dotlings under moonlight still art keen + With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien + Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales: + Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails, + Reducing many lustrous to the lean: + Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen + To show what source divine is, and prevails. + Long watches through, at one with godly night, + I mark thee planting joy in constant fire; + And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire + Life to the spirit, passion for the light, + Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight + Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre. + + + + +SENSE AND SPIRIT + + + THE senses loving Earth or well or ill + Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. + The mind is in their trammels, and lights not + By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will + To find in nature things which less may chill + An ardour that desires, unknowing what. + Till we conceive her living we go distraught, + At best but circle-windsails of a mill. + Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life + Creatively has given us blood and breath + For endless war and never wound unhealed, + The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field + Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife + To read her own and trust her down to death. + + + + +EARTH’S SECRET + + + NOT solitarily in fields we find + Earth’s secret open, though one page is there; + Her plainest, such as children spell, and share + With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. + Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, + In turbid cities, can the key be bare. + It hangs for those who hither thither fare, + Close interthreading nature with our kind. + They, hearing History speak, of what men were, + And have become, are wise. The gain is great + In vision and solidity; it lives. + Yet at a thought of life apart from her, + Solidity and vision lose their state, + For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. + + + + +INTERNAL HARMONY + + + ASSURED of worthiness we do not dread + Competitors; we rather give them hail + And greeting in the lists where we may fail: + Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head! + My betters are my masters: purely fed + By their sustainment I likewise shall scale + Some rocky steps between the mount and vale; + Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed. + So that I draw the breath of finer air, + Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn, + Nor rivals tightly belted for the race. + Good speed to them! My place is here or there; + My pride is that among them I have place: + And thus I keep this instrument in tune. + + + + +GRACE AND LOVE + + + TWO flower-enfolding crystal vases she + I love fills daily, mindful but of one: + And close behind pale morn she, like the sun + Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see, + Clear water in the cup, and into me + The image of herself: and that being done, + Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run + In climbers or in creepers or the tree + She ranges with unerring fingers fine, + To harmony so vivid that through sight + I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold + Beyond the senses, where such love as mine, + Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold + Their starry more from her and me, unite. + + + + +APPRECIATION + + + EARTH was not Earth before her sons appeared, + Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born: + And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn + At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; + To none by her fresh wingedness endeared; + Unwelcome unto revellers outworn. + I the last echoes of Diana’s horn + In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered. + No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul! + And more than simple duty moved thy feet. + New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame, + From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll + May men read on the heart I taught to beat: + That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim. + + + + +THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM + + + RICH labour is the struggle to be wise, + While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. + Else better were it in some bower of peace + Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. + You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, + As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: + She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, + Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. + So following her, your hewing may attain + The right to speak unto the mute, and shun + That sly temptation of the illumined brain, + Deliveries oracular, self-spun. + Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain + To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun. + + + + +THE STATE OF AGE + + + RUB thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg + Honours from aught about thee. Light the young. + Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, + O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg. + Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, + Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue, + Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung, + Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg. + Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. + But hast thou in thy season set her fires + To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, + Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: + Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I + Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash. + + + + +PROGRESS + + + IN Progress you have little faith, say you: + Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, + By force, and gentle women choose their mates + Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: + The human heart Bellona’s mad halloo + Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. + ‘Now at this time,’ says History, ‘those two States + Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. + They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes + Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight + Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred + The bloody settlement of their disputes + Till God should bless them better.’ They did right. + And naming Progress, both shall have the word. + + + + +THE WORLD’S ADVANCE + + + JUDGE mildly the tasked world; and disincline + To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. + You have perchance observed the inebriate’s track + At night when he has quitted the inn-sign: + He plays diversions on the homeward line, + Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack: + A hedge may take him, but he turns not back, + Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine. + ‘Spiral,’ the memorable Lady terms + Our mind’s ascent: our world’s advance presents + That figure on a flat; the way of worms. + Cherish the promise of its good intents, + And warn it, not one instinct to efface + Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place. + + + + +A CERTAIN PEOPLE + + + AS Puritans they prominently wax, + And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks. + Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks, + They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks. + But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks + When Peace another door in them unlocks, + Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox + Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe. + Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, + Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. + They need their pious exercises less + Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief + That these are devilish only to their thief, + Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput. + + + + +THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS + + + THAT Garden of sedate Philosophy + Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap, + A shining spot upon a shaggy map; + Where mind and body, in fair junction free, + Luted their joyful concord; like the tree + From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap. + Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature’s lap + Of gentlemen the happy nursery. + That Garden would on light supremest verge, + Were the long drawing of an equal breath + Healthful for Wisdom’s head, her heart, her aims. + Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge, + And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims + The crucifix that came of Nazareth. + + + + +A LATER ALEXANDRIAN + + + AN inspiration caught from dubious hues + Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased; + For they lead farther than the single-faced, + Wave subtler promise when desire pursues. + The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse, + His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste. + Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced, + And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews. + Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled + Responsively: he sang not Nature’s own + Divinest, but his lyric had a tone, + As ’twere a forest-echo of her voice: + What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled + From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice. + + + + +AN ORSON OF THE MUSE + + + HER son, albeit the Muse’s livery + And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts, + Naked and hairy in his savage haunts, + To Nature only will he bend the knee; + Spouting the founts of her distillery + Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants + Being Nature’s, civil limitation daunts + His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he. + Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate, + The Muse will hearken to with graver ear + Than many of her train can waken: him + Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear + Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight, + If in no vessel built for sea they swim. + + + + +THE POINT OF TASTE + + + UNHAPPY poets of a sunken prime! + You to reviewers are as ball to bat. + They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat + With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime + On you the excommunicates of Rhyme, + Because you sing not in the living Fat. + The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat + Is verse that shuns their self-producing time. + Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, + Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, + You win their pleased attention. But, bright God + O’ the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud! + Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump + Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs. + + + + +CAMELUS SALTAT + + + WHAT say you, critic, now you have become + An author and maternal?—in this trap + (To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap + On instruments as like as drum to drum. + You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum, + So like the nose fly-teased in its noon’s nap. + You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap + With that between the fingers and the thumb. + It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch, + Which bade our public gobble or reject. + O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked, + Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch! + What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere, + You dealt?—the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer. + + + + +CONTINUED + + + ORACLE of the market! thence you drew + The taste which stamped you guide of the inept.— + A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept, + A sturdy and a briny, once men knew. + He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, + To roll ingurgitation till he slept, + Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: + And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew. + At last this dancer to the Polar star + Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, + To drink the sea and pilot him to land. + O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched, + Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are + Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand. + + + + +MY THEME + + + OF me and of my theme think what thou wilt: + The song of gladness one straight bolt can check. + But I have never stood at Fortune’s beck: + Were she and her light crew to run atilt + At my poor holding little would be spilt; + Small were the praise for singing o’er that wreck. + Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck; + He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt. + Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell + With other than those votaries she deals + The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift. + I say but that this love of Earth reveals + A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, + Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift. + + + + +CONTINUED + + + ’TIS true the wisdom that my mind exacts + Through contemplation from a heart unbent + By many tempests may be stained and rent: + The summer flies it mightily attracts. + Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts, + Which scarce give breathing of the sty’s content + For their diurnal carnal nourishment: + Which treat with Nature in official pacts. + The deader body Nature could proclaim. + Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath + Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth. + But during calms the flies of idle aim + Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst + For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst. + + + + +ON THE DANGER OF WAR + + + AVERT, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, + This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick. + When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric + Seems reason they are ripe for cannon’s food. + Dark looms the issue though the cause be good, + But with the doubt ’tis our old devil’s trick. + O now the down-slope of the lunatic + Illumine lest we redden of that brood. + For not since man in his first view of thee + Ascended to the heavens giving sign + Within him of deep sky and sounded sea, + Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress; + In peril of his blood his ears incline + To drums whose loudness is their emptiness. + + + + +TO CARDINAL MANNING + + + I, WAKEFUL for the skylark voice in men, + Or straining for the angel of the light, + Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight, + When I behold one lamp that through our fen + Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again + A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright + From speaking to the soul of us forthright + What things our craven senses keep from ken. + This is the doing of the Christ; the way + He went on earth; the service above guile + To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines; + Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay + Such misery as by these present signs + Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile. + + + + +TO COLONEL CHARLES +(DYING GENERAL C.B.B.) + + +I + + + AN English heart, my commandant, + A soldier’s eye you have, awake + To right and left; with looks askant + On bulwarks not of adamant, + Where white our Channel waters break. + + + +II + + + Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness + Across the ruffled strip of salt, + You look, and like the prospect less. + On men and guns would you lay stress, + To bid the Island’s foemen halt. + + + +III + + + While loud the Year is raising cry + At birth to know if it must bear + In history the bloody dye, + An English heart, a soldier’s eye, + For the old country first will care. + + + +IV + + + And how stands she, artillerist, + Among the vapours waxing dense, + With cannon charged? ’Tis hist! and hist! + And now she screws a gouty fist, + And now she counts to clutch her pence. + + + +V + + + With shudders chill as aconite, + The couchant chewer of the cud + Will start at times in pussy fright + Before the dogs, when reads her sprite + The streaks predicting streams of blood. + + + +VI + + + She thinks they may mean something; thinks + They may mean nothing: haply both. + Where darkness all her daylight drinks, + She fain would find a leader lynx, + Not too much taxing mental sloth. + + + +VII + + + Cleft like the fated house in twain, + One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench! + Gambetta’s word on dull MacMahon: + ‘The cow that sees a passing train’: + So spies she Russian, German, French. + + + +VIII + + + She? no, her weakness: she unbraced + Among those athletes fronting storms! + The muscles less of steel than paste, + Why, they of nature feel distaste + For flash, much more for push, of arms. + + + +IX + + + The poet sings, and well know we, + That ‘iron draws men after it.’ + But towering wealth may seem the tree + Which bears the fruit _Indemnity_, + And draw as fast as battle’s fit, + + + +X + + + If feeble be the hand on guard, + Alas, alas! And nations are + Still the mad forces, though the scarred. + Should they once deem our emblem Pard + Wagger of tail for all save war;— + + + +XI + + + Mechanically screwed to flail + His flanks by Presses conjuring fear;— + A money-bag with head and tail;— + Too late may valour then avail! + As you beheld, my cannonier, + + + +XII + + + When with the staff of Benedek, + On the plateau of Königgrätz, + You saw below that wedgeing speck; + Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck, + Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets. + +_February_ 1887. + + + + +TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS + + +I + + + STRIKE not thy dog with a stick! + I did it yesterday: + Not to undo though I gained + The Paradise: heavy it rained + On Kobold’s flanks, and he lay. + + + +II + + + Little Bruno, our long-ear pup, + From his hunt had come back to my heel. + I heard a sharp worrying sound, + And Bruno foamed on the ground, + With Koby as making a meal. + + + +III + + + I did what I could not undo + Were the gates of the Paradise shut + Behind me: I deemed it was just. + I left Koby crouched in the dust, + Some yards from the woodman’s hut. + + + +IV + + + He bewhimpered his welting, and I + Scarce thought it enough for him: so, + By degrees, through the upper box-grove, + Within me an old story hove, + Of a man and a dog: you shall know. + + + +V + + + The dog was of novel breed, + The Shannon retriever, untried: + His master, an old Irish lord, + In an oaken armchair snored + At midnight, whisky beside. + + + +VI + + + Perched up a desolate tower, + Where the black storm-wind was a whip + To set it nigh spinning, these two + Were alone, like the last of a crew, + Outworn in a wave-beaten ship. + + + +VII + + + The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed; + He quitted his couch on the rug, + Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked; + And, finding the signals unmarked, + Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug. + + + +VIII + + + He pulled till his master jumped + For fury of wrath, and laid on + With the length of a tough knotted staff, + Fit to drive the life flying like chaff, + And leave a sheer carcase anon. + + + +IX + + + That done, he sat, panted, and cursed + The vile cross of this brute: nevermore + Would he house it to rear such a cur! + The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir, + Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door. + + + +X + + + Then his master raised head too, and sniffed: + It struck him the dog had a sense + That honoured both dam and sire. + You have guessed how the tower was afire. + The Shannon retriever dates thence. + + + +XI + + + I mused: saw the pup ease his heart + Of his instinct for chasing, and sink + Overwrought by excitement so new: + A scene that for Koby to view + Was the seizure of nerves in a link. + + + +XII + + + And part sympathetic, and part + Imitatively, raged my poor brute; + And I, not thinking of ill, + Doing eviller: nerves are still + Our savage too quick at the root. + + + +XIII + + + They spring us: I proved it, albeit + I played executioner then + For discipline, justice, the like. + Yon stick I had handy to strike + Should have warned of the tyrant in men. + + + +XIV + + + You read in your History books, + How the Prince in his youth had a mind + For governing gently his land. + Ah, the use of that weapon at hand, + When the temper is other than kind! + + + +XV + + + At home all was well; Koby’s ribs + Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled, + He forgives me, his criminal air + Throws a shade of Llewellyn’s despair + For the hound slain for saving his child. + + + + +POEMS AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH + + +THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN + + +I + + + ENTER these enchanted woods, + You who dare. + Nothing harms beneath the leaves + More than waves a swimmer cleaves. + Toss your heart up with the lark, + Foot at peace with mouse and worm, + Fair you fare. + Only at a dread of dark + Quaver, and they quit their form: + Thousand eyeballs under hoods + Have you by the hair. + Enter these enchanted woods, + You who dare. + + +II + + + Here the snake across your path + Stretches in his golden bath: + Mossy-footed squirrels leap + Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: + Yaffles on a chuckle skim + Low to laugh from branches dim: + Up the pine, where sits the star, + Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. + Each has business of his own; + But should you distrust a tone, + Then beware. + Shudder all the haunted roods, + All the eyeballs under hoods + Shroud you in their glare. + Enter these enchanted woods, + You who dare. + + +III + + + Open hither, open hence, + Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, + Where the strawberry runs red, + With white star-flower overhead; + Cumbered by dry twig and cone, + Shredded husks of seedlings flown, + Mine of mole and spotted flint: + Of dire wizardry no hint, + Save mayhap the print that shows + Hasty outward-tripping toes, + Heels to terror on the mould. + These, the woods of Westermain, + Are as others to behold, + Rich of wreathing sun and rain; + Foliage lustreful around + Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. + Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, + Shelter eager minikins, + Myriads, free to peck and pipe: + Would you better? would you worse? + You with them may gather ripe + Pleasures flowing not from purse. + Quick and far as Colour flies + Taking the delighted eyes, + You of any well that springs + May unfold the heaven of things; + Have it homely and within, + And thereof its likeness win, + Will you so in soul’s desire: + This do sages grant t’ the lyre. + This is being bird and more, + More than glad musician this; + Granaries you will have a store + Past the world of woe and bliss; + Sharing still its bliss and woe; + Harnessed to its hungers, no. + On the throne Success usurps, + You shall seat the joy you feel + Where a race of water chirps, + Twisting hues of flourished steel: + Or where light is caught in hoop + Up a clearing’s leafy rise, + Where the crossing deerherds troop + Classic splendours, knightly dyes. + Or, where old-eyed oxen chew + Speculation with the cud, + Read their pool of vision through, + Back to hours when mind was mud; + Nigh the knot, which did untwine + Timelessly to drowsy suns; + Seeing Earth a slimy spine, + Heaven a space for winging tons. + Farther, deeper, may you read, + Have you sight for things afield, + Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, + Cloaked, but in the peep revealed; + Showing a kind face and sweet: + Look you with the soul you see’t. + Glory narrowing to grace, + Grace to glory magnified, + Following that will you embrace + Close in arms or aëry wide. + Banished is the white Foam-born + Not from here, nor under ban + Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn, + Pipings of the reedy Pan. + Loved of Earth of old they were, + Loving did interpret her; + And the sterner worship bars + None whom Song has made her stars. + You have seen the huntress moon + Radiantly facing dawn, + Dusky meads between them strewn + Glimmering like downy awn: + Argent Westward glows the hunt, + East the blush about to climb; + One another fair they front, + Transient, yet outshine the time; + Even as dewlight off the rose + In the mind a jewel sows. + Thus opposing grandeurs live + Here if Beauty be their dower: + Doth she of her spirit give, + Fleetingness will spare her flower. + This is in the tune we play, + Which no spring of strength would quell; + In subduing does not slay; + Guides the channel, guards the well: + Tempered holds the young blood-heat, + Yet through measured grave accord, + Hears the heart of wildness beat + Like a centaur’s hoof on sward. + Drink the sense the notes infuse, + You a larger self will find: + Sweetest fellowship ensues + With the creatures of your kind. + Ay, and Love, if Love it be + Flaming over _I_ and _ME_, + Love meet they who do not shove + Cravings in the van of Love. + Courtly dames are here to woo, + Knowing love if it be true. + Reverence the blossom-shoot + Fervently, they are the fruit. + Mark them stepping, hear them talk, + Goddess, is no myth inane, + You will say of those who walk + In the woods of Westermain. + Waters that from throat and thigh + Dart the sun his arrows back; + Leaves that on a woodland sigh + Chat of secret things no lack; + Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, + Bare or veiled they move sincere; + Not by slavish terrors tripped + Being anew in nature dipped, + Growths of what they step on, these; + With the roots the grace of trees. + Casket-breasts they give, nor hide, + For a tyrant’s flattered pride, + Mind, which nourished not by light, + Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite: + Whereof are strange tales to tell; + Some in blood writ, tombed in bell. + Here the ancient battle ends, + Joining two astonished friends, + Who the kiss can give and take + With more warmth than in that world + Where the tiger claws the snake, + Snake her tiger clasps infurled, + And the issue of their fight + People lands in snarling plight. + Here her splendid beast she leads + Silken-leashed and decked with weeds + Wild as he, but breathing faint + Sweetness of unfelt constraint. + Love, the great volcano, flings + Fires of lower Earth to sky; + Love, the sole permitted, sings + Sovereignly of _ME_ and _I_. + Bowers he has of sacred shade, + Spaces of superb parade, + Voiceful . . . But bring you a note + Wrangling, howsoe’er remote, + Discords out of discord spin + Round and round derisive din: + Sudden will a pallor pant + Chill at screeches miscreant; + Owls or spectres, thick they flee; + Nightmare upon horror broods; + Hooded laughter, monkish glee, + Gaps the vital air. + Enter these enchanted woods + You who dare. + + +IV + + + You must love the light so well + That no darkness will seem fell. + Love it so you could accost + Fellowly a livid ghost. + Whish! the phantom wisps away, + Owns him smoke to cocks of day. + In your breast the light must burn + Fed of you, like corn in quern + Ever plumping while the wheel + Speeds the mill and drains the meal. + Light to light sees little strange, + Only features heavenly new; + Then you touch the nerve of Change, + Then of Earth you have the clue; + Then her two-sexed meanings melt + Through you, wed the thought and felt. + Sameness locks no scurfy pond + Here for Custom, crazy-fond: + Change is on the wing to bud + Rose in brain from rose in blood. + Wisdom throbbing shall you see + Central in complexity; + From her pasture ’mid the beasts + Rise to her ethereal feasts, + Not, though lightnings track your wit + Starward, scorning them you quit: + For be sure the bravest wing + Preens it in our common spring, + Thence along the vault to soar, + You with others, gathering more, + Glad of more, till you reject + Your proud title of elect, + Perilous even here while few + Roam the arched greenwood with you. + Heed that snare. + Muffled by his cavern-cowl + Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl, + Who was lord ere light you drank, + And lest blood of knightly rank + Stream, let not your fair princess + Stray: he holds the leagues in stress, + Watches keenly there. + Oft has he been riven; slain + Is no force in Westermain. + Wait, and we shall forge him curbs, + Put his fangs to uses, tame, + Teach him, quick as cunning herbs, + How to cure him sick and lame. + Much restricted, much enringed, + Much he frets, the hooked and winged, + Never known to spare. + ’Tis enough: the name of Sage + Hits no thing in nature, nought; + Man the least, save when grave Age + From yon Dragon guards his thought. + Eye him when you hearken dumb + To what words from Wisdom come. + When she says how few are by + Listening to her, eye his eye. + Self, his name declare. + Him shall Change, transforming late, + Wonderously renovate. + Hug himself the creature may: + What he hugs is loathed decay. + Crying, slip thy scales, and slough! + Change will strip his armour off; + Make of him who was all maw, + Inly only thrilling-shrewd, + Such a servant as none saw + Through his days of dragonhood. + Days when growling o’er his bone, + Sharpened he for mine and thine; + Sensitive within alone; + Scaly as the bark of pine. + Change, the strongest son of Life, + Has the Spirit here to wife. + Lo, their young of vivid breed, + Bear the lights that onward speed, + Threading thickets, mounting glades, + Up the verdurous colonnades, + Round the fluttered curves, and down, + Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown, + Whither, in her central space, + Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase. + Fount unresting, Lure divine! + There meet all: too late look most. + Fire in water hued as wine, + Springs amid a shadowy host, + Circled: one close-headed mob, + Breathless, scanning divers heaps, + Where a Heart begins to throb, + Where it ceases, slow, with leaps. + And ’tis very strange, ’tis said, + How you spy in each of them + Semblance of that Dragon red, + As the oak in bracken-stem. + And, ’tis said, how each and each: + Which commences, which subsides: + First my Dragon! doth beseech + Her who food for all provides. + And she answers with no sign; + Utters neither yea nor nay; + Fires the water hued as wine; + Kneads another spark in clay. + Terror is about her hid; + Silence of the thunders locked; + Lightnings lining the shut lid; + Fixity on quaking rocked. + Lo, you look at Flow and Drought + Interflashed and interwrought: + Ended is begun, begun + Ended, quick as torrents run. + Young Impulsion spouts to sink; + Luridness and lustre link; + ’Tis your come and go of breath; + Mirrored pants the Life, the Death; + Each of either reaped and sown: + Rosiest rosy wanes to crone. + See you so? your senses drift; + ’Tis a shuttle weaving swift. + Look with spirit past the sense, + Spirit shines in permanence. + That is She, the view of whom + Is the dust within the tomb, + Is the inner blush above, + Look to loathe, or look to love; + Think her Lump, or know her Flame; + Dread her scourge, or read her aim; + Shoot your hungers from their nerve; + Or, in her example, serve. + Some have found her sitting grave; + Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat, + Hurling dust of fool and knave + In a hissing smithy’s jet. + More it were not well to speak; + Burn to see, you need but seek. + Once beheld she gives the key + Airing every doorway, she. + Little can you stop or steer + Ere of her you are the seër. + On the surface she will witch, + Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze + Under, and the soul is rich + Past computing, past amaze. + Then is courage that endures + Even her awful tremble yours. + Then, the reflex of that Fount + Spied below, will Reason mount + Lordly and a quenchless force, + Lighting Pain to its mad source, + Scaring Fear till Fear escapes, + Shot through all its phantom shapes. + Then your spirit will perceive + Fleshly seed of fleshly sins; + Where the passions interweave, + How the serpent tangle spins + Of the sense of Earth misprised, + Brainlessly unrecognized; + She being Spirit in her clods, + Footway to the God of Gods. + Then for you are pleasures pure, + Sureties as the stars are sure: + Not the wanton beckoning flags + Which, of flattery and delight, + Wax to the grim Habit-Hags + Riding souls of men to night: + Pleasures that through blood run sane, + Quickening spirit from the brain. + Each of each in sequent birth, + Blood and brain and spirit, three, + (Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), + Join for true felicity. + Are they parted, then expect + Some one sailing will be wrecked: + Separate hunting are they sped, + Scan the morsel coveted. + Earth that Triad is: she hides + Joy from him who that divides; + Showers it when the three are one + Glassing her in union. + Earth your haven, Earth your helm, + You command a double realm; + Labouring here to pay your debt, + Till your little sun shall set; + Leaving her the future task: + Loving her too well to ask. + Eglantine that climbs the yew, + She her darkest wreathes for those + Knowing her the Ever-new, + And themselves the kin o’ the rose. + Life, the chisel, axe and sword, + Wield who have her depths explored: + Life, the dream, shall be their robe + Large as air about the globe; + Life, the question, hear its cry + Echoed with concordant Why; + Life, the small self-dragon ramped, + Thrill for service to be stamped. + Ay, and over every height + Life for them shall wave a wand: + That, the last, where sits affright, + Homely shows the stream beyond. + Love the light and be its lynx, + You will track her and attain; + Read her as no cruel Sphinx + In the woods of Westermain, + Daily fresh the woods are ranged; + Glooms which otherwhere appal, + Sounded: here, their worths exchanged + Urban joins with pastoral: + Little lost, save what may drop + Husk-like, and the mind preserves. + Natural overgrowths they lop, + Yet from nature neither swerves, + Trained or savage: for this cause: + Of our Earth they ply the laws, + Have in Earth their feeding root, + Mind of man and bent of brute. + Hear that song; both wild and ruled. + Hear it: is it wail or mirth? + Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled? + None, and all: it springs of Earth. + O but hear it! ’tis the mind; + Mind that with deep Earth unites, + Round the solid trunk to wind + Rings of clasping parasites. + Music have you there to feed + Simplest and most soaring need. + Free to wind, and in desire + Winding, they to her attached + Feel the trunk a spring of fire, + And ascend to heights unmatched, + Whence the tidal world is viewed + As a sea of windy wheat, + Momently black, barren, rude; + Golden-brown, for harvest meet, + Dragon-reaped from folly-sown; + Bride-like to the sickle-blade: + Quick it varies, while the moan, + Moan of a sad creature strayed, + Chiefly is its voice. So flesh + Conjures tempest-flails to thresh + Good from worthless. Some clear lamps + Light it; more of dead marsh-damps. + Monster is it still, and blind, + Fit but to be led by Pain. + Glance we at the paths behind, + Fruitful sight has Westermain. + There we laboured, and in turn + Forward our blown lamps discern, + As you see on the dark deep + Far the loftier billows leap, + Foam for beacon bear. + Hither, hither, if you will, + Drink instruction, or instil, + Run the woods like vernal sap, + Crying, hail to luminousness! + But have care. + In yourself may lurk the trap: + On conditions they caress. + Here you meet the light invoked + Here is never secret cloaked. + Doubt you with the monster’s fry + All his orbit may exclude; + Are you of the stiff, the dry, + Cursing the not understood; + Grasp you with the monster’s claws; + Govern with his truncheon-saws; + Hate, the shadow of a grain; + You are lost in Westermain: + Earthward swoops a vulture sun, + Nighted upon carrion: + Straightway venom wine-cups shout + Toasts to One whose eyes are out: + Flowers along the reeling floor + Drip henbane and hellebore: + Beauty, of her tresses shorn, + Shrieks as nature’s maniac: + Hideousness on hoof and horn + Tumbles, yapping in her track: + Haggard Wisdom, stately once, + Leers fantastical and trips: + Allegory drums the sconce, + Impiousness nibblenips. + Imp that dances, imp that flits, + Imp o’ the demon-growing girl, + Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pits + Round you, and with them you whirl + Fast where pours the fountain-rout + Out of Him whose eyes are out: + Multitudes on multitudes, + Drenched in wallowing devilry: + And you ask where you may be, + In what reek of a lair + Given to bones and ogre-broods: + And they yell you Where. + Enter these enchanted woods, + You who dare. + + + +A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN + + +I + + + LAST night returning from my twilight walk + I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow + Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk + He reached me flowers as from a withered bough: + O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou! + + +II + + + Death said, I gather, and pursued his way. + Another stood by me, a shape in stone, + Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay, + And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: + O Life, how naked and how hard when known! + + +III + + + Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I. + Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, + And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, + Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s decline + Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine. + + + +THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES + + +I + + + HE who has looked upon Earth + Deeper than flower and fruit, + Losing some hue of his mirth, + As the tree striking rock at the root, + Unto him shall the marvellous tale + Of Callistes more humanly come + With the touch on his breast than a hail + From the markets that hum. + + +II + + + Now the youth footed swift to the dawn. + ’Twas the season when wintertide, + In the higher rock-hollows updrawn, + Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied, + By light throwing shallow shade, + Between the beam and the gloom, + Sicilian Enna, whose Maid + Such aspect wears in her bloom + Underneath since the Charioteer + Of Darkness whirled her away, + On a reaped afternoon of the year, + Nigh the poppy-droop of Day. + O and naked of her, all dust, + The majestic Mother and Nurse, + Ringing cries to the God, the Just, + Curled the land with the blight of her curse: + Recollected of this glad isle + Still quaking. But now more fair, + And momently fraying the while + The veil of the shadows there, + Soft Enna that prostrate grief + Sang through, and revealed round the vines, + Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf, + The wheat-blades tripping in lines, + A hue unillumined by sun + Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts: + All the penetrable dun + Of the morn ere she mounts. + + +III + + + Nor had saffron and sapphire and red + Waved aloft to their sisters below, + When gaped by the rock-channel head + Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow, + Reverberant over the plain: + A sound oft fearfully swung + For the coming of wrathful rain: + And forth, like the dragon-tongue + Of a fire beaten flat by the gale, + But more as the smoke to behold, + A chariot burst. Then a wail + Quivered high of the love that would fold + Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart, + Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed, + And the team of the chariot swart + Reared in marble, the six, dismayed, + Like hoofs that by night plashing sea + Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave: + For, lo, the Great Mother, She! + And Callistes gazed, he gave + His eyeballs up to the sight: + The embrace of the Twain, of whom + To men are their day, their night, + Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb: + Our Lady of the Sheaves + And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet + Of Enna: he saw through leaves + The Mother and Daughter meet. + They stood by the chariot-wheel, + Embraced, very tall, most like + Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel + Down their shivering columns and strike + Head to head, crossing throats: and apart, + For the feast of the look, they drew, + Which Darkness no longer could thwart; + And they broke together anew, + Exulting to tears, flower and bud. + But the mate of the Rayless was grave: + She smiled like Sleep on its flood, + That washes of all we crave: + Like the trance of eyes awake + And the spirit enshrouded, she cast + The wan underworld on the lake. + They were so, and they passed. + + +IV + + + He tells it, who knew the law + Upon mortals: he stood alive + Declaring that this he saw: + He could see, and survive. + + +V + + + Now the youth was not ware of the beams + With the grasses intertwined, + For each thing seen, as in dreams, + Came stepping to rear through his mind, + Till it struck his remembered prayer + To be witness of this which had flown + Like a smoke melted thinner than air, + That the vacancy doth disown. + And viewing a maiden, he thought + It might now be morn, and afar + Within him the memory wrought + Of a something that slipped from the car + When those, the august, moved by: + Perchance a scarf, and perchance + This maiden. She did not fly, + Nor started at his advance: + She looked, as when infinite thirst + Pants pausing to bless the springs, + Refreshed, unsated. Then first + He trembled with awe of the things + He had seen; and he did transfer, + Divining and doubting in turn, + His reverence unto her; + Nor asked what he crouched to learn: + The whence of her, whither, and why + Her presence there, and her name, + Her parentage: under which sky + Her birth, and how hither she came, + So young, a virgin, alone, + Unfriended, having no fear, + As Oreads have; no moan, + Like the lost upon earth; no tear; + Not a sign of the torch in the blood, + Though her stature had reached the height + When mantles a tender rud + In maids that of youths have sight, + If maids of our seed they be: + For he said: A glad vision art thou! + And she answered him: Thou to me! + As men utter a vow. + + +VI + + + Then said she, quick as the cries + Of the rainy cranes: Light! light! + And Helios rose in her eyes, + That were full as the dew-balls bright, + Relucent to him as dews + Unshaded. Breathing, she sent + Her voice to the God of the Muse, + And along the vale it went, + Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill: + Sweet, but no young maid’s throat: + The echo beyond the hill + Ran falling on half the note: + And under the shaken ground + Where the Hundred-headed groans + By the roots of great Aetna bound, + As of him were hollow tones + Of wondering roared: a tale + Repeated to sunless halls. + But now off the face of the vale + Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls + Of the lake’s rock-head were gold, + And the breast of the lake, that swell + Of the crestless long wave rolled + To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. + A morning of radiant lids + O’er the dance of the earth opened wide: + The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids + Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, + Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: + There was milk, honey, music to make: + Up their branches the little birds billed: + Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake. + O shining in sunlight, chief + After water and water’s caress, + Was the young bronze-orange leaf, + That clung to the tree as a tress, + Shooting lucid tendrils to wed + With the vine-hook tree or pole, + Like Arachne launched out on her thread. + Then the maiden her dusky stole + In the span of the black-starred zone, + Gathered up for her footing fleet. + As one that had toil of her own + She followed the lines of wheat + Tripping straight through the fields, green blades, + To the groves of olive grey, + Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades + Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray + In a night, like the snow-packed storm: + Pear, apple, almond, plum: + Not wintry now: pushing, warm! + And she touched them with finger and thumb, + As the vine-hook closes: she smiled, + Recounting again and again, + Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child, + With the meaning known to men. + For hours in the track of the plough + And the pruning-knife she stepped, + And of how the seed works, and of how + Yields the soil, she seemed adept. + Then she murmured that name of the dearth, + The Beneficent, Hers, who bade + Our husbandmen sow for the birth + Of the grain making earth full glad. + She murmured that Other’s: the dirge + Of life-light: for whose dark lap + Our locks are clipped on the verge + Of the realm where runs no sap. + She said: We have looked on both! + And her eyes had a wavering beam + Of various lights, like the froth + Of the storm-swollen ravine stream + In flame of the bolt. What links + Were these which had made him her friend? + He eyed her, as one who drinks, + And would drink to the end. + + +VII + + + Now the meadows with crocus besprent, + And the asphodel woodsides she left, + And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent + Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft + That tutors the torrent-brook, + Delaying its forceful spleen + With many a wind and crook + Through rock to the broad ravine. + By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes, + And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid, + And the sun-loving lizards and snakes + On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid + Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all, + At a snap of twig or bark + In the track of the foreign foot-fall, + She climbed to the pineforest dark, + Overbrowing an emerald chine + Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath, + Running poplar and cypress to pine, + The lake-banks are seen, and beneath, + Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms, + The citadel watching the bay, + The bay with the town in its arms, + The town shining white as the spray + Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock, + Where the rock stars the girdle of sea, + White-ringed, as the midday flock, + Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree. + That hour of the piercing shaft + Transfixes bough-shadows, confused + In veins of fire, and she laughed, + With her quiet mouth amused + To see the whole flock, adroop, + Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one, + Imperceptibly filling the loop + Of its shade at a slant of sun. + The pipes under pent of the crag, + Where the goatherds in piping recline, + Have whimsical stops, burst and flag + Uncorrected as outstretched swine: + For the fingers are slack and unsure, + And the wind issues querulous:—thorns + And snakes!—but she listened demure, + Comparing day’s music with morn’s. + Of the gentle spirit that slips + From the bark of the tree she discoursed, + And of her of the wells, whose lips + Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced. + And much of the sacred loon, + The frolic, the Goatfoot God, + For stories of indolent noon + In the pineforest’s odorous nod, + She questioned, not knowing: he can + Be waspish, irascible, rude, + He is oftener friendly to man, + And ever to beasts and their brood. + For the which did she love him well, + She said, and his pipes of the reed, + His twitched lips puffing to tell + In music his tears and his need, + Against the sharp catch of his hurt. + Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak, + Nor spake as the schools, to divert, + But fondly, perceiving him weak + Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear, + A holiness, horn and heel. + All this she had learnt in her ear + From Callistes, and taught him to feel. + Yea, the solemn divinity flushed + Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast, + And the steeps where the cataract rushed, + And the wilds where the forest is priest, + Were his temple to clothe him in awe, + While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read + The haunts of the beak and the claw + As plain as the land of bread, + But Cities and martial States, + Whither soon the youth veered his theme, + Were impervious barrier-gates + To her: and that ship, a trireme, + Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance, + Though he dwelt on the message it bore + Of sceptre and sword and lance + To the bee-swarms black on the shore, + Which were audible almost, + So black they were. It befel + That he called up the warrior host + Of the Song pouring hydromel + In thunder, the wide-winged Song. + And he named with his boyish pride + The heroes, the noble throng + Past Acheron now, foul tide! + With his joy of the godlike band + And the verse divine, he named + The chiefs pressing hot on the strand, + Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed. + The fleetfoot and ireful; the King; + Him, the prompter in stratagem, + Many-shifted and masterful: Sing, + O Muse! But she cried: Not of them + She breathed as if breath had failed, + And her eyes, while she bade him desist, + Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed, + As you see the grey river-mist + Hold shapes on the yonder bank. + A moment her body waned, + The light of her sprang and sank: + Then she looked at the sun, she regained + Clear feature, and she breathed deep. + She wore the wan smile he had seen, + As the flow of the river of Sleep, + On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen. + In sunlight she craved to bask, + Saying: Life! And who was she? who? + Of what issue? He dared not ask, + For that partly he knew. + + +VIII + + + A noise of the hollow ground + Turned the eye to the ear in debate: + Not the soft overflowing of sound + Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight, + Barely swayed to some whispers remote, + Some swarming whispers above: + Not the pines with the faint airs afloat, + Hush-hushing the nested dove: + It was not the pines, or the rout + Oft heard from mid-forest in chase, + But the long muffled roar of a shout + Subterranean. Sharp grew her face. + She rose, yet not moved by affright; + ’Twas rather good haste to use + Her holiday of delight + In the beams of the God of the Muse. + And the steeps of the forest she crossed, + On its dry red sheddings and cones + Up the paths by roots green-mossed, + Spotted amber, and old mossed stones. + Then out where the brook-torrent starts + To her leap, and from bend to curve + A hurrying elbow darts + For the instant-glancing swerve, + Decisive, with violent will + In the action formed, like hers, + The maiden’s, ascending; and still + Ascending, the bud of the furze, + The broom, and all blue-berried shoots + Of stubborn and prickly kind, + The juniper flat on its roots, + The dwarf rhododaphne, behind + She left, and the mountain sheep + Far behind, goat, herbage and flower. + The island was hers, and the deep, + All heaven, a golden hour. + Then with wonderful voice, that rang + Through air as the swan’s nigh death, + Of the glory of Light she sang, + She sang of the rapture of Breath. + Nor ever, says he who heard, + Heard Earth in her boundaries broad, + From bosom of singer or bird + A sweetness thus rich of the God + Whose harmonies always are sane. + She sang of furrow and seed, + The burial, birth of the grain, + The growth, and the showers that feed, + And the green blades waxing mature + For the husbandman’s armful brown. + O, the song in its burden ran pure, + And burden to song was a crown. + Callistes, a singer, skilled + In the gift he could measure and praise, + By a rival’s art was thrilled, + Though she sang but a Song of Days, + Where the husbandman’s toil and strife + Little varies to strife and toil: + But the milky kernel of life, + With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil + The song did give him to eat: + Gave the first rapt vision of Good, + And the fresh young sense of Sweet + The grace of the battle for food, + With the issue Earth cannot refuse + When men to their labour are sworn. + ’Twas a song of the God of the Muse + To the forehead of Morn. + + +IX + + + Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled: + Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack: + The fishing-boat heavenward sailed, + Bent abeam, with a whitened track, + Surprised, fast hauling the net, + As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook. + She said: Is it night? O not yet! + With a travail of thoughts in her look. + The mountain heaved up to its peak: + Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl; + Of bird or of branch rose the shriek. + Night? but never so fell a scowl + Wore night, nor the sky since then + When ocean ran swallowing shore, + And the Gods looked down for men. + Broke tempest with that stern roar + Never yet, save when black on the whirl + Rode wrath of a sovereign Power. + Then the youth and the shuddering girl, + Dim as shades in the angry shower, + Joined hands and descended a maze + Of the paths that were racing alive + Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways, + Incessant, with sound of a hive. + The height was a fountain-urn + Pouring streams, and the whole solid height + Leaped, chasing at every turn + The pair in one spirit of flight + To the folding pineforest. Yet here, + Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt, + The stillness bred spectral fear + Of the awfulness ranging without, + And imminent. Downward they fled, + From under the haunted roof, + To the valley aquake with the tread + Of an iron-resounding hoof, + As of legions of thunderful horse + Broken loose and in line tramping hard. + For the rage of a hungry force + Roamed blind of its mark over sward: + They saw it rush dense in the cloak + Of its travelling swathe of steam; + All the vale through a thin thread-smoke + Was thrown back to distance extreme: + And dull the full breast of it blinked, + Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er, + Diminished, in strangeness distinct, + Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar: + An Enna of fields beyond sun, + Out of light, in a lurid web; + And the traversing fury spun + Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb; + As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn, + Retire, and in ravenous greed, + Inveterate, swell its return. + Up and down, as if wringing from speed + Sights that made the unsighted appear, + Delude and dissolve, on it scoured. + Lo, a sea upon land held career + Through the plain of the vale half-devoured. + Callistes of home and escape + Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech. + She gazed at the Void of shape, + She put her white hand to his reach, + Saying: Now have we looked on the Three. + And divided from day, from night, + From air that is breath, stood she, + Like the vale, out of light. + + +X + + + Then again in disorderly words + He muttered of home, and was mute, + With the heart of the cowering birds + Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot. + He gave her some redness that streamed + Through her limbs in a flitting glow. + The sigh of our life she seemed, + The bliss of it clothing in woe. + Frailer than flower when the round + Of the sickle encircles it: strong + To tell of the things profound, + Our inmost uttering song, + Unspoken. So stood she awhile + In the gloom of the terror afield, + And the silence about her smile + Said more than of tongue is revealed. + I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been: + It said: and not joylessly shone + The remembrance of light through the screen + Of a face that seemed shadow and stone. + She led the youth trembling, appalled, + To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise + Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called, + And the hurricane blackness had eyes. + It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt. + Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side + Would have clasped her and dared a revolt + Sacrilegious as ever defied + High Olympus, but vainly for strength + His compassionate heart shook a frame + Stricken rigid to ice all its length. + On amain the black traveller came. + Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm, + Clove the fountaining lake with a plough, + And the lord of the steeds was in form + He, the God of implacable brow, + Darkness: he: he in person: he raged + Through the wave like a boar of the wilds + From the hunters and hounds disengaged, + And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s. + Horror melted in anguish to hear. + Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path + Of the terrible Charioteer, + With the foam and torn features of wrath, + Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet; + And the steeds clove it, rushing at land + Like the teeth of the famished at meat. + Then he swept out his hand. + + +XI + + + This, no more, doth Callistes recall: + He saw, ere he dropped in swoon, + On the maiden the chariot fall, + As a thundercloud swings on the moon. + Forth, free of the deluge, one cry + From the vanishing gallop rose clear: + And: Skiágeneia! the sky + Rang; Skiágeneia! the sphere. + And she left him therewith, to rejoice, + Repine, yearn, and know not his aim, + The life of their day in her voice, + Left her life in her name. + + +XII + + + Now the valley in ruin of fields + And fair meadowland, showing at eve + Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields + After battle, bade men believe + That no other than wrathfullest God + Had been loose on her beautiful breast, + Where the flowery grass was clod, + Wheat and vine as a trailing nest. + The valley, discreet in grief, + Disclosed but the open truth, + And Enna had hope of the sheaf: + There was none for the desolate youth + Devoted to mourn and to crave. + Of the secret he had divined + Of his friend of a day would he rave: + How for light of our earth she pined: + For the olive, the vine and the wheat, + Burning through with inherited fire: + And when Mother went Mother to meet, + She was prompted by simple desire + In the day-destined car to have place + At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen, + And be drawn to the dear earth’s face. + She was fire for the blue and the green + Of our earth, dark fire; athirst + As a seed of her bosom for dawn, + White air that had robed and nursed + Her mother. Now was she gone + With the Silent, the God without tear, + Like a bud peeping out of its sheath + To be sundered and stamped with the sere. + And Callistes to her beneath, + As she to our beams, extinct, + Strained arms: he was shade of her shade. + In division so were they linked. + But the song which had betrayed + Her flight to the cavernous ear + For its own keenly wakeful: that song + Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer + Of the husbandman’s heart made strong + Through droughts and deluging rains + With his faith in the Great Mother’s love: + O the joy of the breath she sustains, + And the lyre of the light above, + And the first rapt vision of Good, + And the fresh young sense of Sweet: + That song the youth ever pursued + In the track of her footing fleet. + For men to be profited much + By her day upon earth did he sing: + Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch + On the blossoms of tender Spring, + Immortal: and how in her soul + She is with them, and tearless abides, + Folding grain of a love for one goal + In patience, past flowing of tides. + And if unto him she was tears, + He wept not: he wasted within: + Seeming sane in the song, to his peers, + Only crazed where the cravings begin. + Our Lady of Gifts prized he less + Than her issue in darkness: the dim + Lost Skiágencia’s caress + Of our earth made it richest for him. + And for that was a curse on him raised, + And he withered rathe, dry to his prime, + Though the bounteous Giver be praised + Through the island with rites of old time + Exceedingly fervent, and reaped + Veneration for teachings devout, + Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped + And the wine-presses ruddily spout, + And the olive and apple are juice + At a touch light as hers lost below. + Whatsoever to men is of use + Sprang his worship of them who bestow, + In a measure of songs unexcelled: + But that soul loving earth and the sun + From her home of the shadows he held + For his beacon where beam there is none: + And to join her, or have her brought back, + In his frenzy the singer would call, + Till he followed where never was track, + On the path trod of all. + + + +THE LARK ASCENDING + + + HE rises and begins to round, + He drops the silver chain of sound, + Of many links without a break, + In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, + All intervolved and spreading wide, + Like water-dimples down a tide + Where ripple ripple overcurls + And eddy into eddy whirls; + A press of hurried notes that run + So fleet they scarce are more than one, + Yet changeingly the trills repeat + And linger ringing while they fleet, + Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear + To her beyond the handmaid ear, + Who sits beside our inner springs, + Too often dry for this he brings, + Which seems the very jet of earth + At sight of sun, her music’s mirth, + As up he wings the spiral stair, + A song of light, and pierces air + With fountain ardour, fountain play, + To reach the shining tops of day, + And drink in everything discerned + An ecstasy to music turned, + Impelled by what his happy bill + Disperses; drinking, showering still, + Unthinking save that he may give + His voice the outlet, there to live + Renewed in endless notes of glee, + So thirsty of his voice is he, + For all to hear and all to know + That he is joy, awake, aglow; + The tumult of the heart to hear + Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, + And know the pleasure sprinkled bright + By simple singing of delight; + Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, + Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained + Without a break, without a fall, + Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, + Perennial, quavering up the chord + Like myriad dews of sunny sward + That trembling into fulness shine, + And sparkle dropping argentine; + Such wooing as the ear receives + From zephyr caught in choric leaves + Of aspens when their chattering net + Is flushed to white with shivers wet; + And such the water-spirit’s chime + On mountain heights in morning’s prime, + Too freshly sweet to seem excess, + Too animate to need a stress; + But wider over many heads + The starry voice ascending spreads, + Awakening, as it waxes thin, + The best in us to him akin; + And every face to watch him raised, + Puts on the light of children praised; + So rich our human pleasure ripes + When sweetness on sincereness pipes, + Though nought be promised from the seas, + But only a soft-ruffling breeze + Sweep glittering on a still content, + Serenity in ravishment + For singing till his heaven fills, + ’Tis love of earth that he instils, + And ever winging up and up, + Our valley is his golden cup, + And he the wine which overflows + To lift us with him as he goes: + The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine, + He is, the hills, the human line, + The meadows green, the fallows brown, + The dreams of labour in the town; + He sings the sap, the quickened veins; + The wedding song of sun and rains + He is, the dance of children, thanks + Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, + And eye of violets while they breathe; + All these the circling song will wreathe, + And you shall hear the herb and tree, + The better heart of men shall see, + Shall feel celestially, as long + As you crave nothing save the song. + + Was never voice of ours could say + Our inmost in the sweetest way, + Like yonder voice aloft, and link + All hearers in the song they drink. + Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, + Our passion is too full in flood, + We want the key of his wild note + Of truthful in a tuneful throat; + The song seraphically free + Of taint of personality, + So pure that it salutes the suns + The voice of one for millions, + In whom the millions rejoice + For giving their one spirit voice. + Yet men have we, whom we revere, + Now names, and men still housing here, + Whose lives, by many a battle-dint + Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, + Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet + For song our highest heaven to greet: + Whom heavenly singing gives us new, + Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, + From firmest base to farthest leap, + Because their love of Earth is deep, + And they are warriors in accord + With life to serve, and, pass reward, + So touching purest and so heard + In the brain’s reflex of yon bird: + Wherefore their soul in me, or mine, + Through self-forgetfulness divine, + In them, that song aloft maintains, + To fill the sky and thrill the plains + With showerings drawn from human stores, + As he to silence nearer soars, + Extends the world at wings and dome, + More spacious making more our home, + Till lost on his aërial rings + In light, and then the fancy sings. + + + +PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS + + +I + + + WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, + Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, + Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, + Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod! + Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe + Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, + How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere, + Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +II + + + Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks: + Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey: + Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks: + Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay. + Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard, + Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate: + Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd, + Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s gate. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +III + + + Water, first of singers, o’er rocky mount and mead, + First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill, + Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed, + Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill. + Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool, + Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook, + Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool + Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +IV + + + Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields: + Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high: + Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields, + Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry! + Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins + Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice rose: + Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins; + Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +V + + + Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft: + Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s teeth + Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft; + Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe! + Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped + Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new gold. + Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead + Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +VI + + + Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above: + Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air! + Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love + Ease because the creature was all too fair. + Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good, + Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast. + He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood + Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +VII + + + Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known, + Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame. + Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone, + After he had taught how the sweet sounds came + Stretched about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see + Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind. + So began contention to give delight and be + Excellent in things aimed to make life kind. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + +VIII + + + You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats, + You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew! + Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats! + Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few! + You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays, + You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent: + He has been our fellow, the morning of our days! + Us he chose for housemates, and this way went. + God! of whom music + And song and blood are pure, + The day is never darkened + That had thee here obscure. + + + +MELAMPUS + + +I + + + WITH love exceeding a simple love of the things + That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; + Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings + From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; + Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; + Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; + The good physician Melampus, loving them all, + Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. + + +II + + + For him the woods were a home and gave him the key + Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. + The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we + To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours: + And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined + Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows + In them, in us, from the source by man unattained + Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose. + + +III + + + And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast + Embracing tenderly each little motive shape, + The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best + Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape. + For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk, + As babes they learn where her motherly help is great: + They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk, + And need they medical antidotes, find them straight. + + +IV + + + Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods, + Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain + Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods + Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane + The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns + To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life + Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns + Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife. + + +V + + + Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire, + A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret + That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire, + Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set + Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue + Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears + A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung, + He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears! + + +VI + + + A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech + Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves + To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach; + He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves. + No fears have I of a man who goes with his head + To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand: + I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed; + I pipe him much for his good could he understand. + + +VII + + + Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist + He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard. + Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist, + He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird. + His cushion mosses in shades of various green, + The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake + Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene, + It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake. + + +VIII + + + Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full, + As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth, + Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool + To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth. + The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream; + The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew; + Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam, + The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew. + + +IX + + + He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed + Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one + They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed + For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun, + Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings, + Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned: + He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings, + The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned. + + +X + + + Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet, + By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth + With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat, + Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth, + The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze, + Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent, + Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease, + The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument. + + +XI + + + So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates + We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged + With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates, + With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged. + Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute, + He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled, + To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root + A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled. + + +XII + + + Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form + Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels gave, + Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm, + And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave, + And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire, + And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere; + And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre, + He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear. + + +XIII + + + Sweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze + In heat, the run of the river on root and stone, + All senses joined, as the sister Pierides + Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own. + In stately order, evolved of sound into sight, + From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried + The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night, + Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied. + + +XIV + + + And there vitality, there, there solely in song, + Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs, + Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong, + The Master said: and the studious eye that reads, + (Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), + In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. + Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount + To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground. + + +XV + + + Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage, + He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed, + Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage + Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. + He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings + Melodious: as the God did he drive and check, + Through love exceeding a simple love of the things + That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck. + + + +LOVE IN THE VALLEY + + + UNDER yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, + Couched with her arms behind her golden head, + Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, + Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. + Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, + Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, + Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: + Then would she hold me and never let me go? + + * * * + + Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, + Swift as the swallow along the river’s light + Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, + Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. + Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, + Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, + She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, + Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! + + * * * + + When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, + Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, + Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, + More love should I have, and much less care. + When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror, + Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, + Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, + I should miss but one for the many boys and girls. + + * * * + + Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows + Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. + No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder: + Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. + Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure, + Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: + Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones + Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. + + * * * + + Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping + Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. + Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, + Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. + Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: + So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. + Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, + Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. + + * * * + + Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, + Arm in arm, all against the raying West, + Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, + Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. + Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking + Whispered the world was; morning light is she. + Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless; + Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free. + + * * * + + Happy happy time, when the white star hovers + Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, + Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, + Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew. + Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens + Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. + Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; + Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells. + + * * * + + Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting + Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, + Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter + Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. + Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom + Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend + Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset + Rich, deep like love in beauty without end. + + * * * + + When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window + Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, + Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily + Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. + When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle + In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, + Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily + Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. + + * * * + + Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight, + Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s brim, + Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, + Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. + Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet, + Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. + Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever + Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. + + * * * + + All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; + Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. + My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters, + Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands. + Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, + Coming the rose: and unaware a cry + Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, + Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. + + * * * + + Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips, + Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain: + Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel + She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. + Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way: + She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. + So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder, + Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. + + * * * + + Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, + Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please. + I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones. + O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. + You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, + Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, + They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, + You are of life’s, on the banks that line the way. + + * * * + + Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, + Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. + Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine + Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. + Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest + Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, + Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine + Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths. + + * * * + + Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades; + Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf: + Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; + Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf. + Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; + Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine: + Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, + Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. + + * * * + + This I may know: her dressing and undressing + Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport + Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder + Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port + White sails furl; or on the ocean borders + White sails lean along the waves leaping green. + Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight + Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. + + * * * + + Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse + Open with the morn, and in a breezy link + Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard, + Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. + Busy in the grass the early sun of summer + Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting notes + Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: + Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats! + + * * * + + Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy + Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, + Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine; + O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! + Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher + Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. + Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, + Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laughed and leaned her cheek. + + * * * + + Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof + Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. + Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way + Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. + Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, + Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. + Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, + Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. + + * * * + + O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! + O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! + O the treasure-tresses one another over + Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! + Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet + Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist, + Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness! + O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! + + * * * + + Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk drops, + Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: + Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise, + Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. + Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree + Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I. + Here may life on death or death on life be painted. + Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die! + + * * * + + Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber + Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. + ‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers, + Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. + Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled: + Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. + Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy + Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet. + + * * * + + Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, + Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise + High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; + Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. + Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming, + Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.— + Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, + Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names. + + * * * + + Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise. + Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, + Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, + Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. + Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. + Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring! + Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants, + Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing. + + * * * + + Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April + Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you + Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, + Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: + Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry: + Fair as in image my seraph love appears + Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids: + Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. + + * * * + + Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, + I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. + Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, + Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. + Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; + Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; + Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: + All seem to know what is for heaven alone. + + + +THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD + + + CAROLS nature, counsel men. + Different notes as rook from wren + Hear we when our steps begin, + And the choice is cast within, + Where a robber raven’s tale + Urges passion’s nightingale. + + Hark to the three. Chimed they in one, + Life were music of the sun. + Liquid first, and then the caw, + Then the cry that knows not law. + + +I + + + As the birds do, so do we, + Bill our mate, and choose our tree. + Swift to building work addressed, + Any straw will help a nest. + Mates are warm, and this is truth, + Glad the young that come of youth. + They have bloom i’ the blood and sap + Chilling at no thunder-clap. + Man and woman on the thorn + Trust not Earth, and have her scorn. + They who in her lead confide, + Wither me if they spread not wide! + Look for aid to little things, + You will get them quick as wings, + Thick as feathers; would you feed, + Take the leap that springs the need. + + +II + + + Contemplate the rutted road: + Life is both a lure and goad. + Each to hold in measure just, + Trample appetite to dust. + Mark the fool and wanton spin: + Keep to harness as a skin. + Ere you follow nature’s lead, + Of her powers in you have heed; + Else a shiverer you will find + You have challenged humankind. + Mates are chosen marketwise: + Coolest bargainer best buys. + Leap not, nor let leap the heart: + Trot your track, and drag your cart. + So your end may be in wool, + Honoured, and with manger full. + + +III + + + O the rosy light! it fleets, + Dearer dying than all sweets. + That is life: it waves and goes; + Solely in that cherished Rose + Palpitates, or else ’tis death. + Call it love with all thy breath. + Love! it lingers: Love! it nears: + Love! O Love! the Rose appears, + Blushful, magic, reddening air. + Now the choice is on thee: dare! + Mortal seems the touch, but makes + Immortal the hand that takes. + Feel what sea within thee shames + Of its force all other claims, + Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be + Heavenly Rose to swelling sea. + + + +THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH + + + I CHANCED upon an early walk to spy + A troop of children through an orchard gate: + The boughs hung low, the grass was high; + They had but to lift hands or wait + For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky. + + They shouted, running on from tree to tree, + And played the game the wind plays, on and round. + ’Twas visible invisible glee + Pursuing; and a fountain’s sound + Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me. + + I could have watched them till the daylight fled, + Their pretty bower made such a light of day. + A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! head!’ + The rest to comfort her straightway + Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red. + + The tiny creature flashing through green grass, + And laughing with her feet and eyes among + Fresh apples, while a little lass + Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung: + That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass. + + My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, + Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers; + Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains, + Across a heath I walked for hours, + And met its rival tenants, rays and rains. + + Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared, + When, under a patched channel-bank enriched + With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared, + Behold, a family had pitched + Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared. + + Here, too, were many children, quick to scan + A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth: + In many-coloured rags they ran, + Like iron runlets of the heath. + Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can. + + Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea + Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid + From either ridge unequally), + Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid + A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee. + + They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke + In act to follow, but as one they snuffed + Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke + Of provender, its pale flame puffed, + And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke. + + Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam, + The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat, + Paused for its bubbling-up supreme: + A dog upright in circle sat, + And oft his nose went with the flying steam. + + I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now + The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light; + Threw high aloft a golden bough, + And seemed the desert of the night + Far down with mellow orchards to endow. + + + +EARTH AND MAN + + +I + + + ON her great venture, Man, + Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast + Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, + And fair to scan. + + +II + + + More aid than that embrace, + That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart + Involves his fate; and she who urged the start + Abides the race. + + +III + + + For he is in the lists + Contentious with the elements, whose dower + First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour + If he desists. + + +IV + + + His breath of instant thirst + Is warning of a creature matched with strife, + To meet it as a bride, or let fall life + On life’s accursed. + + +V + + + No longer forth he bounds + The lusty animal, afield to roam, + But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome + Strange themes propounds. + + +VI + + + By hunger sharply sped + To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use, + In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews, + An infant’s head. + + +VII + + + And ever that old task + Of reading what he is and whence he came, + Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame + Across her mask. + + +VIII + + + She hears his wailful prayer, + When now to the Invisible he raves + To rend him from her, now of his mother craves + Her calm, her care. + + +IX + + + The thing that shudders most + Within him is the burden of his cry. + Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye + The eyeless Ghost. + + +X + + + Or sometimes she will seem + Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, + Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, + With gold-buds dim. + + +XI + + + Once worshipped Prime of Powers, + She still was the Implacable: as a beast, + She struck him down and dragged him from the feast + She crowned with flowers. + + +XII + + + Her pomp of glorious hues, + Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile, + Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile + With symbol-clues. + + +XIII + + + The mystery she holds + For him, inveterately he strains to see, + And sight of his obtuseness is the key + Among those folds. + + +XIV + + + He may entreat, aspire, + He may despair, and she has never heed. + She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, + Not his desire. + + +XV + + + She prompts him to rejoice, + Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud. + He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed + A wanton’s choice. + + +XVI + + + Albeit thereof he has found + Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain; + Has half transferred the battle to his brain, + From bloody ground; + + +XVII + + + He will not read her good, + Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; + Through that old devil of the thousand lures, + Through that dense hood: + + +XVIII + + + Through terror, through distrust; + The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live: + Through all that makes of him a sensitive + Abhorring dust. + + +XIX + + + Behold his wormy home! + And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave + Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave + To waste in foam. + + +XX + + + Therefore the wretch inclined + Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith, + Can raise him high: with vows of living faith + For little signs. + + +XXI + + + Some signs he must demand, + Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few, + To satisfy the senses it is true, + And in his hand, + + +XXII + + + This miracle which saves + Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch, + By virtue of his worth, contrasting much + With brutes and knaves. + + +XXIII + + + From dust, of him abhorred, + He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth. + ‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth! + Me take, dear Lord!’ + + +XXIV + + + She hears him. Him she owes + For half her loveliness a love well won + By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, + Their common foes. + + +XXV + + + He builds the soaring spires, + That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws, + Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, + Her purest fires. + + +XXVI + + + Through him hath she exchanged, + For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, + Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown + Where monsters ranged. + + +XXVII + + + And order, high discourse, + And decency, than which is life less dear, + She has of him: the lyre of language clear, + Love’s tongue and source. + + +XXVIII + + + She hears him, and can hear + With glory in his gains by work achieved: + With grief for grief that is the unperceived + In her so near. + + +XXIX + + + If he aloft for aid + Imploring storms, her essence is the spur. + His cry to heaven is a cry to her + He would evade. + + +XXX + + + Not elsewhere can he tend. + Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins; + Those her revulsions from the skull that grins + To ape his end. + + +XXXI + + + And her desires are those + For happiness, for lastingness, for light. + ’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night + The hoped dawn-rose. + + +XXXII + + + Fair fountains of the dark + Daily she waves him, that his inner dream + May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, + A quivering lark: + + +XXIII + + + This life and her to know + For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee + To feel stern joy her origin: not he + The child of woe. + + +XXXIV + + + But that the senses still + Usurp the station of their issue mind, + He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind: + As yet he will; + + +XXXV + + + As yet he will, she prays, + Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;— + The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf + In shifting rays;— + + +XXXVI + + + That captain of the scorned; + The coveter of life in soul and shell, + The fratricide, the thief, the infidel, + The hoofed and horned;— + + +XXXVII + + + He singularly doomed + To what he execrates and writhes to shun;— + When fire has passed him vapour to the sun, + And sun relumed, + + +XXXVIII + + + Then shall the horrid pall + Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine, + ‘Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,’ + Will hear her call. + + +XXXIX + + + Whence looks he on a land + Whereon his labour is a carven page; + And forth from heritage to heritage + Nought writ on sand. + + +XL + + + His fables of the Above, + And his gapped readings of the crown and sword, + The hell detested and the heaven adored, + The hate, the love, + + +XLI + + + The bright wing, the black hoof, + He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined, + And never unfaith clamouring to be coined + To faith by proof. + + +XLII + + + She her just Lord may view, + Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned + With all her gifts to reach the light discerned + Her spirit through. + + +XLIIII + + + Then in him time shall run + As in the hour that to young sunlight crows; + And—‘If thou hast good faith it can repose,’ + She tells her son. + + +XLIV + + + Meanwhile on him, her chief + Expression, her great word of life, looks she; + Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree, + Or dated leaf. + + + +A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT + + +I + + + SEE the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath + The ever-falling fountain of green leaves + Round the white bending stem, and like a wreath + Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through, + To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves: + Is one for me? is one for you? + + +II + + + —Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place, + And you shall choose among us which you will, + Without the idle pastime of the chase, + If to this treaty you can well agree: + To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil. + He who’s for us, for him are we! + + +III + + + —Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth, + A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells, + And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth + In the first plucking of them, past us flew + To labour, singing rustic ritornells: + Had they a cause? are they of you? + + +IV + + + —Sirs, they are as unthinking armies are + To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs. + When they know men they know the state of war: + But now they dream like sunlight on a sea, + And deem you hold the half of happy pairs. + He who’s for us, for him are we! + + +V + + + —Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames; + Judicial in the robe and wig; secure + As venerated portraits in their frames; + And they denounced some insurrection new + Against sound laws which keep you good and pure. + Are you of them? are they of you? + + +VI + + + —Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes, + And by as much: let them together chime: + It is an ancient bell within their throats, + Pulled by an aged ringer; with what glee + Befits the yellow yesterdays of time. + He who’s for us, for him are we! + + +VII + + + —Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit; + Dowered of all favours and all blessed things + Whereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit; + Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew, + Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings? + Who is for love must be for you. + + +VIII + + + —The manners of the market, honest sirs, + ’Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares. + You flatter us, or perchance our milliners + You flatter; so this vain and outworn She + May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs! + A higher lord than Love claim we. + + +IX + + + —One day, dear lady, missing the broad track, + I came on a wood’s border, by a mead, + Where golden May ran up to moted black: + And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review, + With Love before her throne in act to plead. + Take him for me, take her for you. + + +X + + + —Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known. + Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt: + She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throne + The shadow of his back froze witheringly, + And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt. + O not such slaves of Love are we! + + +XI + + + —Love, lady, like the star above that lance + Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud, + Sad as the last line of a brave romance!— + Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw + Beams of fresh fire, while Beauty waned and bowed. + Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you. + + +XII + + + —Called she not for her mirror, sir? Forth ran + Her women: I am lost, she cried, when lo, + Love in the form of an admiring man + Once more in adoration bent the knee, + And brought the faded Pagan to full blow: + For which her throne she gave: not we! + + +XIII + + + —My version, madam, runs not to that end. + A certain madness of an hour half past, + Caught her like fever; her just lord no friend + She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew + The prim acerbity, sweet Love’s outcast. + Great heaven ward off that stroke from you! + + +XIV + + + —Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous: + How generous likewise that you do not name + Offended nature! She from all of us + Couched idle underneath our showering tree, + May quite withhold her most destructive flame; + And then what woeful women we! + + +XV + + + —Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youth + May run to drought in visionary schemes: + And a late waking to perceive the truth, + When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu, + Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams: + And that may be in store for you. + + +XVI + + + —O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t in the skies, + Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours? + But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes + That look on it! the diverse things they see, + According to their thirst for fruit or flowers! + Pass on: it is the truth seek we. + + +XVII + + + —Lady, there is a truth of settled laws + That down the past burns like a great watch-fire. + Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause, + Whetting its edge to cut the race in two, + Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre, + Much honour and much glory you! + + +XVIII + + + —Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride, + And not as cat and serpent and poor slave, + Wherewith we walked in union by your side? + Spare to false womanliness her delicacy, + Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave: + In our defence thus chained are we. + + +XIX + + + —Yours, madam, were the privileges of life + Proper to man’s ideal; you were the mark + Of action, and the banner in the strife: + Yea, of your very weakness once you drew + The strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark: + Wrapped in a robe of flame were you! + + +XX + + + —Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, when we were chill, + You clothed us warmly; all in honour! when + We starved you fed us; all in honour still: + Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably! + Deep is the gratitude we owe to men, + For privileged indeed were we! + + +XXI + + + —You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad, + But come in the red struggle of our growth. + Alas, that I should have to say it! bad + Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do, + Shows animal impatience, mental sloth: + Man monstrous! pining seraphs you! + + +XXII + + + —I fain would ask your friend . . . but I will ask + You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague, + Your sad exceptions were to break that mask + They wear for your cool mind historically, + And blaze like black lists of a _present_ plague? + But in that light behold them we. + + +XXIII + + + —Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world, + Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof + And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled + In his hard-earned oblivion! You are few, + Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof, + I have lived, and have known none like you. + + +XXIV + + + —We may be blind to men, sir: we embrace + A future now beyond the fowler’s nets. + Though few, we hold a promise for the race + That was not at our rising: you are free + To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes. + He who’s for us, for him are we. + + +XXV + + + —Ah! madam, were they puppets who withstood + Youth’s cravings for adventure to preserve + The dedicated ways of womanhood? + The light which leads us from the paths of rue, + That light above us, never seen to swerve, + Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you. + + +XXVI + + + —Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we perchance + Shall not abandon, though we see not how, + Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advance + Beside our lords in any real degree, + Unless we move: and to advance is now + A sovereign need, think more than we. + + +XXVII + + + —So push you out of harbour in small craft, + With little seamanship; and comes a gale, + The world will laugh, the world has often laughed, + Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue, + When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale, + How swift to the old nest fly you! + + +XXVIII + + + —What thinks your friend, kind sir? We have escaped + But partly that old half-tamed wild beast’s paw + Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped: + Men, too, have known the cramping enemy + In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe: + Him our deliverer, await we! + + +XXIX + + + —Delusions are with eloquence endowed, + And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres + To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed, + Deliverer, lady! but like summer dew + O’er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears, + Who see the awakening for you. + + +XXX + + + —Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps not. + O sir, delusion mounting like a sun + On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot, + Giving it warmth and movement! if this be + Delusion, think of what thereby was won + For men, and dream of what win we. + + +XXXI + + + —Lady, the destiny of minor powers, + Who would recast us, is but to convulse: + You enter on a strife that frets and sours; + You can but win sick disappointment’s hue; + And simply an accelerated pulse, + Some tonic you have drunk moves you. + + +XXXII + + + —Thinks your friend so? Good sir, your wit is bright; + But wit that strives to speak the popular voice, + Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light. + Curfew, would seem your conqueror’s decree + To women likewise: and we have no choice + Save darkness or rebellion, we! + + +XXXIII + + + —A plain safe intermediate way is cleft + By reason foiling passion: you that rave + Of mad alternatives to right and left + Echo the tempter, madam: and ’tis due + Unto your sex to shun it as the grave, + This later apple offered you. + + +XXXIV + + + —This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet; + Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouth + Are little wooed by it; yet we would eat. + We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea. + We have thirsted long; this apple suits our drouth: + ’Tis good for men to halve, think we. + + +XXXV + + + —But say, what seek you, madam? ’Tis enough + That you should have dominion o’er the springs + Domestic and man’s heart: those ways, how rough, + How vile, outside the stately avenue + Where you walk sheltered by your angel’s wings, + Are happily unknown to you. + + +XXXVI + + + —We hear women’s shrieks on them. We like your phrase, + Dominion domestic! And that roar, + ‘What seek you?’ is of tyrants in all days. + Sir, get you something of our purity + And we will of your strength: we ask no more. + That is the sum of what seek we. + + +XXXVII + + + —O for an image, madam, in one word, + To show you as the lightning night reveals, + Your error and your perils: you have erred + In mind only, and the perils that ensue + Swift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels + Address your hopes of safety you! + + +XXXVIII + + + —To err in mind, sir . . . your friend smiles: he may! + To err in mind, if err in mind we can, + Is grievous error you do well to stay. + But O how different from reality + Men’s fiction is! how like you in the plan, + Is woman, knew you her as we! + + +XXXIX + + + —Look, lady, where yon river winds its line + Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face + The splendour of fair life: to be divine, + ’Tis nature bids you be to nature true, + Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace, + Reflecting heaven in clearness you. + + +XL + + + —Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes. + To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse, + Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes, + Who is not wholly of the nursery, + Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse; + Together shake it off, say we! + + +XLI + + + —Hear, then, my friend, madam! Tongue-restrained he stands + Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched + With traceries of the artificer’s hands, + Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view.— + Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched! + Heed him not! Traitress beauties you! + + +XLII + + + —We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage! + —Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast! + —Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage. + —Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key. + —Then are there fresher mornings mounting East + Than ever yet have dawned, sing we! + + +XLIII + + + —False ends as false began, madam, be sure! + —What lure there is the pure cause purifies! + —Who purifies the victim of the lure? + —That soul which bids us our high light pursue. + —Some heights are measured down: the wary wise + Shun Reason in the masque with you! + + +XLIV + + + —Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks. + Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal; + A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks! + But could she give more loyal guarantee + Than wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul + Has risen? Adieu: content are we! + + +XLV + + + Those ladies led their captive to the flood’s + Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most + Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds. + Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too? + For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast + His comrade over me and you. + + +XLVI + + + Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed + Over the sea of blood the blushing star, + That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed, + When not possessing her (for such is he!), + Might in a wondering season seen afar, + Be tamed to say not ‘I,’ but ‘we’? + + +XLVII + + + And shall they make of Beauty their estate, + The fortress and the weapon of their sex? + Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate, + More queenly than of old, how we must woo, + Ere she will melt? The halter’s on our necks, + Kick as it likes us, I and you. + + +XLVIII + + + Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained + Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high: + If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained. + But can she keep her followers without fee? + Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry, + He who’s for us, for him are we! + + + + +BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE + + +THE TWO MASKS + + +I + + + MELPOMENE among her livid people, + Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks, + Warned by old contests that one museful ripple + Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks + Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos, + Perchance may change of masks midway demand, + Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos, + The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand. + + +II + + + For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures + Appealing to the fount of tears: that they + Strive never to outleap our human features, + And do Right Reason’s ordinance obey, + In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. + But prove they under stress of action’s fire + Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest, + She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre. + + + +ARCHDUCHESS ANNE + + +I + +I + + + IN middle age an evil thing + Befell Archduchess Anne: + She looked outside her wedding-ring + Upon a princely man. + + +II + + + Count Louis was for horse and arms; + And if its beacon waved, + For love; but ladies had not charms + To match a danger braved. + + +III + + + On battlefields he was the bow + Bestrung to fly the shaft: + In idle hours his heart would flow + As winds on currents waft. + + +IV + + + His blood was of those warrior tribes + That streamed from morning’s fire, + Whom now with traps and now with bribes + The wily Council wire. + + +V + + + Archduchess Anne the Council ruled, + Count Louis his great dame; + And woe to both when one had cooled! + Little was she to blame. + + +VI + + + Among her chiefs who spun their plots, + Old Kraken stood the sword: + As sharp his wits for cutting knots + Of babble he abhorred. + + +VII + + + He reverenced her name and line, + Nor other merit had + Save soldierwise to wait her sign, + And do the deed she bade. + + +VIII + + + He saw her hand jump at her side + Ere royally she smiled + On Louis and his fair young bride + Where courtly ranks defiled. + + +IX + + + That was a moment when a shock + Through the procession ran, + And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock, + Yet smiled Archduchess Anne. + + +X + + + No touch gave she to hound in leash, + No wink to sword in sheath: + She seemed a woman scarce of flesh; + Above it, or beneath. + + +XI + + + Old Kraken spied with kennelled snarl, + His Lady deemed disgraced. + He footed as on burning marl, + When out of Hall he paced. + + +XII + + + ’Twas seen he hammered striding legs, + And stopped, and strode again. + Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs, + But Patience must be hen. + + +XIII + + + Too slow are they for wrath to hatch, + Too hot for time to rear. + Old Kraken kept unwinding watch; + He marked his day appear. + + +XIV + + + He neighed a laugh, though moods were rough + With standards in revolt: + His nostrils took the news for snuff, + His smacking lips for salt. + + +XV + + + Count Louis’ wavy cock’s plumes led + His troops of black-haired manes, + A rebel; and old Kraken sped + To front him on the plains. + + +XVI + + + Then camp opposed to camp did they + Fret earth with panther claws + For signal of a bloody day, + Each reading from the Laws. + + +XVII + + + ‘Forefend it, heaven!’ Count Louis cried, + ‘And let the righteous plead: + My country is a willing bride, + Was never slave decreed. + + +XVIII + + + ‘Not we for thirst of blood appeal + To sword and slaughter curst; + We have God’s blessing on our steel, + Do we our pleading first.’ + + +XIX + + + Count Louis, soul of chivalry, + Put trust in plighted word; + By starlight on the broad brown lea, + To bar the strife he spurred. + + +XX + + + Across his breast a crimson spot, + That in a quiver glowed, + The ruddy crested camp-fires shot, + As he to darkness rode. + + +XXI + + + He rode while omens called, beware + Old Kraken’s pledge of faith! + A smile and waving hand in air, + And outward flew the wraith. + + +XXII + + + Before pale morn had mixed with gold, + His army roared, and chilled, + As men who have a woe foretold, + And see it red fulfilled. + + +XXIII + + + Away and to his young wife speed, + And say that Honour’s dead! + Another word she will not need + To bow a widow’s head. + + +XXIV + + + Old Kraken roped his white moustache + Right, left, for savage glee: + —To swing him in his soldier’s sash + Were kind for such as he! + + +XXV + + + Old Kraken’s look hard Winter wears + When sweeps the wild snow-blast: + He had the hug of Arctic bears + For captives he held fast. + + +II + +I + + + Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost, + Shut off from priest and spouse. + Her lips were locked, her arms were crossed, + Her eyes were in her brows. + + +II + + + One hand enclosed a paper scroll, + Held as a strangled asp. + So may we see the woman’s soul + In her dire tempter’s grasp. + + +III + + + Along that scroll Count Louis’ doom + Throbbed till the letters flamed. + She saw him in his scornful bloom, + She saw him chained and shamed. + + +IV + + + Around that scroll Count Louis’ fate + Was acted to her stare, + And hate in love and love in hate + Fought fell to smite or spare. + + +V + + + Between the day that struck her old, + And this black star of days, + Her heart swung like a storm-bell tolled + Above a town ablaze. + + +VI + + + His beauty pressed to intercede, + His beauty served him ill. + —Not Vengeance, ’tis his rebel’s deed, + ’Tis Justice, not our will! + + +VII + + + Yet who had sprung to life’s full force + A breast that loveless dried? + But who had sapped it at the source, + With scarlet to her pride! + + +VIII + + + He brought her waning heart as ’twere + New message from the skies. + And he betrayed, and left on her + The burden of their sighs. + + +IX + + + In floods her tender memories poured; + They foamed with waves of spite: + She crushed them, high her heart outsoared, + To keep her mind alight. + + +X + + + —The crawling creature, called in scorn + A woman!—with this pen + We sign a paper that may warn + His crowing fellowmen. + + +XI + + + —We read them lesson of a power + They slight who do us wrong. + That bitter hour this bitter hour + Provokes; by turns the strong! + + +XII + + + —That we were woman once is known: + That we are Justice now, + Above our sex, above the throne, + Men quaking shall avow. + + +XIII + + + Archduchess Anne ascending flew, + Her heart outsoared, but felt + The demon of her sex pursue, + Incensing or to melt. + + +XIV + + + Those counterfloods below at leap + Still in her breast blew storm, + And farther up the heavenly steep + Wrestled in angels’ form. + + +XV + + + To disentangle one clear wish + Not of her sex, she sought; + And womanish to womanish + Discerned in lighted thought. + + +XVI + + + With Louis’ chance it went not well + When at herself she raged; + A woman, of whom men might tell + She doted, crazed and aged. + + +XVII + + + Or else enamoured of a sweet + Withdrawn, a vengeful crone! + And say, what figure at her feet + Is this that utters moan? + + +XVIII + + + The Countess Louis from her head + Drew veil: ‘Great Lady, hear! + My husband deems you Justice dread, + I know you Mercy dear. + + +XIX + + + ‘His error upon him may fall; + He will not breathe a nay. + I am his helpless mate in all, + Except for grace to pray. + + +XX + + + ‘Perchance on me his choice inclined, + To give his House an heir: + I had not marriage with his mind, + His counsel could not share. + + +XXI + + + ‘I brought no portion for his weal + But this one instinct true, + Which bids me in my weakness kneel, + Archduchess Anne, to you.’ + + +XXII + + + The frowning Lady uttered, ‘Forth!’ + Her look forbade delay: + ‘It is not mine to weigh your worth; + Your husband’s others weigh. + + +XXIII + + + ‘Hence with the woman in your speech,’ + For nothing it avails + In woman’s fashion to beseech + Where Justice holds the scales.’ + + +XXIV + + + Then bent and went the lady wan, + Whose girlishness made grey + The thoughts that through Archduchess Anne + Shattered like stormy spray. + + +XXV + + + Long sat she there, as flame that strives + To hold on beating wind: + —His wife must be the fool of wives, + Or cunningly designed! + + +XXVI + + + She sat until the tempest-pitch + In her torn bosom fell; + —His wife must be a subtle witch + Or else God loves her well! + + +III + +I + + + Old Kraken read a missive penned + By his great Lady’s hand. + Her condescension called him friend, + To raise the crest she fanned. + + +II + + + Swiftly to where he lay encamped + It flew, yet breathed aloof + From woman’s feeling, and he stamped + A heel more like a hoof. + + +III + + + She wrote of Mercy: ‘She was loth + Too hard to goad a foe.’ + He stamped, as when men drive an oath + Devils transcribe below. + + +IV + + + She wrote: ‘We have him half by theft.’ + His wrinkles glistened keen: + And see the Winter storm-cloud cleft + To lurid skies between! + + +V + + + When read old Kraken: ‘Christ our Guide,’ + His eyes were spikes of spar: + And see the white snow-storm divide + About an icy star! + + +VI + + + ‘She trusted him to understand,’ + She wrote, and further prayed + That policy might rule the land. + Old Kraken’s laughter neighed. + + +VII + + + Her words he took; her nods and winks + Treated as woman’s fog. + The man-dog for his mistress thinks, + Not less her faithful dog. + + +VIII + + + She hugged a cloak old Kraken ripped; + Disguise to him he loathed. + —Your mercy, madam, shows you stripped, + While mine will keep you clothed. + + +IX + + + A rough ill-soldered scar in haste + He rubbed on his cheek-bone. + —Our policy the man shall taste; + Our mercy shall be shown. + + +X + + + ‘Count Louis, honour to your race + Decrees the Council-hall: + You ’scape the rope by special grace, + And like a soldier fall.’ + + +XI + + + —I am a man of many sins, + Who for one virtue die, + Count Louis said.—They play at shins, + Who kick, was the reply. + + +XII + + + Uprose the day of crimson sight, + The day without a God. + At morn the hero said Good-night: + See there that stain on sod! + + +XIII + + + At morn the Countess Louis heard + Young light sing in the lark. + Ere eve it was that other bird, + Which brings the starless dark. + + +XIV + + + To heaven she vowed herself, and yearned + Beside her lord to lie. + Archduchess Anne on Kraken turned, + All white as a dead eye. + + +XV + + + If I could kill thee! shrieked her look: + If lightning sprang from Will! + An oaken head old Kraken shook, + And she might thank or kill. + + +XVI + + + The pride that fenced her heart in mail + By mortal pain was torn. + Forth from her bosom leaped a wail, + As of a babe new-born. + + +XVII + + + She clad herself in courtly use, + And one who heard them prate + Had said they differed upon views + Where statecraft raised debate. + + +XVIII + + + The wretch detested must she trust, + The servant master own: + Confide to godless cause so just, + And for God’s blessing moan. + + +XIX + + + Austerely she her heart kept down, + Her woman’s tongue was mute + When voice of People, voice of Crown, + In cannon held dispute. + + +XX + + + The Crown on seas of blood, like swine, + Swam forefoot at the throat: + It drank of its dear veins for wine, + Enough if it might float! + + +XXI + + + It sank with piteous yelp, resurged + Electrical with fear. + O had she on old Kraken urged + Her word of mercy clear! + + +XXII + + + O had they with Count Louis been + Accordant in his plea! + Cursed are the women vowed to screen + A heart that all can see! + + +XXIII + + + The godless drove unto a goal + Was worse than vile defeat. + Did vengeance prick Count Louis’ soul + They dressed him luscious meat. + + +XXIV + + + Worms will the faithless find their lies + In the close treasure-chest. + Without a God no day can rise, + Though it should slay our best. + + +XXV + + + The Crown it furled a draggled flag, + It sheathed a broken blade. + Behold its triumph in the hag + That lives with looks decayed! + + +XXVI + + + And lo, the man of oaken head, + Of soldier’s honour bare, + He fled his land, but most he fled + His Lady’s frigid stare. + + +XXVII + + + Judged by the issue we discern + God’s blessing, and the bane. + Count Louis’ dust would fill an urn, + His deeds are waving grain. + + +XXVIII + + + And she that helped to slay, yet bade + To spare the fated man, + Great were her errors, but she had + Great heart, Archduchess Anne. + + + +THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA + + +I + + + QUEEN Theodolind has built + In the earth a furnace-bed: + There the Traitor Nail that spilt + Blood of the anointed Head, + Red of heat, resolves in shame: + White of heat, awakes to flame. + Beat, beat! white of heat, + Red of heat, beat, beat! + + +II + + + Mark the skeleton of fire + Lightening from its thunder-roof: + So comes this that saw expire + Him we love, for our behoof! + Red of heat, O white of heat, + This from off the Cross we greet. + + +III + + + Brown-cowled hammermen around + Nerve their naked arms to strike + Death with Resurrection crowned, + Each upon that cruel spike. + Red of heat the furnace leaps, + White of heat transfigured sleeps. + + +IV + + + Hard against the furnace core + Holds the Queen her streaming eyes: + Lo! that thing of piteous gore + In the lap of radiance lies, + Red of heat, as when He takes, + White of heat, whom earth forsakes. + + +V + + + Forth with it, and crushing ring + Iron hymns, for men to hear + Echoes of the deeds that sting + Earth into its graves, and fear! + Red of heat, He maketh thus, + White of heat, a crown of us. + + +VI + + + This that killed Thee, kissed Thee, Lord! + Touched Thee, and we touch it: dear, + Dark it is; adored, abhorred: + Vilest, yet most sainted here. + Red of heat, O white of heat, + In it hell and heaven meet. + + +VII + + + I behold our morning day + When they chased Him out with rods + Up to where this traitor lay + Thirsting; and the blood was God’s! + Red of heat, it shall be pressed, + White of heat, once on my breast! + + +VIII + + + Quick! the reptile in me shrieks, + Not the soul. Again; the Cross + Burn there. Oh! this pain it wreaks + Rapture is: pain is not loss. + Red of heat, the tooth of Death, + White of heat, has caught my breath. + + +IX + + + Brand me, bite me, bitter thing! + Thus He felt, and thus I am + One with Him in suffering, + One with Him in bliss, the Lamb. + Red of heat, O white of heat, + Thus is bitterness made sweet. + + +X + + + Now am I, who bear that stamp + Scorched in me, the living sign + Sole on earth—the lighted lamp + Of the dreadful Day divine. + White of heat, beat on it fast! + Red of heat, its shape has passed. + + +XI + + + Out in angry sparks they fly, + They that sentenced Him to bleed: + Pontius and his troop: they die, + Damned for ever for the deed! + White of heat in vain they soar: + Red of heat they strew the floor. + + +XII + + + Fury on it! have its debt! + Thunder on the Hill accurst, + Golgotha, be ye! and sweat + Blood, and thirst the Passion’s thirst. + Red of heat and white of heat, + Champ it like fierce teeth that eat. + + +XIII + + + Strike it as the ages crush + Towers! for while a shape is seen + I am rivalled. Quench its blush, + Devil! But it crowns me Queen, + Red of heat, as none before, + White of heat, the circlet wore. + + +XIV + + + Lowly I will be, and quail, + Crawling, with a beggar’s hand: + On my breast the branded Nail, + On my head the iron band. + Red of heat, are none so base! + White of heat, none know such grace! + + +XV + + + In their heaven the sainted hosts, + Robed in violet unflecked, + Gaze on humankind as ghosts: + I draw down a ray direct. + Red of heat, across my brow, + White of heat, I touch Him now. + + +XVI + + + Robed in violet, robed in gold, + Robed in pearl, they make our dawn. + What am I to them? Behold + What ye are to me, and fawn. + Red of heat, be humble, ye! + White of heat, O teach it me! + + +XVII + + + Martyrs! hungry peaks in air, + Rent with lightnings, clad with snow, + Crowned with stars! you strip me bare, + Pierce me, shame me, stretch me low, + Red of heat, but it may be, + White of heat, some envy me! + + +XVIII + + + O poor enviers! God’s own gifts + Have a devil for the weak. + Yea, the very force that lifts + Finds the vessel’s secret leak. + Red of heat, I rise o’er all: + White of heat, I faint, I fall. + + +XIX + + + Those old Martyrs sloughed their pride, + Taking humbleness like mirth. + I am to His Glory tied, + I that witness Him on earth! + Red of heat, my pride of dust, + White of heat, feeds fire in trust. + + +XX + + + Kindle me to constant fire, + Lest the nail be but a nail! + Give me wings of great desire, + Lest I look within, and fail! + Red of heat, the furnace light, + White of heat, fix on my sight. + + +XXI + + + Never for the Chosen peace! + Know, by me tormented know, + Never shall the wrestling cease + Till with our outlasting Foe, + Red of heat to white of heat, + Roll we to the Godhead’s feet! + Beat, beat! white of heat, + Red of heat, beat, beat! + + + +A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD + + +I + + + LADIES who in chains of wedlock + Chafe at an unequal yoke, + Not to nightingales give hearing; + Better this, the raven’s croak. + + +II + + + Down the Prado strolled my seigneur, + Arm at lordly bow on hip, + Fingers trimming his moustachios, + Eyes for pirate fellowship. + + +III + + + Home sat she that owned him master; + Like the flower bent to ground + Rain-surcharged and sun-forsaken; + Heedless of her hair unbound. + + +IV + + + Sudden at her feet a lover + Palpitating knelt and wooed; + Seemed a very gift from heaven + To the starved of common food. + + +V + + + Love me? she his vows repeated: + Fiery vows oft sung and thrummed: + Wondered, as on earth a stranger; + Thirsted, trusted, and succumbed. + + +VI + + + O beloved youth! my lover! + Mine! my lover! take my life + Wholly: thine in soul and body, + By this oath of more than wife! + + +VII + + + Know me for no helpless woman; + Nay, nor coward, though I sink + Awed beside thee, like an infant + Learning shame ere it can think. + + +VIII + + + Swing me hence to do thee service, + Be thy succour, prove thy shield; + Heaven will hear!—in house thy handmaid, + Squire upon the battlefield. + + +IX + + + At my breasts I cool thy footsoles; + Wine I pour, I dress thy meats; + Humbly, when my lord it pleaseth, + Lie with him on perfumed sheets: + + +X + + + Pray for him, my blood’s dear fountain, + While he sleeps, and watch his yawn + In that wakening babelike moment, + Sweeter to my thought than dawn!— + + +XI + + + Thundered then her lord of thunders; + Burst the door, and, flashing sword, + Loud disgorged the woman’s title: + Condemnation in one word. + + +XII + + + Grand by righteous wrath transfigured, + Towers the husband who provides + In his person judge and witness, + Death’s black doorkeeper besides! + + +XIII + + + Round his head the ancient terrors, + Conjured of the stronger’s law, + Circle, to abash the creature + Daring twist beneath his paw. + + +XIV + + + How though he hath squandered Honour + High of Honour let him scold: + Gilding of the man’s possession, + ’Tis the woman’s coin of gold. + + +XV + + + She inheriting from many + Bleeding mothers bleeding sense + Feels ’twixt her and sharp-fanged nature + Honour first did plant the fence. + + +XVI + + + Nature, that so shrieks for justice; + Honour’s thirst, that blood will slake; + These are women’s riddles, roughly + Mixed to write them saint or snake. + + +XVII + + + Never nature cherished woman: + She throughout the sexes’ war + Serves as temptress and betrayer, + Favouring man, the muscular. + + +XVIII + + + Lureful is she, bent for folly; + Doating on the child which crows: + Yours to teach him grace in fealty, + What the bloom is, what the rose. + + +XIX + + + Hard the task: your prison-chamber + Widens not for lifted latch + Till the giant thews and sinews + Meet their Godlike overmatch. + + +XX + + + Read that riddle, scorning pity’s + Tears, of cockatrices shed: + When the heart is vowed for freedom, + Captaincy it yields to head. + + +XXI + + + Meanwhile you, freaked nature’s martyrs, + Honour’s army, flower and weed, + Gentle ladies, wedded ladies, + See for you this fair one bleed. + + +XXII + + + Sole stood her offence, she faltered; + Prayed her lord the youth to spare; + Prayed that in the orange garden + She might lie, and ceased her prayer. + + +XXIII + + + Then commanding to all women + Chastity, her breasts she laid + Bare unto the self-avenger. + Man in metal was the blade. + + + +THE YOUNG PRINCESS +A BALLAD OF OLD LAWS OF LOVE + + +I + +I + + + WHEN the South sang like a nightingale + Above a bower in May, + The training of Love’s vine of flame + Was writ in laws, for lord and dame + To say their yea and nay. + + +II + + + When the South sang like a nightingale + Across the flowering night, + And lord and dame held gentle sport, + There came a young princess to Court, + A frost of beauty white. + + +III + + + The South sang like a nightingale + To thaw her glittering dream: + No vine of Love her bosom gave, + She drank no wine of Love, but grave + She held them to Love’s theme. + + +IV + + + The South grew all a nightingale + Beneath a moon unmoved: + Like the banner of war she led them on; + She left them to lie, like the light that has gone + From wine-cups overproved. + + +V + + + When the South was a fervid nightingale, + And she a chilling moon, + ’Twas pity to see on the garden swards, + Against Love’s laws, those rival lords + As willow-wands lie strewn. + + +VI + + + The South had throat of a nightingale + For her, the young princess: + She gave no vine of Love to rear, + Love’s wine drank not, yet bent her ear + To themes of Love no less. + + +II + +I + + + The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick, + Heart-free Lord Dusiote laughed: + I prize her no more than a fling o’ the dice, + But, or shame to my manhood, a lady of ice, + We master her by craft! + + +II + + + Heart-sick the lords of joyance yawned, + Lord Dusiote laughed heart-free: + I count her as much as a crack o’ my thumb, + But, or shame of my manhood, to me she shall come + Like the bird to roost in the tree! + + +III + + + At dead of night when the palace-guard + Had passed the measured rounds, + The young princess awoke to feel + A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel + Within the garden-bounds. + + +IV + + + It ceased, and she thought of whom was need, + The friar or the leech; + When lo, stood her tirewoman breathless by: + Lord Dusiote, madam, to death is nigh, + Of you he would have speech. + + +V + + + He prays you of your gentleness, + To light him to his dark end. + The princess rose, and forth she went, + For charity was her intent, + Devoutly to befriend. + + +VI + + + Lord Dusiote hung on his good squire’s arm, + The priest beside him knelt: + A weeping handkerchief was pressed + To stay the red flood at his breast, + And bid cold ladies melt. + + +VII + + + O lady, though you are ice to men, + All pure to heaven as light + Within the dew within the flower, + Of you ’tis whispered that love has power + When secret is the night. + + +VIII + + + I have silenced the slanderers, peace to their souls! + Save one was too cunning for me. + I die, whose love is late avowed, + He lives, who boasts the lily has bowed + To the oath of a bended knee. + + +IX + + + Lord Dusiote drew breath with pain, + And she with pain drew breath: + On him she looked, on his like above; + She flew in the folds of a marvel of love + Revealed to pass to death. + + +X + + + You are dying, O great-hearted lord, + You are dying for me, she cried; + O take my hand, O take my kiss, + And take of your right for love like this, + The vow that plights me bride. + + +XI + + + She bade the priest recite his words + While hand in hand were they, + Lord Dusiote’s soul to waft to bliss; + He had her hand, her vow, her kiss, + And his body was borne away. + + +III + +I + + + Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire; + He gazed at her lighted room: + The laughter in his heart grew slack; + He knew not the force that pushed him back + From her and the morn in bloom. + + +II + + + Like a drowned man’s length on the strong flood-tide, + Like the shade of a bird in the sun, + He fled from his lady whom he might claim + As ghost, and who made the daybeams flame + To scare what he had done. + + +III + + + There was grief at Court for one so gay, + Though he was a lord less keen + For training the vine than at vintage-press; + But in her soul the young princess + Believed that love had been. + + +IV + + + Lord Dusiote fled the Court and land, + He crossed the woeful seas, + Till his traitorous doing seemed clearer to burn, + And the lady beloved drew his heart for return, + Like the banner of war in the breeze. + + +V + + + He neared the palace, he spied the Court, + And music he heard, and they told + Of foreign lords arrived to bring + The nuptial gifts of a bridegroom king + To the princess grave and cold. + + +VI + + + The masque and the dance were cloud on wave, + And down the masque and the dance + Lord Dusiote stepped from dame to dame, + And to the young princess he came, + With a bow and a burning glance. + + +VII + + + Do you take a new husband to-morrow, lady? + She shrank as at prick of steel. + Must the first yield place to the second, he sighed. + Her eyes were like the grave that is wide + For the corpse from head to heel. + + +VIII + + + My lady, my love, that little hand + Has mine ringed fast in plight: + I bear for your lips a lawful thirst, + And as justly the second should follow the first, + I come to your door this night. + + +IX + + + If a ghost should come a ghost will go: + No more the lady said, + Save that ever when he in wrath began + To swear by the faith of a living man, + She answered him, You are dead. + + +IV + +I + + + The soft night-wind went laden to death + With smell of the orange in flower; + The light leaves prattled to neighbour ears; + The bird of the passion sang over his tears; + The night named hour by hour. + + +II + + + Sang loud, sang low the rapturous bird + Till the yellow hour was nigh, + Behind the folds of a darker cloud: + He chuckled, he sobbed, alow, aloud; + The voice between earth and sky. + + +III + + + O will you, will you, women are weak; + The proudest are yielding mates + For a forward foot and a tongue of fire: + So thought Lord Dusiote’s trusty squire, + At watch by the palace-gates. + + +IV + + + The song of the bird was wine in his blood, + And woman the odorous bloom: + His master’s great adventure stirred + Within him to mingle the bloom and bird, + And morn ere its coming illume. + + +V + + + Beside him strangely a piece of the dark + Had moved, and the undertones + Of a priest in prayer, like a cavernous wave, + He heard, as were there a soul to save + For urgency now in the groans. + + +VI + + + No priest was hired for the play this night: + And the squire tossed head like a deer + At sniff of the tainted wind; he gazed + Where cresset-lamps in a door were raised, + Belike on a passing bier. + + +VII + + + All cloaked and masked, with naked blades, + That flashed of a judgement done, + The lords of the Court, from the palace-door, + Came issuing silently, bearers four, + And flat on their shoulders one. + + +VIII + + + They marched the body to squire and priest, + They lowered it sad to earth: + The priest they gave the burial dole, + Bade wrestle hourly for his soul, + Who was a lord of worth. + + +IX + + + One said, farewell to a gallant knight! + And one, but a restless ghost! + ’Tis a year and a day since in this place + He died, sped high by a lady of grace + To join the blissful host. + + +X + + + Not vainly on us she charged her cause, + The lady whom we revere + For faith in the mask of a love untrue + To the Love we honour, the Love her due, + The Love we have vowed to rear. + + +XI + + + A trap for the sweet tooth, lures for the light, + For the fortress defiant a mine: + Right well! But not in the South, princess, + Shall the lady snared of her nobleness + Ever shamed or a captive pine. + + +XII + + + When the South had voice of a nightingale + Above a Maying bower, + On the heights of Love walked radiant peers; + The bird of the passion sang over his tears + To the breeze and the orange-flower. + + + +KING HARALD’S TRANCE + + +I + + + SWORD in length a reaping-hook amain + Harald sheared his field, blood up to shank: + ’Mid the swathes of slain, + First at moonrise drank. + + +II + + + Thereof hunger, as for meats the knife, + Pricked his ribs, in one sharp spur to reach + Home and his young wife, + Nigh the sea-ford beach. + + +III + + + After battle keen to feed was he: + Smoking flesh the thresher washed down fast, + Like an angry sea + Ships from keel to mast. + + +IV + + + Name us glory, singer, name us pride + Matching Harald’s in his deeds of strength; + Chiefs, wife, sword by side, + Foemen stretched their length! + + +V + + + Half a winter night the toasts hurrahed, + Crowned him, clothed him, trumpeted him high, + Till awink he bade + Wife to chamber fly. + + +VI + + + Twice the sun had mounted, twice had sunk, + Ere his ears took sound; he lay for dead; + Mountain on his trunk, + Ocean on his head. + + +VII + + + Clamped to couch, his fiery hearing sucked + Whispers that at heart made iron-clang: + Here fool-women clucked, + There men held harangue. + + +VIII + + + Burial to fit their lord of war + They decreed him: hailed the kingling: ha! + Hateful! but this Thor + Failed a weak lamb’s baa. + + +IX + + + King they hailed a branchlet, shaped to fare, + Weighted so, like quaking shingle spume, + When his blood’s own heir + Ripened in the womb! + + +X + + + Still he heard, and doglike, hoglike, ran + Nose of hearing till his blind sight saw: + Woman stood with man + Mouthing low, at paw. + + +XI + + + Woman, man, they mouthed; they spake a thing + Armed to split a mountain, sunder seas: + Still the frozen king + Lay and felt him freeze. + + +XII + + + Doglike, hoglike, horselike now he raced, + Riderless, in ghost across a ground + Flint of breast, blank-faced, + Past the fleshly bound. + + +XIII + + + Smell of brine his nostrils filled with might: + Nostrils quickened eyelids, eyelids hand: + Hand for sword at right + Groped, the great haft spanned. + + +XIV + + + Wonder struck to ice his people’s eyes: + Him they saw, the prone upon the bier, + Sheer from backbone rise, + Sword uplifting peer. + + +XV + + + Sitting did he breathe against the blade, + Standing kiss it for that proof of life: + Strode, as netters wade, + Straightway to his wife. + + +XVI + + + Her he eyed: his judgement was one word, + Foulbed! and she fell: the blow clove two. + Fearful for the third, + All their breath indrew. + + +XVII + + + Morning danced along the waves to beach; + Dumb his chiefs fetched breath for what might hap: + Glassily on each + Stared the iron cap. + + +XVIII + + + Sudden, as it were a monster oak + Split to yield a limb by stress of heat, + Strained he, staggered, broke + Doubled at their feet. + + + +WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY + + + HAWK or shrike has done this deed + Of downy feathers: rueful sight! + Sweet sentimentalist, invite + Your bosom’s Power to intercede. + + So hard it seems that one must bleed + Because another needs will bite! + All round we find cold Nature slight + The feelings of the totter-knee’d. + + O it were pleasant with you + To fly from this tussle of foes, + The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle! + To dwell in yon dribble of dew + On the cheek of your sovereign rose, + And live the young life of a twinkle. + + + +YOUNG REYNARD + + +I + + + GRACEFULLEST leaper, the dappled fox-cub + Curves over brambles with berries and buds, + Light as a bubble that flies from the tub, + Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds. + Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease, + Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce; + Nature’s own prince of the dance: then he sees + Me, and retires as if making excuse. + + +II + + + Never closed minuet courtlier! Soon + Cub-hunting troops were abroad, and a yelp + Told of sure scent: ere the stroke upon noon + Reynard the younger lay far beyond help. + Wild, my poor friend, has the fate to be chased; + Civil will conquer: were ’t other ’twere worse; + Fair, by the flushed early morning embraced, + Haply you live a day longer in verse. + + + +MANFRED + + +I + + + PROJECTED from the bilious Childe, + This clatterjaw his foot could set + On Alps, without a breast beguiled + To glow in shedding rascal sweat. + Somewhere about his grinder teeth, + He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath, + And summoned Nature to her feud + With bile and buskin Attitude. + + +II + + + Considerably was the world + Of spinsterdom and clergy racked + While he his hinted horrors hurled, + And she pictorially attacked. + A duel hugeous. Tragic? Ho! + The cities, not the mountains, blow + Such bladders; in their shapes confessed + An after-dinner’s indigest. + + + +HERNANI + + + CISTERCIANS might crack their sides + With laughter, and exemption get, + At sight of heroes clasping brides, + And hearing—O the horn! the horn! + The horn of their obstructive debt! + + But quit the stage, that note applies + For sermons cosmopolitan, + Hernani. Have we filched our prize, + Forgetting . . .? O the horn! the horn! + The horn of the Old Gentleman! + + + +THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA + + +I + + + FLAT as to an eagle’s eye, + Earth hung under Attila. + Sign for carnage gave he none. + In the peace of his disdain, + Sun and rain, and rain and sun, + Cherished men to wax again, + Crawl, and in their manner die. + On his people stood a frost. + Like the charger cut in stone, + Rearing stiff, the warrior host, + Which had life from him alone, + Craved the trumpet’s eager note, + As the bridled earth the Spring. + Rusty was the trumpet’s throat. + He let chief and prophet rave; + Venturous earth around him string + Threads of grass and slender rye, + Wave them, and untrampled wave. + O for the time when God did cry, + Eye and have, my Attila! + + +II + + + Scorn of conquest filled like sleep + Him that drank of havoc deep + When the Green Cat pawed the globe: + When the horsemen from his bow + Shot in sheaves and made the foe + Crimson fringes of a robe, + Trailed o’er towns and fields in woe; + When they streaked the rivers red, + When the saddle was the bed. + Attila, my Attila! + + +III + + + He breathed peace and pulled a flower. + Eye and have, my Attila! + This was the damsel Ildico, + Rich in bloom until that hour: + Shyer than the forest doe + Twinkling slim through branches green. + Yet the shyest shall be seen. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +IV + + + Seen of Attila, desired, + She was led to him straightway: + Radiantly was she attired; + Rifled lands were her array, + Jewels bled from weeping crowns, + Gold of woeful fields and towns. + She stood pallid in the light. + How she walked, how withered white, + From the blessing to the board, + She who would have proudly blushed, + Women whispered, asking why, + Hinting of a youth, and hushed. + Was it terror of her lord? + Was she childish? was she sly? + Was it the bright mantle’s dye + Drained her blood to hues of grief + Like the ash that shoots the spark? + See the green tree all in leaf: + See the green tree stripped of bark!— + Make the bed for Attila! + + +V + + + Round the banquet-table’s load + Scores of iron horsemen rode; + Chosen warriors, keen and hard; + Grain of threshing battle-dints; + Attila’s fierce body-guard, + Smelling war like fire in flints. + Grant them peace be fugitive! + Iron-capped and iron-heeled, + Each against his fellow’s shield + Smote the spear-head, shouting, Live, + Attila! my Attila! + Eagle, eagle of our breed, + Eagle, beak the lamb, and feed! + Have her, and unleash us! live, + Attila! my Attila! + + +VI + + + He was of the blood to shine + Bronze in joy, like skies that scorch. + Beaming with the goblet wine + In the wavering of the torch, + Looked he backward on his bride. + Eye and have, my Attila! + Fair in her wide robe was she: + Where the robe and vest divide, + Fair she seemed surpassingly: + Soft, yet vivid as the stream + Danube rolls in the moonbeam + Through rock-barriers: but she smiled + Never, she sat cold as salt: + Open-mouthed as a young child + Wondering with a mind at fault. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +VII + + + Under the thin hoop of gold + Whence in waves her hair outrolled, + ’Twixt her brows the women saw + Shadows of a vulture’s claw + Gript in flight: strange knots that sped + Closing and dissolving aye: + Such as wicked dreams betray + When pale dawn creeps o’er the bed. + They might show the common pang + Known to virgins, in whom dread + Hunts their bliss like famished hounds; + While the chiefs with roaring rounds + Tossed her to her lord, and sang + Praise of him whose hand was large, + Cheers for beauty brought to yield, + Chirrups of the trot afield, + Hurrahs of the battle-charge. + + +VIII + + + Those rock-faces hung with weed + Reddened: their great days of speed, + Slaughter, triumph, flood and flame, + Like a jealous frenzy wrought, + Scoffed at them and did them shame, + Quaffing idle, conquering nought. + O for the time when God decreed + Earth the prey of Attila! + God called on thee in his wrath, + Trample it to mire! ’Twas done. + Swift as Danube clove our path + Down from East to Western sun. + Huns! behold your pasture, gaze, + Take, our king said: heel to flank + (Whisper it, the war-horse neighs!) + Forth we drove, and blood we drank + Fresh as dawn-dew: earth was ours: + Men were flocks we lashed and spurned: + Fast as windy flame devours, + Flame along the wind, we burned. + Arrow javelin, spear, and sword! + Here the snows and there the plains; + On! our signal: onward poured + Torrents of the tightened reins, + Foaming over vine and corn + Hot against the city-wall. + Whisper it, you sound a horn + To the grey beast in the stall! + Yea, he whinnies at a nod. + O for sound of the trumpet-notes! + O for the time when thunder-shod, + He that scarce can munch his oats, + Hung on the peaks, brooded aloof, + Champed the grain of the wrath of God, + Pressed a cloud on the cowering roof, + Snorted out of the blackness fire! + Scarlet broke the sky, and down, + Hammering West with print of his hoof, + He burst out of the bosom of ire + Sharp as eyelight under thy frown, + Attila, my Attila! + + +IX + + + Ravaged cities rolling smoke + Thick on cornfields dry and black, + Wave his banners, bear his yoke. + Track the lightning, and you track + Attila. They moan: ’tis he! + Bleed: ’tis he! Beneath his foot + Leagues are deserts charred and mute; + Where he passed, there passed a sea. + Attila, my Attila! + + +X + + + —Who breathed on the king cold breath? + Said a voice amid the host, + He is Death that weds a ghost, + Else a ghost that weds with Death? + Ildico’s chill little hand + Shuddering he beheld: austere + Stared, as one who would command + Sight of what has filled his ear: + Plucked his thin beard, laughed disdain. + Feast, ye Huns! His arm be raised, + Like the warrior, battle-dazed, + Joining to the fight amain. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XI + + + Silent Ildico stood up. + King and chief to pledge her well, + Shocked sword sword and cup on cup, + Clamouring like a brazen bell. + Silent stepped the queenly slave. + Fair, by heaven! she was to meet + On a midnight, near a grave, + Flapping wide the winding-sheet. + + +XII + + + Death and she walked through the crowd, + Out beyond the flush of light. + Ceremonious women bowed + Following her: ’twas middle night. + Then the warriors each on each + Spied, nor overloudly laughed; + Like the victims of the leech, + Who have drunk of a strange draught. + + +XIII + + + Attila remained. Even so + Frowned he when he struck the blow, + Brained his horse, that stumbled twice, + On a bloody day in Gaul, + Bellowing, Perish omens! All + Marvelled at the sacrifice, + But the battle, swinging dim, + Rang off that axe-blow for him. + Attila, my Attila! + + +XIV + + + Brightening over Danube wheeled + Star by star; and she, most fair, + Sweet as victory half-revealed, + Seized to make him glad and young; + She, O sweet as the dark sign + Given him oft in battles gone, + When the voice within said, Dare! + And the trumpet-notes were sprung + Rapturous for the charge in line: + She lay waiting: fair as dawn + Wrapped in folds of night she lay; + Secret, lustrous; flaglike there, + Waiting him to stream and ray, + With one loosening blush outflung, + Colours of his hordes of horse + Ranked for combat; still he hung + Like the fever dreading air, + Cursed of heat; and as a corse + Gathers vultures, in his brain + Images of her eyes and kiss + Plucked at the limbs that could remain + Loitering nigh the doors of bliss. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XV + + + Passion on one hand, on one, + Destiny led forth the Hun. + Heard ye outcries of affright, + Voices that through many a fray, + In the press of flag and spear, + Warned the king of peril near? + Men were dumb, they gave him way, + Eager heads to left and right, + Like the bearded standard, thrust, + As in battle, for a nod + From their lord of battle-dust. + Attila, my Attila! + Slow between the lines he trod. + Saw ye not the sun drop slow + On this nuptial day, ere eve + Pierced him on the couch aglow? + Attila, my Attila! + Here and there his heart would cleave + Clotted memory for a space: + Some stout chief’s familiar face, + Choicest of his fighting brood, + Touched him, as ’twere one to know + Ere he met his bride’s embrace. + Attila, my Attila! + Twisting fingers in a beard + Scant as winter underwood, + With a narrowed eye he peered; + Like the sunset’s graver red + Up old pine-stems. Grave he stood + Eyeing them on whom was shed + Burning light from him alone. + Attila, my Attila! + Red were they whose mouths recalled + Where the slaughter mounted high, + High on it, o’er earth appalled, + He; heaven’s finger in their sight + Raising him on waves of dead, + Up to heaven his trumpets blown. + O for the time when God’s delight + Crowned the head of Attila! + Hungry river of the crag + Stretching hands for earth he came: + Force and Speed astride his name + Pointed back to spear and flag. + He came out of miracle cloud, + Lightning-swift and spectre-lean. + Now those days are in a shroud: + Have him to his ghostly queen. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XVI + + + One, with winecups overstrung, + Cried him farewell in Rome’s tongue. + Who? for the great king turned as though + Wrath to the shaft’s head strained the bow. + Nay, not wrath the king possessed, + But a radiance of the breast. + In that sound he had the key + Of his cunning malady. + Lo, where gleamed the sapphire lake, + Leo, with his Rome at stake, + Drew blank air to hues and forms; + Whereof Two that shone distinct, + Linked as orbed stars are linked, + Clear among the myriad swarms, + In a constellation, dashed + Full on horse and rider’s eyes + Sunless light, but light it was— + Light that blinded and abashed, + Froze his members, bade him pause, + Caught him mid-gallop, blazed him home. + Attila, my Attila! + What are streams that cease to flow? + What was Attila, rolled thence, + Cheated by a juggler’s show? + Like that lake of blue intense, + Under tempest lashed to foam, + Lurid radiance, as he passed, + Filled him, and around was glassed, + When deep-voiced he uttered, Rome! + + +XVII + + + Rome! the word was: and like meat + Flung to dogs the word was torn. + Soon Rome’s magic priests shall bleat + Round their magic Pope forlorn! + Loud they swore the king had sworn + Vengeance on the Roman cheat, + Ere he passed, as, grave and still, + Danube through the shouting hill: + Sworn it by his naked life! + Eagle, snakes these women are: + Take them on the wing! but war, + Smoking war’s the warrior’s wife! + Then for plunder! then for brides + Won without a winking priest!— + Danube whirled his train of tides + Black toward the yellow East. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XVIII + + + Chirrups of the trot afield, + Hurrahs of the battle-charge, + How they answered, how they pealed, + When the morning rose and drew + Bow and javelin, lance and targe, + In the nuptial casement’s view! + Attila, my Attila! + Down the hillspurs, out of tents + Glimmering in mid-forest, through + Mists of the cool morning scents, + Forth from city-alley, court, + Arch, the bounding horsemen flew, + Joined along the plains of dew, + Raced and gave the rein to sport, + Closed and streamed like curtain-rents + Fluttered by a wind, and flowed + Into squadrons: trumpets blew, + Chargers neighed, and trappings glowed + Brave as the bright Orient’s. + Look on the seas that run to greet + Sunrise: look on the leagues of wheat: + Look on the lines and squares that fret + Leaping to level the lance blood-wet. + Tens of thousands, man and steed, + Tossing like field-flowers in Spring; + Ready to be hurled at need + Whither their great lord may sling. + Finger Romeward, Romeward, King! + Attila, my Attila! + Still the woman holds him fast + As a night-flag round the mast. + + +XIX + + + Nigh upon the fiery noon, + Out of ranks a roaring burst. + ’Ware white women like the moon! + They are poison: they have thirst + First for love, and next for rule. + Jealous of the army, she? + Ho, the little wanton fool! + We were his before she squealed + Blind for mother’s milk, and heeled + Kicking on her mother’s knee. + His in life and death are we: + She but one flower of a field. + We have given him bliss tenfold + In an hour to match her night: + Attila, my Attila! + Still her arms the master hold, + As on wounds the scarf winds tight. + + +XX + + + Over Danube day no more, + Like the warrior’s planted spear, + Stood to hail the King: in fear + Western day knocked at his door. + Attila, my Attila! + Sudden in the army’s eyes + Rolled a blast of lights and cries: + Flashing through them: Dead are ye! + Dead, ye Huns, and torn piecemeal! + See the ordered army reel + Stricken through the ribs: and see, + Wild for speed to cheat despair, + Horsemen, clutching knee to chin, + Crouch and dart they know not where. + Attila, my Attila! + Faces covered, faces bare, + Light the palace-front like jets + Of a dreadful fire within. + Beating hands and driving hair + Start on roof and parapets. + Dust rolls up; the slaughter din. + —Death to them who call him dead! + Death to them who doubt the tale! + Choking in his dusty veil, + Sank the sun on his death-bed. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XXI + + + ’Tis the room where thunder sleeps. + Frenzy, as a wave to shore + Surging, burst the silent door, + And drew back to awful deeps + Breath beaten out, foam-white. Anew + Howled and pressed the ghastly crew, + Like storm-waters over rocks. + Attila, my Attila! + One long shaft of sunset red + Laid a finger on the bed. + Horror, with the snaky locks, + Shocked the surge to stiffened heaps, + Hoary as the glacier’s head + Faced to the moon. Insane they look. + God it is in heaven who weeps + Fallen from his hand the Scourge he shook. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XXII + + + Square along the couch, and stark, + Like the sea-rejected thing + Sea-sucked white, behold their King. + Attila, my Attila! + Beams that panted black and bright, + Scornful lightnings danced their sight: + Him they see an oak in bud, + Him an oaklog stripped of bark: + Him, their lord of day and night, + White, and lifting up his blood + Dumb for vengeance. Name us that, + Huddled in the corner dark + Humped and grinning like a cat, + Teeth for lips!—’tis she! she stares, + Glittering through her bristled hairs. + Rend her! Pierce her to the hilt! + She is Murder: have her out! + What! this little fist, as big + As the southern summer fig! + She is Madness, none may doubt. + Death, who dares deny her guilt! + Death, who says his blood she spilt! + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XXIII + + + Torch and lamp and sunset-red + Fell three-fingered on the bed. + In the torch the beard-hair scant + With the great breast seemed to pant: + In the yellow lamp the limbs + Wavered, as the lake-flower swims: + In the sunset red the dead + Dead avowed him, dry blood-red. + + +XXIV + + + Hatred of that abject slave, + Earth, was in each chieftain’s heart. + Earth has got him, whom God gave, + Earth may sing, and earth shall smart! + Attila, my Attila! + + +XXV + + + Thus their prayer was raved and ceased. + Then had Vengeance of her feast + Scent in their quick pang to smite + Which they knew not, but huge pain + Urged them for some victim slain + Swift, and blotted from the sight. + Each at each, a crouching beast, + Glared, and quivered for the word. + Each at each, and all on that, + Humped and grinning like a cat, + Head-bound with its bridal-wreath. + Then the bitter chamber heard + Vengeance in a cauldron seethe. + Hurried counsel rage and craft + Yelped to hungry men, whose teeth + Hard the grey lip-ringlet gnawed, + Gleaming till their fury laughed. + With the steel-hilt in the clutch, + Eyes were shot on her that froze + In their blood-thirst overawed; + Burned to rend, yet feared to touch. + She that was his nuptial rose, + She was of his heart’s blood clad: + Oh! the last of him she had!— + Could a little fist as big + As the southern summer fig, + Push a dagger’s point to pierce + Ribs like those? Who else! They glared + Each at each. Suspicion fierce + Many a black remembrance bared. + Attila, my Attila! + Death, who dares deny her guilt! + Death, who says his blood she spilt! + Traitor he, who stands between! + Swift to hell, who harms the Queen! + She, the wild contention’s cause, + Combed her hair with quiet paws. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XXVI + + + Night was on the host in arms. + Night, as never night before, + Hearkened to an army’s roar + Breaking up in snaky swarms: + Torch and steel and snorting steed, + Hunted by the cry of blood, + Cursed with blindness, mad for day. + Where the torches ran a flood, + Tales of him and of the deed + Showered like a torrent spray. + Fear of silence made them strive + Loud in warrior-hymns that grew + Hoarse for slaughter yet unwreaked. + Ghostly Night across the hive, + With a crimson finger drew + Letters on her breast and shrieked. + Night was on them like the mould + On the buried half alive. + Night, their bloody Queen, her fold + Wound on them and struck them through. + Make the bed for Attila! + + +XXVII + + + Earth has got him whom God gave, + Earth may sing, and earth shall smart! + None of earth shall know his grave. + They that dig with Death depart. + Attila, my Attila! + + +XXVIII + + + Thus their prayer was raved and passed: + Passed in peace their red sunset: + Hewn and earthed those men of sweat + Who had housed him in the vast, + Where no mortal might declare, + There lies he—his end was there! + Attila, my Attila! + + +XXIX + + + Kingless was the army left: + Of its head the race bereft. + Every fury of the pit + Tortured and dismembered it. + Lo, upon a silent hour, + When the pitch of frost subsides, + Danube with a shout of power + Loosens his imprisoned tides: + Wide around the frighted plains + Shake to hear his riven chains, + Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath, + As he makes himself a path: + High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile + Floes to bergs, and giant peers + Wrestle on a drifted isle; + Island on ice-island rears; + Dissolution battles fast: + Big the senseless Titans loom, + Through a mist of common doom + Striving which shall die the last: + Till a gentle-breathing morn + Frees the stream from bank to bank. + So the Empire built of scorn + Agonized, dissolved and sank. + Of the Queen no more was told + Than of leaf on Danube rolled. + Make the bed for Attila! + + + +ANEURIN’S HARP + + +I + + + PRINCE of Bards was old Aneurin; + He the grand Gododin sang; + All his numbers threw such fire in, + Struck his harp so wild a twang;— + Still the wakeful Briton borrows + Wisdom from its ancient heat: + Still it haunts our source of sorrows, + Deep excess of liquor sweet! + + +II + + + Here the Briton, there the Saxon, + Face to face, three fields apart, + Thirst for light to lay their thwacks on + Each the other with good heart. + Dry the Saxon sits, ’mid dinful + Noise of iron knits his steel: + Fresh and roaring with a skinful, + Britons round the hirlas reel. + + +III + + + Yellow flamed the meady sunset; + Red runs up the flag of morn. + Signal for the British onset + Hiccups through the British horn. + Down these hillmen pour like cattle + Sniffing pasture: grim below, + Showing eager teeth of battle, + In his spear-heads lies the foe. + + +IV + + + —Monster of the sea! we drive him + Back into his hungry brine. + —You shall lodge him, feed him, wive him, + Look on us; we stand in line. + —Pale sea-monster! foul the waters + Cast him; foul he leaves our land. + —You shall yield us land and daughters: + Stay the tongue, and try the hand. + + +V + + + Swift as torrent-streams our warriors, + Tossing torrent lights, find way; + Burst the ridges, crowd the barriers, + Pierce them where the spear-heads play; + Turn them as the clods in furrow, + Top them like the leaping foam; + Sorrow to the mother, sorrow, + Sorrow to the wife at home! + + +VI + + + Stags, they butted; bulls, they bellowed; + Hounds, we baited them; oh, brave! + Every second man, unfellowed, + Took the strokes of two, and gave. + Bare as hop-stakes in November’s + Mists they met our battle-flood: + Hoary-red as Winter’s embers + Lay their dead lines done in blood. + + +VII + + + Thou, my Bard, didst hang thy lyre in + Oak-leaves, and with crimson brand + Rhythmic fury spent, Aneurin; + Songs the churls could understand: + Thrumming on their Saxon sconces + Straight, the invariable blow, + Till they snorted true responses. + Ever thus the Bard they know! + + +VIII + + + But ere nightfall, harper lusty! + When the sun was like a ball + Dropping on the battle dusty, + What was yon discordant call? + Cambria’s old metheglin demon + Breathed against our rushing tide; + Clove us midst the threshing seamen:— + Gashed, we saw our ranks divide! + + +IX + + + Britain then with valedictory + Shriek veiled off her face and knelt. + Full of liquor, full of victory, + Chief on chief old vengeance dealt. + Backward swung their hurly-burly; + None but dead men kept the fight. + They that drink their cup too early, + Darkness they shall see ere night. + + +X + + + Loud we heard the yellow rover + Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick, + Thick as ants the ant-hill over, + Asking who has thrust the stick. + Lo, as frogs that Winter cumbers + Meet the Spring with stiffen’d yawn, + We from our hard night of slumbers + Marched into the bloody dawn. + + +XI + + + Day on day we fought, though shattered: + Pushed and met repulses sharp, + Till our Raven’s plumes were scattered: + All, save old Aneurin’s harp. + Hear it wailing like a mother + O’er the strings of children slain! + He in one tongue, in another, + Alien, I; one blood, yet twain. + + +XII + + + Old Aneurin! droop no longer. + That squat ocean-scum, we own, + Had fine stoutness, made us stronger, + Brought us much-required backbone: + Claimed of Power their dues, and granted + Dues to Power in turn, when rose + Mightier rovers; they that planted + Sovereign here the Norman nose. + + +XIII + + + Glorious men, with heads of eagles, + Chopping arms, and cupboard lips; + Warriors, hunters, keen as beagles, + Mounted aye on horse or ships. + Active, being hungry creatures; + Silent, having nought to say: + High they raised the lord of features, + Saxon-worshipped to this day. + + +XIV + + + Hear its deeds, the great recital! + Stout as bergs of Arctic ice + Once it led, and lived; a title + Now it is, and names its price. + This our Saxon brothers cherish: + This, when by the worth of wits + Lands are reared aloft, or perish, + Sole illumes their lucre-pits. + + +XV + + + Know we not our wrongs, unwritten + Though they be, Aneurin? Sword, + Song, and subtle mind, the Briton + Brings to market, all ignored. + ’Gainst the Saxon’s bone impinging, + Still is our Gododin played; + Shamed we see him humbly cringing + In a shadowy nose’s shade. + + +XVI + + + Bitter is the weight that crushes + Low, my Bard, thy race of fire. + Here no fair young future blushes + Bridal to a man’s desire. + Neither chief, nor aim, nor splendour + Dressing distance, we perceive. + Neither honour, nor the tender + Bloom of promise, morn or eve. + + +XVII + + + Joined we are; a tide of races + Rolled to meet a common fate; + England clasps in her embraces + Many: what is England’s state? + England her distended middle + Thumps with pride as Mammon’s wife; + Says that thus she reads thy riddle, + Heaven! ’tis heaven to plump her life. + + +XVIII + + + O my Bard! a yellow liquor, + Like to that we drank of old— + Gold is her metheglin beaker, + She destruction drinks in gold. + Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing + Hotly for his dues this hour; + Tell her that no drunken blessing + Stops the onward march of Power. + + +XIX + + + Has she ears to take forewarnings + She will cleanse her of her stains, + Feed and speed for braver mornings + Valorously the growth of brains. + Power, the hard man knit for action, + Reads each nation on the brow. + Cripple, fool, and petrifaction + Fall to him—are falling now! + + + +MEN AND MAN + + +I + + + MEN the Angels eyed; + And here they were wild waves, + And there as marsh descried; + Men the Angels eyed, + And liked the picture best + Where they were greenly dressed + In brotherhood of graves. + + +II + + + Man the Angels marked: + He led a host through murk, + On fearful seas embarked; + Man the Angels marked; + To think without a nay, + That he was good as they, + And help him at his work. + + +III + + + Man and Angels, ye + A sluggish fen shall drain, + Shall quell a warring sea. + Man and Angels, ye, + Whom stain of strife befouls, + A light to kindle souls + Bear radiant in the stain. + + + +THE LAST CONTENTION + + +I + + + YOUNG captain of a crazy bark! + O tameless heart in battered frame! + Thy sailing orders have a mark, + And hers is not the name. + + +II + + + For action all thine iron clanks + In cravings for a splendid prize; + Again to race or bump thy planks + With any flag that flies. + + +III + + + Consult them; they are eloquent + For senses not inebriate. + They trust thee on the star intent, + That leads to land their freight. + + +IV + + + And they have known thee high peruse + The heavens, and deep the earth, till thou + Didst into the flushed circle cruise + Where reason quits the brow. + + +V + + + Thou animatest ancient tales, + To prove our world of linear seed: + Thy very virtue now assails, + A tempter to mislead. + + +VI + + + But thou hast answer I am I; + My passion hallows, bids command: + And she is gracious, she is nigh: + One motion of the hand! + + +VII + + + It will suffice; a whirly tune + These winds will pipe, and thou perform + The nodded part of pantaloon + In thy created storm. + + +VIII + + + Admires thee Nature with much pride; + She clasps thee for a gift of morn, + Till thou art set against the tide, + And then beware her scorn. + + +IX + + + Sad issue, should that strife befall + Between thy mortal ship and thee! + It writes the melancholy scrawl + Of wreckage over sea. + + +X + + + This lady of the luting tongue, + The flash in darkness, billow’s grace, + For thee the worship; for the young + In muscle the embrace. + + +XI + + + Soar on thy manhood clear from those + Whose toothless Winter claws at May, + And take her as the vein of rose + Athwart an evening grey. + + + +PERIANDER + + +I + + + HOW died Melissa none dares shape in words. + A woman who is wife despotic lords + Count faggot at the question, Shall she live! + Her son, because his brows were black of her, + Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive, + And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur. + + +II + + + There is no Corinth save the whip and curb + Of Corinth, high Periander; the superb + In magnanimity, in rule severe. + Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits, + The city under him: a white yoked steer, + That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits. + + +III + + + Bloom of the generous fires of his fair Spring + Still coloured him when men forbore to sting; + Admiring meekly where the ordered seeds + Of his good sovereignty showed gardens trim; + And owning that the hoe he struck at weeds + Was author of the flowers raised face to him. + + +IV + + + His Corinth, to each mood subservient + In homage, made he as an instrument + To yield him music with scarce touch of stops. + He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly: + At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops; + At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye. + + +V + + + His wisdom men acknowledged; only one, + The creature, issue of him, Lycophron, + That rebel with his mother in his brows, + Contested: such an infamous would foul + Pirene! Little heed where he might house + The prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl! + + +VI + + + To prove the Gods benignant to his rule, + The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool, + Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power. + A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had: + One greyer pointed on the pallid hour + To come: a river dried of waters glad. + + +VII + + + For which of his male issue promised grip + To stride yon people, with the curb and whip? + This Lycophron! he sole, the father like, + Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide, + By right of mastery; stern will to strike; + Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride! + + +VIII + + + Himself the prince beheld a failing fount. + His line stretched back unto its holy mount: + The thirsty onward waved for him no sign. + Then stood before his vision that hard son. + The seizure of a passion for his line + Impelled him to the path of Lycophron. + + +IX + + + The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea; + A figure shunned along the busy quay, + Perforce of the harsh edict for who dared + Address him outcast. Naming it, he crossed + His father’s look with look that proved them paired + For stiffness, and another pebble tossed. + + +X + + + An exile to the Island ere nightfall + He passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all. + It had resemblance to a death: and on, + Against a coast where sapphire shattered white, + The seasons rolled like troops of billows blown + To spraymist. The prince gazed on capping night. + + +XI + + + Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy son! + Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done. + He heard historic echoes moan his name, + As of the prince in whom the race had pause; + Till Tyranny paternity became, + And him he hated loved he for the cause. + + +XII + + + Not Lycophron the exile now appeared, + But young Periander, from the shadow cleared, + That haunted his rebellious brows. The prince + Grew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth, + Return: and of pure pardon to convince, + Despatched the messenger most dear with both. + + +XIII + + + His daughter, from the exile’s Island home, + Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o’er the foam, + Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed; + Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced. + To bring him back a prince the father vowed, + Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist. + + +XIV + + + He waved the fleet to strain its westward way + On to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay: + Soil of those hospitable islanders + Whom now his heart, for honour to his blood, + Thanked. They should learn what boons a prince confers + When happiness enjoins him gratitude! + + +XV + + + In watch upon the offing, worn with haste + To see his youth revived, and, close embraced, + Pardon who had subdued him, who had gained + Surely the stoutest battle between two + Since Titan pierced by young Apollo stained + Earth’s breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked through. + + +XVI + + + Errors aforetime unperceived were bared, + To be by his young masterful repaired: + Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke; + His policy confirmed amid the surge + Of States and people fretting at his yoke. + And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge! + + +XVII + + + Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheer + For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier. + They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress + Of numbers the free islanders dismayed + At Tyranny come masking to oppress, + Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid. + + +XVIII + + + Who smote the man thrown open to young joy? + The image of the mother of his boy + Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths, + With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct, + Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes? + Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked! + + +XIX + + + Dead was he, and demanding earth. Demand + Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand, + The Tyrant in the father heard him cry, + And raged a plague; to prove on free Hellenes + How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye; + How black his Gods behind their marble screens. + + + +SOLON + + +I + + + THE Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye + On the great man of Athens, whom for foe + He knew, than on the sycophantic fry + That broke as waters round a galley’s flow, + Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake. + Solidity the Thunderer could not shake, + Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare, + His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look, + From thought drew, and a countenance could wear + Not less at peace than fields in Attic air + Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper’s hook. + + +II + + + Most enviable so; yet much insane + To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep, + By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein; + Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap, + My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood. + For ones and twos and threes thy words are good; + For thine own government are pillars: mine + Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst, + Rejecting elegiacs, though they shine + On polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine, + In showering columns from their fountain burst. + + +III + + + Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed, + To his high seat upon the sacred rock: + And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed + The meditation which that passing mock + Had buffeted awhile to sallowness. + He little loved the man, his office less, + Yet owned him for a flower of his kind. + Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he! + The people grew not in themselves, but, blind, + Accepted sight from him, to him resigned + Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea. + + +IV + + + As under sea lay Solon’s work, or seemed + By turbid shore-waves beaten day by day; + Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed, + Or child that fashioned in another clay + Appears, by strangers’ hands to home returned. + But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned + It was in some way, justly says the sage. + One sees not how, while husbanding regrets; + While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage, + High vision is obscured; for this is age + When robbed—more infant than the babe it frets! + + +V + + + Yet see Athenians treading the black path + Laid by a prince’s shadow! well content + To wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath: + They bow to their accepted Orient + With offer of the all that renders bright: + Forgetful of the growth of men to light, + As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow. + Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast. + But still may they who sowed behind the plough + True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW + To make the plagues afflicting us things past. + + + +BELLEROPHON + + +I + + + MAIMED, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod + Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread; + Upon the stature of a God, + He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head. + + +II + + + Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue + Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc: + Once radiant as the javelin flung + Right at the centre breastplate of his mark. + + +III + + + Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look, + Some undermountain narrative he tells, + As gapped by Lykian heat the brook + Cut from the source that in the upland swells. + + +IV + + + The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust + With patient inattention hear him prate: + And comes the snow, and comes the dust, + Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late. + + +V + + + A crazy beggar grateful for a meal + Has ever of himself a world to say. + For them he is an ancient wheel + Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day. + + +VI + + + He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect; + For never singer in the land had been + Who him for theme did not reject: + Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene. + + +VII + + + Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight + The snorting white-winged brother of the wave, + They hear him as a thing by fate + Cursed in unholy babble to his grave. + + +VIII + + + As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort, + Their sires have told; and of a martial prince + Bestriding him; and old report + Speaks of a monster slain by one long since. + + +IX + + + There is that story of the golden bit + By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed: + A mortal who could mount, and sit + Flying, and up Olympus midway speed. + + +X + + + He rose like the loosed fountain’s utmost leap; + He played the star at span of heaven right o’er + Men’s heads: they saw the snowy steep, + Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more. + + +XI + + + He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell: + And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins; + And in his breast a mouthless well + Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins. + + +XII + + + Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs + Of recollections richer than our skies + To feed the flow of tuneful strings, + Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies. + + +PHAÉTHÔN +ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE + + + AT the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer, + Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes, + And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent! + For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to + black; + In the light of him there is music thro’ the poplar and river-sedge, + Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song. + Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, + In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios. + Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite’s loved one it is! + To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, + Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, + Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage, + He would grant his son’s petition, whatsoever the sign thereof. + Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: ‘Rule of day give me; give it + me, + Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly + I, divine, proclaim my birthright.’ Darkened Helios, and his + utterance + Choked prophetic: ‘O half mortal!’ he exclaimed in an agony, + ‘O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing: + Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious! + Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous + Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy? + Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently; + As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them; + Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin + Shall be known even as when _I_ strike on the string’d shell with + melody, + And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the cavities, + Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships + thereon.’ + Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquence + Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks away. + What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in delirium, + Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent, + ‘By the oath! the oath! thine oath!’ cried. The effulgent foreseër + then, + Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy’s beaming countenance + Looked and moaned, and urged him for love’s sake, for sweet life’s + sake, to yield the claim, + To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity. + But he, vehement, passionate, called out: ‘Let me show I am what I + say, + That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their whispering. + Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels, + How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily, + Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial, + And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear + dew-drinkers: + Yea, for this I gaze on life’s light; throw for this any sacrifice.’ + + All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocable + Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless. + Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so decreed. + They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries. + Swift the ripple ripples follow’d, as of aureate Helicon, + Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the distances, + And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight! + Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air! + Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory! + Chafed the youth with their spirit súrcharged, as when blossom is + shaken by winds, + Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quick + On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning + rose: + Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest + fields, + When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it: + Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate + (If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil), + Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate: + Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution’d urgently betweenwhiles: + Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness, + That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice of Gods; + None but Gods can curb. He spake: vain were the words: scarcely + listening, + Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, ‘Behold me, companions, + It is I here, I!’ he shouted, glancing down with supremacy; + ‘Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men; + I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!’ + Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly + Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that;— + At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand, + Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and yon; + Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled East:— + Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer, + Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his arid wits; + The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the mastery, + Till a thunder off the tense chords thro’ his ears dinnèd horrible. + Panic seized him: fled his vision of inviolability; + Fled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances predominant; + And he cried, ‘Had I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite, + My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go + With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate. + Oh, my sisters! Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was enviable, + From whose arms I rushed befrenzied, what a wreck will this body be, + That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thy mysteries + Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged! + Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering; + Not again hear thy half-murmurs—I am lost!—never, never more. + I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of flame! + Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!’ + + Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer + Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car superimpending + Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales; + Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately; + Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move + With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable, + The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the + firmament. + For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon-fire, + And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day’s apparition forth. + Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering: + Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate hours: + Lo, the ravish’d beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the + chariot-wheels: + Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets! + Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo, + Torrid brilliancies thro’ the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate them, + Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth’s frame crackling + busily. + He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, + Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft: + Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him. + Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under their + paws. + White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind: + Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate shock. + To the bolt he launched, ‘Strike dead, thou,’ uttered Zeus, very + terrible; + ‘Perish folly, else ’tis man’s fate’; and the bolt flew unerringly. + Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measureless + altitudes + Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not a + cry. + Like the flower on the river’s surface when expanding it vanishes, + Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched: and so fell he + precipitate, + Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it comes: + So he showered above them, shadowed o’er the blue archipelagoes, + O’er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles; + So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth. + + Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep, + By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria, + Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the tremulous + Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen. + + + + +A READING OF EARTH + + +SEED-TIME + + +I + + + FLOWERS of the willow-herb are wool; + Flowers of the briar berries red; + Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule, + Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread. + Flowers of the clematis drip in beard, + Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed; + Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared; + Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed. + + +II + + + Where were skies of the mantle stained + Orange and scarlet, a coat of frieze + Travels from North till day has waned, + Tattered, soaked in the ditch’s dyes; + Tumbles the rook under grey or slate; + Else enfolding us, damps to the bone; + Narrows the world to my neighbour’s gate; + Paints me Life as a wheezy crone. + + +III + + + Now seems none but the spider lord; + Star in circle his web waits prey, + Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward; + Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray. + Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh, + Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed, + He who frolicked the jewelled fly; + All is adroop on the down and the weald. + + +IV + + + Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap + Nights that tardily let slip a morn + Paler than moons, and on noontide’s lap + Flame dies cold, like the rose late born. + Rose born late, born withered in bud!— + I, even I, for a zenith of sun + Cry, to fulfil me, nourish my blood: + O for a day of the long light, one! + + +V + + + Master the blood, nor read by chills, + Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed, + Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills, + Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud. + Steadily eyeing, before that wail + Animal-infant, thy mind began, + Momently nearer me: should sight fail, + Plod in the track of the husbandman. + + +VI + + + Verily now is our season of seed, + Now in our Autumn; and Earth discerns + Them that have served her in them that can read, + Glassing, where under the surface she burns, + Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay, + Brightens the fire of renewal: and we? + Death is the word of a bovine day, + Know you the breast of the springing To-be. + + + +HARD WEATHER + + + BURSTS from a rending East in flaws + The young green leaflet’s harrier, sworn + To strew the garden, strip the shaws, + And show our Spring with banner torn. + Was ever such virago morn? + The wind has teeth, the wind has claws. + All the wind’s wolves through woods are loose, + The wild wind’s falconry aloft. + Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews, + At gallop, clumped, and down the croft + Bestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed; + It seems a scythe, it seems a rod. + The howl is up at the howl’s accost; + The shivers greet and the shivers nod. + + Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive + Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum; + Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive, + Or down in dregs, or on in scum. + And drums the distant, pipes the near, + And vale and hill are grey in grey, + As when the surge is crumbling sheer, + And sea-mews wing the haze of spray. + Clouds—are they bony witches?—swarms, + Darting swift on the robber’s flight, + Hurry an infant sky in arms: + It peeps, it becks; ’tis day, ’tis night. + Black while over the loop of blue + The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse. + Lo, as if swift the Furies flew, + The Fates at heel at a cry to horse! + + Interpret me the savage whirr: + And is it Nature scourged, or she, + Her offspring’s executioner, + Reducing land to barren sea? + But is there meaning in a day + When this fierce angel of the air, + Intent to throw, and haply slay, + Can for what breath of life we bear, + Exact the wrestle?—Call to mind + The many meanings glistening up + When Nature to her nurslings kind, + Hands them the fruitage and the cup! + And seek we rich significance + Not otherwhere than with those tides + Of pleasure on the sunned expanse, + Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides? + + Look in the face of men who fare + Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews + For this fierce angel of the air, + To twist with him and take his bruise. + That is the face beloved of old + Of Earth, young mother of her brood: + Nor broken for us shows the mould + When muscle is in mind renewed: + Though farther from her nature rude, + Yet nearer to her spirit’s hold: + And though of gentler mood serene, + Still forceful of her fountain-jet. + So shall her blows be shrewdly met, + Be luminously read the scene + Where Life is at her grindstone set, + That she may give us edgeing keen, + String us for battle, till as play + The common strokes of fortune shower. + Such meaning in a dagger-day + Our wits may clasp to wax in power. + Yea, feel us warmer at her breast, + By spin of blood in lusty drill, + Than when her honeyed hands caressed, + And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill. + + Behold the life at ease; it drifts. + The sharpened life commands its course. + She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts, + To dip her chosen in her source: + Contention is the vital force, + Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts, + Sky of the senses! on which height, + Not disconnected, yet released, + They see how spirit comes to light, + Through conquest of the inner beast, + Which Measure tames to movement sane, + In harmony with what is fair. + Never is Earth misread by brain: + That is the welling of her, there + The mirror: with one step beyond, + For likewise is it voice; and more, + Benignest kinship bids respond, + When wail the weak, and them restore + Whom days as fell as this may rive, + While Earth sits ebon in her gloom, + Us atomies of life alive + Unheeding, bent on life to come. + Her children of the labouring brain, + These are the champions of the race, + True parents, and the sole humane, + With understanding for their base. + Earth yields the milk, but all her mind + Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock. + Her passion for old giantkind, + That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock, + Devolves on them who read aright + Her meaning and devoutly serve; + Nor in her starlessness of night + Peruse her with the craven nerve: + But even as she from grass to corn, + To eagle high from grubbing mole, + Prove in strong brain her noblest born, + The station for the flight of soul. + + + +THE SOUTH-WESTER + + + DAY of the cloud in fleets! O day + Of wedded white and blue, that sail + Immingled, with a footing ray + In shadow-sandals down our vale!— + And swift to ravish golden meads, + Swift up the run of turf it speeds, + Thy bright of head and dark of heel, + To where the hilltop flings on sky, + As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel, + The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:— + Thee the last thunder’s caverned peal + Delivered from a wailful night: + All dusky round thy cradled light, + Those brine-born issues, now in bloom + Transfigured, wreathed as raven’s plume + And briony-leaf to watch thee lie: + Dark eyebrows o’er a dreamful eye + Nigh opening: till in the braid + Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed: + Till that new babe a Goddess maid + Appeared and vividly disclosed + Her beat of life: then crimson played + On edges of the plume and leaf: + Shape had they and fair feature brief, + The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast, + Earth’s milk. But what imperial march + Their standards led for earth, none guessed + Ere upward of a coloured arch, + An arrow straining eager head + Lightened, and high for zenith sped. + Fierier followed; followed Fire. + Name the young lord of Earth’s desire, + Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth + Her music! Beauteous was she seen + Beneath her midway West of South; + And sister was her quivered green + To sapphire of the Nereid eyes + On sea when sun is breeze; she winked + As they, and waved, heaved waterwise + Her flood of leaves and grasses linked: + A myriad lustrous butterflies + A moment in the fluttering sheen; + Becapped with the slate air that throws + The reindeer’s antlers black between + Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows, + A minute after; hooded, stoled + To suit a graveside Season’s dirge. + Lo, but the breaking of a surge, + And she is in her lover’s fold, + Illumined o’er a boundless range + Anew: and through quick morning hours + The Tropic-Arctic countercharge + Did seem to pant in beams and showers. + + But noon beheld a larger heaven; + Beheld on our reflecting field + The Sower to the Bearer given, + And both their inner sweetest yield, + Fresh as when dews were grey or first + Received the flush of hues athirst. + Heard we the woodland, eyeing sun, + As harp and harper were they one. + A murky cloud a fair pursued, + Assailed, and felt the limbs elude: + He sat him down to pipe his woe, + And some strange beast of sky became: + A giant’s club withheld the blow; + A milky cloud went all to flame. + And there were groups where silvery springs + The ethereal forest showed begirt + By companies in choric rings, + Whom but to see made ear alert. + For music did each movement rouse, + And motion was a minstrel’s rage + To have our spirits out of house, + And bathe them on the open page. + This was a day that knew not age. + Since flew the vapoury twos and threes + From western pile to eastern rack; + As on from peaks of Pyrenees + To Graians; youngness ruled the track. + When songful beams were shut in caves, + And rainy drapery swept across; + When the ranked clouds were downy waves, + Breast of swan, eagle, albatross, + In ordered lines to screen the blue, + Youngest of light was nigh, we knew. + The silver finger of it laughed + Along the narrow rift: it shot, + Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft, + Then haled on high the volumed blot, + To build the hurling palace, cleave + The dazzling chasm; the flying nests, + The many glory-garlands weave, + Whose presence not our sight attests + Till wonder with the splendour blent, + And passion for the beauty flown, + Make evanescence permanent, + The thing at heart our endless own. + + Only at gathered eve knew we + The marvels of the day: for then + Mount upon mountain out of sea + Arose, and to our spacious ken + Trebled sublime Olympus round + In towering amphitheatre. + Colossal on enormous mound, + Majestic gods we saw confer. + They wafted the Dream-messenger + From off the loftiest, the crowned: + That Lady of the hues of foam + In sun-rays: who, close under dome, + A figure on the foot’s descent, + Irradiate to vapour went, + As one whose mission was resigned, + Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads; + Melting she passed into the mind, + Where immortal with mortal weds. + + Whereby was known that we had viewed + The union of our earth and skies + Renewed: nor less alive renewed + Than when old bards, in nature wise, + Conceived pure beauty given to eyes, + And with undyingness imbued. + Pageant of man’s poetic brain, + His grand procession of the song, + It was; the Muses and their train; + Their God to lead the glittering throng: + At whiles a beat of forest gong; + At whiles a glimpse of Python slain. + Mostly divinest harmony, + The lyre, the dance. We could believe + A life in orb and brook and tree, + And cloud; and still holds Memory + A morning in the eyes of eve. + + + +THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY + + + I KNOW him, February’s thrush, + And loud at eve he valentines + On sprays that paw the naked bush + Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines. + + Now ere the foreign singer thrills + Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours, + A herald of the million bills; + And heed him not, the loss is yours. + + My study, flanked with ivied fir + And budded beech with dry leaves curled, + Perched over yew and juniper, + He neighbours, piping to his world:— + + The wooded pathways dank on brown, + The branches on grey cloud a web, + The long green roller of the down, + An image of the deluge-ebb:— + + And farther, they may hear along + The stream beneath the poplar row. + By fits, like welling rocks, the song + Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow. + + But most he loves to front the vale + When waves of warm South-western rains + Have left our heavens clear in pale, + With faintest beck of moist red veins: + + Vermilion wings, by distance held + To pause aflight while fleeting swift: + And high aloft the pearl inshelled + Her lucid glow in glow will lift; + + A little south of coloured sky; + Directing, gravely amorous, + The human of a tender eye + Through pure celestial on us: + + Remote, not alien; still, not cold; + Unraying yet, more pearl than star; + She seems a while the vale to hold + In trance, and homelier makes the far. + + Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes, + An orb of lustre quits the height; + And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths + The sky takes darkness, long ere quite. + + His Island voice then shall you hear, + Nor ever after separate + From such a twilight of the year + Advancing to the vernal gate. + + He sings me, out of Winter’s throat, + The young time with the life ahead; + And my young time his leaping note + Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead. + + Imbedded in a land of greed, + Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth’s, + My care was but to soothe my need; + At peace among the littleworths. + + To light and song my yearning aimed; + To that deep breast of song and light + Which men have barrenest proclaimed; + As ’tis to senses pricked with fright. + + So mine are these new fruitings rich + The simple to the common brings; + I keep the youth of souls who pitch + Their joy in this old heart of things: + + Who feel the Coming young as aye, + Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough; + Alive for life, awake to die; + One voice to cheer the seedling Now. + + Full lasting is the song, though he, + The singer, passes: lasting too, + For souls not lent in usury, + The rapture of the forward view. + + With that I bear my senses fraught + Till what I am fast shoreward drives. + They are the vessel of the Thought. + The vessel splits, the Thought survives. + + Nought else are we when sailing brave, + Save husks to raise and bid it burn. + Glimpse of its livingness will wave + A light the senses can discern + + Across the river of the death, + Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird + Of promise! bird of happy breath! + I hear, I would the City heard. + + The City of the smoky fray; + A prodded ox, it drags and moans: + Its Morrow no man’s child; its Day + A vulture’s morsel beaked to bones. + + It strives without a mark for strife; + It feasts beside a famished host: + The loose restraint of wanton life, + That threatened penance in the ghost! + + Yet there our battle urges; there + Spring heroes many: issuing thence, + Names that should leave no vacant air + For fresh delight in confidence. + + Life was to them the bag of grain, + And Death the weedy harrow’s tooth. + Those warriors of the sighting brain + Give worn Humanity new youth. + + Our song and star are they to lead + The tidal multitude and blind + From bestial to the higher breed + By fighting souls of love divined, + + They scorned the ventral dream of peace, + Unknown in nature. This they knew: + That life begets with fair increase + Beyond the flesh, if life be true. + + Just reason based on valiant blood, + The instinct bred afield would match + To pipe thereof a swelling flood, + Were men of Earth made wise in watch. + + Though now the numbers count as drops + An urn might bear, they father Time. + She shapes anew her dusty crops; + Her quick in their own likeness climb. + + Of their own force do they create; + They climb to light, in her their root. + Your brutish cry at muffled fate + She smites with pangs of worse than brute. + + She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears + A Mother whom no cry can melt; + But read her past desires and fears, + The letters on her breast are spelt. + + A slayer, yea, as when she pressed + Her savage to the slaughter-heaps, + To sacrifice she prompts her best: + She reaps them as the sower reaps. + + But read her thought to speed the race, + And stars rush forth of blackest night: + You chill not at a cold embrace + To come, nor dread a dubious might. + + Her double visage, double voice, + In oneness rise to quench the doubt. + This breath, her gift, has only choice + Of service, breathe we in or out. + + Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand + Led our wild steps from slimy rock + To yonder sweeps of gardenland, + We breathe but to be sword or block. + + The sighting brain her good decree + Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, + By reason hourly fed, that she, + To some the clod, to some the wraith, + + Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. + Flame, stream, are we, in mid career + From torrent source, delirious dream, + To heaven-reflecting currents clear. + + And why the sons of Strength have been + Her cherished offspring ever; how + The Spirit served by her is seen + Through Law; perusing love will show. + + Love born of knowledge, love that gains + Vitality as Earth it mates, + The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, + The Life, the Death, illuminates. + + For love we Earth, then serve we all; + Her mystic secret then is ours: + We fall, or view our treasures fall, + Unclouded, as beholds her flowers + + Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, + Enrobed in morning’s mounted fire, + When lowly, with a broken neck, + The crocus lays her cheek to mire. + + + +THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER + + +I + + + DEMETER devastated our good land, + In blackness for her daughter snatched below. + Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, + Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw + The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer’s ray. + Now whether night advancing, whether day, + Scarce did the baldness show: + The hand of man was a defeated hand. + + +II + + + Necessity, the primal goad to growth, + Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; + Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; + Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, + Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. + High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, + Idly the flax-wheel spun + Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth. + + +III + + + Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags, + Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees + Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; + Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, + More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. + Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, + Careless to lure or please. + A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags. + + +IV + + + No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, + Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, + In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, + Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, + And whose pale place of habitation mute, + She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit + Anciently, gaped for bloom: + Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl’s claw. + + +V + + + The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, + That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. + Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, + Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. + It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. + Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone. + More than for her who grieved, + She could for this waste home have piped the wail. + + +VI + + + Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet + To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld + A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, + And seed like infant’s teeth, that never swelled, + Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round. + Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground + Rocky in spikes rebelled + Against the hand here slack as rotted net. + + +VII + + + The valley people up the ashen scoop + She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win + Her Mistress in compassion of yon group + So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, + For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, + White as in chalk outlining little O, + Dumb, from a falling chin; + Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop. + + +VIII + + + Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when + Dark underwaters the recesses choke; + With cluck and upper quiver of a hen + In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak. + Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount + Bountiful of old days, heard them recount + This and that cruel stroke: + Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men. + + +IX + + + A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned + Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold + An earth in awe before the claps resound + And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled, + The barren Nourisher unmelted shed + Death from the looks that wandered with the dead + Out of the realms of gold, + In famine for her lost, her lost unfound. + + +X + + + Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised + The cattle-call above the moan of prayer; + And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed, + Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare: + The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view + Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through + Shoots the swift foamspit: bare + They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed. + + +XI + + + Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, + Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse: + Reversed, each head at either’s flank, they stood. + Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse, + Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked. + Neighing within, at either’s flank they licked; + Played on a moment’s force + At courtship, withering to the crazy nod. + + +XII + + + The nod was that we gather for consent; + And mournfully amid the group a dame, + Interpreting the thing in nature meant, + Her hands held out like bearers of the flame, + And nodded for the negative sideways. + Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays + From the Great Mother came: + Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent. + + +XIII + + + She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none + Like thunder of the song of heart: her face, + The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, + And peal on peal across the hills held chase. + She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; + Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire + Full of the marrowy race. + Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton. + + +XIV + + + The valley people huddled, broke, afraid, + Assured, and taking lightning in the veins, + They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed, + Unwitting happiness till golden rains + Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote + Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat + Pouring to heal their pains: + And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid. + + +XV + + + Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts + Inspire the valley people, still on seas, + Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts, + With rapture in their wonderment; but these, + Low homage being rendered, ran to plough, + Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow + Calves at the teats they tease: + Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts. + + +XVI + + + Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red, + The tree of water and the tree of wood: + And soon among the branches overhead + Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food. + O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth. + Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth! + Good for the spirit, good + For body, thou! to both art wine and bread! + + + +EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN + + +I + + + THE shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, + Has told of rain upon the fall of day. + But promise is there none for Susan’s drouth, + That he will come, who keeps in dry delay. + The freshest of the village three years gone, + She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived; + And she and Earth are one + In withering unrevived. + Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! + And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! + + +II + + + Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid, + When she who wedded with the soldier hides + At home as good as widowed in the shade, + A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides: + Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor + To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan, + Her husband in the war, + And she to lie alone. + Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! + And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! + + +III + + + They have not known; they are not in the stream; + Light as the flying seed-ball is their play, + The silly maids! and happy souls they seem; + Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they. + They have not struck the roots which meet the fires + Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know + The strength of her desires, + The sternness of her woe. + Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! + And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! + + +IV + + + Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without shower + A borderless low blotting Westward spreads. + The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour; + Across an inner chamber thunder treads: + The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor + Of dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks, + And drives the dames to door, + Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks. + Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! + And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain! + + +V + + + Through night, with bedroom window wide for air, + Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend: + And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare, + Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life’s end, + From her heaved breast of sacred common mould; + Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel + Unworded things and old + To her pained heart appeal. + Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! + And down in deluges of blessed rain! + + +VI + + + At morn she stood to live for ear and sight, + Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched. + A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light + Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched. + But she would muse when neighbours praised her face, + Her services, and staunchness to her mate: + Knowing by some dim trace, + The change might bear a date. + Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! + Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain! + + + +MOTHER TO BABE + + +I + + + FLECK of sky you are, + Dropped through branches dark, + O my little one, mine! + Promise of the star, + Outpour of the lark; + Beam and song divine. + + +II + + + See this precious gift, + Steeping in new birth + All my being, for sign + Earth to heaven can lift, + Heaven descend on earth, + Both in one be mine! + + +III + + + Life in light you glass + When you peep and coo, + You, my little one, mine! + Brooklet chirps to grass, + Daisy looks in dew + Up to dear sunshine. + + + +WOODLAND PEACE + + + SWEET as Eden is the air, + And Eden-sweet the ray. + No Paradise is lost for them + Who foot by branching root and stem, + And lightly with the woodland share + The change of night and day. + + Here all say, + We serve her, even as I: + We brood, we strive to sky, + We gaze upon decay, + We wot of life through death, + How each feeds each we spy; + And is a tangle round, + Are patient; what is dumb + We question not, nor ask + The silent to give sound, + The hidden to unmask, + The distant to draw near. + + And this the woodland saith: + I know not hope or fear; + I take whate’er may come; + I raise my head to aspects fair, + From foul I turn away. + + Sweet as Eden is the air, + And Eden-sweet the ray. + + + +THE QUESTION WHITHER + + +I + + + WHEN we have thrown off this old suit, + So much in need of mending, + To sink among the naked mute, + Is that, think you, our ending? + We follow many, more we lead, + And you who sadly turf us, + Believe not that all living seed + Must flower above the surface. + + +II + + + Sensation is a gracious gift, + But were it cramped to station, + The prayer to have it cast adrift + Would spout from all sensation. + Enough if we have winked to sun, + Have sped the plough a season; + There is a soul for labour done, + Endureth fixed as reason. + + +III + + + Then let our trust be firm in Good, + Though we be of the fasting; + Our questions are a mortal brood, + Our work is everlasting. + We children of Beneficence + Are in its being sharers; + And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, + For word with such wayfarers. + + + +OUTER AND INNER + + +I + + + FROM twig to twig the spider weaves + At noon his webbing fine. + So near to mute the zephyrs flute + That only leaflets dance. + The sun draws out of hazel leaves + A smell of woodland wine. + I wake a swarm to sudden storm + At any step’s advance. + + +II + + + Along my path is bugloss blue, + The star with fruit in moss; + The foxgloves drop from throat to top + A daily lesser bell. + The blackest shadow, nurse of dew, + Has orange skeins across; + And keenly red is one thin thread + That flashing seems to swell. + + +III + + + My world I note ere fancy comes, + Minutest hushed observe: + What busy bits of motioned wits + Through antlered mosswork strive. + But now so low the stillness hums, + My springs of seeing swerve, + For half a wink to thrill and think + The woods with nymphs alive. + + +IV + + + I neighbour the invisible + So close that my consent + Is only asked for spirits masked + To leap from trees and flowers. + And this because with them I dwell + In thought, while calmly bent + To read the lines dear Earth designs + Shall speak her life on ours. + + +V + + + Accept, she says; it is not hard + In woods; but she in towns + Repeats, accept; and have we wept, + And have we quailed with fears, + Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward + We have whom knowledge crowns; + Who see in mould the rose unfold, + The soul through blood and tears. + + + +NATURE AND LIFE + + +I + + + LEAVE the uproar: at a leap + Thou shalt strike a woodland path, + Enter silence, not of sleep, + Under shadows, not of wrath; + Breath which is the spirit’s bath + In the old Beginnings find, + And endow them with a mind, + Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe. + That gives Nature to us, this + Give we her, and so we kiss. + + +II + + + Fruitful is it so: but hear + How within the shell thou art, + Music sounds; nor other near + Can to such a tremor start. + Of the waves our life is part; + They our running harvests bear: + Back to them for manful air, + Laden with the woodland’s heart! + That gives Battle to us, this + Give we it, and good the kiss. + + + +DIRGE IN WOODS + + + A wind sways the pines, + And below + Not a breath of wild air; + Still as the mosses that glow + On the flooring and over the lines + Of the roots here and there. + The pine-tree drops its dead; + They are quiet, as under the sea. + Overhead, overhead + Rushes life in a race, + As the clouds the clouds chase; + And we go, + And we drop like the fruits of the tree, + Even we, + Even so. + + + +A FAITH ON TRIAL + + + ON the morning of May, + Ere the children had entered my gate + With their wreaths and mechanical lay, + A metal ding-dong of the date! + I mounted our hill, bearing heart + That had little of life save its weight: + The crowned Shadow poising dart + Hung over her: she, my own, + My good companion, mate, + Pulse of me: she who had shown + Fortitude quiet as Earth’s + At the shedding of leaves. And around + The sky was in garlands of cloud, + Winning scents from unnumbered new births, + Pointed buds, where the woods were browned + By a mouldered beechen shroud; + Or over our meads of the vale, + Such an answer to sun as he, + Brave in his gold; to a sound, + None sweeter, of woods flapping sail, + With the first full flood of our year, + For their voyage on lustreful sea: + Unto what curtained haven in chief, + Will be writ in the book of the sere. + But surely the crew are we, + Eager or stamped or bowed; + Counted thinner at fall of the leaf. + Grief heard them, and passed like a bier. + Due Summerward, lo, they were set, + In volumes of foliage proud, + On the heave of their favouring tides, + And their song broadened out to the cheer + When a neck of the ramping surf + Rattles thunder a boat overrides. + All smiles ran the highways wet; + The worm drew its links from the turf; + The bird of felicity loud + Spun high, and a South wind blew. + Weak out of sheath downy leaves + Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, + Their radiance asking, who grieves; + For nought of a sorrow they knew: + No space to the dread wrestle vowed, + No chamber in shadow of night. + At times as the steadier breeze + Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd, + The beam of them wafted my sight + To league-long sun upon seas: + The golden path we had crossed + Many years, till her birthland swung + Recovered to vision from lost, + A light in her filial glance. + And sweet was her voice with the tongue, + The speechful tongue of her France, + Soon at ripple about us, like rills + Ever busy with little: away + Through her Normandy, down where the mills + Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey + As its bordering poplars bent + To gusts off the plains above. + Old stone château and farms, + Home of her birth and her love! + On the thread of the pasture you trace, + By the river, their milk, for miles, + Spotted once with the English tent, + In days of the tocsin’s alarms, + To tower of the tallest of piles, + The country’s surveyor breast-high. + Home of her birth and her love! + Home of a diligent race; + Thrifty, deft-handed to ply + Shuttle or needle, and woo + Sun to the roots of the pear + Frogging each mud-walled cot. + The elders had known her in arms. + There plucked we the bluet, her hue + Of the deeper forget-me-not; + Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair. + + I saw, unsighting: her heart + I saw, and the home of her love + There printed, mournfully rent: + Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, + And the stride of the Shadow athwart. + For one of our Autumns there! . . . + Straight as the flight of a dove + We went, swift winging we went. + We trod solid ground, we breathed air, + The heavens were unbroken. Break they, + The word of the world is adieu: + Her word: and the torrents are round, + The jawed wolf-waters of prey. + We stand upon isles, who stand: + A Shadow before us, and back, + A phantom the habited land. + We may cry to the Sunderer, spare + That dearest! he loosens his pack. + Arrows we breathe, not air. + The memories tenderly bound + To us are a drifting crew, + Amid grey-gapped waters for ground. + Alone do we stand, each one, + Till rootless as they we strew + Those deeps of the corse-like stare + At a foreign and stony sun. + + Eyes had I but for the scene + Of my circle, what neighbourly grew. + If haply no finger lay out + To the figures of days that had been, + I gathered my herb, and endured; + My old cloak wrapped me about. + Unfooted was ground-ivy blue, + Whose rustic shrewd odour allured + In Spring’s fresh of morning: unseen + Her favourite wood-sorrel bell + As yet, though the leaves’ green floor + Awaited their flower, that would tell + Of a red-veined moist yestreen, + With its droop and the hues it wore, + When we two stood overnight + One, in the dark van-glow + On our hill-top, seeing beneath + Our household’s twinkle of light + Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath. + + Budding, the service-tree, white + Almost as whitebeam, threw, + From the under of leaf upright, + Flecks like a showering snow + On the flame-shaped junipers green, + On the sombre mounds of the yew. + Like silvery tapers bright + By a solemn cathedral screen, + They glistened to closer view. + Turf for a rooks’ revel striped + Pleased those devourers astute. + Chorister blackbird and thrush + Together or alternate piped; + A free-hearted harmony large, + With meaning for man, for brute, + When the primitive forces are brimmed. + Like featherings hither and yon + Of aëry tree-twigs over marge, + To the comb of the winds, untrimmed, + Their measure is found in the vast. + Grief heard them, and stepped her way on. + She has but a narrow embrace. + Distrustful of hearing she passed. + They piped her young Earth’s Bacchic rout; + The race, and the prize of the race; + Earth’s lustihead pressing to sprout. + + But sight holds a soberer space. + Colourless dogwood low + Curled up a twisted root, + Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush + Redder than sun upon rocks, + When the creeper clematis-shoot + Shall climb, cap his branches, and show, + Beside veteran green of the box, + At close of the year’s maple blush, + A bleeding greybeard is he, + Now hale in the leafage lush. + Our parasites paint us. Hard by, + A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel + Of our naked forefathers in fight; + With stains of the fray sweating free; + And him came no parasite nigh: + Firm on the hard knotted knee, + He stood in the crown of his dun; + Earth’s toughest to stay her wheel: + Under whom the full day is night; + Whom the century-tempests call son, + Having striven to rend him in vain. + + I walked to observe, not to feel, + Not to fancy, if simple of eye + One may be among images reaped + For a shift of the glance, as grain: + Profitless froth you espy + Ashore after billows have leaped. + I fled nothing, nothing pursued: + The changeful visible face + Of our Mother I sought for my food; + Crumbs by the way to sustain. + Her sentence I knew past grace. + Myself I had lost of us twain, + Once bound in mirroring thought. + She had flung me to dust in her wake; + And I, as your convict drags + His chain, by the scourge untaught, + Bore life for a goad, without aim. + I champed the sensations that make + Of a ruffled philosophy rags. + For them was no meaning too blunt, + Nor aspect too cutting of steel. + This Earth of the beautiful breasts, + Shining up in all colours aflame, + To them had visage of hags: + A Mother of aches and jests: + Soulless, heading a hunt + Aimless except for the meal. + Hope, with the star on her front; + Fear, with an eye in the heel; + Our links to a Mother of grace; + They were dead on the nerve, and dead + For the nature divided in three; + Gone out of heart, out of brain, + Out of soul: I had in their place + The calm of an empty room. + We were joined but by that thin thread, + My disciplined habit to see. + And those conjure images, those, + The puppets of loss or gain; + Not he who is bare to his doom; + For whom never semblance plays + To bewitch, overcloud, illume. + The dusty mote-images rose; + Sheer film of the surface awag: + They sank as they rose; their pain + Declaring them mine of old days. + + Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom, + As flower-bush in sun-specked crag, + Up the spine of the double combe + With yew-boughs heavily cloaked, + A young apparition shone: + Known, yet wonderful, white + Surpassingly; doubtfully known, + For it struck as the birth of Light: + Even Day from the dark unyoked. + It waved like a pilgrim flag + O’er processional penitents flown + When of old they broke rounding yon spine: + O the pure wild-cherry in bloom! + + For their Eastward march to the shrine + Of the footsore far-eyed Faith, + Was banner so brave, so fair, + So quick with celestial sign + Of victorious rays over death? + For a conquest of coward despair;— + Division of soul from wits, + And these made rulers;—full sure, + More starlike never did shine + To illumine the sinister field + Where our life’s old night-bird flits. + I knew it: with her, my own, + Had hailed it pure of the pure; + Our beacon yearly: but strange + When it strikes to within is the known; + Richer than newness revealed. + There was needed darkness like mine. + Its beauty to vividness blown + Drew the life in me forward, chased, + From aloft on a pinnacle’s range, + That hindward spidery line, + The length of the ways I had paced, + A footfarer out of the dawn, + To Youth’s wild forest, where sprang, + For the morning of May long gone, + The forest’s white virgin; she + Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang; + She in me, I in her; what songs + The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive + To pour forth their tune-footed throngs; + Inspire to the dreaming of good + Illimitable to come: + She, the white wild cherry, a tree, + Earth-rooted, tangibly wood, + Yet a presence throbbing alive; + Nor she in our language dumb: + A spirit born of a tree; + Because earth-rooted alive: + Huntress of things worth pursuit + Of souls; in our naming, dreams. + And each unto other was lute, + By fits quick as breezy gleams. + My quiver of aims and desires + Had colour that she would have owned; + And if by humaner fires + Hued later, these held her enthroned: + My crescent of Earth; my blood + At the silvery early stir; + Hour of the thrill of the bud + About to burst, and by her + Directed, attuned, englobed: + My Goddess, the chaste, not chill; + Choir over choir white-robed; + White-bosomed fold within fold: + For so could I dream, breast-bare, + In my time of blooming; dream still + Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck, + Despite, since manhood was bold, + The yoke of the flesh on my neck. + She beckoned, I gazed, unaware + How a shaft of the blossoming tree + Was shot from the yew-wood’s core. + I stood to the touch of a key + Turned in a fast-shut door. + + They rounded my garden, content, + The small fry, clutching their fee, + Their fruit of the wreath and the pole; + And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent, + In a buzz of young company glee, + Their natural music, swift shoal + To the next easy shedders of pence. + Why not? for they had me in tune + With the hungers of my kind. + Do readings of earth draw thence, + Then a concord deeper than cries + Of the Whither whose echo is Whence, + To jar unanswered, shall rise + As a fountain-jet in the mind + Bowed dark o’er the falling and strewn. + + * * * + + Unwitting where it might lead, + How it came, for the anguish to cease, + And the Questions that sow not nor spin, + This wisdom, rough-written, and black, + As of veins that from venom bleed, + I had with the peace within; + Or patience, mortal of peace, + Compressing the surgent strife + In a heart laid open, not mailed, + To the last blank hour of the rack, + When struck the dividing knife: + When the hand that never had failed + In its pressure to mine hung slack. + + But this in myself did I know, + Not needing a studious brow, + Or trust in a governing star, + While my ears held the jangled shout + The children were lifting afar: + That natures at interflow + With all of their past and the now, + Are chords to the Nature without, + Orbs to the greater whole: + First then, nor utterly then + Till our lord of sensations at war, + The rebel, the heart, yields place + To brain, each prompting the soul. + Thus our dear Earth we embrace + For the milk, her strength to men. + + And crave we her medical herb, + We have but to see and hear, + Though pierced by the cruel acerb, + The troops of the memories armed + Hostile to strike at the nest + That nourished and flew them warmed. + Not she gives the tear for the tear. + Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught, + She is moveless. Not of her breast + Are the symbols we conjure when Fear + Takes leaven of Hope. I caught, + With Death in me shrinking from Death, + As cold from cold, for a sign + Of the life beyond ashes: I cast, + Believing the vision divine, + Wings of that dream of my Youth + To the spirit beloved: ’twas unglassed + On her breast, in her depths austere: + A flash through the mist, mere breath, + Breath on a buckler of steel. + For the flesh in revolt at her laws, + Neither song nor smile in ruth, + Nor promise of things to reveal, + Has she, nor a word she saith: + We are asking her wheels to pause. + Well knows she the cry of unfaith. + If we strain to the farther shore, + We are catching at comfort near. + Assurances, symbols, saws, + Revelations in legends, light + To eyes rolling darkness, these + Desired of the flesh in affright, + For the which it will swear to adore, + She yields not for prayers at her knees; + The woolly beast bleating will shear. + These are our sensual dreams; + Of the yearning to touch, to feel + The dark Impalpable sure, + And have the Unveiled appear; + Whereon ever black she beams, + Doth of her terrible deal, + She who dotes over ripeness at play, + Rosiness fondles and feeds, + Guides it with shepherding crook, + To her sports and her pastures alway. + Not she gives the tear for the tear: + Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more; + In one the spur and the curb: + An answer to thoughts or deeds; + To the Legends an alien look; + To the Questions a figure of clay. + Yet we have but to see and hear, + Crave we her medical herb. + For the road to her soul is the Real: + The root of the growth of man: + And the senses must traverse it fresh + With a love that no scourge shall abate, + To reach the lone heights where we scan + In the mind’s rarer vision this flesh; + In the charge of the Mother our fate; + Her law as the one common weal. + + We, whom the view benumbs, + We, quivering upward, each hour + Know battle in air and in ground + For the breath that goes as it comes, + For the choice between sweet and sour, + For the smallest grain of our worth: + And he who the reckoning sums + Finds nought in his hand save Earth. + Of Earth are we stripped or crowned. + The fleeting Present we crave, + Barter our best to wed, + In hope of a cushioned bower, + What is it but Future and Past + Like wind and tide at a wave! + Idea of the senses, bred + For the senses to snap and devour: + Thin as the shell of a sound + In delivery, withered in light. + Cry we for permanence fast, + Permanence hangs by the grave; + Sits on the grave green-grassed, + On the roll of the heaved grave-mound. + By Death, as by Life, are we fed: + The two are one spring; our bond + With the numbers; with whom to unite + Here feathers wings for beyond: + Only they can waft us in flight. + For they are Reality’s flower. + Of them, and the contact with them, + Issues Earth’s dearest daughter, the firm + In footing, the stately of stem; + Unshaken though elements lour; + A warrior heart unquelled; + Mirror of Earth, and guide + To the Holies from sense withheld: + Reason, man’s germinant fruit. + She wrestles with our old worm + Self in the narrow and wide: + Relentless quencher of lies, + With laughter she pierces the brute; + And hear we her laughter peal, + ’Tis Light in us dancing to scour + The loathed recess of his dens; + Scatter his monstrous bed, + And hound him to harrow and plough. + She is the world’s one prize; + Our champion, rightfully head; + The vessel whose piloted prow, + Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot, + Leaves legible print at the keel. + Nor least is the service she does, + That service to her may cleanse + The well of the Sorrows in us; + For a common delight will drain + The rank individual fens + Of a wound refusing to heal + While the old worm slavers its root. + + I bowed as a leaf in rain; + As a tree when the leaf is shed + To winds in the season at wane: + And when from my soul I said, + May the worm be trampled: smite, + Sacred Reality! power + Filled me to front it aright. + I had come of my faith’s ordeal. + + It is not to stand on a tower + And see the flat universe reel; + Our mortal sublimities drop + Like raiment by glisterlings worn, + At a sweep of the scythe for the crop. + Wisdom is won of its fight, + The combat incessant; and dries + To mummywrap perching a height. + It chews the contemplative cud + In peril of isolate scorn, + Unfed of the onward flood. + Nor view we a different morn + If we gaze with the deeper sight, + With the deeper thought forewise: + The world is the same, seen through; + The features of men are the same. + But let their historian new + In the language of nakedness write, + Rejoice we to know not shame, + Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done + With the tortures of thought in the throes, + Our animal tangle, and grasp + Very sap of the vital in this: + That from flesh unto spirit man grows + Even here on the sod under sun: + That she of the wanton’s kiss, + Broken through with the bite of an asp, + Is Mother of simple truth, + Relentless quencher of lies; + Eternal in thought; discerned + In thought mid-ferry between + The Life and the Death, which are one, + As our breath in and out, joy or teen. + She gives the rich vision to youth, + If we will, of her prompting wise; + Or men by the lash made lean, + Who in harness the mind subserve, + Their title to read her have earned; + Having mastered sensation—insane + At a stroke of the terrified nerve; + And out of the sensual hive + Grown to the flower of brain; + To know her a thing alive, + Whose aspects mutably swerve, + Whose laws immutably reign. + Our sentencer, clother in mist, + Her morn bends breast to her noon, + Noon to the hour dark-dyed, + If we will, of her promptings wise: + Her light is our own if we list. + The legends that sweep her aside, + Crying loud for an opiate boon, + To comfort the human want, + From the bosom of magical skies, + She smiles on, marking their source: + They read her with infant eyes. + Good ships of morality they, + For our crude developing force; + Granite the thought to stay, + That she is a thing alive + To the living, the falling and strewn. + But the Questions, the broods that haunt + Sensation insurgent, may drive, + The way of the channelling mole, + Head in a ground-vault gaunt + As your telescope’s skeleton moon. + Barren comfort to these will she dole; + Dead is her face to their cries. + Intelligence pushing to taste + A lesson from beasts might heed. + They scatter a voice in the waste, + Where any dry swish of a reed + By grey-glassy water replies. + + ‘They see not above or below; + Farthest are they from my soul,’ + Earth whispers: ‘they scarce have the thirst, + Except to unriddle a rune; + And I spin none; only show, + Would humanity soar from its worst, + Winged above darkness and dole, + How flesh unto spirit must grow. + Spirit raves not for a goal. + Shapes in man’s likeness hewn + Desires not; neither desires + The sleep or the glory: it trusts; + Uses my gifts, yet aspires; + Dreams of a higher than it. + The dream is an atmosphere; + A scale still ascending to knit + The clear to the loftier Clear. + ’Tis Reason herself, tiptoe + At the ultimate bound of her wit, + On the verges of Night and Day. + But is it a dream of the lusts, + To my dustiest ’tis decreed; + And them that so shuffle astray + I touch with no key of gold + For the wealth of the secret nook; + Though I dote over ripeness at play, + Rosiness fondle and feed, + Guide it with shepherding crook + To my sports and my pastures alway. + The key will shriek in the lock, + The door will rustily hinge, + Will open on features of mould, + To vanish corrupt at a glimpse, + And mock as the wild echoes mock, + Soulless in mimic, doth Greed + Or the passion for fruitage tinge + That dream, for your parricide imps + To wing through the body of Time, + Yourselves in slaying him slay. + Much are you shots of your prime, + You men of the act and the dream: + And please you to fatten a weed + That perishes, pledged to decay, + ’Tis dearth in your season of need, + Down the slopes of the shoreward way;— + Nigh on the misty stream, + Where Ferryman under his hood, + With a call to be ready to pay + The small coin, whitens red blood. + But the young ethereal seed + Shall bring you the bread no buyer + Can have for his craving supreme; + To my quenchless quick shall speed + The soul at her wrestle rude + With devil, with angel more dire; + With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed. + The dream of the blossom of Good + Is your banner of battle unrolled + In its waver and current and curve + (Choir over choir white-winged, + White-bosomed fold within fold): + Hopeful of victory most + When hard is the task to sustain + Assaults of the fearful sense + At a mind in desolate mood + With the Whither, whose echo is Whence; + And humanity’s clamour, lost, lost; + And its clasp of the staves that snap; + And evil abroad, as a main + Uproarious, bursting its dyke. + For back do you look, and lo, + Forward the harvest of grain!— + Numbers in council, awake + To love more than things of my lap, + Love me; and to let the types break, + Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow; + All save the dream sink alike + To the source of my vital in sap: + Their battle, their loss, their ache, + For my pledge of vitality know. + The dream is the thought in the ghost; + The thought sent flying for food; + Eyeless, but sprung of an aim + Supernal of Reason, to find + The great Over-Reason we name + Beneficence: mind seeking Mind. + Dream of the blossom of Good, + In its waver and current and curve, + With the hopes of my offspring enscrolled! + Soon to be seen of a host + The flag of the Master I serve! + And life in them doubled on Life, + As flame upon flame, to behold, + High over Time-tumbled sea, + The bliss of his headship of strife, + Him through handmaiden me.’ + + + +CHANGE IN RECURRENCE + + +I + + + I STOOD at the gate of the cot + Where my darling, with side-glance demure, + Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, + The busy wild things chase and lure. + For these with their ways were her feast; + They had surety no enemy lurked. + Their deftest of tricks to their least + She gathered in watch as she worked. + + +II + + + When berries were red on her ash, + The blackbird would rifle them rough, + Till the ground underneath looked a gash, + And her rogue grew the round of a chough. + The squirrel cocked ear o’er his hoop, + Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush. + She knew any tit of the troop + All as well as the snail-tapping thrush. + + +III + + + I gazed: ’twas the scene of the frame, + With the face, the dear life for me, fled. + No window a lute to my name, + No watcher there plying the thread. + But the blackbird hung peeking at will; + The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; + The thrush had a snail in his bill, + And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone. + + + +HYMN TO COLOUR + + +I + + + WITH Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, + And made them on each side a shadow seem. + Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared, + Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream + To fall on daylight; and night puts away + Her darker veil for grey. + + +II + + + In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by; + We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead + Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky: + Around, save for those shapes, with him who led + And linked them, desert varied by no sign + Of other life than mine. + + +III + + + By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide, + From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne, + Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried, + Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn: + And those two shapes the splendour interweaved, + Hung web-like, sank and heaved. + + +IV + + + Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun + To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow. + Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one. + Whichever is, the other is: but know, + It is thy craving self that thou dost see, + Not in them seeing me. + + +V + + + Shall man into the mystery of breath, + From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy? + Or learn the secret of the shrouded death, + By lifting up the lid of a white eye? + Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire + Of fire to reach to fire. + + +VI + + + Look now where Colour, the soul’s bridegroom, makes + The house of heaven splendid for the bride. + To him as leaps a fountain she awakes, + In knotting arms, yet boundless: him beside, + She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power + Brings heaven to the flower. + + +VII + + + He gives her homeliness in desert air, + And sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads + Through widening chambers of surprise to where + Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes, + Because his touch is infinite and lends + A yonder to all ends. + + +VIII + + + Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades + To keep long day with his caresses graced. + He is the heart of light, the wing of shades, + The crown of beauty: never soul embraced + Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him + Possessed walks never dim. + + +IX + + + Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang: + O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf + Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang + The space of dewdrops running over leaf; + Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost + Than Time with all his host! + + +X + + + Of thee to say behold, has said adieu: + But love remembers how the sky was green, + And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue; + How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen + Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came + Between a blush and flame. + + +XI + + + Love saw the emissary eglantine + Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom; + Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line + With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom, + Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down, + Earth under rolling brown. + + +XII + + + They do not look through love to look on thee, + Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight, + Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be + Its wrecking and last issue of delight. + Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot + Of colour unforgot. + + +XIII + + + This way have men come out of brutishness + To spell the letters of the sky and read + A reflex upon earth else meaningless. + With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead, + Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged + Shall on through brave wars waged. + + +XIV + + + More gardens will they win than any lost; + The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain. + Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed, + To stature of the Gods will they attain. + They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord, + Themselves the attuning chord! + + +XV + + + The song had ceased; my vision with the song. + Then of those Shadows, which one made descent + Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long + Came on me in the public ways and bent + Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too, + And saw the dawn glow through. + + + +MEDITATION UNDER STARS + + + WHAT links are ours with orbs that are + So resolutely far: + The solitary asks, and they + Give radiance as from a shield: + Still at the death of day, + The seen, the unrevealed. + Implacable they shine + To us who would of Life obtain + An answer for the life we strain + To nourish with one sign. + Nor can imagination throw + The penetrative shaft: we pass + The breath of thought, who would divine + If haply they may grow + As Earth; have our desire to know; + If life comes there to grain from grass, + And flowers like ours of toil and pain; + Has passion to beat bar, + Win space from cleaving brain; + The mystic link attain, + Whereby star holds on star. + + Those visible immortals beam + Allurement to the dream: + Ireful at human hungers brook + No question in the look. + For ever virgin to our sense, + Remote they wane to gaze intense: + Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite + The beating heart behind the ball of sight: + Till we conceive their heavens hoar, + Those lights they raise but sparkles frore, + And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey + To that frigidity of brainless ray. + + Yet space is given for breath of thought + Beyond our bounds when musing: more + When to that musing love is brought, + And love is asked of love’s wherefore. + ’Tis Earth’s, her gift; else have we nought: + Her gift, her secret, here our tie. + And not with her and yonder sky? + Bethink you: were it Earth alone + Breeds love, would not her region be + The sole delight and throne + Of generous Deity? + + To deeper than this ball of sight + Appeal the lustrous people of the night. + Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails, + It is our ravenous that quails, + Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught. + The spirit leaps alight, + Doubts not in them is he, + The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right: + Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, + To feel it large of the great life they hold: + In them to come, or vaster intervolved, + The issues known in us, our unsolved solved: + That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree, + Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped. + So may we read and little find them cold: + Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide + Our eyes; no branch of Reason’s growing lopped; + Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified + By day to penetrate black midnight; see, + Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we, + The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, + We who reflect those rays, though low our place, + To them are lastingly allied. + + So may we read, and little find them cold: + Not frosty lamps illumining dead space, + Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers. + The fire is in them whereof we are born; + The music of their motion may be ours. + Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced + Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. + Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold + The love that lends her grace + Among the starry fold. + Then at new flood of customary morn, + Look at her through her showers, + Her mists, her streaming gold, + A wonder edges the familiar face: + She wears no more that robe of printed hours; + Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers. + + + +WOODMAN AND ECHO + + + CLOSE Echo hears the woodman’s axe, + To double on it, as in glee, + With clap of hands, and little lacks + Of meaning in her repartee. + For all shall fall, + As one has done, + The tree of me, + Of thee the tree; + And unto all + The fate we wait + Reveals the wheels + Whereon we run: + We tower to flower, + We spread the shade, + We drop for crop, + At length are laid; + Are rolled in mould, + From chop and lop: + And are we thick in woodland tracks, + Or tempting of our stature we, + The end is one, we do but wax + For service over land and sea. + So, strike! the like + Shall thus of us, + My brawny woodman, claim the tax. + Nor foe thy blow, + Though wood be good, + And shriekingly the timber cracks: + The ground we crowned + Shall speed the seed + Of younger into swelling sacks. + + For use he hews, + To make awake + The spirit of what stuff we be: + Our earth of mirth + And tears he clears + For braver, let our minds agree; + And then will men + Within them win + An Echo clapping harmony. + + + +THE WISDOM OF ELD + + + WE spend our lives in learning pilotage, + And grow good steersmen when the vessel’s crank! + Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank + Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. + It is the sentence which completes that stage; + A testament of wisdom reading blank. + The seniors of the race, on their last plank, + Pass mumbling it as nature’s final page. + These, bent by such experience, are the band + Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain + What things we view, and Earth’s decree withstand, + Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay, + Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain, + And ancients musical at close of day. + + + +EARTH’S PREFERENCE + + + EARTH loves her young: a preference manifest: + She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds; + Their beauty with her choicest interthreads, + And makes her revel of their merry zest; + As in our East much were it in our West, + If men had risen to do the work of heads. + Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads + The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed. + How wrought they in their zenith? ’Tis not writ; + Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read: + Have they but held her laws and nature dear, + They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. + More prizes she her beasts than this high breed + Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear. + + + +SOCIETY + + + HISTORIC be the survey of our kind, + And how their brave Society took shape. + Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape, + The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find, + Who, with some jars in harmony, combined, + Their primal instincts taming, to escape + The brawl indecent, and hot passions drape. + Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind. + Thus entered they the field of milder beasts, + Which in some sort of civil order graze, + And do half-homage to the God of Laws. + But are they still for their old ravenous feasts, + Earth gives the edifice they build no base: + They spring another flood of fangs and claws. + + + +WINTER HEAVENS + + + SHARP is the night, but stars with frost alive + Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. + It is a night to make the heavens our home + More than the nest whereto apace we strive. + Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, + In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. + They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: + The living throb in me, the dead revive. + Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath, + Life glistens on the river of the death. + It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, + Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs + Of radiance, the radiance enrings: + And this is the soul’s haven to have felt. + + + + +NOTES + + +PHAETHON +_The Galliambic Measure_ + + +Hermann (_Elementa Doctrinae Metricae_), after citing lines from the +Tragic poet Phrynichus and from the Comic, observes: + +Dixi supra, Phrynichorum versus videri puros Ionicos esse. Id si verum +est, Galliambi non alia re ab his differunt, quam quod anaclasin, +contractionesque et solutiones recipiunt. Itaque versus Galliambicus ex +duobus versibus Anacreonteis constat, quorum secundus catalecticus est, +hac forma: + + [Picture: Graphic depiction of scheme] + +The wonderful _Attis_ of Catullus is the one classic example. A few +lines have been gathered elsewhere. Lord Tennyson’s _Boadicea_ rides +over many difficulties and is a noble poem. Catullus makes general use +of the variant second of the above metrical forms: + + _Mihi januae frequentes_, _mihi limina tepida_: + +With stress on the emotion; + + _Jam_, _jam dolet quod egi_, _jam jamque poenitet_. + +A perfect conquest of the measure is not possible in our tongue. For the +sake of an occasional success in the velocity, sweep, volume of the line, +it seems worth an effort; and, if to some degree serviceable for +narrative verse, it is one of the exercises of a writer which readers may +be invited to share. + + + +THEODOLINDA + + +The legend of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, formed of a nail of the true +Cross by order of the devout Queen Theodolinda, is well known. In this +dramatic song she is seen passing through one of the higher temptations +of the believing Christian. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty + at the Edinburgh University Press + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 2 [OF 3]*** + + +******* This file should be named 1382-0.txt or 1382-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/8/1382 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/1382-0.zip b/1382-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..edb3900 --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-0.zip diff --git a/1382-h.zip b/1382-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3fdc9df --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h.zip diff --git a/1382-h/1382-h.htm b/1382-h/1382-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b957832 --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/1382-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9326 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Poems, Volume 2 [of 3], by George Meredith</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poems, Volume 2 [of 3], by George Meredith + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Poems, Volume 2 [of 3] + + +Author: George Meredith + + + +Release Date: January 2, 2015 [eBook #1382] +[This file was first posted on May 7, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 2 [OF 3]*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” +edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/fpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"The Châlet, Box Hill" +title= +"The Châlet, Box Hill" + src="images/fps.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>POEMS<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">VOL. II</span></h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +GEORGE MEREDITH</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">SURREY EDITION</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +THE TIMES BOOK CLUB<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">376–384 OXFORD STREET, W.</span><br +/> +1912</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageiv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iv</span>Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, +Printers to his Majesty</p> +<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +v</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>TO J. M.,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Let Fate or Insufficiency provide</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Now farewell to you! you are</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page2">2</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>TIME AND SENTIMENT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">I see a fair young couple in a wood,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page11">11</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page12">12</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE STAR SIRIUS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page12">12</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>SENSE AND SPIRIT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The senses loving Earth or well or ill</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page13">13</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>EARTH’S SECRET,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Not solitarily in fields we find</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page13">13</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>INTERNAL HARMONY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Assured of worthiness we do not dread</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>GRACE AND LOVE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>APPRECIATION,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Earth was not Earth before her sons +appeared,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page15">15</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Rich labour is the struggle to be wise</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page15">15</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE STATE OF AGE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor +beg</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vi</span>PROGRESS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">In Progress you have little faith, say +you:</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE WORLD’S ADVANCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Judge mildly the tasked world; and +disincline</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page17">17</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>A CERTAIN PEOPLE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">As Puritans they prominently wax,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page17">17</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">That Garden of sedate Philosophy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>A LATER ALEXANDRIAN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">An inspiration caught from dubious hues</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>AN ORSON OF THE MUSE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Her son, albeit the Muse’s livery</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page19">19</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE POINT OF TASTE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page19">19</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>CAMELUS SALTAT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">What say you, critic, now you have +become</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page20">20</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>CONTINUED,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Oracle of the market! thence you drew</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page20">20</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>MY THEME,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Of me and of my theme think what thou +wilt:</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>CONTINUED,</p> +<p class="gutindent">’Tis true the wisdom that my mind +exacts</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>ON THE DANGER OF WAR,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page22">22</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>TO CARDINAL MANNING,</p> +<p class="gutindent">I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page23">23</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>TO COLONEL CHARLES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">An English heart, my commandant,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page24">24</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Strike not thy dog with a stick!</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page27">27</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><a +name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vii</span><b>Poems +and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Enter these enchanted woods,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page33">33</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Last night returning from my twilight +walk</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page48">48</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES,</p> +<p class="gutindent">He who has looked upon Earth</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page49">49</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE LARK ASCENDING,</p> +<p class="gutindent">He rises and begins to round,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page67">67</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">When by Zeus relenting the mandate was +revoked,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>MELAMPUS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">With love exceeding a simple love of the +things</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page75">75</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>LOVE IN THE VALLEY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Under yonder beech-tree single on the +greensward,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page80">80</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Carols nature, counsel men,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page88">88</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH,</p> +<p class="gutindent">I chanced upon an early walk to spy</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page90">90</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>EARTH AND MAN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">On her great venture, Man,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page92">92</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT,</p> +<p class="gutindent">See the sweet women, friend, that lean +beneath</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page100">100</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><b>Ballads and +poems of Tragic Life</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE TWO MASKS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Melpomene among her livid people,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page115">115</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>ARCHDUCHESS ANNE,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page116">116</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">I.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>In middle age an evil thing</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">II.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">III.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>Old Kraken read a missive penned</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pageviii"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. viii</span>THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Queen Theodolind has built</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page133">133</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Ladies who in chains of wedlock</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page139">139</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE YOUNG PRINCESS,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page144">144</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">I.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>When the South sang like a nightingale</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">II.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">III.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire;</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">IV.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p>The soft night-wind went laden to death</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>KING HARALD’S TRANCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sword in length a reaping-hook amain</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page154">154</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Hawk or shrike has done this deed</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page158">158</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>YOUNG REYNARD,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page159">159</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>MANFRED,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Projected from the bilious Childe,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page160">160</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>HERNANI,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Cistercians might crack their sides</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page161">161</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Flat as to an eagle’s eye,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page162">162</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>ANEURIN’S HARP,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Prince of Bards was old Aneurin;</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page180">180</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>MEN AND MAN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Men the Angels eyed;</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page186">186</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE LAST CONTENTION,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Young captain of a crazy bark!</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page187">187</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>PERIANDER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">How died Melissa none dares shape in +words.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page190">190</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +ix</span>SOLON,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his +eye</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page195">195</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>BELLEROPHON,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; +with nod</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page197">197</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>PHAÉTHÔN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous +charioteer,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page200">200</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><b>A Reading of +Earth</b></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>SEED-TIME,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Flowers of the willow-herb are wool;</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page209">209</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>HARD WEATHER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Bursts from a rending East in flaws</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page211">211</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE SOUTH-WESTER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Day of the cloud in fleets! O day</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page215">215</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">I know him, February’s thrush,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page220">220</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Demeter devastated our good land,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page226">226</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN,</p> +<p class="gutindent">The shepherd, with his eye on hazy +South,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page231">231</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>MOTHER TO BABE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Fleck of sky you are,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page234">234</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>WOODLAND PEACE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sweet as Eden is the air,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page235">235</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE QUESTION WHITHER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">When we have thrown off this old suit,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page236">236</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>OUTER AND INNER,</p> +<p class="gutindent">From twig to twig the spider weaves</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page237">237</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p><a name="pagex"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +x</span>NATURE AND LIFE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Leave the uproar: at a leap</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page239">239</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>DIRGE IN WOODS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">A wind sways the pines,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page240">240</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>A FAITH ON TRIAL,</p> +<p class="gutindent">On the morning of May,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page241">241</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>CHANGE IN RECURRENCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">I stood at the gate of the cot</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page260">260</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>HYMN TO COLOUR,</p> +<p class="gutindent">With Life and Death I walked when Love +appeared,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page261">261</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>MEDITATION UNDER STARS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">What links are ours with orbs that are</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page265">265</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>WOODMAN AND ECHO,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Close Echo hears the woodman’s +axe,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page268">268</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>THE WISDOM OF ELD,</p> +<p class="gutindent">We spend our lives in learning pilotage,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>EARTH’S PREFERENCE,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Earth loves her young: a preference +manifest:</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page270">270</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>SOCIETY,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Historic be the survey of our kind,</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page271">271</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>WINTER HEAVENS,</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sharp is the night, but stars with frost +alive</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page271">271</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"><p>NOTES</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page272">272</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>TO J. +M.</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Let</span> Fate or +Insufficiency provide<br /> +Mean ends for men who what they are would be:<br /> +Penned in their narrow day no change they see<br /> +Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride.<br /> +Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide:<br /> +And whether Earth’s great offspring, by decree,<br /> +Must rot if they abjure rapacity,<br /> +Not argument but effort shall decide.<br /> +They number many heads in that hard flock:<br /> +Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel.<br /> +Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel<br /> +The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew<br /> +A chasm sheer into the barrier rock,<br /> +And bring the army of the faithful through.</p> +<h2><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>LINES TO +A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Now</span> farewell to you! +you are<br /> +One of my dearest, whom I trust:<br /> +Now follow you the Western star,<br /> +And cast the old world off as dust.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">From many friends adieu! adieu!<br /> +The quick heart of the word therein.<br /> +Much that we hope for hangs with you:<br /> +We lose you, but we lose to win.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">The beggar-king, November, frets:<br /> +His tatters rich with Indian dyes<br /> +Goes hugging: we our season’s debts<br /> +Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">We send our worthiest; can no less,<br /> +If we would now be read aright,—<br /> +To that great people who may bless<br /> +Or curse mankind: they have the might.</p> +<h3><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>V</h3> +<p class="poetry">The proudest seasons find their graves,<br /> +And we, who would not be wooed, must court.<br /> +We have let the blunderers and the waves<br /> +Divide us, and the devil had sport.</p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p class="poetry">The blunderers and the waves no more<br /> +Shall sever kindred sending forth<br /> +Their worthiest from shore to shore<br /> +For welcome, bent to prove their worth.</p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Go you and such as you afloat,<br /> +Our lost kinsfellowship to revive.<br /> +The battle of the antidote<br /> +Is tough, though silent: may you thrive!</p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">I, when in this North wind I see<br /> +The straining red woods blown awry,<br /> +Feel shuddering like the winter tree,<br /> +All vein and artery on cold sky.</p> +<h3>IX</h3> +<p class="poetry">The leaf that clothed me is torn away;<br /> +My friend is as a flying seed.<br /> +Ay, true; to bring replenished day<br /> +Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed.</p> +<h3><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>X</h3> +<p class="poetry">What husky habitations seem<br /> +These comfortable sayings! they fell,<br /> +In some rich year become a dream:—<br /> +So cries my heart, the infidel! . . .</p> +<h3>XI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest,<br /> +Arabian visions could not vie<br /> +With those broad wonders of the West,<br /> +And would I bid you stay? Not I!</p> +<h3>XII</h3> +<p class="poetry">The strange experimental land<br /> +Where men continually dare take<br /> +Niagara leaps;—unshattered stand<br /> +’Twixt fall and fall;—for conscience’ sake,</p> +<h3>XIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Drive onward like a flood’s +increase;—<br /> +Fresh rapids and abysms engage;—<br /> +(We live—we die) scorn fireside peace,<br /> +And, as a garment, put on rage,</p> +<h3>XIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Rather than bear God’s reprimand,<br /> +By rearing on a full fat soil<br /> +Concrete of sin and sloth;—this land,<br /> +You will observe it coil in coil.</p> +<h3><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>XV</h3> +<p class="poetry">The land has been discover’d long,<br /> +The people we have yet to know;<br /> +Themselves they know not, save that strong<br /> +For good and evil still they grow.</p> +<h3>XVI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Nor know they us. Yea, well enough<br /> +In that inveterate machine<br /> +Through which we speak the printed stuff<br /> +Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien</p> +<h3>XVII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Tremendous:—as a lion’s show<br /> +The grand menagerie paintings hide:<br /> +Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow!<br /> +The poor old Lion lies inside! . . .</p> +<h3>XVIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">It is not England that they hear,<br /> +But mighty Mammon’s pipers, trained<br /> +To trumpet out his moods, and stir<br /> +His sluggish soul: <i>her</i> voice is chained:</p> +<h3>XIX</h3> +<p class="poetry">Almost her spirit seems moribund!<br /> +O teach them, ’tis not she displays<br /> +The panic of a purse rotund,<br /> +Eternal dread of evil days,—</p> +<h3><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>XX</h3> +<p class="poetry">That haunting spectre of success<br /> +Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths:<br /> +Not England answers nobleness,—<br /> +‘Live for thyself: thou art not earth’s.’</p> +<h3>XXI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Not she, when struggling manhood tries<br /> +For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate,<br /> +Points out the planet, Compromise,<br /> +And shakes a mild reproving pate:</p> +<h3>XXII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Says never: ‘I am well at ease,<br /> +My sneers upon the weak I shed:<br /> +The strong have my cajoleries:<br /> +And those beneath my feet I tread.’</p> +<h3>XXIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Nay, but ’tis said for her, great +Lord!<br /> +The misery’s there! The shameless one<br /> +Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword,<br /> +Herself not yielding what it won:—</p> +<h3>XXIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach,<br /> +On sweet Prosperity—or greed.<br /> +‘Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each,<br /> +God’s blessings let us take, and feed!’</p> +<h3><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>XXV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Ungrateful creatures crave a part—<br /> +She tells them firmly she is full;<br /> +Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart<br /> +With bleating, stops her ears with wool:—</p> +<h3>XXVI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms<br /> +(Nightmares of bankruptcy and death),—<br /> +Showers down in lumps a load of alms,<br /> +Then pants as one who has lost a breath;</p> +<h3>XXVII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Believes high heaven, whence favours flow,<br +/> +Too kind to ask a sacrifice<br /> +For what it specially doth bestow;—<br /> +Gives <i>she</i>, ’tis generous, cheese to mice.</p> +<h3>XXVIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">She saw the young Dominion strip<br /> +For battle with a grievous wrong,<br /> +And curled a noble Norman lip,<br /> +And looked with half an eye sidelong;</p> +<h3>XXIX</h3> +<p class="poetry">And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers,<br /> +Denounced the waste of blood and coin,<br /> +Implored the combatants, with tears,<br /> +Never to think they could rejoin.</p> +<h3><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>XXX</h3> +<p class="poetry">Oh! was it England that, alas!<br /> +Turned sharp the victor to cajole?<br /> +Behold her features in the glass:<br /> +A monstrous semblance mocks her soul!</p> +<h3>XXXI</h3> +<p class="poetry">A false majority, by stealth,<br /> +Have got her fast, and sway the rod:<br /> +A headless tyrant built of wealth,<br /> +The hypocrite, the belly-God.</p> +<h3>XXXII</h3> +<p class="poetry">To him the daily hymns they raise:<br /> +His tastes are sought: his will is done:<br /> +He sniffs the putrid steam of praise,<br /> +Place for true England here is none!</p> +<h3>XXXIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">But can a distant race discern<br /> +The difference ’twixt her and him?<br /> +My friend, that will you bid them learn.<br /> +He shames and binds her, head and limb.</p> +<h3>XXXIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">Old wood has blossoms of this sort.<br /> +Though sound at core, she is old wood.<br /> +If freemen hate her, one retort<br /> +She has; but one!—‘You are my blood.’</p> +<h3><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +9</span>XXXV</h3> +<p class="poetry">A poet, half a prophet, rose<br /> +In recent days, and called for power.<br /> +I love him; but his mountain prose—<br /> +His Alp and valley and wild flower—</p> +<h3>XXXVI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Proclaimed our weakness, not its source.<br /> +What medicine for disease had he?<br /> +Whom summoned for a show of force?<br /> +Our titular aristocracy!</p> +<h3>XXXVII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Why, these are great at City feasts;<br /> +From City riches mainly rise:<br /> +’Tis well to hear them, when the beasts<br /> +That die for us they eulogize!</p> +<h3>XXXVIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">But these, of all the liveried crew<br /> +Obeisant in Mammon’s walk,<br /> +Most deferent ply the facial screw,<br /> +The spinal bend, submissive talk.</p> +<h3>XXXIX</h3> +<p class="poetry">Small fear that they will run to books<br /> +(At least the better form of seed)!<br /> +I, too, have hoped from their good looks,<br /> +And fables of their Northman breed;—</p> +<h3><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +10</span>XL</h3> +<p class="poetry">Have hoped that they the land would head<br /> +In acts magnanimous; but, lo,<br /> +When fainting heroes beg for bread<br /> +They frown: where they are driven they go.</p> +<h3>XLI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Good health, my friend! and may your lot<br /> +Be cheerful o’er the Western rounds.<br /> +This butter-woman’s market-trot<br /> +Of verse is passing market-bounds.</p> +<h3>XLII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone.<br /> +On banks of fog faint lines extend:<br /> +Adieu! bring back a braver dawn<br /> +To England, and to me my friend.</p> +<p><i>November</i> 15<i>th</i>, 1867.</p> +<h2><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>TIME +AND SENTIMENT</h2> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">see</span> a fair young +couple in a wood,<br /> +And as they go, one bends to take a flower,<br /> +That so may be embalmed their happy hour,<br /> +And in another day, a kindred mood,<br /> +Haply together, or in solitude,<br /> +Recovered what the teeth of Time devour,<br /> +The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power,<br /> +Wherewith by their young blood they are endued<br /> +To move all enviable, framed in May,<br /> +And of an aspect sisterly with Truth:<br /> +Yet seek they with Time’s laughing things to wed:<br /> +Who will be prompted on some pallid day<br /> +To lift the hueless flower and show that dead,<br /> +Even such, and by this token, is their youth.</p> +<h2><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">On</span> a starred night +Prince Lucifer uprose.<br /> +Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend<br /> +Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,<br /> +Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.<br /> +Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.<br /> +And now upon his western wing he leaned,<br /> +Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,<br /> +Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.<br /> +Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars<br /> +With memory of the old revolt from Awe,<br /> +He reached a middle height, and at the stars,<br /> +Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.<br /> +Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,<br /> +The army of unalterable law.</p> +<h2>THE STAR SIRIUS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Bright</span> Sirius! that +when Orion pales<br /> +To dotlings under moonlight still art keen<br /> +With cheerful fervour of a warrior’s mien<br /> +Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales:<br /> +Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails,<br /> +Reducing many lustrous to the lean:<br /> +Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen<br /> +To show what source divine is, and prevails.<br /> +Long watches through, at one with godly night,<br /> +I mark thee planting joy in constant fire;<br /> +And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire<br /> +Life to the spirit, passion for the light,<br /> +Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight<br /> +Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre.</p> +<h2><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>SENSE +AND SPIRIT</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> senses loving +Earth or well or ill<br /> +Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot.<br /> +The mind is in their trammels, and lights not<br /> +By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will<br /> +To find in nature things which less may chill<br /> +An ardour that desires, unknowing what.<br /> +Till we conceive her living we go distraught,<br /> +At best but circle-windsails of a mill.<br /> +Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life<br /> +Creatively has given us blood and breath<br /> +For endless war and never wound unhealed,<br /> +The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field<br /> +Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife<br /> +To read her own and trust her down to death.</p> +<h2>EARTH’S SECRET</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Not</span> solitarily in +fields we find<br /> +Earth’s secret open, though one page is there;<br /> +Her plainest, such as children spell, and share<br /> +With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind.<br /> +Not where the troubled passions toss the mind,<br /> +In turbid cities, can the key be bare.<br /> +It hangs for those who hither thither fare,<br /> +Close interthreading nature with our kind.<br /> +They, hearing History speak, of what men were,<br /> +And have become, are wise. The gain is great<br /> +In vision and solidity; it lives.<br /> +Yet at a thought of life apart from her,<br /> +Solidity and vision lose their state,<br /> +For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives.</p> +<h2><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +14</span>INTERNAL HARMONY</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Assured</span> of +worthiness we do not dread<br /> +Competitors; we rather give them hail<br /> +And greeting in the lists where we may fail:<br /> +Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head!<br /> +My betters are my masters: purely fed<br /> +By their sustainment I likewise shall scale<br /> +Some rocky steps between the mount and vale;<br /> +Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed.<br /> +So that I draw the breath of finer air,<br /> +Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn,<br /> +Nor rivals tightly belted for the race.<br /> +Good speed to them! My place is here or there;<br /> +My pride is that among them I have place:<br /> +And thus I keep this instrument in tune.</p> +<h2>GRACE AND LOVE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Two</span> flower-enfolding +crystal vases she<br /> +I love fills daily, mindful but of one:<br /> +And close behind pale morn she, like the sun<br /> +Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see,<br /> +Clear water in the cup, and into me<br /> +The image of herself: and that being done,<br /> +Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run<br /> +In climbers or in creepers or the tree<br /> +She ranges with unerring fingers fine,<br /> +To harmony so vivid that through sight<br /> +I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold<br /> +Beyond the senses, where such love as mine,<br /> +Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold<br /> +Their starry more from her and me, unite.</p> +<h2><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +15</span>APPRECIATION</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Earth</span> was not Earth +before her sons appeared,<br /> +Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born:<br /> +And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn<br /> +At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared;<br /> +To none by her fresh wingedness endeared;<br /> +Unwelcome unto revellers outworn.<br /> +I the last echoes of Diana’s horn<br /> +In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered.<br /> +No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul!<br /> +And more than simple duty moved thy feet.<br /> +New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame,<br /> +From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll<br /> +May men read on the heart I taught to beat:<br /> +That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim.</p> +<h2>THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Rich</span> labour is the +struggle to be wise,<br /> +While we make sure the struggle cannot cease.<br /> +Else better were it in some bower of peace<br /> +Slothful to swing, contending with the flies.<br /> +You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies,<br /> +As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece:<br /> +She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece,<br /> +Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies.<br /> +So following her, your hewing may attain<br /> +The right to speak unto the mute, and shun<br /> +That sly temptation of the illumined brain,<br /> +Deliveries oracular, self-spun.<br /> +Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain<br /> +To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun.</p> +<h2><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>THE +STATE OF AGE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Rub</span> thou thy +battered lamp: nor claim nor beg<br /> +Honours from aught about thee. Light the young.<br /> +Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung,<br /> +O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg.<br /> +Thou art for this our life an ancient egg,<br /> +Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue,<br /> +Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung,<br /> +Which runs, Time’s contrast to thy halting leg.<br /> +Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires.<br /> +But hast thou in thy season set her fires<br /> +To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash,<br /> +Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high:<br /> +Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I<br /> +Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash.</p> +<h2>PROGRESS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">In</span> Progress you have +little faith, say you:<br /> +Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates,<br /> +By force, and gentle women choose their mates<br /> +Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew:<br /> +The human heart Bellona’s mad halloo<br /> +Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates.<br /> +‘Now at this time,’ says History, ‘those two +States<br /> +Stood ready their past wrestling to renew.<br /> +They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes<br /> +Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight<br /> +Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred<br /> +The bloody settlement of their disputes<br /> +Till God should bless them better.’ They did +right.<br /> +And naming Progress, both shall have the word.</p> +<h2><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>THE +WORLD’S ADVANCE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Judge</span> mildly the +tasked world; and disincline<br /> +To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.<br /> +You have perchance observed the inebriate’s track<br /> +At night when he has quitted the inn-sign:<br /> +He plays diversions on the homeward line,<br /> +Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack:<br /> +A hedge may take him, but he turns not back,<br /> +Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine.<br /> +‘Spiral,’ the memorable Lady terms<br /> +Our mind’s ascent: our world’s advance presents<br /> +That figure on a flat; the way of worms.<br /> +Cherish the promise of its good intents,<br /> +And warn it, not one instinct to efface<br /> +Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place.</p> +<h2>A CERTAIN PEOPLE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">As</span> Puritans they +prominently wax,<br /> +And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.<br /> +Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,<br /> +They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.<br /> +But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks<br /> +When Peace another door in them unlocks,<br /> +Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox<br /> +Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe.<br /> +Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness,<br /> +Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut.<br /> +They need their pious exercises less<br /> +Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief<br /> +That these are devilish only to their thief,<br /> +Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.</p> +<h2><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>THE +GARDEN OF EPICURUS</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">That</span> Garden of +sedate Philosophy<br /> +Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap,<br /> +A shining spot upon a shaggy map;<br /> +Where mind and body, in fair junction free,<br /> +Luted their joyful concord; like the tree<br /> +From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap.<br /> +Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature’s lap<br /> +Of gentlemen the happy nursery.<br /> +That Garden would on light supremest verge,<br /> +Were the long drawing of an equal breath<br /> +Healthful for Wisdom’s head, her heart, her aims.<br /> +Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge,<br /> +And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims<br /> +The crucifix that came of Nazareth.</p> +<h2>A LATER ALEXANDRIAN</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">An</span> inspiration +caught from dubious hues<br /> +Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased;<br /> +For they lead farther than the single-faced,<br /> +Wave subtler promise when desire pursues.<br /> +The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse,<br /> +His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste.<br /> +Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced,<br /> +And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews.<br /> +Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled<br /> +Responsively: he sang not Nature’s own<br /> +Divinest, but his lyric had a tone,<br /> +As ’twere a forest-echo of her voice:<br /> +What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled<br /> +From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice.</p> +<h2><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>AN +ORSON OF THE MUSE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Her</span> son, albeit the +Muse’s livery<br /> +And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts,<br /> +Naked and hairy in his savage haunts,<br /> +To Nature only will he bend the knee;<br /> +Spouting the founts of her distillery<br /> +Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants<br /> +Being Nature’s, civil limitation daunts<br /> +His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.<br /> +Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,<br /> +The Muse will hearken to with graver ear<br /> +Than many of her train can waken: him<br /> +Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear<br /> +Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,<br /> +If in no vessel built for sea they swim.</p> +<h2>THE POINT OF TASTE</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Unhappy</span> poets of a +sunken prime!<br /> +You to reviewers are as ball to bat.<br /> +They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat<br /> +With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime<br /> +On you the excommunicates of Rhyme,<br /> +Because you sing not in the living Fat.<br /> +The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat<br /> +Is verse that shuns their self-producing time.<br /> +Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,<br /> +Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs,<br /> +You win their pleased attention. But, bright God<br /> +O’ the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!<br /> +Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump<br /> +Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs.</p> +<h2><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>CAMELUS SALTAT</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">What</span> say you, +critic, now you have become<br /> +An author and maternal?—in this trap<br /> +(To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap<br /> +On instruments as like as drum to drum.<br /> +You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum,<br /> +So like the nose fly-teased in its noon’s nap.<br /> +You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap<br /> +With that between the fingers and the thumb.<br /> +It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch,<br /> +Which bade our public gobble or reject.<br /> +O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked,<br /> +Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch!<br /> +What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere,<br /> +You dealt?—the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer.</p> +<h2>CONTINUED</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Oracle</span> of the +market! thence you drew<br /> +The taste which stamped you guide of the inept.—<br /> +A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept,<br /> +A sturdy and a briny, once men knew.<br /> +He loved small beer, and for that copious brew,<br /> +To roll ingurgitation till he slept,<br /> +Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept:<br /> +And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew.<br /> +At last this dancer to the Polar star<br /> +Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched,<br /> +To drink the sea and pilot him to land.<br /> +O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched,<br /> +Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are<br /> +Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand.</p> +<h2><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>MY +THEME</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Of</span> me and of my +theme think what thou wilt:<br /> +The song of gladness one straight bolt can check.<br /> +But I have never stood at Fortune’s beck:<br /> +Were she and her light crew to run atilt<br /> +At my poor holding little would be spilt;<br /> +Small were the praise for singing o’er that wreck.<br /> +Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck;<br /> +He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt.<br /> +Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell<br /> +With other than those votaries she deals<br /> +The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift.<br /> +I say but that this love of Earth reveals<br /> +A soul beside our own to quicken, quell,<br /> +Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift.</p> +<h2>CONTINUED</h2> +<p class="poetry">’<span class="smcap">Tis</span> true the +wisdom that my mind exacts<br /> +Through contemplation from a heart unbent<br /> +By many tempests may be stained and rent:<br /> +The summer flies it mightily attracts.<br /> +Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts,<br /> +Which scarce give breathing of the sty’s content<br /> +For their diurnal carnal nourishment:<br /> +Which treat with Nature in official pacts.<br /> +The deader body Nature could proclaim.<br /> +Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath<br /> +Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth.<br /> +But during calms the flies of idle aim<br /> +Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst<br /> +For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst.</p> +<h2><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>ON THE +DANGER OF WAR</h2> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Avert</span>, High Wisdom, +never vainly wooed,<br /> +This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick.<br /> +When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric<br /> +Seems reason they are ripe for cannon’s food.<br /> +Dark looms the issue though the cause be good,<br /> +But with the doubt ’tis our old devil’s trick.<br /> +O now the down-slope of the lunatic<br /> +Illumine lest we redden of that brood.<br /> +For not since man in his first view of thee<br /> +Ascended to the heavens giving sign<br /> +Within him of deep sky and sounded sea,<br /> +Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress;<br /> +In peril of his blood his ears incline<br /> +To drums whose loudness is their emptiness.</p> +<h2><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>TO +CARDINAL MANNING</h2> +<p class="poetry">I, <span class="smcap">wakeful</span> for the +skylark voice in men,<br /> +Or straining for the angel of the light,<br /> +Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight,<br /> +When I behold one lamp that through our fen<br /> +Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again<br /> +A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright<br /> +From speaking to the soul of us forthright<br /> +What things our craven senses keep from ken.<br /> +This is the doing of the Christ; the way<br /> +He went on earth; the service above guile<br /> +To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines;<br /> +Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay<br /> +Such misery as by these present signs<br /> +Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile.</p> +<h2><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>TO +COLONEL CHARLES<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">(DYING GENERAL C.B.B.)</span></h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">An</span> English heart, my +commandant,<br /> +A soldier’s eye you have, awake<br /> +To right and left; with looks askant<br /> +On bulwarks not of adamant,<br /> +Where white our Channel waters break.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness<br /> +Across the ruffled strip of salt,<br /> +You look, and like the prospect less.<br /> +On men and guns would you lay stress,<br /> +To bid the Island’s foemen halt.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">While loud the Year is raising cry<br /> +At birth to know if it must bear<br /> +In history the bloody dye,<br /> +An English heart, a soldier’s eye,<br /> +For the old country first will care.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">And how stands she, artillerist,<br /> +Among the vapours waxing dense,<br /> +With cannon charged? ’Tis hist! and hist!<br /> +And now she screws a gouty fist,<br /> +And now she counts to clutch her pence.</p> +<h3><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>V</h3> +<p class="poetry">With shudders chill as aconite,<br /> +The couchant chewer of the cud<br /> +Will start at times in pussy fright<br /> +Before the dogs, when reads her sprite<br /> +The streaks predicting streams of blood.</p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p class="poetry">She thinks they may mean something; thinks<br +/> +They may mean nothing: haply both.<br /> +Where darkness all her daylight drinks,<br /> +She fain would find a leader lynx,<br /> +Not too much taxing mental sloth.</p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p class="poetry">Cleft like the fated house in twain,<br /> +One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench!<br /> +Gambetta’s word on dull MacMahon:<br /> +‘The cow that sees a passing train’:<br /> +So spies she Russian, German, French.</p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">She? no, her weakness: she unbraced<br /> +Among those athletes fronting storms!<br /> +The muscles less of steel than paste,<br /> +Why, they of nature feel distaste<br /> +For flash, much more for push, of arms.</p> +<h3>IX</h3> +<p class="poetry">The poet sings, and well know we,<br /> +That ‘iron draws men after it.’<br /> +But towering wealth may seem the tree<br /> +Which bears the fruit <i>Indemnity</i>,<br /> +And draw as fast as battle’s fit,</p> +<h3><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>X</h3> +<p class="poetry">If feeble be the hand on guard,<br /> +Alas, alas! And nations are<br /> +Still the mad forces, though the scarred.<br /> +Should they once deem our emblem Pard<br /> +Wagger of tail for all save war;—</p> +<h3>XI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Mechanically screwed to flail<br /> +His flanks by Presses conjuring fear;—<br /> +A money-bag with head and tail;—<br /> +Too late may valour then avail!<br /> +As you beheld, my cannonier,</p> +<h3>XII</h3> +<p class="poetry">When with the staff of Benedek,<br /> +On the plateau of Königgrätz,<br /> +You saw below that wedgeing speck;<br /> +Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck,<br /> +Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets.</p> +<p><i>February</i> 1887.</p> +<h2><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>TO +CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Strike</span> not thy dog +with a stick!<br /> + I did it yesterday:<br /> +Not to undo though I gained<br /> +The Paradise: heavy it rained<br /> + On Kobold’s flanks, and he lay.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p class="poetry">Little Bruno, our long-ear pup,<br /> + From his hunt had come back to my heel.<br /> +I heard a sharp worrying sound,<br /> +And Bruno foamed on the ground,<br /> + With Koby as making a meal.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p class="poetry">I did what I could not undo<br /> + Were the gates of the Paradise shut<br /> +Behind me: I deemed it was just.<br /> +I left Koby crouched in the dust,<br /> + Some yards from the woodman’s hut.</p> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p class="poetry">He bewhimpered his welting, and I<br /> + Scarce thought it enough for him: so,<br /> +By degrees, through the upper box-grove,<br /> +Within me an old story hove,<br /> + Of a man and a dog: you shall know.</p> +<h3><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>V</h3> +<p class="poetry">The dog was of novel breed,<br /> + The Shannon retriever, untried:<br /> +His master, an old Irish lord,<br /> +In an oaken armchair snored<br /> + At midnight, whisky beside.</p> +<h3>VI</h3> +<p class="poetry">Perched up a desolate tower,<br /> + Where the black storm-wind was a whip<br /> +To set it nigh spinning, these two<br /> +Were alone, like the last of a crew,<br /> + Outworn in a wave-beaten ship.</p> +<h3>VII</h3> +<p class="poetry">The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed;<br /> + He quitted his couch on the rug,<br /> +Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked;<br /> +And, finding the signals unmarked,<br /> + Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug.</p> +<h3>VIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">He pulled till his master jumped<br /> + For fury of wrath, and laid on<br /> +With the length of a tough knotted staff,<br /> +Fit to drive the life flying like chaff,<br /> + And leave a sheer carcase anon.</p> +<h3>IX</h3> +<p class="poetry">That done, he sat, panted, and cursed<br /> + The vile cross of this brute: nevermore<br /> +Would he house it to rear such a cur!<br /> +The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir,<br /> + Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door.</p> +<h3><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>X</h3> +<p class="poetry">Then his master raised head too, and +sniffed:<br /> + It struck him the dog had a sense<br /> +That honoured both dam and sire.<br /> +You have guessed how the tower was afire.<br /> + The Shannon retriever dates thence.</p> +<h3>XI</h3> +<p class="poetry">I mused: saw the pup ease his heart<br /> + Of his instinct for chasing, and sink<br /> +Overwrought by excitement so new:<br /> +A scene that for Koby to view<br /> + Was the seizure of nerves in a link.</p> +<h3>XII</h3> +<p class="poetry">And part sympathetic, and part<br /> + Imitatively, raged my poor brute;<br /> +And I, not thinking of ill,<br /> +Doing eviller: nerves are still<br /> + Our savage too quick at the root.</p> +<h3>XIII</h3> +<p class="poetry">They spring us: I proved it, albeit<br /> + I played executioner then<br /> +For discipline, justice, the like.<br /> +Yon stick I had handy to strike<br /> + Should have warned of the tyrant in men.</p> +<h3>XIV</h3> +<p class="poetry">You read in your History books,<br /> + How the Prince in his youth had a mind<br /> +For governing gently his land.<br /> +Ah, the use of that weapon at hand,<br /> + When the temper is other than kind!</p> +<h3><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +30</span>XV</h3> +<p class="poetry">At home all was well; Koby’s ribs<br /> + Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled,<br /> +He forgives me, his criminal air<br /> +Throws a shade of Llewellyn’s despair<br /> + For the hound slain for saving his child.</p> +<h2><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>POEMS +AND LYRICS OF THE JOY OF EARTH</h2> +<h3><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>THE +WOODS OF WESTERMAIN</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Enter</span> these +enchanted woods,<br /> + You who dare.<br /> +Nothing harms beneath the leaves<br /> +More than waves a swimmer cleaves.<br /> +Toss your heart up with the lark,<br /> +Foot at peace with mouse and worm,<br /> + Fair you fare.<br /> +Only at a dread of dark<br /> +Quaver, and they quit their form:<br /> +Thousand eyeballs under hoods<br /> + Have you by the hair.<br /> +Enter these enchanted woods,<br /> + You who dare.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Here the snake across your path<br /> +Stretches in his golden bath:<br /> +Mossy-footed squirrels leap<br /> +Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:<br /> +Yaffles on a chuckle skim<br /> +Low to laugh from branches dim:<br /> +Up the pine, where sits the star,<br /> +Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.<br /> +Each has business of his own;<br /> +But should you distrust a tone,<br /> + Then beware.<br /> +<a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>Shudder +all the haunted roods,<br /> +All the eyeballs under hoods<br /> + Shroud you in their glare.<br /> +Enter these enchanted woods,<br /> + You who dare.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Open hither, open hence,<br /> +Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,<br /> +Where the strawberry runs red,<br /> +With white star-flower overhead;<br /> +Cumbered by dry twig and cone,<br /> +Shredded husks of seedlings flown,<br /> +Mine of mole and spotted flint:<br /> +Of dire wizardry no hint,<br /> +Save mayhap the print that shows<br /> +Hasty outward-tripping toes,<br /> +Heels to terror on the mould.<br /> +These, the woods of Westermain,<br /> +Are as others to behold,<br /> +Rich of wreathing sun and rain;<br /> +Foliage lustreful around<br /> +Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.<br /> +Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,<br /> +Shelter eager minikins,<br /> +Myriads, free to peck and pipe:<br /> +Would you better? would you worse?<br /> +You with them may gather ripe<br /> +Pleasures flowing not from purse.<br /> +Quick and far as Colour flies<br /> +Taking the delighted eyes,<br /> +You of any well that springs<br /> +May unfold the heaven of things;<br /> +Have it homely and within,<br /> +And thereof its likeness win,<br /> +<a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>Will you +so in soul’s desire:<br /> +This do sages grant t’ the lyre.<br /> +This is being bird and more,<br /> +More than glad musician this;<br /> +Granaries you will have a store<br /> +Past the world of woe and bliss;<br /> +Sharing still its bliss and woe;<br /> +Harnessed to its hungers, no.<br /> +On the throne Success usurps,<br /> +You shall seat the joy you feel<br /> +Where a race of water chirps,<br /> +Twisting hues of flourished steel:<br /> +Or where light is caught in hoop<br /> +Up a clearing’s leafy rise,<br /> +Where the crossing deerherds troop<br /> +Classic splendours, knightly dyes.<br /> +Or, where old-eyed oxen chew<br /> +Speculation with the cud,<br /> +Read their pool of vision through,<br /> +Back to hours when mind was mud;<br /> +Nigh the knot, which did untwine<br /> +Timelessly to drowsy suns;<br /> +Seeing Earth a slimy spine,<br /> +Heaven a space for winging tons.<br /> +Farther, deeper, may you read,<br /> +Have you sight for things afield,<br /> +Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,<br /> +Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;<br /> +Showing a kind face and sweet:<br /> +Look you with the soul you see’t.<br /> +Glory narrowing to grace,<br /> +Grace to glory magnified,<br /> +Following that will you embrace<br /> +Close in arms or aëry wide.<br /> +Banished is the white Foam-born<br /> +<a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>Not from +here, nor under ban<br /> +Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe’s horn,<br /> +Pipings of the reedy Pan.<br /> +Loved of Earth of old they were,<br /> +Loving did interpret her;<br /> +And the sterner worship bars<br /> +None whom Song has made her stars.<br /> +You have seen the huntress moon<br /> +Radiantly facing dawn,<br /> +Dusky meads between them strewn<br /> +Glimmering like downy awn:<br /> +Argent Westward glows the hunt,<br /> +East the blush about to climb;<br /> +One another fair they front,<br /> +Transient, yet outshine the time;<br /> +Even as dewlight off the rose<br /> +In the mind a jewel sows.<br /> +Thus opposing grandeurs live<br /> +Here if Beauty be their dower:<br /> +Doth she of her spirit give,<br /> +Fleetingness will spare her flower.<br /> +This is in the tune we play,<br /> +Which no spring of strength would quell;<br /> +In subduing does not slay;<br /> +Guides the channel, guards the well:<br /> +Tempered holds the young blood-heat,<br /> +Yet through measured grave accord,<br /> +Hears the heart of wildness beat<br /> +Like a centaur’s hoof on sward.<br /> +Drink the sense the notes infuse,<br /> +You a larger self will find:<br /> +Sweetest fellowship ensues<br /> +With the creatures of your kind.<br /> +Ay, and Love, if Love it be<br /> +Flaming over <i>I</i> and <i>ME</i>,<br /> +<a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>Love meet +they who do not shove<br /> +Cravings in the van of Love.<br /> +Courtly dames are here to woo,<br /> +Knowing love if it be true.<br /> +Reverence the blossom-shoot<br /> +Fervently, they are the fruit.<br /> +Mark them stepping, hear them talk,<br /> +Goddess, is no myth inane,<br /> +You will say of those who walk<br /> +In the woods of Westermain.<br /> +Waters that from throat and thigh<br /> +Dart the sun his arrows back;<br /> +Leaves that on a woodland sigh<br /> +Chat of secret things no lack;<br /> +Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,<br /> +Bare or veiled they move sincere;<br /> +Not by slavish terrors tripped<br /> +Being anew in nature dipped,<br /> +Growths of what they step on, these;<br /> +With the roots the grace of trees.<br /> +Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,<br /> +For a tyrant’s flattered pride,<br /> +Mind, which nourished not by light,<br /> +Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:<br /> +Whereof are strange tales to tell;<br /> +Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.<br /> +Here the ancient battle ends,<br /> +Joining two astonished friends,<br /> +Who the kiss can give and take<br /> +With more warmth than in that world<br /> +Where the tiger claws the snake,<br /> +Snake her tiger clasps infurled,<br /> +And the issue of their fight<br /> +People lands in snarling plight.<br /> +Here her splendid beast she leads<br /> +<a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>Silken-leashed and decked with weeds<br /> +Wild as he, but breathing faint<br /> +Sweetness of unfelt constraint.<br /> +Love, the great volcano, flings<br /> +Fires of lower Earth to sky;<br /> +Love, the sole permitted, sings<br /> +Sovereignly of <i>ME</i> and <i>I</i>.<br /> +Bowers he has of sacred shade,<br /> +Spaces of superb parade,<br /> +Voiceful . . . But bring you a note<br /> +Wrangling, howsoe’er remote,<br /> +Discords out of discord spin<br /> +Round and round derisive din:<br /> +Sudden will a pallor pant<br /> +Chill at screeches miscreant;<br /> +Owls or spectres, thick they flee;<br /> +Nightmare upon horror broods;<br /> +Hooded laughter, monkish glee,<br /> + Gaps the vital air.<br /> +Enter these enchanted woods<br /> + You who dare.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">You must love the light so well<br /> +That no darkness will seem fell.<br /> +Love it so you could accost<br /> +Fellowly a livid ghost.<br /> +Whish! the phantom wisps away,<br /> +Owns him smoke to cocks of day.<br /> +In your breast the light must burn<br /> +Fed of you, like corn in quern<br /> +Ever plumping while the wheel<br /> +Speeds the mill and drains the meal.<br /> +<a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>Light to +light sees little strange,<br /> +Only features heavenly new;<br /> +Then you touch the nerve of Change,<br /> +Then of Earth you have the clue;<br /> +Then her two-sexed meanings melt<br /> +Through you, wed the thought and felt.<br /> +Sameness locks no scurfy pond<br /> +Here for Custom, crazy-fond:<br /> +Change is on the wing to bud<br /> +Rose in brain from rose in blood.<br /> +Wisdom throbbing shall you see<br /> +Central in complexity;<br /> +From her pasture ’mid the beasts<br /> +Rise to her ethereal feasts,<br /> +Not, though lightnings track your wit<br /> +Starward, scorning them you quit:<br /> +For be sure the bravest wing<br /> +Preens it in our common spring,<br /> +Thence along the vault to soar,<br /> +You with others, gathering more,<br /> +Glad of more, till you reject<br /> +Your proud title of elect,<br /> +Perilous even here while few<br /> +Roam the arched greenwood with you.<br /> + Heed that snare.<br /> +Muffled by his cavern-cowl<br /> +Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,<br /> +Who was lord ere light you drank,<br /> +And lest blood of knightly rank<br /> +Stream, let not your fair princess<br /> +Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,<br /> + Watches keenly there.<br /> +Oft has he been riven; slain<br /> +Is no force in Westermain.<br /> +Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,<br /> +<a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>Put his +fangs to uses, tame,<br /> +Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,<br /> +How to cure him sick and lame.<br /> +Much restricted, much enringed,<br /> +Much he frets, the hooked and winged,<br /> + Never known to spare.<br /> +’Tis enough: the name of Sage<br /> +Hits no thing in nature, nought;<br /> +Man the least, save when grave Age<br /> +From yon Dragon guards his thought.<br /> +Eye him when you hearken dumb<br /> +To what words from Wisdom come.<br /> +When she says how few are by<br /> +Listening to her, eye his eye.<br /> + Self, his name declare.<br /> +Him shall Change, transforming late,<br /> +Wonderously renovate.<br /> +Hug himself the creature may:<br /> +What he hugs is loathed decay.<br /> +Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!<br /> +Change will strip his armour off;<br /> +Make of him who was all maw,<br /> +Inly only thrilling-shrewd,<br /> +Such a servant as none saw<br /> +Through his days of dragonhood.<br /> +Days when growling o’er his bone,<br /> +Sharpened he for mine and thine;<br /> +Sensitive within alone;<br /> +Scaly as the bark of pine.<br /> +Change, the strongest son of Life,<br /> +Has the Spirit here to wife.<br /> +Lo, their young of vivid breed,<br /> +Bear the lights that onward speed,<br /> +Threading thickets, mounting glades,<br /> +Up the verdurous colonnades,<br /> +<a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>Round the +fluttered curves, and down,<br /> +Out of sight of Earth’s blue crown,<br /> +Whither, in her central space,<br /> +Spouts the Fount and Lure o’ the chase.<br /> +Fount unresting, Lure divine!<br /> +There meet all: too late look most.<br /> +Fire in water hued as wine,<br /> +Springs amid a shadowy host,<br /> +Circled: one close-headed mob,<br /> +Breathless, scanning divers heaps,<br /> +Where a Heart begins to throb,<br /> +Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.<br /> +And ’tis very strange, ’tis said,<br /> +How you spy in each of them<br /> +Semblance of that Dragon red,<br /> +As the oak in bracken-stem.<br /> +And, ’tis said, how each and each:<br /> +Which commences, which subsides:<br /> +First my Dragon! doth beseech<br /> +Her who food for all provides.<br /> +And she answers with no sign;<br /> +Utters neither yea nor nay;<br /> +Fires the water hued as wine;<br /> +Kneads another spark in clay.<br /> +Terror is about her hid;<br /> +Silence of the thunders locked;<br /> +Lightnings lining the shut lid;<br /> +Fixity on quaking rocked.<br /> +Lo, you look at Flow and Drought<br /> +Interflashed and interwrought:<br /> +Ended is begun, begun<br /> +Ended, quick as torrents run.<br /> +Young Impulsion spouts to sink;<br /> +Luridness and lustre link;<br /> +’Tis your come and go of breath;<br /> +<a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>Mirrored +pants the Life, the Death;<br /> +Each of either reaped and sown:<br /> +Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.<br /> +See you so? your senses drift;<br /> +’Tis a shuttle weaving swift.<br /> +Look with spirit past the sense,<br /> +Spirit shines in permanence.<br /> +That is She, the view of whom<br /> +Is the dust within the tomb,<br /> +Is the inner blush above,<br /> +Look to loathe, or look to love;<br /> +Think her Lump, or know her Flame;<br /> +Dread her scourge, or read her aim;<br /> +Shoot your hungers from their nerve;<br /> +Or, in her example, serve.<br /> +Some have found her sitting grave;<br /> +Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,<br /> +Hurling dust of fool and knave<br /> +In a hissing smithy’s jet.<br /> +More it were not well to speak;<br /> +Burn to see, you need but seek.<br /> +Once beheld she gives the key<br /> +Airing every doorway, she.<br /> +Little can you stop or steer<br /> +Ere of her you are the seër.<br /> +On the surface she will witch,<br /> +Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze<br /> +Under, and the soul is rich<br /> +Past computing, past amaze.<br /> +Then is courage that endures<br /> +Even her awful tremble yours.<br /> +Then, the reflex of that Fount<br /> +Spied below, will Reason mount<br /> +Lordly and a quenchless force,<br /> +Lighting Pain to its mad source,<br /> +<a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>Scaring +Fear till Fear escapes,<br /> +Shot through all its phantom shapes.<br /> +Then your spirit will perceive<br /> +Fleshly seed of fleshly sins;<br /> +Where the passions interweave,<br /> +How the serpent tangle spins<br /> +Of the sense of Earth misprised,<br /> +Brainlessly unrecognized;<br /> +She being Spirit in her clods,<br /> +Footway to the God of Gods.<br /> +Then for you are pleasures pure,<br /> +Sureties as the stars are sure:<br /> +Not the wanton beckoning flags<br /> +Which, of flattery and delight,<br /> +Wax to the grim Habit-Hags<br /> +Riding souls of men to night:<br /> +Pleasures that through blood run sane,<br /> +Quickening spirit from the brain.<br /> +Each of each in sequent birth,<br /> +Blood and brain and spirit, three,<br /> +(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),<br /> +Join for true felicity.<br /> +Are they parted, then expect<br /> +Some one sailing will be wrecked:<br /> +Separate hunting are they sped,<br /> +Scan the morsel coveted.<br /> +Earth that Triad is: she hides<br /> +Joy from him who that divides;<br /> +Showers it when the three are one<br /> +Glassing her in union.<br /> +Earth your haven, Earth your helm,<br /> +You command a double realm;<br /> +Labouring here to pay your debt,<br /> +Till your little sun shall set;<br /> +Leaving her the future task:<br /> +<a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>Loving her +too well to ask.<br /> +Eglantine that climbs the yew,<br /> +She her darkest wreathes for those<br /> +Knowing her the Ever-new,<br /> +And themselves the kin o’ the rose.<br /> +Life, the chisel, axe and sword,<br /> +Wield who have her depths explored:<br /> +Life, the dream, shall be their robe<br /> +Large as air about the globe;<br /> +Life, the question, hear its cry<br /> +Echoed with concordant Why;<br /> +Life, the small self-dragon ramped,<br /> +Thrill for service to be stamped.<br /> +Ay, and over every height<br /> +Life for them shall wave a wand:<br /> +That, the last, where sits affright,<br /> +Homely shows the stream beyond.<br /> +Love the light and be its lynx,<br /> +You will track her and attain;<br /> +Read her as no cruel Sphinx<br /> +In the woods of Westermain,<br /> +Daily fresh the woods are ranged;<br /> +Glooms which otherwhere appal,<br /> +Sounded: here, their worths exchanged<br /> +Urban joins with pastoral:<br /> +Little lost, save what may drop<br /> +Husk-like, and the mind preserves.<br /> +Natural overgrowths they lop,<br /> +Yet from nature neither swerves,<br /> +Trained or savage: for this cause:<br /> +Of our Earth they ply the laws,<br /> +Have in Earth their feeding root,<br /> +Mind of man and bent of brute.<br /> +Hear that song; both wild and ruled.<br /> +Hear it: is it wail or mirth?<br /> +<a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>Ordered, +bubbled, quite unschooled?<br /> +None, and all: it springs of Earth.<br /> +O but hear it! ’tis the mind;<br /> +Mind that with deep Earth unites,<br /> +Round the solid trunk to wind<br /> +Rings of clasping parasites.<br /> +Music have you there to feed<br /> +Simplest and most soaring need.<br /> +Free to wind, and in desire<br /> +Winding, they to her attached<br /> +Feel the trunk a spring of fire,<br /> +And ascend to heights unmatched,<br /> +Whence the tidal world is viewed<br /> +As a sea of windy wheat,<br /> +Momently black, barren, rude;<br /> +Golden-brown, for harvest meet,<br /> +Dragon-reaped from folly-sown;<br /> +Bride-like to the sickle-blade:<br /> +Quick it varies, while the moan,<br /> +Moan of a sad creature strayed,<br /> +Chiefly is its voice. So flesh<br /> +Conjures tempest-flails to thresh<br /> +Good from worthless. Some clear lamps<br /> +Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.<br /> +Monster is it still, and blind,<br /> +Fit but to be led by Pain.<br /> +Glance we at the paths behind,<br /> +Fruitful sight has Westermain.<br /> +There we laboured, and in turn<br /> +Forward our blown lamps discern,<br /> +As you see on the dark deep<br /> +Far the loftier billows leap,<br /> + Foam for beacon bear.<br /> +Hither, hither, if you will,<br /> +Drink instruction, or instil,<br /> +<a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>Run the +woods like vernal sap,<br /> +Crying, hail to luminousness!<br /> + But have care.<br /> +In yourself may lurk the trap:<br /> +On conditions they caress.<br /> +Here you meet the light invoked<br /> +Here is never secret cloaked.<br /> +Doubt you with the monster’s fry<br /> +All his orbit may exclude;<br /> +Are you of the stiff, the dry,<br /> +Cursing the not understood;<br /> +Grasp you with the monster’s claws;<br /> +Govern with his truncheon-saws;<br /> +Hate, the shadow of a grain;<br /> +You are lost in Westermain:<br /> +Earthward swoops a vulture sun,<br /> +Nighted upon carrion:<br /> +Straightway venom wine-cups shout<br /> +Toasts to One whose eyes are out:<br /> +Flowers along the reeling floor<br /> +Drip henbane and hellebore:<br /> +Beauty, of her tresses shorn,<br /> +Shrieks as nature’s maniac:<br /> +Hideousness on hoof and horn<br /> +Tumbles, yapping in her track:<br /> +Haggard Wisdom, stately once,<br /> +Leers fantastical and trips:<br /> +Allegory drums the sconce,<br /> +Impiousness nibblenips.<br /> +Imp that dances, imp that flits,<br /> +Imp o’ the demon-growing girl,<br /> +Maddest! whirl with imp o’ the pits<br /> +Round you, and with them you whirl<br /> +Fast where pours the fountain-rout<br /> +Out of Him whose eyes are out:<br /> +<a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>Multitudes +on multitudes,<br /> +Drenched in wallowing devilry:<br /> +And you ask where you may be,<br /> + In what reek of a lair<br /> +Given to bones and ogre-broods:<br /> + And they yell you Where.<br /> +Enter these enchanted woods,<br /> + You who dare.</p> +<h3><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>A +BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Last</span> night returning +from my twilight walk<br /> +I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow<br /> +Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk<br /> +He reached me flowers as from a withered bough:<br /> +O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Death said, I gather, and pursued his way.<br +/> +Another stood by me, a shape in stone,<br /> +Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay,<br /> +And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone:<br /> +O Life, how naked and how hard when known!</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am +I.<br /> +Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine,<br /> +And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky,<br /> +Joined notes of Death and Life till night’s decline<br /> +Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine.</p> +<h3><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>THE +DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> who has looked +upon Earth<br /> +Deeper than flower and fruit,<br /> +Losing some hue of his mirth,<br /> +As the tree striking rock at the root,<br /> +Unto him shall the marvellous tale<br /> +Of Callistes more humanly come<br /> +With the touch on his breast than a hail<br /> +From the markets that hum.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now the youth footed swift to the dawn.<br /> +’Twas the season when wintertide,<br /> +In the higher rock-hollows updrawn,<br /> +Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied,<br /> +By light throwing shallow shade,<br /> +Between the beam and the gloom,<br /> +Sicilian Enna, whose Maid<br /> +Such aspect wears in her bloom<br /> +Underneath since the Charioteer<br /> +Of Darkness whirled her away,<br /> +On a reaped afternoon of the year,<br /> +Nigh the poppy-droop of Day.<br /> +O and naked of her, all dust,<br /> +The majestic Mother and Nurse,<br /> +Ringing cries to the God, the Just,<br /> +Curled the land with the blight of her curse:<br /> +Recollected of this glad isle<br /> +<a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>Still +quaking. But now more fair,<br /> +And momently fraying the while<br /> +The veil of the shadows there,<br /> +Soft Enna that prostrate grief<br /> +Sang through, and revealed round the vines,<br /> +Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf,<br /> +The wheat-blades tripping in lines,<br /> +A hue unillumined by sun<br /> +Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts:<br /> +All the penetrable dun<br /> + Of the morn ere she mounts.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Nor had saffron and sapphire and red<br /> +Waved aloft to their sisters below,<br /> +When gaped by the rock-channel head<br /> +Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow,<br /> +Reverberant over the plain:<br /> +A sound oft fearfully swung<br /> +For the coming of wrathful rain:<br /> +And forth, like the dragon-tongue<br /> +Of a fire beaten flat by the gale,<br /> +But more as the smoke to behold,<br /> +A chariot burst. Then a wail<br /> +Quivered high of the love that would fold<br /> +Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart,<br /> +Though a God’s: and the wheels were stayed,<br /> +And the team of the chariot swart<br /> +Reared in marble, the six, dismayed,<br /> +Like hoofs that by night plashing sea<br /> +Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave:<br /> +For, lo, the Great Mother, She!<br /> +And Callistes gazed, he gave<br /> +His eyeballs up to the sight:<br /> +The embrace of the Twain, of whom<br /> +<a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>To men are +their day, their night,<br /> +Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb:<br /> +Our Lady of the Sheaves<br /> +And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet<br /> +Of Enna: he saw through leaves<br /> +The Mother and Daughter meet.<br /> +They stood by the chariot-wheel,<br /> +Embraced, very tall, most like<br /> +Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel<br /> +Down their shivering columns and strike<br /> +Head to head, crossing throats: and apart,<br /> +For the feast of the look, they drew,<br /> +Which Darkness no longer could thwart;<br /> +And they broke together anew,<br /> +Exulting to tears, flower and bud.<br /> +But the mate of the Rayless was grave:<br /> +She smiled like Sleep on its flood,<br /> +That washes of all we crave:<br /> +Like the trance of eyes awake<br /> +And the spirit enshrouded, she cast<br /> +The wan underworld on the lake.<br /> + They were so, and they passed.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">He tells it, who knew the law<br /> +Upon mortals: he stood alive<br /> +Declaring that this he saw:<br /> + He could see, and survive.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now the youth was not ware of the beams<br /> +With the grasses intertwined,<br /> +For each thing seen, as in dreams,<br /> +Came stepping to rear through his mind,<br /> +Till it struck his remembered prayer<br /> +<a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>To be +witness of this which had flown<br /> +Like a smoke melted thinner than air,<br /> +That the vacancy doth disown.<br /> +And viewing a maiden, he thought<br /> +It might now be morn, and afar<br /> +Within him the memory wrought<br /> +Of a something that slipped from the car<br /> +When those, the august, moved by:<br /> +Perchance a scarf, and perchance<br /> +This maiden. She did not fly,<br /> +Nor started at his advance:<br /> +She looked, as when infinite thirst<br /> +Pants pausing to bless the springs,<br /> +Refreshed, unsated. Then first<br /> +He trembled with awe of the things<br /> +He had seen; and he did transfer,<br /> +Divining and doubting in turn,<br /> +His reverence unto her;<br /> +Nor asked what he crouched to learn:<br /> +The whence of her, whither, and why<br /> +Her presence there, and her name,<br /> +Her parentage: under which sky<br /> +Her birth, and how hither she came,<br /> +So young, a virgin, alone,<br /> +Unfriended, having no fear,<br /> +As Oreads have; no moan,<br /> +Like the lost upon earth; no tear;<br /> +Not a sign of the torch in the blood,<br /> +Though her stature had reached the height<br /> +When mantles a tender rud<br /> +In maids that of youths have sight,<br /> +If maids of our seed they be:<br /> +For he said: A glad vision art thou!<br /> +And she answered him: Thou to me!<br /> + As men utter a vow.</p> +<h4><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +53</span>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then said she, quick as the cries<br /> +Of the rainy cranes: Light! light!<br /> +And Helios rose in her eyes,<br /> +That were full as the dew-balls bright,<br /> +Relucent to him as dews<br /> +Unshaded. Breathing, she sent<br /> +Her voice to the God of the Muse,<br /> +And along the vale it went,<br /> +Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill:<br /> +Sweet, but no young maid’s throat:<br /> +The echo beyond the hill<br /> +Ran falling on half the note:<br /> +And under the shaken ground<br /> +Where the Hundred-headed groans<br /> +By the roots of great Aetna bound,<br /> +As of him were hollow tones<br /> +Of wondering roared: a tale<br /> +Repeated to sunless halls.<br /> +But now off the face of the vale<br /> +Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls<br /> +Of the lake’s rock-head were gold,<br /> +And the breast of the lake, that swell<br /> +Of the crestless long wave rolled<br /> +To shore-bubble, pebble and shell.<br /> +A morning of radiant lids<br /> +O’er the dance of the earth opened wide:<br /> +The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids<br /> +Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied,<br /> +Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled:<br /> +There was milk, honey, music to make:<br /> +Up their branches the little birds billed:<br /> +Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.<br /> +O shining in sunlight, chief<br /> +After water and water’s caress,<br /> +<a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>Was the +young bronze-orange leaf,<br /> +That clung to the tree as a tress,<br /> +Shooting lucid tendrils to wed<br /> +With the vine-hook tree or pole,<br /> +Like Arachne launched out on her thread.<br /> +Then the maiden her dusky stole<br /> +In the span of the black-starred zone,<br /> +Gathered up for her footing fleet.<br /> +As one that had toil of her own<br /> +She followed the lines of wheat<br /> +Tripping straight through the fields, green blades,<br /> +To the groves of olive grey,<br /> +Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades<br /> +Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray<br /> +In a night, like the snow-packed storm:<br /> +Pear, apple, almond, plum:<br /> +Not wintry now: pushing, warm!<br /> +And she touched them with finger and thumb,<br /> +As the vine-hook closes: she smiled,<br /> +Recounting again and again,<br /> +Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child,<br /> +With the meaning known to men.<br /> +For hours in the track of the plough<br /> +And the pruning-knife she stepped,<br /> +And of how the seed works, and of how<br /> +Yields the soil, she seemed adept.<br /> +Then she murmured that name of the dearth,<br /> +The Beneficent, Hers, who bade<br /> +Our husbandmen sow for the birth<br /> +Of the grain making earth full glad.<br /> +She murmured that Other’s: the dirge<br /> +Of life-light: for whose dark lap<br /> +Our locks are clipped on the verge<br /> +Of the realm where runs no sap.<br /> +She said: We have looked on both!<br /> +<a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>And her +eyes had a wavering beam<br /> +Of various lights, like the froth<br /> +Of the storm-swollen ravine stream<br /> +In flame of the bolt. What links<br /> +Were these which had made him her friend?<br /> +He eyed her, as one who drinks,<br /> + And would drink to the end.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now the meadows with crocus besprent,<br /> +And the asphodel woodsides she left,<br /> +And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent<br /> +Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft<br /> +That tutors the torrent-brook,<br /> +Delaying its forceful spleen<br /> +With many a wind and crook<br /> +Through rock to the broad ravine.<br /> +By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes,<br /> +And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid,<br /> +And the sun-loving lizards and snakes<br /> +On the cleft’s barren ledges, that slid<br /> +Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all,<br /> +At a snap of twig or bark<br /> +In the track of the foreign foot-fall,<br /> +She climbed to the pineforest dark,<br /> +Overbrowing an emerald chine<br /> +Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath,<br /> +Running poplar and cypress to pine,<br /> +The lake-banks are seen, and beneath,<br /> +Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms,<br /> +The citadel watching the bay,<br /> +The bay with the town in its arms,<br /> +The town shining white as the spray<br /> +Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock,<br /> +Where the rock stars the girdle of sea,<br /> +<a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>White-ringed, as the midday flock,<br /> +Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree.<br /> +That hour of the piercing shaft<br /> +Transfixes bough-shadows, confused<br /> +In veins of fire, and she laughed,<br /> +With her quiet mouth amused<br /> +To see the whole flock, adroop,<br /> +Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one,<br /> +Imperceptibly filling the loop<br /> +Of its shade at a slant of sun.<br /> +The pipes under pent of the crag,<br /> +Where the goatherds in piping recline,<br /> +Have whimsical stops, burst and flag<br /> +Uncorrected as outstretched swine:<br /> +For the fingers are slack and unsure,<br /> +And the wind issues querulous:—thorns<br /> +And snakes!—but she listened demure,<br /> +Comparing day’s music with morn’s.<br /> +Of the gentle spirit that slips<br /> +From the bark of the tree she discoursed,<br /> +And of her of the wells, whose lips<br /> +Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced.<br /> +And much of the sacred loon,<br /> +The frolic, the Goatfoot God,<br /> +For stories of indolent noon<br /> +In the pineforest’s odorous nod,<br /> +She questioned, not knowing: he can<br /> +Be waspish, irascible, rude,<br /> +He is oftener friendly to man,<br /> +And ever to beasts and their brood.<br /> +For the which did she love him well,<br /> +She said, and his pipes of the reed,<br /> +His twitched lips puffing to tell<br /> +In music his tears and his need,<br /> +Against the sharp catch of his hurt.<br /> +<a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>Not as +shepherds of Pan did she speak,<br /> +Nor spake as the schools, to divert,<br /> +But fondly, perceiving him weak<br /> +Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear,<br /> +A holiness, horn and heel.<br /> +All this she had learnt in her ear<br /> +From Callistes, and taught him to feel.<br /> +Yea, the solemn divinity flushed<br /> +Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast,<br /> +And the steeps where the cataract rushed,<br /> +And the wilds where the forest is priest,<br /> +Were his temple to clothe him in awe,<br /> +While she spake: ’twas a wonder: she read<br /> +The haunts of the beak and the claw<br /> +As plain as the land of bread,<br /> +But Cities and martial States,<br /> +Whither soon the youth veered his theme,<br /> +Were impervious barrier-gates<br /> +To her: and that ship, a trireme,<br /> +Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance,<br /> +Though he dwelt on the message it bore<br /> +Of sceptre and sword and lance<br /> +To the bee-swarms black on the shore,<br /> +Which were audible almost,<br /> +So black they were. It befel<br /> +That he called up the warrior host<br /> +Of the Song pouring hydromel<br /> +In thunder, the wide-winged Song.<br /> +And he named with his boyish pride<br /> +The heroes, the noble throng<br /> +Past Acheron now, foul tide!<br /> +With his joy of the godlike band<br /> +And the verse divine, he named<br /> +The chiefs pressing hot on the strand,<br /> +Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed.<br /> +<a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>The +fleetfoot and ireful; the King;<br /> +Him, the prompter in stratagem,<br /> +Many-shifted and masterful: Sing,<br /> +O Muse! But she cried: Not of them<br /> +She breathed as if breath had failed,<br /> +And her eyes, while she bade him desist,<br /> +Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed,<br /> +As you see the grey river-mist<br /> +Hold shapes on the yonder bank.<br /> +A moment her body waned,<br /> +The light of her sprang and sank:<br /> +Then she looked at the sun, she regained<br /> +Clear feature, and she breathed deep.<br /> +She wore the wan smile he had seen,<br /> +As the flow of the river of Sleep,<br /> +On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen.<br /> +In sunlight she craved to bask,<br /> +Saying: Life! And who was she? who?<br /> +Of what issue? He dared not ask,<br /> + For that partly he knew.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">A noise of the hollow ground<br /> +Turned the eye to the ear in debate:<br /> +Not the soft overflowing of sound<br /> +Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight,<br /> +Barely swayed to some whispers remote,<br /> +Some swarming whispers above:<br /> +Not the pines with the faint airs afloat,<br /> +Hush-hushing the nested dove:<br /> +It was not the pines, or the rout<br /> +Oft heard from mid-forest in chase,<br /> +But the long muffled roar of a shout<br /> +Subterranean. Sharp grew her face.<br /> +She rose, yet not moved by affright;<br /> +<a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +59</span>’Twas rather good haste to use<br /> +Her holiday of delight<br /> +In the beams of the God of the Muse.<br /> +And the steeps of the forest she crossed,<br /> +On its dry red sheddings and cones<br /> +Up the paths by roots green-mossed,<br /> +Spotted amber, and old mossed stones.<br /> +Then out where the brook-torrent starts<br /> +To her leap, and from bend to curve<br /> +A hurrying elbow darts<br /> +For the instant-glancing swerve,<br /> +Decisive, with violent will<br /> +In the action formed, like hers,<br /> +The maiden’s, ascending; and still<br /> +Ascending, the bud of the furze,<br /> +The broom, and all blue-berried shoots<br /> +Of stubborn and prickly kind,<br /> +The juniper flat on its roots,<br /> +The dwarf rhododaphne, behind<br /> +She left, and the mountain sheep<br /> +Far behind, goat, herbage and flower.<br /> +The island was hers, and the deep,<br /> +All heaven, a golden hour.<br /> +Then with wonderful voice, that rang<br /> +Through air as the swan’s nigh death,<br /> +Of the glory of Light she sang,<br /> +She sang of the rapture of Breath.<br /> +Nor ever, says he who heard,<br /> +Heard Earth in her boundaries broad,<br /> +From bosom of singer or bird<br /> +A sweetness thus rich of the God<br /> +Whose harmonies always are sane.<br /> +She sang of furrow and seed,<br /> +The burial, birth of the grain,<br /> +The growth, and the showers that feed,<br /> +<a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>And the +green blades waxing mature<br /> +For the husbandman’s armful brown.<br /> +O, the song in its burden ran pure,<br /> +And burden to song was a crown.<br /> +Callistes, a singer, skilled<br /> +In the gift he could measure and praise,<br /> +By a rival’s art was thrilled,<br /> +Though she sang but a Song of Days,<br /> +Where the husbandman’s toil and strife<br /> +Little varies to strife and toil:<br /> +But the milky kernel of life,<br /> +With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil<br /> +The song did give him to eat:<br /> +Gave the first rapt vision of Good,<br /> +And the fresh young sense of Sweet<br /> +The grace of the battle for food,<br /> +With the issue Earth cannot refuse<br /> +When men to their labour are sworn.<br /> +’Twas a song of the God of the Muse<br /> + To the forehead of Morn.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:<br +/> +Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:<br /> +The fishing-boat heavenward sailed,<br /> +Bent abeam, with a whitened track,<br /> +Surprised, fast hauling the net,<br /> +As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.<br /> +She said: Is it night? O not yet!<br /> +With a travail of thoughts in her look.<br /> +The mountain heaved up to its peak:<br /> +Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl;<br /> +Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.<br /> +Night? but never so fell a scowl<br /> +Wore night, nor the sky since then<br /> +<a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>When ocean +ran swallowing shore,<br /> +And the Gods looked down for men.<br /> +Broke tempest with that stern roar<br /> +Never yet, save when black on the whirl<br /> +Rode wrath of a sovereign Power.<br /> +Then the youth and the shuddering girl,<br /> +Dim as shades in the angry shower,<br /> +Joined hands and descended a maze<br /> +Of the paths that were racing alive<br /> +Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways,<br /> +Incessant, with sound of a hive.<br /> +The height was a fountain-urn<br /> +Pouring streams, and the whole solid height<br /> +Leaped, chasing at every turn<br /> +The pair in one spirit of flight<br /> +To the folding pineforest. Yet here,<br /> +Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt,<br /> +The stillness bred spectral fear<br /> +Of the awfulness ranging without,<br /> +And imminent. Downward they fled,<br /> +From under the haunted roof,<br /> +To the valley aquake with the tread<br /> +Of an iron-resounding hoof,<br /> +As of legions of thunderful horse<br /> +Broken loose and in line tramping hard.<br /> +For the rage of a hungry force<br /> +Roamed blind of its mark over sward:<br /> +They saw it rush dense in the cloak<br /> +Of its travelling swathe of steam;<br /> +All the vale through a thin thread-smoke<br /> +Was thrown back to distance extreme:<br /> +And dull the full breast of it blinked,<br /> +Like a buckler of steel breathed o’er,<br /> +Diminished, in strangeness distinct,<br /> +Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar:<br /> +<a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>An Enna of +fields beyond sun,<br /> +Out of light, in a lurid web;<br /> +And the traversing fury spun<br /> +Up and down with a wave’s flow and ebb;<br /> +As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn,<br /> +Retire, and in ravenous greed,<br /> +Inveterate, swell its return.<br /> +Up and down, as if wringing from speed<br /> +Sights that made the unsighted appear,<br /> +Delude and dissolve, on it scoured.<br /> +Lo, a sea upon land held career<br /> +Through the plain of the vale half-devoured.<br /> +Callistes of home and escape<br /> +Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech.<br /> +She gazed at the Void of shape,<br /> +She put her white hand to his reach,<br /> +Saying: Now have we looked on the Three.<br /> +And divided from day, from night,<br /> +From air that is breath, stood she,<br /> + Like the vale, out of light.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then again in disorderly words<br /> +He muttered of home, and was mute,<br /> +With the heart of the cowering birds<br /> +Ere they burst off the fowler’s foot.<br /> +He gave her some redness that streamed<br /> +Through her limbs in a flitting glow.<br /> +The sigh of our life she seemed,<br /> +The bliss of it clothing in woe.<br /> +Frailer than flower when the round<br /> +Of the sickle encircles it: strong<br /> +To tell of the things profound,<br /> +Our inmost uttering song,<br /> +Unspoken. So stood she awhile<br /> +<a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>In the +gloom of the terror afield,<br /> +And the silence about her smile<br /> +Said more than of tongue is revealed.<br /> +I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been:<br /> +It said: and not joylessly shone<br /> +The remembrance of light through the screen<br /> +Of a face that seemed shadow and stone.<br /> +She led the youth trembling, appalled,<br /> +To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise<br /> +Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called,<br /> +And the hurricane blackness had eyes.<br /> +It launched like the Thunderer’s bolt.<br /> +Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side<br /> +Would have clasped her and dared a revolt<br /> +Sacrilegious as ever defied<br /> +High Olympus, but vainly for strength<br /> +His compassionate heart shook a frame<br /> +Stricken rigid to ice all its length.<br /> +On amain the black traveller came.<br /> +Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm,<br /> +Clove the fountaining lake with a plough,<br /> +And the lord of the steeds was in form<br /> +He, the God of implacable brow,<br /> +Darkness: he: he in person: he raged<br /> +Through the wave like a boar of the wilds<br /> +From the hunters and hounds disengaged,<br /> +And a name shouted hoarsely: his child’s.<br /> +Horror melted in anguish to hear.<br /> +Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path<br /> +Of the terrible Charioteer,<br /> +With the foam and torn features of wrath,<br /> +Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet;<br /> +And the steeds clove it, rushing at land<br /> +Like the teeth of the famished at meat.<br /> + Then he swept out his hand.</p> +<h4><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">This, no more, doth Callistes recall:<br /> +He saw, ere he dropped in swoon,<br /> +On the maiden the chariot fall,<br /> +As a thundercloud swings on the moon.<br /> +Forth, free of the deluge, one cry<br /> +From the vanishing gallop rose clear:<br /> +And: Skiágeneia! the sky<br /> +Rang; Skiágeneia! the sphere.<br /> +And she left him therewith, to rejoice,<br /> +Repine, yearn, and know not his aim,<br /> +The life of their day in her voice,<br /> + Left her life in her name.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now the valley in ruin of fields<br /> +And fair meadowland, showing at eve<br /> +Like the spear-pitted warrior’s shields<br /> +After battle, bade men believe<br /> +That no other than wrathfullest God<br /> +Had been loose on her beautiful breast,<br /> +Where the flowery grass was clod,<br /> +Wheat and vine as a trailing nest.<br /> +The valley, discreet in grief,<br /> +Disclosed but the open truth,<br /> +And Enna had hope of the sheaf:<br /> +There was none for the desolate youth<br /> +Devoted to mourn and to crave.<br /> +Of the secret he had divined<br /> +Of his friend of a day would he rave:<br /> +How for light of our earth she pined:<br /> +For the olive, the vine and the wheat,<br /> +Burning through with inherited fire:<br /> +And when Mother went Mother to meet,<br /> +She was prompted by simple desire<br /> +<a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>In the +day-destined car to have place<br /> +At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen,<br /> +And be drawn to the dear earth’s face.<br /> +She was fire for the blue and the green<br /> +Of our earth, dark fire; athirst<br /> +As a seed of her bosom for dawn,<br /> +White air that had robed and nursed<br /> +Her mother. Now was she gone<br /> +With the Silent, the God without tear,<br /> +Like a bud peeping out of its sheath<br /> +To be sundered and stamped with the sere.<br /> +And Callistes to her beneath,<br /> +As she to our beams, extinct,<br /> +Strained arms: he was shade of her shade.<br /> +In division so were they linked.<br /> +But the song which had betrayed<br /> +Her flight to the cavernous ear<br /> +For its own keenly wakeful: that song<br /> +Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer<br /> +Of the husbandman’s heart made strong<br /> +Through droughts and deluging rains<br /> +With his faith in the Great Mother’s love:<br /> +O the joy of the breath she sustains,<br /> +And the lyre of the light above,<br /> +And the first rapt vision of Good,<br /> +And the fresh young sense of Sweet:<br /> +That song the youth ever pursued<br /> +In the track of her footing fleet.<br /> +For men to be profited much<br /> +By her day upon earth did he sing:<br /> +Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch<br /> +On the blossoms of tender Spring,<br /> +Immortal: and how in her soul<br /> +She is with them, and tearless abides,<br /> +Folding grain of a love for one goal<br /> +<a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>In +patience, past flowing of tides.<br /> +And if unto him she was tears,<br /> +He wept not: he wasted within:<br /> +Seeming sane in the song, to his peers,<br /> +Only crazed where the cravings begin.<br /> +Our Lady of Gifts prized he less<br /> +Than her issue in darkness: the dim<br /> +Lost Skiágencia’s caress<br /> +Of our earth made it richest for him.<br /> +And for that was a curse on him raised,<br /> +And he withered rathe, dry to his prime,<br /> +Though the bounteous Giver be praised<br /> +Through the island with rites of old time<br /> +Exceedingly fervent, and reaped<br /> +Veneration for teachings devout,<br /> +Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped<br /> +And the wine-presses ruddily spout,<br /> +And the olive and apple are juice<br /> +At a touch light as hers lost below.<br /> +Whatsoever to men is of use<br /> +Sprang his worship of them who bestow,<br /> +In a measure of songs unexcelled:<br /> +But that soul loving earth and the sun<br /> +From her home of the shadows he held<br /> +For his beacon where beam there is none:<br /> +And to join her, or have her brought back,<br /> +In his frenzy the singer would call,<br /> +Till he followed where never was track,<br /> +On the path trod of all.</p> +<h3><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>THE +LARK ASCENDING</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">He</span> rises and begins +to round,<br /> +He drops the silver chain of sound,<br /> +Of many links without a break,<br /> +In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake,<br /> +All intervolved and spreading wide,<br /> +Like water-dimples down a tide<br /> +Where ripple ripple overcurls<br /> +And eddy into eddy whirls;<br /> +A press of hurried notes that run<br /> +So fleet they scarce are more than one,<br /> +Yet changeingly the trills repeat<br /> +And linger ringing while they fleet,<br /> +Sweet to the quick o’ the ear, and dear<br /> +To her beyond the handmaid ear,<br /> +Who sits beside our inner springs,<br /> +Too often dry for this he brings,<br /> +Which seems the very jet of earth<br /> +At sight of sun, her music’s mirth,<br /> +As up he wings the spiral stair,<br /> +A song of light, and pierces air<br /> +With fountain ardour, fountain play,<br /> +To reach the shining tops of day,<br /> +And drink in everything discerned<br /> +An ecstasy to music turned,<br /> +Impelled by what his happy bill<br /> +Disperses; drinking, showering still,<br /> +Unthinking save that he may give<br /> +His voice the outlet, there to live<br /> +Renewed in endless notes of glee,<br /> +<a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>So thirsty +of his voice is he,<br /> +For all to hear and all to know<br /> +That he is joy, awake, aglow;<br /> +The tumult of the heart to hear<br /> +Through pureness filtered crystal-clear,<br /> +And know the pleasure sprinkled bright<br /> +By simple singing of delight;<br /> +Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained,<br /> +Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained<br /> +Without a break, without a fall,<br /> +Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical,<br /> +Perennial, quavering up the chord<br /> +Like myriad dews of sunny sward<br /> +That trembling into fulness shine,<br /> +And sparkle dropping argentine;<br /> +Such wooing as the ear receives<br /> +From zephyr caught in choric leaves<br /> +Of aspens when their chattering net<br /> +Is flushed to white with shivers wet;<br /> +And such the water-spirit’s chime<br /> +On mountain heights in morning’s prime,<br /> +Too freshly sweet to seem excess,<br /> +Too animate to need a stress;<br /> +But wider over many heads<br /> +The starry voice ascending spreads,<br /> +Awakening, as it waxes thin,<br /> +The best in us to him akin;<br /> +And every face to watch him raised,<br /> +Puts on the light of children praised;<br /> +So rich our human pleasure ripes<br /> +When sweetness on sincereness pipes,<br /> +Though nought be promised from the seas,<br /> +But only a soft-ruffling breeze<br /> +Sweep glittering on a still content,<br /> +Serenity in ravishment<br /> +<a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>For +singing till his heaven fills,<br /> +’Tis love of earth that he instils,<br /> +And ever winging up and up,<br /> +Our valley is his golden cup,<br /> +And he the wine which overflows<br /> +To lift us with him as he goes:<br /> +The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine,<br /> +He is, the hills, the human line,<br /> +The meadows green, the fallows brown,<br /> +The dreams of labour in the town;<br /> +He sings the sap, the quickened veins;<br /> +The wedding song of sun and rains<br /> +He is, the dance of children, thanks<br /> +Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks,<br /> +And eye of violets while they breathe;<br /> +All these the circling song will wreathe,<br /> +And you shall hear the herb and tree,<br /> +The better heart of men shall see,<br /> +Shall feel celestially, as long<br /> +As you crave nothing save the song.</p> +<p class="poetry">Was never voice of ours could say<br /> +Our inmost in the sweetest way,<br /> +Like yonder voice aloft, and link<br /> +All hearers in the song they drink.<br /> +Our wisdom speaks from failing blood,<br /> +Our passion is too full in flood,<br /> +We want the key of his wild note<br /> +Of truthful in a tuneful throat;<br /> +The song seraphically free<br /> +Of taint of personality,<br /> +So pure that it salutes the suns<br /> +The voice of one for millions,<br /> +In whom the millions rejoice<br /> +For giving their one spirit voice.<br /> +<a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>Yet men +have we, whom we revere,<br /> +Now names, and men still housing here,<br /> +Whose lives, by many a battle-dint<br /> +Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint,<br /> +Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet<br /> +For song our highest heaven to greet:<br /> +Whom heavenly singing gives us new,<br /> +Enspheres them brilliant in our blue,<br /> +From firmest base to farthest leap,<br /> +Because their love of Earth is deep,<br /> +And they are warriors in accord<br /> +With life to serve, and, pass reward,<br /> +So touching purest and so heard<br /> +In the brain’s reflex of yon bird:<br /> +Wherefore their soul in me, or mine,<br /> +Through self-forgetfulness divine,<br /> +In them, that song aloft maintains,<br /> +To fill the sky and thrill the plains<br /> +With showerings drawn from human stores,<br /> +As he to silence nearer soars,<br /> +Extends the world at wings and dome,<br /> +More spacious making more our home,<br /> +Till lost on his aërial rings<br /> +In light, and then the fancy sings.</p> +<h3><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> by Zeus +relenting the mandate was revoked,<br /> + Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,<br /> +Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,<br /> + Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod!<br /> +Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe<br /> + Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide,<br /> +How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere,<br /> + Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide.<br /> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in +ranks:<br /> + Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey:<br +/> +Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks:<br /> + Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay.<br +/> +Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard,<br /> + Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate:<br +/> +Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd,<br /> + Clear of limb a Youth smote the master’s +gate.<br /> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +72</span>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Water, first of singers, o’er rocky mount +and mead,<br /> + First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill,<br /> +Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed,<br /> + Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.<br /> +Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool,<br /> + Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook,<br /> +Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool<br /> + Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand +shook.<br /> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Many swarms of wild bees descended on our +fields:<br /> + Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high:<br +/> +Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields,<br /> + Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry!<br /> +Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins<br /> + Plump, and at the sealing the Youth’s voice +rose:<br /> +Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins;<br /> + Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose.<br +/> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender +shaft:<br /> + Often down the pit spied the lean wolf’s +teeth<br /> +Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft;<br /> + Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe!<br +/> +<a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>Safe the +tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped<br /> + Whirled before the crocus, the year’s new +gold.<br /> +Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead<br /> + Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold.<br +/> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods +above:<br /> + Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed +air!<br /> +Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love<br /> + Ease because the creature was all too fair.<br /> +Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good,<br /> + Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come +fast.<br /> +He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood<br /> + Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped +mast.<br /> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is +known,<br /> + Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame.<br +/> +Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone,<br /> + After he had taught how the sweet sounds came<br /> +<a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>Stretched +about his feet, labour done, ’twas as you see<br /> + Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind.<br /> +So began contention to give delight and be<br /> + Excellent in things aimed to make life kind.<br /> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory +goats,<br /> + You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew!<br /> +Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats!<br /> + Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few!<br +/> +You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays,<br /> + You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent:<br +/> +He has been our fellow, the morning of our days!<br /> + Us he chose for housemates, and this way went.<br /> + God! of whom +music<br /> + And song and +blood are pure,<br /> + The day is never +darkened<br /> + That had thee +here obscure.</p> +<h3><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>MELAMPUS</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">With</span> love exceeding +a simple love of the things<br /> + That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck;<br +/> +Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings<br /> + From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and +peck;<br /> +Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball;<br /> + Or cast their web between bramble and thorny +hook;<br /> +The good physician Melampus, loving them all,<br /> + Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a +book.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">For him the woods were a home and gave him the +key<br /> + Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs +and flowers.<br /> +The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we<br /> + To earth he sought, and the link of their life with +ours:<br /> +And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined<br /> + Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows<br +/> +In them, in us, from the source by man unattained<br /> + Save marks he well what the mystical woods +disclose.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">And this he deemed might be boon of love to a +breast<br /> + Embracing tenderly each little motive shape,<br /> +The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best<br /> + Their wits direct, whither best from their foes +escape.<br /> +For closer drawn to our mother’s natural milk,<br /> + As babes they learn where her motherly help is +great:<br /> +They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk,<br /> + And need they medical antidotes, find them +straight.</p> +<h4><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +76</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish +their broods,<br /> + Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and +pain<br /> +Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods<br /> + Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane<br /> +The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns<br /> + To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life<br /> +Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns<br /> + Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of +strife.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous +fire,<br /> + A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave +regret<br /> +That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire,<br /> + Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and +set<br /> +Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue<br /> + Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears<br +/> +A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung,<br /> + He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no +fears!</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and +the speech<br /> + Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves<br +/> +To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach;<br /> + He feeds his young as do we, and as we love +loves.<br /> +No fears have I of a man who goes with his head<br /> + To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of +hand:<br /> +I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed;<br /> + I pipe him much for his good could he +understand.</p> +<h4><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on +wrist<br /> + He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard.<br +/> +Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist,<br /> + He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking +bird.<br /> +His cushion mosses in shades of various green,<br /> + The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the +sunny snake<br /> +Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene,<br /> + It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods +awake.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly +full,<br /> + As quick well-waters that come of the heart of +earth,<br /> +Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool<br /> + To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of +birth.<br /> +The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream;<br /> + The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew;<br +/> +Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam,<br /> + The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he +knew.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden +with seed<br /> + Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one<br /> +They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed<br /> + For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in +sun,<br /> +Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings,<br /> + Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have +earned:<br /> +He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings,<br /> + The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, +discerned.</p> +<h4><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet,<br /> + By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in +growth<br /> +With brooding deep as the noon-ray’s quickening wheat,<br +/> + Ere touch’d, the pendulous flower of the +plants of sloth,<br /> +The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze,<br /> + Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent,<br +/> +Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease,<br /> + The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the +fates<br /> + We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were +charged<br /> +With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates,<br /> + With music wrought of distraction his heart +enlarged.<br /> +Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute,<br /> + He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or +stilled,<br /> +To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root<br /> + A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and +form<br /> + Of light’s excess, many lessons and counsels +gave,<br /> +Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm,<br /> + And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that +rave,<br /> +And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire,<br /> + And where it stands, in the centre of life a +sphere;<br /> +And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre,<br /> + He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to +hear.</p> +<h4><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sweet, sweet: ’twas glory of vision, +honey, the breeze<br /> + In heat, the run of the river on root and stone,<br +/> +All senses joined, as the sister Pierides<br /> + Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his +own.<br /> +In stately order, evolved of sound into sight,<br /> + From sight to sound intershifting, the man +descried<br /> +The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night,<br /> + Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">And there vitality, there, there solely in +song,<br /> + Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their +needs,<br /> +Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong,<br /> + The Master said: and the studious eye that reads,<br +/> +(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount),<br /> + In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound.<br +/> +Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount<br /> + To spring perennial; well-spring is common +ground.</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Melampus dwelt among men: physician and +sage,<br /> + He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or +maimed,<br /> +Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage<br /> + Outran the measure, his juice of the woods +reclaimed.<br /> +He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings<br /> + Melodious: as the God did he drive and check,<br /> +Through love exceeding a simple love of the things<br /> + That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck.</p> +<h3><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>LOVE +IN THE VALLEY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Under</span> yonder +beech-tree single on the greensward,<br /> + Couched with her arms behind her golden head,<br /> +Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,<br /> + Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.<br /> +Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,<br /> + Press her parting lips as her waist I gather +slow,<br /> +Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:<br /> + Then would she hold me and never let me go?</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the +swallow,<br /> + Swift as the swallow along the river’s +light<br /> +Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets,<br /> + Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight.<br +/> +Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops,<br /> + Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun,<br /> +She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer,<br /> + Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she +won!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">When her mother tends her before the laughing +mirror,<br /> + Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,<br /> +Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,<br /> + More love should I have, and much less care.<br /> +When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,<br /> + Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,<br /> +Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,<br /> + I should miss but one for the many boys and +girls.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows<br /> + Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon.<br /> +No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder:<br /> + Earth to her is young as the slip of the new +moon.<br /> +Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure,<br /> + Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no +less:<br /> +Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with +hailstones<br /> + Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and +bless.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Lovely are the curves of the white owl +sweeping<br /> + Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.<br /> +Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,<br /> + Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown +eve-jar.<br /> +Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting:<br /> + So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.<br +/> +Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,<br /> + Tell it to forget the source that keeps it +filled.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Stepping down the hill with her fair +companions,<br /> + Arm in arm, all against the raying West,<br /> +Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches,<br /> + Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed.<br /> +Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking<br /> + Whispered the world was; morning light is she.<br /> +Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;<br /> + Fain would fling the net, and fain have her +free.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Happy happy time, when the white star hovers<br +/> + Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,<br /> +Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,<br /> + Threading it with colour, like yewberries the +yew.<br /> +<a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>Thicker +crowd the shades as the grave East deepens<br /> + Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.<br /> +Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;<br /> + Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold +sea-shells.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and +lighting<br /> + Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,<br +/> +Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter<br /> + Chill as a dull face frowning on a song.<br /> +Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom<br /> + Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and +ascend<br /> +Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset<br +/> + Rich, deep like love in beauty without end.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to +the window<br /> + Turns grave eyes craving light, released from +dreams,<br /> +Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily<br /> + Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams.<br /> +When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle<br /> + In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May,<br /> +Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily<br /> + Pure from the night, and splendid for the day.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed +twilight,<br /> + Low-lidded twilight, o’er the valley’s +brim,<br /> +Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark,<br /> + Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in +him.<br /> +Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet,<br /> + Fountain-full he pours the spraying +fountain-showers.<br /> +Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever<br /> + Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the +flowers.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>All the girls are out with their baskets for the +primrose;<br /> + Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful +bands.<br /> +My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters,<br /> + Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands.<br /> +Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping,<br /> + Coming the rose: and unaware a cry<br /> +Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour,<br /> + Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her +tulips,<br /> + Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain:<br /> +Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel<br /> + She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds +again.<br /> +Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way:<br /> + She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.<br +/> +So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder,<br /> + Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Prim little scholars are the flowers of her +garden,<br /> + Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they +please.<br /> +I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones.<br /> + O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.<br /> +You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,<br /> + Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as +they,<br /> +They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,<br /> + You are of life’s, on the banks that line the +way.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red +rose,<br /> + Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.<br +/> +Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine<br /> + Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of +me.<br /> +<a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>Sweeter +unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest<br /> + Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine +breathes,<br /> +Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine<br /> + Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the +grass-glades;<br /> + Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:<br /> +Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;<br /> + Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the +sheaf.<br /> +Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;<br /> + Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:<br +/> +Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,<br /> + Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of +mine.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">This I may know: her dressing and undressing<br +/> + Such a change of light shows as when the skies in +sport<br /> +Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder<br /> + Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port<br /> +White sails furl; or on the ocean borders<br /> + White sails lean along the waves leaping green.<br +/> +Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight<br /> + Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Front door and back of the mossed old +farmhouse<br /> + Open with the morn, and in a breezy link<br /> +Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard,<br /> + Green across a rill where on sand the minnows +wink.<br /> +Busy in the grass the early sun of summer<br /> + Swarms, and the blackbird’s mellow fluting +notes<br /> +Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge:<br /> + Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing +throats!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy<br /> + Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from +school,<br /> +Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;<br /> + O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!<br /> +Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher<br /> + Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the +beak.<br /> +Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,<br /> + Said, ‘I will kiss you’: she laughed and +leaned her cheek.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red +roof<br /> + Through the long noon coo, crooning through the +coo.<br /> +Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way<br /> + Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the +blue.<br /> +Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,<br /> + Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.<br /> +Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,<br /> + Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger +sky.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">O the golden sheaf, the rustling +treasure-armful!<br /> + O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!<br /> +O the treasure-tresses one another over<br /> + Nodding! O the girdle slack about the +waist!<br /> +Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet<br /> + Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist,<br +/> +Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness!<br /> + O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Large and smoky red the sun’s cold disk +drops,<br /> + Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:<br /> +Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise,<br /> + Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.<br /> +<a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>Nightlong +on black print-branches our beech-tree<br /> + Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.<br /> +Here may life on death or death on life be painted.<br /> + Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow +chamber<br /> + Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.<br +/> +‘When she was a tiny,’ one aged woman quavers,<br /> + Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.<br /> +Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled:<br /> + Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.<br +/> +Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy<br /> + Earth and air, may have faults from head to +feet.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Hither she comes; she comes to me; she +lingers,<br /> + Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise<br +/> +High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;<br /> + Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.<br /> +Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming,<br +/> + Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and +tames.—<br /> +Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,<br /> + Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our +names.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Soon will she lie like a white-frost +sunrise.<br /> + Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye,<br +/> +Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,<br /> + Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly.<br +/> +Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.<br /> + Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring!<br /> +Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants,<br /> + Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +87</span>Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April<br /> + Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you<br +/> +Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,<br /> + Youngest green transfused in silver shining +through:<br /> +Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:<br /> + Fair as in image my seraph love appears<br /> +Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids:<br /> + Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Could I find a place to be alone with +heaven,<br /> + I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need.<br /> +Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,<br /> + Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the +reed.<br /> +Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;<br /> + Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown;<br /> +Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam:<br /> + All seem to know what is for heaven alone.</p> +<h3><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>THE +THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Carols</span> nature, +counsel men.<br /> +Different notes as rook from wren<br /> +Hear we when our steps begin,<br /> +And the choice is cast within,<br /> +Where a robber raven’s tale<br /> +Urges passion’s nightingale.</p> +<p class="poetry">Hark to the three. Chimed they in one,<br +/> +Life were music of the sun.<br /> +Liquid first, and then the caw,<br /> +Then the cry that knows not law.</p> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry">As the birds do, so do we,<br /> +Bill our mate, and choose our tree.<br /> +Swift to building work addressed,<br /> +Any straw will help a nest.<br /> +Mates are warm, and this is truth,<br /> +Glad the young that come of youth.<br /> +They have bloom i’ the blood and sap<br /> +Chilling at no thunder-clap.<br /> +Man and woman on the thorn<br /> +Trust not Earth, and have her scorn.<br /> +They who in her lead confide,<br /> +Wither me if they spread not wide!<br /> +Look for aid to little things,<br /> +You will get them quick as wings,<br /> +Thick as feathers; would you feed,<br /> +Take the leap that springs the need.</p> +<h4><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Contemplate the rutted road:<br /> +Life is both a lure and goad.<br /> +Each to hold in measure just,<br /> +Trample appetite to dust.<br /> +Mark the fool and wanton spin:<br /> +Keep to harness as a skin.<br /> +Ere you follow nature’s lead,<br /> +Of her powers in you have heed;<br /> +Else a shiverer you will find<br /> +You have challenged humankind.<br /> +Mates are chosen marketwise:<br /> +Coolest bargainer best buys.<br /> +Leap not, nor let leap the heart:<br /> +Trot your track, and drag your cart.<br /> +So your end may be in wool,<br /> +Honoured, and with manger full.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">O the rosy light! it fleets,<br /> +Dearer dying than all sweets.<br /> +That is life: it waves and goes;<br /> +Solely in that cherished Rose<br /> +Palpitates, or else ’tis death.<br /> +Call it love with all thy breath.<br /> +Love! it lingers: Love! it nears:<br /> +Love! O Love! the Rose appears,<br /> +Blushful, magic, reddening air.<br /> +Now the choice is on thee: dare!<br /> +Mortal seems the touch, but makes<br /> +Immortal the hand that takes.<br /> +Feel what sea within thee shames<br /> +Of its force all other claims,<br /> +Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be<br /> +Heavenly Rose to swelling sea.</p> +<h3><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>THE +ORCHARD AND THE HEATH</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">chanced</span> upon an +early walk to spy<br /> +A troop of children through an orchard gate:<br /> + The boughs hung low, the grass was high;<br /> + They had but to lift hands or wait<br /> +For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.</p> +<p class="poetry">They shouted, running on from tree to tree,<br +/> +And played the game the wind plays, on and round.<br /> + ’Twas visible invisible glee<br /> + Pursuing; and a fountain’s sound<br /> +Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.</p> +<p class="poetry">I could have watched them till the daylight +fled,<br /> +Their pretty bower made such a light of day.<br /> + A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! +head!’<br /> + The rest to comfort her straightway<br /> +Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red.</p> +<p class="poetry">The tiny creature flashing through green +grass,<br /> +And laughing with her feet and eyes among<br /> + Fresh apples, while a little lass<br /> + Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung:<br /> +That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.</p> +<p class="poetry">My footpath left the pleasant farms and +lanes,<br /> +Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;<br /> + Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,<br /> + Across a heath I walked for hours,<br /> +And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +91</span>Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,<br /> +When, under a patched channel-bank enriched<br /> + With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,<br /> + Behold, a family had pitched<br /> +Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.</p> +<p class="poetry">Here, too, were many children, quick to scan<br +/> +A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth:<br /> + In many-coloured rags they ran,<br /> + Like iron runlets of the heath.<br /> +Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.</p> +<p class="poetry">Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at +sea<br /> +Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid<br /> + From either ridge unequally),<br /> + Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid<br /> +A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.</p> +<p class="poetry">They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and +broke<br /> +In act to follow, but as one they snuffed<br /> + Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke<br /> + Of provender, its pale flame puffed,<br /> +And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke.</p> +<p class="poetry">Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,<br /> +The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,<br /> + Paused for its bubbling-up supreme:<br /> + A dog upright in circle sat,<br /> +And oft his nose went with the flying steam.</p> +<p class="poetry">I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where +now<br /> +The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light;<br /> + Threw high aloft a golden bough,<br /> + And seemed the desert of the night<br /> +Far down with mellow orchards to endow.</p> +<h3><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>EARTH +AND MAN</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">On</span> her great +venture, Man,<br /> +Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast<br /> +Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,<br /> +And fair to scan.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">More aid than that embrace,<br /> +That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart<br /> +Involves his fate; and she who urged the start<br /> +Abides the race.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">For he is in the lists<br /> +Contentious with the elements, whose dower<br /> +First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour<br /> +If he desists.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">His breath of instant thirst<br /> +Is warning of a creature matched with strife,<br /> +To meet it as a bride, or let fall life<br /> +On life’s accursed.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">No longer forth he bounds<br /> +The lusty animal, afield to roam,<br /> +But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome<br /> +Strange themes propounds.</p> +<h4><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +93</span>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">By hunger sharply sped<br /> +To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,<br /> +In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews,<br /> +An infant’s head.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">And ever that old task<br /> +Of reading what he is and whence he came,<br /> +Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame<br /> +Across her mask.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">She hears his wailful prayer,<br /> +When now to the Invisible he raves<br /> +To rend him from her, now of his mother craves<br /> +Her calm, her care.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">The thing that shudders most<br /> +Within him is the burden of his cry.<br /> +Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye<br /> +The eyeless Ghost.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Or sometimes she will seem<br /> +Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white,<br /> +Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight,<br /> +With gold-buds dim.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Once worshipped Prime of Powers,<br /> +She still was the Implacable: as a beast,<br /> +She struck him down and dragged him from the feast<br /> +She crowned with flowers.</p> +<h4><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +94</span>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Her pomp of glorious hues,<br /> +Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile,<br /> +Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile<br /> +With symbol-clues.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">The mystery she holds<br /> +For him, inveterately he strains to see,<br /> +And sight of his obtuseness is the key<br /> +Among those folds.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">He may entreat, aspire,<br /> +He may despair, and she has never heed.<br /> +She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need,<br /> +Not his desire.</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">She prompts him to rejoice,<br /> +Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud.<br /> +He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed<br /> +A wanton’s choice.</p> +<h4>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Albeit thereof he has found<br /> +Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain;<br /> +Has half transferred the battle to his brain,<br /> +From bloody ground;</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">He will not read her good,<br /> +Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures;<br /> +Through that old devil of the thousand lures,<br /> +Through that dense hood:</p> +<h4><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +95</span>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Through terror, through distrust;<br /> +The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live:<br /> +Through all that makes of him a sensitive<br /> +Abhorring dust.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Behold his wormy home!<br /> +And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave<br /> +Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave<br /> +To waste in foam.</p> +<h4>XX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Therefore the wretch inclined<br /> +Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith,<br /> +Can raise him high: with vows of living faith<br /> +For little signs.</p> +<h4>XXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Some signs he must demand,<br /> +Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few,<br /> +To satisfy the senses it is true,<br /> +And in his hand,</p> +<h4>XXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">This miracle which saves<br /> +Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch,<br /> +By virtue of his worth, contrasting much<br /> +With brutes and knaves.</p> +<h4>XXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">From dust, of him abhorred,<br /> +He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth.<br /> +‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth!<br /> +Me take, dear Lord!’</p> +<h4><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +96</span>XXIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">She hears him. Him she owes<br /> +For half her loveliness a love well won<br /> +By work that lights the shapeless and the dun,<br /> +Their common foes.</p> +<h4>XXV</h4> +<p class="poetry">He builds the soaring spires,<br /> +That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws,<br /> +Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws,<br /> +Her purest fires.</p> +<h4>XXVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Through him hath she exchanged,<br /> +For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown,<br /> +Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown<br /> +Where monsters ranged.</p> +<h4>XXVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">And order, high discourse,<br /> +And decency, than which is life less dear,<br /> +She has of him: the lyre of language clear,<br /> +Love’s tongue and source.</p> +<h4>XXVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">She hears him, and can hear<br /> +With glory in his gains by work achieved:<br /> +With grief for grief that is the unperceived<br /> +In her so near.</p> +<h4>XXIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">If he aloft for aid<br /> +Imploring storms, her essence is the spur.<br /> +His cry to heaven is a cry to her<br /> +He would evade.</p> +<h4><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>XXX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Not elsewhere can he tend.<br /> +Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins;<br /> +Those her revulsions from the skull that grins<br /> +To ape his end.</p> +<h4>XXXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">And her desires are those<br /> +For happiness, for lastingness, for light.<br /> +’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night<br /> +The hoped dawn-rose.</p> +<h4>XXXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Fair fountains of the dark<br /> +Daily she waves him, that his inner dream<br /> +May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam,<br /> +A quivering lark:</p> +<h4>XXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">This life and her to know<br /> +For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee<br /> +To feel stern joy her origin: not he<br /> +The child of woe.</p> +<h4>XXXIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">But that the senses still<br /> +Usurp the station of their issue mind,<br /> +He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind:<br /> +As yet he will;</p> +<h4>XXXV</h4> +<p class="poetry">As yet he will, she prays,<br /> +Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;—<br /> +The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf<br /> +In shifting rays;—</p> +<h4><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>XXXVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">That captain of the scorned;<br /> +The coveter of life in soul and shell,<br /> +The fratricide, the thief, the infidel,<br /> +The hoofed and horned;—</p> +<h4>XXXVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">He singularly doomed<br /> +To what he execrates and writhes to shun;—<br /> +When fire has passed him vapour to the sun,<br /> +And sun relumed,</p> +<h4>XXXVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then shall the horrid pall<br /> +Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine,<br /> +‘Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,’<br /> +Will hear her call.</p> +<h4>XXXIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Whence looks he on a land<br /> +Whereon his labour is a carven page;<br /> +And forth from heritage to heritage<br /> +Nought writ on sand.</p> +<h4>XL</h4> +<p class="poetry">His fables of the Above,<br /> +And his gapped readings of the crown and sword,<br /> +The hell detested and the heaven adored,<br /> +The hate, the love,</p> +<h4>XLI</h4> +<p class="poetry">The bright wing, the black hoof,<br /> +He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined,<br /> +And never unfaith clamouring to be coined<br /> +To faith by proof.</p> +<h4><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +99</span>XLII</h4> +<p class="poetry">She her just Lord may view,<br /> +Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned<br /> +With all her gifts to reach the light discerned<br /> +Her spirit through.</p> +<h4>XLIIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then in him time shall run<br /> +As in the hour that to young sunlight crows;<br /> +And—‘If thou hast good faith it can repose,’<br +/> +She tells her son.</p> +<h4>XLIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Meanwhile on him, her chief<br /> +Expression, her great word of life, looks she;<br /> +Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree,<br /> +Or dated leaf.</p> +<h3><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>A +BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">See</span> the sweet women, +friend, that lean beneath<br /> +The ever-falling fountain of green leaves<br /> +Round the white bending stem, and like a wreath<br /> +Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through,<br /> +To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves:<br /> + Is one for me? is one for you?</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield +you place,<br /> +And you shall choose among us which you will,<br /> +Without the idle pastime of the chase,<br /> +If to this treaty you can well agree:<br /> +To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil.<br /> + He who’s for us, for him are we!</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Most gracious ladies, nigh when light +has birth,<br /> +A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells,<br /> +And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth<br /> +In the first plucking of them, past us flew<br /> +To labour, singing rustic ritornells:<br /> + Had they a cause? are they of you?</p> +<h4><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +101</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Sirs, they are as unthinking armies +are<br /> +To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs.<br /> +When they know men they know the state of war:<br /> +But now they dream like sunlight on a sea,<br /> +And deem you hold the half of happy pairs.<br /> + He who’s for us, for him are we!</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Ladies, I listened to a ring of +dames;<br /> +Judicial in the robe and wig; secure<br /> +As venerated portraits in their frames;<br /> +And they denounced some insurrection new<br /> +Against sound laws which keep you good and pure.<br /> + Are you of them? are they of you?</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Sirs, they are of us, as their dress +denotes,<br /> +And by as much: let them together chime:<br /> +It is an ancient bell within their throats,<br /> +Pulled by an aged ringer; with what glee<br /> +Befits the yellow yesterdays of time.<br /> + He who’s for us, for him are we!</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with +wit;<br /> +Dowered of all favours and all blessed things<br /> +Whereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit;<br /> +Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew,<br /> +Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings?<br /> + Who is for love must be for you.</p> +<h4><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—The manners of the market, honest +sirs,<br /> +’Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares.<br /> +You flatter us, or perchance our milliners<br /> +You flatter; so this vain and outworn She<br /> +May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs!<br /> + A higher lord than Love claim we.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">—One day, dear lady, missing the broad +track,<br /> +I came on a wood’s border, by a mead,<br /> +Where golden May ran up to moted black:<br /> +And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review,<br /> +With Love before her throne in act to plead.<br /> + Take him for me, take her for you.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Ingenious gentleman, the tale is +known.<br /> +Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt:<br /> +She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throne<br /> +The shadow of his back froze witheringly,<br /> +And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt.<br /> + O not such slaves of Love are we!</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Love, lady, like the star above that +lance<br /> +Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud,<br /> +Sad as the last line of a brave romance!—<br /> +Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw<br /> +Beams of fresh fire, while Beauty waned and bowed.<br /> + Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you.</p> +<h4><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Called she not for her mirror, +sir? Forth ran<br /> +Her women: I am lost, she cried, when lo,<br /> +Love in the form of an admiring man<br /> +Once more in adoration bent the knee,<br /> +And brought the faded Pagan to full blow:<br /> + For which her throne she gave: not we!</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—My version, madam, runs not to that +end.<br /> +A certain madness of an hour half past,<br /> +Caught her like fever; her just lord no friend<br /> +She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew<br /> +The prim acerbity, sweet Love’s outcast.<br /> + Great heaven ward off that stroke from you!</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is +generous:<br /> +How generous likewise that you do not name<br /> +Offended nature! She from all of us<br /> +Couched idle underneath our showering tree,<br /> +May quite withhold her most destructive flame;<br /> + And then what woeful women we!</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your +youth<br /> +May run to drought in visionary schemes:<br /> +And a late waking to perceive the truth,<br /> +When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu,<br /> +Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams:<br /> + And that may be in store for you.</p> +<h4><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +104</span>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t +in the skies,<br /> +Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours?<br /> +But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes<br /> +That look on it! the diverse things they see,<br /> +According to their thirst for fruit or flowers!<br /> + Pass on: it is the truth seek we.</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Lady, there is a truth of settled +laws<br /> +That down the past burns like a great watch-fire.<br /> +Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause,<br /> +Whetting its edge to cut the race in two,<br /> +Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre,<br /> + Much honour and much glory you!</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Sir, was it glory, was it honour, +pride,<br /> +And not as cat and serpent and poor slave,<br /> +Wherewith we walked in union by your side?<br /> +Spare to false womanliness her delicacy,<br /> +Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave:<br /> + In our defence thus chained are we.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Yours, madam, were the privileges of +life<br /> +Proper to man’s ideal; you were the mark<br /> +Of action, and the banner in the strife:<br /> +Yea, of your very weakness once you drew<br /> +The strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark:<br /> + Wrapped in a robe of flame were you!</p> +<h4><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +105</span>XX</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, +when we were chill,<br /> +You clothed us warmly; all in honour! when<br /> +We starved you fed us; all in honour still:<br /> +Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably!<br /> +Deep is the gratitude we owe to men,<br /> + For privileged indeed were we!</p> +<h4>XXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—You cite exceptions, madam, that are +sad,<br /> +But come in the red struggle of our growth.<br /> +Alas, that I should have to say it! bad<br /> +Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do,<br /> +Shows animal impatience, mental sloth:<br /> + Man monstrous! pining seraphs you!</p> +<h4>XXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—I fain would ask your friend . . . but I +will ask<br /> +You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague,<br /> +Your sad exceptions were to break that mask<br /> +They wear for your cool mind historically,<br /> +And blaze like black lists of a <i>present</i> plague?<br /> + But in that light behold them we.</p> +<h4>XXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Your spirit breathes a mist upon our +world,<br /> +Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof<br /> +And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled<br /> +In his hard-earned oblivion! You are few,<br /> +Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof,<br /> + I have lived, and have known none like you.</p> +<h4><a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +106</span>XXIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—We may be blind to men, sir: we +embrace<br /> +A future now beyond the fowler’s nets.<br /> +Though few, we hold a promise for the race<br /> +That was not at our rising: you are free<br /> +To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes.<br /> + He who’s for us, for him are we.</p> +<h4>XXV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Ah! madam, were they puppets who +withstood<br /> +Youth’s cravings for adventure to preserve<br /> +The dedicated ways of womanhood?<br /> +The light which leads us from the paths of rue,<br /> +That light above us, never seen to swerve,<br /> + Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you.</p> +<h4>XXVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we +perchance<br /> +Shall not abandon, though we see not how,<br /> +Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advance<br /> +Beside our lords in any real degree,<br /> +Unless we move: and to advance is now<br /> + A sovereign need, think more than we.</p> +<h4>XXVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—So push you out of harbour in small +craft,<br /> +With little seamanship; and comes a gale,<br /> +The world will laugh, the world has often laughed,<br /> +Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue,<br /> +When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale,<br /> + How swift to the old nest fly you!</p> +<h4><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +107</span>XXVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—What thinks your friend, kind sir? +We have escaped<br /> +But partly that old half-tamed wild beast’s paw<br /> +Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped:<br /> +Men, too, have known the cramping enemy<br /> +In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe:<br /> + Him our deliverer, await we!</p> +<h4>XXIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Delusions are with eloquence endowed,<br +/> +And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres<br /> +To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed,<br /> +Deliverer, lady! but like summer dew<br /> +O’er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears,<br +/> + Who see the awakening for you.</p> +<h4>XXX</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps +not.<br /> +O sir, delusion mounting like a sun<br /> +On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot,<br /> +Giving it warmth and movement! if this be<br /> +Delusion, think of what thereby was won<br /> + For men, and dream of what win we.</p> +<h4>XXXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Lady, the destiny of minor powers,<br /> +Who would recast us, is but to convulse:<br /> +You enter on a strife that frets and sours;<br /> +You can but win sick disappointment’s hue;<br /> +And simply an accelerated pulse,<br /> + Some tonic you have drunk moves you.</p> +<h4><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>XXXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Thinks your friend so? Good sir, +your wit is bright;<br /> +But wit that strives to speak the popular voice,<br /> +Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light.<br /> +Curfew, would seem your conqueror’s decree<br /> +To women likewise: and we have no choice<br /> + Save darkness or rebellion, we!</p> +<h4>XXXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—A plain safe intermediate way is +cleft<br /> +By reason foiling passion: you that rave<br /> +Of mad alternatives to right and left<br /> +Echo the tempter, madam: and ’tis due<br /> +Unto your sex to shun it as the grave,<br /> + This later apple offered you.</p> +<h4>XXXIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—This apple is not ripe, it is not +sweet;<br /> +Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouth<br /> +Are little wooed by it; yet we would eat.<br /> +We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea.<br /> +We have thirsted long; this apple suits our drouth:<br /> + ’Tis good for men to halve, think we.</p> +<h4>XXXV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—But say, what seek you, madam? +’Tis enough<br /> +That you should have dominion o’er the springs<br /> +Domestic and man’s heart: those ways, how rough,<br /> +How vile, outside the stately avenue<br /> +Where you walk sheltered by your angel’s wings,<br /> + Are happily unknown to you.</p> +<h4><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +109</span>XXXVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—We hear women’s shrieks on +them. We like your phrase,<br /> +Dominion domestic! And that roar,<br /> +‘What seek you?’ is of tyrants in all days.<br /> +Sir, get you something of our purity<br /> +And we will of your strength: we ask no more.<br /> + That is the sum of what seek we.</p> +<h4>XXXVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—O for an image, madam, in one word,<br +/> +To show you as the lightning night reveals,<br /> +Your error and your perils: you have erred<br /> +In mind only, and the perils that ensue<br /> +Swift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels<br /> + Address your hopes of safety you!</p> +<h4>XXXVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—To err in mind, sir . . . your friend +smiles: he may!<br /> +To err in mind, if err in mind we can,<br /> +Is grievous error you do well to stay.<br /> +But O how different from reality<br /> +Men’s fiction is! how like you in the plan,<br /> + Is woman, knew you her as we!</p> +<h4>XXXIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Look, lady, where yon river winds its +line<br /> +Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face<br /> +The splendour of fair life: to be divine,<br /> +’Tis nature bids you be to nature true,<br /> +Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace,<br /> + Reflecting heaven in clearness you.</p> +<h4><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span>XL</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Sir, you speak well: your friend no word +vouchsafes.<br /> +To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse,<br /> +Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes,<br /> +Who is not wholly of the nursery,<br /> +Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse;<br /> + Together shake it off, say we!</p> +<h4>XLI</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Hear, then, my friend, madam! +Tongue-restrained he stands<br /> +Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched<br /> +With traceries of the artificer’s hands,<br /> +Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view.—<br /> +Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched!<br /> + Heed him not! Traitress beauties you!</p> +<h4>XLII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—We have won a champion, sisters, and a +sage!<br /> +—Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast!<br /> +—Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage.<br /> +—Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key.<br /> +—Then are there fresher mornings mounting East<br /> + Than ever yet have dawned, sing we!</p> +<h4>XLIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">—False ends as false began, madam, be +sure!<br /> +—What lure there is the pure cause purifies!<br /> +—Who purifies the victim of the lure?<br /> +—That soul which bids us our high light pursue.<br /> +—Some heights are measured down: the wary wise<br /> + Shun Reason in the masque with you!</p> +<h4><a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span>XLIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Sir, for the friend you bring us, take +our thanks.<br /> +Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal;<br /> +A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks!<br /> +But could she give more loyal guarantee<br /> +Than wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul<br /> + Has risen? Adieu: content are we!</p> +<h4>XLV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Those ladies led their captive to the +flood’s<br /> +Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most<br /> +Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds.<br /> +Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too?<br /> +For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast<br /> + His comrade over me and you.</p> +<h4>XLVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Have women nursed some dream since Helen +sailed<br /> +Over the sea of blood the blushing star,<br /> +That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed,<br /> +When not possessing her (for such is he!),<br /> +Might in a wondering season seen afar,<br /> + Be tamed to say not ‘I,’ but +‘we’?</p> +<h4>XLVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">And shall they make of Beauty their estate,<br +/> +The fortress and the weapon of their sex?<br /> +Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate,<br /> +More queenly than of old, how we must woo,<br /> +Ere she will melt? The halter’s on our necks,<br /> + Kick as it likes us, I and you.</p> +<h4><a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +112</span>XLVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained<br /> +Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high:<br /> +If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained.<br /> +But can she keep her followers without fee?<br /> +Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry,<br /> + He who’s for us, for him are we!</p> +<h2><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +113</span>BALLADS AND POEMS OF TRAGIC LIFE</h2> +<h3><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>THE +TWO MASKS</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Melpomene</span> among her +livid people,<br /> +Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks,<br /> +Warned by old contests that one museful ripple<br /> +Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks<br /> +Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos,<br /> +Perchance may change of masks midway demand,<br /> +Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos,<br /> +The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures<br +/> +Appealing to the fount of tears: that they<br /> +Strive never to outleap our human features,<br /> +And do Right Reason’s ordinance obey,<br /> +In peril of the hum to laughter nighest.<br /> +But prove they under stress of action’s fire<br /> +Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest,<br /> +She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre.</p> +<h3><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +116</span>ARCHDUCHESS ANNE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">In</span> middle age an +evil thing<br /> + Befell Archduchess Anne:<br /> +She looked outside her wedding-ring<br /> + Upon a princely man.</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">Count Louis was for horse and arms;<br /> + And if its beacon waved,<br /> +For love; but ladies had not charms<br /> + To match a danger braved.</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">On battlefields he was the bow<br /> + Bestrung to fly the shaft:<br /> +In idle hours his heart would flow<br /> + As winds on currents waft.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">His blood was of those warrior tribes<br /> + That streamed from morning’s fire,<br /> +Whom now with traps and now with bribes<br /> + The wily Council wire.</p> +<h5>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">Archduchess Anne the Council ruled,<br /> + Count Louis his great dame;<br /> +And woe to both when one had cooled!<br /> + Little was she to blame.</p> +<h5><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +117</span>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">Among her chiefs who spun their plots,<br /> + Old Kraken stood the sword:<br /> +As sharp his wits for cutting knots<br /> + Of babble he abhorred.</p> +<h5>VII</h5> +<p class="poetry">He reverenced her name and line,<br /> + Nor other merit had<br /> +Save soldierwise to wait her sign,<br /> + And do the deed she bade.</p> +<h5>VIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">He saw her hand jump at her side<br /> + Ere royally she smiled<br /> +On Louis and his fair young bride<br /> + Where courtly ranks defiled.</p> +<h5>IX</h5> +<p class="poetry">That was a moment when a shock<br /> + Through the procession ran,<br /> +And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock,<br /> + Yet smiled Archduchess Anne.</p> +<h5>X</h5> +<p class="poetry">No touch gave she to hound in leash,<br /> + No wink to sword in sheath:<br /> +She seemed a woman scarce of flesh;<br /> + Above it, or beneath.</p> +<h5><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +118</span>XI</h5> +<p class="poetry">Old Kraken spied with kennelled snarl,<br /> + His Lady deemed disgraced.<br /> +He footed as on burning marl,<br /> + When out of Hall he paced.</p> +<h5>XII</h5> +<p class="poetry">’Twas seen he hammered striding legs,<br +/> + And stopped, and strode again.<br /> +Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs,<br /> + But Patience must be hen.</p> +<h5>XIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Too slow are they for wrath to hatch,<br /> + Too hot for time to rear.<br /> +Old Kraken kept unwinding watch;<br /> + He marked his day appear.</p> +<h5>XIV</h5> +<p class="poetry">He neighed a laugh, though moods were rough<br +/> + With standards in revolt:<br /> +His nostrils took the news for snuff,<br /> + His smacking lips for salt.</p> +<h5>XV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Count Louis’ wavy cock’s plumes +led<br /> + His troops of black-haired manes,<br /> +A rebel; and old Kraken sped<br /> + To front him on the plains.</p> +<h5><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +119</span>XVI</h5> +<p class="poetry">Then camp opposed to camp did they<br /> + Fret earth with panther claws<br /> +For signal of a bloody day,<br /> + Each reading from the Laws.</p> +<h5>XVII</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘Forefend it, heaven!’ Count Louis +cried,<br /> + ‘And let the righteous plead:<br /> +My country is a willing bride,<br /> + Was never slave decreed.</p> +<h5>XVIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘Not we for thirst of blood appeal<br /> + To sword and slaughter curst;<br /> +We have God’s blessing on our steel,<br /> + Do we our pleading first.’</p> +<h5>XIX</h5> +<p class="poetry">Count Louis, soul of chivalry,<br /> + Put trust in plighted word;<br /> +By starlight on the broad brown lea,<br /> + To bar the strife he spurred.</p> +<h5>XX</h5> +<p class="poetry">Across his breast a crimson spot,<br /> + That in a quiver glowed,<br /> +The ruddy crested camp-fires shot,<br /> + As he to darkness rode.</p> +<h5><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +120</span>XXI</h5> +<p class="poetry">He rode while omens called, beware<br /> + Old Kraken’s pledge of faith!<br /> +A smile and waving hand in air,<br /> + And outward flew the wraith.</p> +<h5>XXII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Before pale morn had mixed with gold,<br /> + His army roared, and chilled,<br /> +As men who have a woe foretold,<br /> + And see it red fulfilled.</p> +<h5>XXIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Away and to his young wife speed,<br /> + And say that Honour’s dead!<br /> +Another word she will not need<br /> + To bow a widow’s head.</p> +<h5>XXIV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Old Kraken roped his white moustache<br /> + Right, left, for savage glee:<br /> +—To swing him in his soldier’s sash<br /> + Were kind for such as he!</p> +<h5>XXV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Old Kraken’s look hard Winter wears<br /> + When sweeps the wild snow-blast:<br /> +He had the hug of Arctic bears<br /> + For captives he held fast.</p> +<h4><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +121</span>II</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry">Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost,<br /> + Shut off from priest and spouse.<br /> +Her lips were locked, her arms were crossed,<br /> + Her eyes were in her brows.</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">One hand enclosed a paper scroll,<br /> + Held as a strangled asp.<br /> +So may we see the woman’s soul<br /> + In her dire tempter’s grasp.</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">Along that scroll Count Louis’ doom<br /> + Throbbed till the letters flamed.<br /> +She saw him in his scornful bloom,<br /> + She saw him chained and shamed.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Around that scroll Count Louis’ fate<br +/> + Was acted to her stare,<br /> +And hate in love and love in hate<br /> + Fought fell to smite or spare.</p> +<h5><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +122</span>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">Between the day that struck her old,<br /> + And this black star of days,<br /> +Her heart swung like a storm-bell tolled<br /> + Above a town ablaze.</p> +<h5>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">His beauty pressed to intercede,<br /> + His beauty served him ill.<br /> +—Not Vengeance, ’tis his rebel’s deed,<br /> + ’Tis Justice, not our will!</p> +<h5>VII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Yet who had sprung to life’s full +force<br /> + A breast that loveless dried?<br /> +But who had sapped it at the source,<br /> + With scarlet to her pride!</p> +<h5>VIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">He brought her waning heart as ’twere<br +/> + New message from the skies.<br /> +And he betrayed, and left on her<br /> + The burden of their sighs.</p> +<h5>IX</h5> +<p class="poetry">In floods her tender memories poured;<br /> + They foamed with waves of spite:<br /> +She crushed them, high her heart outsoared,<br /> + To keep her mind alight.</p> +<h5><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +123</span>X</h5> +<p class="poetry">—The crawling creature, called in +scorn<br /> + A woman!—with this pen<br /> +We sign a paper that may warn<br /> + His crowing fellowmen.</p> +<h5>XI</h5> +<p class="poetry">—We read them lesson of a power<br /> + They slight who do us wrong.<br /> +That bitter hour this bitter hour<br /> + Provokes; by turns the strong!</p> +<h5>XII</h5> +<p class="poetry">—That we were woman once is known:<br /> + That we are Justice now,<br /> +Above our sex, above the throne,<br /> + Men quaking shall avow.</p> +<h5>XIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Archduchess Anne ascending flew,<br /> + Her heart outsoared, but felt<br /> +The demon of her sex pursue,<br /> + Incensing or to melt.</p> +<h5>XIV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Those counterfloods below at leap<br /> + Still in her breast blew storm,<br /> +And farther up the heavenly steep<br /> + Wrestled in angels’ form.</p> +<h5><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +124</span>XV</h5> +<p class="poetry">To disentangle one clear wish<br /> + Not of her sex, she sought;<br /> +And womanish to womanish<br /> + Discerned in lighted thought.</p> +<h5>XVI</h5> +<p class="poetry">With Louis’ chance it went not well<br /> + When at herself she raged;<br /> +A woman, of whom men might tell<br /> + She doted, crazed and aged.</p> +<h5>XVII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Or else enamoured of a sweet<br /> + Withdrawn, a vengeful crone!<br /> +And say, what figure at her feet<br /> + Is this that utters moan?</p> +<h5>XVIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">The Countess Louis from her head<br /> + Drew veil: ‘Great Lady, hear!<br /> +My husband deems you Justice dread,<br /> + I know you Mercy dear.</p> +<h5>XIX</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘His error upon him may fall;<br /> + He will not breathe a nay.<br /> +I am his helpless mate in all,<br /> + Except for grace to pray.</p> +<h5><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +125</span>XX</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘Perchance on me his choice inclined,<br +/> + To give his House an heir:<br /> +I had not marriage with his mind,<br /> + His counsel could not share.</p> +<h5>XXI</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘I brought no portion for his weal<br /> + But this one instinct true,<br /> +Which bids me in my weakness kneel,<br /> + Archduchess Anne, to you.’</p> +<h5>XXII</h5> +<p class="poetry">The frowning Lady uttered, +‘Forth!’<br /> + Her look forbade delay:<br /> +‘It is not mine to weigh your worth;<br /> + Your husband’s others weigh.</p> +<h5>XXIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘Hence with the woman in your +speech,’<br /> + For nothing it avails<br /> +In woman’s fashion to beseech<br /> + Where Justice holds the scales.’</p> +<h5>XXIV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Then bent and went the lady wan,<br /> + Whose girlishness made grey<br /> +The thoughts that through Archduchess Anne<br /> + Shattered like stormy spray.</p> +<h5><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +126</span>XXV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Long sat she there, as flame that strives<br /> + To hold on beating wind:<br /> +—His wife must be the fool of wives,<br /> + Or cunningly designed!</p> +<h5>XXVI</h5> +<p class="poetry">She sat until the tempest-pitch<br /> + In her torn bosom fell;<br /> +—His wife must be a subtle witch<br /> + Or else God loves her well!</p> +<h4><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +127</span>III</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry">Old Kraken read a missive penned<br /> + By his great Lady’s hand.<br /> +Her condescension called him friend,<br /> + To raise the crest she fanned.</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">Swiftly to where he lay encamped<br /> + It flew, yet breathed aloof<br /> +From woman’s feeling, and he stamped<br /> + A heel more like a hoof.</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">She wrote of Mercy: ‘She was loth<br /> + Too hard to goad a foe.’<br /> +He stamped, as when men drive an oath<br /> + Devils transcribe below.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">She wrote: ‘We have him half by +theft.’<br /> + His wrinkles glistened keen:<br /> +And see the Winter storm-cloud cleft<br /> + To lurid skies between!</p> +<h5><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +128</span>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">When read old Kraken: ‘Christ our +Guide,’<br /> + His eyes were spikes of spar:<br /> +And see the white snow-storm divide<br /> + About an icy star!</p> +<h5>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘She trusted him to understand,’<br +/> + She wrote, and further prayed<br /> +That policy might rule the land.<br /> + Old Kraken’s laughter neighed.</p> +<h5>VII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Her words he took; her nods and winks<br /> + Treated as woman’s fog.<br /> +The man-dog for his mistress thinks,<br /> + Not less her faithful dog.</p> +<h5>VIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">She hugged a cloak old Kraken ripped;<br /> + Disguise to him he loathed.<br /> +—Your mercy, madam, shows you stripped,<br /> + While mine will keep you clothed.</p> +<h5>IX</h5> +<p class="poetry">A rough ill-soldered scar in haste<br /> + He rubbed on his cheek-bone.<br /> +—Our policy the man shall taste;<br /> + Our mercy shall be shown.</p> +<h5><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>X</h5> +<p class="poetry">‘Count Louis, honour to your race<br /> + Decrees the Council-hall:<br /> +You ’scape the rope by special grace,<br /> + And like a soldier fall.’</p> +<h5>XI</h5> +<p class="poetry">—I am a man of many sins,<br /> + Who for one virtue die,<br /> +Count Louis said.—They play at shins,<br /> + Who kick, was the reply.</p> +<h5>XII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Uprose the day of crimson sight,<br /> + The day without a God.<br /> +At morn the hero said Good-night:<br /> + See there that stain on sod!</p> +<h5>XIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">At morn the Countess Louis heard<br /> + Young light sing in the lark.<br /> +Ere eve it was that other bird,<br /> + Which brings the starless dark.</p> +<h5>XIV</h5> +<p class="poetry">To heaven she vowed herself, and yearned<br /> + Beside her lord to lie.<br /> +Archduchess Anne on Kraken turned,<br /> + All white as a dead eye.</p> +<h5><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>XV</h5> +<p class="poetry">If I could kill thee! shrieked her look:<br /> + If lightning sprang from Will!<br /> +An oaken head old Kraken shook,<br /> + And she might thank or kill.</p> +<h5>XVI</h5> +<p class="poetry">The pride that fenced her heart in mail<br /> + By mortal pain was torn.<br /> +Forth from her bosom leaped a wail,<br /> + As of a babe new-born.</p> +<h5>XVII</h5> +<p class="poetry">She clad herself in courtly use,<br /> + And one who heard them prate<br /> +Had said they differed upon views<br /> + Where statecraft raised debate.</p> +<h5>XVIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">The wretch detested must she trust,<br /> + The servant master own:<br /> +Confide to godless cause so just,<br /> + And for God’s blessing moan.</p> +<h5>XIX</h5> +<p class="poetry">Austerely she her heart kept down,<br /> + Her woman’s tongue was mute<br /> +When voice of People, voice of Crown,<br /> + In cannon held dispute.</p> +<h5><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +131</span>XX</h5> +<p class="poetry">The Crown on seas of blood, like swine,<br /> + Swam forefoot at the throat:<br /> +It drank of its dear veins for wine,<br /> + Enough if it might float!</p> +<h5>XXI</h5> +<p class="poetry">It sank with piteous yelp, resurged<br /> + Electrical with fear.<br /> +O had she on old Kraken urged<br /> + Her word of mercy clear!</p> +<h5>XXII</h5> +<p class="poetry">O had they with Count Louis been<br /> + Accordant in his plea!<br /> +Cursed are the women vowed to screen<br /> + A heart that all can see!</p> +<h5>XXIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">The godless drove unto a goal<br /> + Was worse than vile defeat.<br /> +Did vengeance prick Count Louis’ soul<br /> + They dressed him luscious meat.</p> +<h5>XXIV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Worms will the faithless find their lies<br /> + In the close treasure-chest.<br /> +Without a God no day can rise,<br /> + Though it should slay our best.</p> +<h5><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +132</span>XXV</h5> +<p class="poetry">The Crown it furled a draggled flag,<br /> + It sheathed a broken blade.<br /> +Behold its triumph in the hag<br /> + That lives with looks decayed!</p> +<h5>XXVI</h5> +<p class="poetry">And lo, the man of oaken head,<br /> + Of soldier’s honour bare,<br /> +He fled his land, but most he fled<br /> + His Lady’s frigid stare.</p> +<h5>XXVII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Judged by the issue we discern<br /> + God’s blessing, and the bane.<br /> +Count Louis’ dust would fill an urn,<br /> + His deeds are waving grain.</p> +<h5>XXVIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">And she that helped to slay, yet bade<br /> + To spare the fated man,<br /> +Great were her errors, but she had<br /> + Great heart, Archduchess Anne.</p> +<h3><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>THE +SONG OF THEODOLINDA</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Queen</span> Theodolind has +built<br /> +In the earth a furnace-bed:<br /> +There the Traitor Nail that spilt<br /> +Blood of the anointed Head,<br /> +Red of heat, resolves in shame:<br /> +White of heat, awakes to flame.<br /> + Beat, beat! white of heat,<br /> + Red of heat, beat, beat!</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Mark the skeleton of fire<br /> +Lightening from its thunder-roof:<br /> +So comes this that saw expire<br /> +Him we love, for our behoof!<br /> +Red of heat, O white of heat,<br /> +This from off the Cross we greet.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Brown-cowled hammermen around<br /> +Nerve their naked arms to strike<br /> +Death with Resurrection crowned,<br /> +Each upon that cruel spike.<br /> +Red of heat the furnace leaps,<br /> +White of heat transfigured sleeps.</p> +<h4><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +134</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Hard against the furnace core<br /> +Holds the Queen her streaming eyes:<br /> +Lo! that thing of piteous gore<br /> +In the lap of radiance lies,<br /> +Red of heat, as when He takes,<br /> +White of heat, whom earth forsakes.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Forth with it, and crushing ring<br /> +Iron hymns, for men to hear<br /> +Echoes of the deeds that sting<br /> +Earth into its graves, and fear!<br /> +Red of heat, He maketh thus,<br /> +White of heat, a crown of us.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">This that killed Thee, kissed Thee, Lord!<br /> +Touched Thee, and we touch it: dear,<br /> +Dark it is; adored, abhorred:<br /> +Vilest, yet most sainted here.<br /> +Red of heat, O white of heat,<br /> +In it hell and heaven meet.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">I behold our morning day<br /> +When they chased Him out with rods<br /> +Up to where this traitor lay<br /> +Thirsting; and the blood was God’s!<br /> +Red of heat, it shall be pressed,<br /> +White of heat, once on my breast!</p> +<h4><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +135</span>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Quick! the reptile in me shrieks,<br /> +Not the soul. Again; the Cross<br /> +Burn there. Oh! this pain it wreaks<br /> +Rapture is: pain is not loss.<br /> +Red of heat, the tooth of Death,<br /> +White of heat, has caught my breath.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Brand me, bite me, bitter thing!<br /> +Thus He felt, and thus I am<br /> +One with Him in suffering,<br /> +One with Him in bliss, the Lamb.<br /> +Red of heat, O white of heat,<br /> +Thus is bitterness made sweet.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now am I, who bear that stamp<br /> +Scorched in me, the living sign<br /> +Sole on earth—the lighted lamp<br /> +Of the dreadful Day divine.<br /> +White of heat, beat on it fast!<br /> +Red of heat, its shape has passed.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Out in angry sparks they fly,<br /> +They that sentenced Him to bleed:<br /> +Pontius and his troop: they die,<br /> +Damned for ever for the deed!<br /> +White of heat in vain they soar:<br /> +Red of heat they strew the floor.</p> +<h4><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +136</span>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Fury on it! have its debt!<br /> +Thunder on the Hill accurst,<br /> +Golgotha, be ye! and sweat<br /> +Blood, and thirst the Passion’s thirst.<br /> +Red of heat and white of heat,<br /> +Champ it like fierce teeth that eat.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Strike it as the ages crush<br /> +Towers! for while a shape is seen<br /> +I am rivalled. Quench its blush,<br /> +Devil! But it crowns me Queen,<br /> +Red of heat, as none before,<br /> +White of heat, the circlet wore.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Lowly I will be, and quail,<br /> +Crawling, with a beggar’s hand:<br /> +On my breast the branded Nail,<br /> +On my head the iron band.<br /> +Red of heat, are none so base!<br /> +White of heat, none know such grace!</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">In their heaven the sainted hosts,<br /> +Robed in violet unflecked,<br /> +Gaze on humankind as ghosts:<br /> +I draw down a ray direct.<br /> +Red of heat, across my brow,<br /> +White of heat, I touch Him now.</p> +<h4><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +137</span>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Robed in violet, robed in gold,<br /> +Robed in pearl, they make our dawn.<br /> +What am I to them? Behold<br /> +What ye are to me, and fawn.<br /> +Red of heat, be humble, ye!<br /> +White of heat, O teach it me!</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Martyrs! hungry peaks in air,<br /> +Rent with lightnings, clad with snow,<br /> +Crowned with stars! you strip me bare,<br /> +Pierce me, shame me, stretch me low,<br /> +Red of heat, but it may be,<br /> +White of heat, some envy me!</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">O poor enviers! God’s own gifts<br +/> +Have a devil for the weak.<br /> +Yea, the very force that lifts<br /> +Finds the vessel’s secret leak.<br /> +Red of heat, I rise o’er all:<br /> +White of heat, I faint, I fall.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Those old Martyrs sloughed their pride,<br /> +Taking humbleness like mirth.<br /> +I am to His Glory tied,<br /> +I that witness Him on earth!<br /> +Red of heat, my pride of dust,<br /> +White of heat, feeds fire in trust.</p> +<h4><a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>XX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Kindle me to constant fire,<br /> +Lest the nail be but a nail!<br /> +Give me wings of great desire,<br /> +Lest I look within, and fail!<br /> +Red of heat, the furnace light,<br /> +White of heat, fix on my sight.</p> +<h4>XXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Never for the Chosen peace!<br /> +Know, by me tormented know,<br /> +Never shall the wrestling cease<br /> +Till with our outlasting Foe,<br /> +Red of heat to white of heat,<br /> +Roll we to the Godhead’s feet!<br /> + Beat, beat! white of heat,<br /> + Red of heat, beat, beat!</p> +<h3><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>A +PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Ladies</span> who in chains +of wedlock<br /> +Chafe at an unequal yoke,<br /> +Not to nightingales give hearing;<br /> +Better this, the raven’s croak.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Down the Prado strolled my seigneur,<br /> +Arm at lordly bow on hip,<br /> +Fingers trimming his moustachios,<br /> +Eyes for pirate fellowship.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Home sat she that owned him master;<br /> +Like the flower bent to ground<br /> +Rain-surcharged and sun-forsaken;<br /> +Heedless of her hair unbound.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sudden at her feet a lover<br /> +Palpitating knelt and wooed;<br /> +Seemed a very gift from heaven<br /> +To the starved of common food.</p> +<h4><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +140</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Love me? she his vows repeated:<br /> +Fiery vows oft sung and thrummed:<br /> +Wondered, as on earth a stranger;<br /> +Thirsted, trusted, and succumbed.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">O beloved youth! my lover!<br /> +Mine! my lover! take my life<br /> +Wholly: thine in soul and body,<br /> +By this oath of more than wife!</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Know me for no helpless woman;<br /> +Nay, nor coward, though I sink<br /> +Awed beside thee, like an infant<br /> +Learning shame ere it can think.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Swing me hence to do thee service,<br /> +Be thy succour, prove thy shield;<br /> +Heaven will hear!—in house thy handmaid,<br /> +Squire upon the battlefield.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">At my breasts I cool thy footsoles;<br /> +Wine I pour, I dress thy meats;<br /> +Humbly, when my lord it pleaseth,<br /> +Lie with him on perfumed sheets:</p> +<h4><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Pray for him, my blood’s dear +fountain,<br /> +While he sleeps, and watch his yawn<br /> +In that wakening babelike moment,<br /> +Sweeter to my thought than dawn!—</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thundered then her lord of thunders;<br /> +Burst the door, and, flashing sword,<br /> +Loud disgorged the woman’s title:<br /> +Condemnation in one word.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Grand by righteous wrath transfigured,<br /> +Towers the husband who provides<br /> +In his person judge and witness,<br /> +Death’s black doorkeeper besides!</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Round his head the ancient terrors,<br /> +Conjured of the stronger’s law,<br /> +Circle, to abash the creature<br /> +Daring twist beneath his paw.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">How though he hath squandered Honour<br /> +High of Honour let him scold:<br /> +Gilding of the man’s possession,<br /> +’Tis the woman’s coin of gold.</p> +<h4><a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +142</span>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">She inheriting from many<br /> +Bleeding mothers bleeding sense<br /> +Feels ’twixt her and sharp-fanged nature<br /> +Honour first did plant the fence.</p> +<h4>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Nature, that so shrieks for justice;<br /> +Honour’s thirst, that blood will slake;<br /> +These are women’s riddles, roughly<br /> +Mixed to write them saint or snake.</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Never nature cherished woman:<br /> +She throughout the sexes’ war<br /> +Serves as temptress and betrayer,<br /> +Favouring man, the muscular.</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Lureful is she, bent for folly;<br /> +Doating on the child which crows:<br /> +Yours to teach him grace in fealty,<br /> +What the bloom is, what the rose.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Hard the task: your prison-chamber<br /> +Widens not for lifted latch<br /> +Till the giant thews and sinews<br /> +Meet their Godlike overmatch.</p> +<h4><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>XX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Read that riddle, scorning pity’s<br /> +Tears, of cockatrices shed:<br /> +When the heart is vowed for freedom,<br /> +Captaincy it yields to head.</p> +<h4>XXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Meanwhile you, freaked nature’s +martyrs,<br /> +Honour’s army, flower and weed,<br /> +Gentle ladies, wedded ladies,<br /> +See for you this fair one bleed.</p> +<h4>XXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sole stood her offence, she faltered;<br /> +Prayed her lord the youth to spare;<br /> +Prayed that in the orange garden<br /> +She might lie, and ceased her prayer.</p> +<h4>XXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then commanding to all women<br /> +Chastity, her breasts she laid<br /> +Bare unto the self-avenger.<br /> +Man in metal was the blade.</p> +<h3><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>THE +YOUNG PRINCESS<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">A BALLAD OF OLD LAWS OF LOVE</span></h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> the South sang +like a nightingale<br /> + Above a bower in May,<br /> +The training of Love’s vine of flame<br /> +Was writ in laws, for lord and dame<br /> + To say their yea and nay.</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">When the South sang like a nightingale<br /> + Across the flowering night,<br /> +And lord and dame held gentle sport,<br /> +There came a young princess to Court,<br /> + A frost of beauty white.</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">The South sang like a nightingale<br /> + To thaw her glittering dream:<br /> +No vine of Love her bosom gave,<br /> +She drank no wine of Love, but grave<br /> + She held them to Love’s theme.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">The South grew all a nightingale<br /> + Beneath a moon unmoved:<br /> +Like the banner of war she led them on;<br /> +She left them to lie, like the light that has gone<br /> + From wine-cups overproved.</p> +<h5><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +145</span>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">When the South was a fervid nightingale,<br /> + And she a chilling moon,<br /> +’Twas pity to see on the garden swards,<br /> +Against Love’s laws, those rival lords<br /> + As willow-wands lie strewn.</p> +<h5>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">The South had throat of a nightingale<br /> + For her, the young princess:<br /> +She gave no vine of Love to rear,<br /> +Love’s wine drank not, yet bent her ear<br /> + To themes of Love no less.</p> +<h4><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +146</span>II</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry">The lords of the Court they sighed +heart-sick,<br /> + Heart-free Lord Dusiote laughed:<br /> +I prize her no more than a fling o’ the dice,<br /> +But, or shame to my manhood, a lady of ice,<br /> + We master her by craft!</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">Heart-sick the lords of joyance yawned,<br /> + Lord Dusiote laughed heart-free:<br /> +I count her as much as a crack o’ my thumb,<br /> +But, or shame of my manhood, to me she shall come<br /> + Like the bird to roost in the tree!</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">At dead of night when the palace-guard<br /> + Had passed the measured rounds,<br /> +The young princess awoke to feel<br /> +A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel<br /> + Within the garden-bounds.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">It ceased, and she thought of whom was need,<br +/> + The friar or the leech;<br /> +When lo, stood her tirewoman breathless by:<br /> +Lord Dusiote, madam, to death is nigh,<br /> + Of you he would have speech.</p> +<h5><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +147</span>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">He prays you of your gentleness,<br /> + To light him to his dark end.<br /> +The princess rose, and forth she went,<br /> +For charity was her intent,<br /> + Devoutly to befriend.</p> +<h5>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">Lord Dusiote hung on his good squire’s +arm,<br /> + The priest beside him knelt:<br /> +A weeping handkerchief was pressed<br /> +To stay the red flood at his breast,<br /> + And bid cold ladies melt.</p> +<h5>VII</h5> +<p class="poetry">O lady, though you are ice to men,<br /> + All pure to heaven as light<br /> +Within the dew within the flower,<br /> +Of you ’tis whispered that love has power<br /> + When secret is the night.</p> +<h5>VIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">I have silenced the slanderers, peace to their +souls!<br /> + Save one was too cunning for me.<br /> +I die, whose love is late avowed,<br /> +He lives, who boasts the lily has bowed<br /> + To the oath of a bended knee.</p> +<h5>IX</h5> +<p class="poetry">Lord Dusiote drew breath with pain,<br /> + And she with pain drew breath:<br /> +On him she looked, on his like above;<br /> +She flew in the folds of a marvel of love<br /> + Revealed to pass to death.</p> +<h5><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>X</h5> +<p class="poetry">You are dying, O great-hearted lord,<br /> + You are dying for me, she cried;<br /> +O take my hand, O take my kiss,<br /> +And take of your right for love like this,<br /> + The vow that plights me bride.</p> +<h5>XI</h5> +<p class="poetry">She bade the priest recite his words<br /> + While hand in hand were they,<br /> +Lord Dusiote’s soul to waft to bliss;<br /> +He had her hand, her vow, her kiss,<br /> + And his body was borne away.</p> +<h4><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>III</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry">Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire;<br +/> + He gazed at her lighted room:<br /> +The laughter in his heart grew slack;<br /> +He knew not the force that pushed him back<br /> + From her and the morn in bloom.</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">Like a drowned man’s length on the strong +flood-tide,<br /> + Like the shade of a bird in the sun,<br /> +He fled from his lady whom he might claim<br /> +As ghost, and who made the daybeams flame<br /> + To scare what he had done.</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">There was grief at Court for one so gay,<br /> + Though he was a lord less keen<br /> +For training the vine than at vintage-press;<br /> +But in her soul the young princess<br /> + Believed that love had been.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">Lord Dusiote fled the Court and land,<br /> + He crossed the woeful seas,<br /> +Till his traitorous doing seemed clearer to burn,<br /> +And the lady beloved drew his heart for return,<br /> + Like the banner of war in the breeze.</p> +<h5><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +150</span>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">He neared the palace, he spied the Court,<br /> + And music he heard, and they told<br /> +Of foreign lords arrived to bring<br /> +The nuptial gifts of a bridegroom king<br /> + To the princess grave and cold.</p> +<h5>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">The masque and the dance were cloud on wave,<br +/> + And down the masque and the dance<br /> +Lord Dusiote stepped from dame to dame,<br /> +And to the young princess he came,<br /> + With a bow and a burning glance.</p> +<h5>VII</h5> +<p class="poetry">Do you take a new husband to-morrow, lady?<br +/> + She shrank as at prick of steel.<br /> +Must the first yield place to the second, he sighed.<br /> +Her eyes were like the grave that is wide<br /> + For the corpse from head to heel.</p> +<h5>VIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">My lady, my love, that little hand<br /> + Has mine ringed fast in plight:<br /> +I bear for your lips a lawful thirst,<br /> +And as justly the second should follow the first,<br /> + I come to your door this night.</p> +<h5>IX</h5> +<p class="poetry">If a ghost should come a ghost will go:<br /> + No more the lady said,<br /> +Save that ever when he in wrath began<br /> +To swear by the faith of a living man,<br /> + She answered him, You are dead.</p> +<h4><a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span>IV</h4> +<h5>I</h5> +<p class="poetry">The soft night-wind went laden to death<br /> + With smell of the orange in flower;<br /> +The light leaves prattled to neighbour ears;<br /> +The bird of the passion sang over his tears;<br /> + The night named hour by hour.</p> +<h5>II</h5> +<p class="poetry">Sang loud, sang low the rapturous bird<br /> + Till the yellow hour was nigh,<br /> +Behind the folds of a darker cloud:<br /> +He chuckled, he sobbed, alow, aloud;<br /> + The voice between earth and sky.</p> +<h5>III</h5> +<p class="poetry">O will you, will you, women are weak;<br /> + The proudest are yielding mates<br /> +For a forward foot and a tongue of fire:<br /> +So thought Lord Dusiote’s trusty squire,<br /> + At watch by the palace-gates.</p> +<h5>IV</h5> +<p class="poetry">The song of the bird was wine in his blood,<br +/> + And woman the odorous bloom:<br /> +His master’s great adventure stirred<br /> +Within him to mingle the bloom and bird,<br /> + And morn ere its coming illume.</p> +<h5><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +152</span>V</h5> +<p class="poetry">Beside him strangely a piece of the dark<br /> + Had moved, and the undertones<br /> +Of a priest in prayer, like a cavernous wave,<br /> +He heard, as were there a soul to save<br /> + For urgency now in the groans.</p> +<h5>VI</h5> +<p class="poetry">No priest was hired for the play this night:<br +/> + And the squire tossed head like a deer<br /> +At sniff of the tainted wind; he gazed<br /> +Where cresset-lamps in a door were raised,<br /> + Belike on a passing bier.</p> +<h5>VII</h5> +<p class="poetry">All cloaked and masked, with naked blades,<br +/> + That flashed of a judgement done,<br /> +The lords of the Court, from the palace-door,<br /> +Came issuing silently, bearers four,<br /> + And flat on their shoulders one.</p> +<h5>VIII</h5> +<p class="poetry">They marched the body to squire and priest,<br +/> + They lowered it sad to earth:<br /> +The priest they gave the burial dole,<br /> +Bade wrestle hourly for his soul,<br /> + Who was a lord of worth.</p> +<h5>IX</h5> +<p class="poetry">One said, farewell to a gallant knight!<br /> + And one, but a restless ghost!<br /> +’Tis a year and a day since in this place<br /> +He died, sped high by a lady of grace<br /> + To join the blissful host.</p> +<h5><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>X</h5> +<p class="poetry">Not vainly on us she charged her cause,<br /> + The lady whom we revere<br /> +For faith in the mask of a love untrue<br /> +To the Love we honour, the Love her due,<br /> + The Love we have vowed to rear.</p> +<h5>XI</h5> +<p class="poetry">A trap for the sweet tooth, lures for the +light,<br /> + For the fortress defiant a mine:<br /> +Right well! But not in the South, princess,<br /> +Shall the lady snared of her nobleness<br /> + Ever shamed or a captive pine.</p> +<h5>XII</h5> +<p class="poetry">When the South had voice of a nightingale<br /> + Above a Maying bower,<br /> +On the heights of Love walked radiant peers;<br /> +The bird of the passion sang over his tears<br /> + To the breeze and the orange-flower.</p> +<h3><a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>KING +HARALD’S TRANCE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sword</span> in length a +reaping-hook amain<br /> +Harald sheared his field, blood up to shank:<br /> + ’Mid the swathes of +slain,<br /> + First at moonrise drank.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thereof hunger, as for meats the knife,<br /> +Pricked his ribs, in one sharp spur to reach<br /> + Home and his young wife,<br /> + Nigh the sea-ford beach.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">After battle keen to feed was he:<br /> +Smoking flesh the thresher washed down fast,<br /> + Like an angry sea<br /> + Ships from keel to mast.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Name us glory, singer, name us pride<br /> +Matching Harald’s in his deeds of strength;<br /> + Chiefs, wife, sword by side,<br /> + Foemen stretched their length!</p> +<h4><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +155</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Half a winter night the toasts hurrahed,<br /> +Crowned him, clothed him, trumpeted him high,<br /> + Till awink he bade<br /> + Wife to chamber fly.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Twice the sun had mounted, twice had sunk,<br +/> +Ere his ears took sound; he lay for dead;<br /> + Mountain on his trunk,<br /> + Ocean on his head.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Clamped to couch, his fiery hearing sucked<br +/> +Whispers that at heart made iron-clang:<br /> + Here fool-women clucked,<br /> + There men held harangue.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Burial to fit their lord of war<br /> +They decreed him: hailed the kingling: ha!<br /> + Hateful! but this Thor<br /> + Failed a weak lamb’s +baa.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">King they hailed a branchlet, shaped to +fare,<br /> +Weighted so, like quaking shingle spume,<br /> + When his blood’s own heir<br +/> + Ripened in the womb!</p> +<h4><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +156</span>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Still he heard, and doglike, hoglike, ran<br /> +Nose of hearing till his blind sight saw:<br /> + Woman stood with man<br /> + Mouthing low, at paw.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Woman, man, they mouthed; they spake a thing<br +/> +Armed to split a mountain, sunder seas:<br /> + Still the frozen king<br /> + Lay and felt him freeze.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Doglike, hoglike, horselike now he raced,<br /> +Riderless, in ghost across a ground<br /> + Flint of breast, blank-faced,<br +/> + Past the fleshly bound.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Smell of brine his nostrils filled with +might:<br /> +Nostrils quickened eyelids, eyelids hand:<br /> + Hand for sword at right<br /> + Groped, the great haft +spanned.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Wonder struck to ice his people’s +eyes:<br /> +Him they saw, the prone upon the bier,<br /> + Sheer from backbone rise,<br /> + Sword uplifting peer.</p> +<h4><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sitting did he breathe against the blade,<br /> +Standing kiss it for that proof of life:<br /> + Strode, as netters wade,<br /> + Straightway to his wife.</p> +<h4>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Her he eyed: his judgement was one word,<br /> +Foulbed! and she fell: the blow clove two.<br /> + Fearful for the third,<br /> + All their breath indrew.</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Morning danced along the waves to beach;<br /> +Dumb his chiefs fetched breath for what might hap:<br /> + Glassily on each<br /> + Stared the iron cap.</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sudden, as it were a monster oak<br /> +Split to yield a limb by stress of heat,<br /> + Strained he, staggered, broke<br +/> + Doubled at their feet.</p> +<h3><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Hawk</span> or shrike has +done this deed<br /> +Of downy feathers: rueful sight!<br /> +Sweet sentimentalist, invite<br /> +Your bosom’s Power to intercede.</p> +<p class="poetry">So hard it seems that one must bleed<br /> +Because another needs will bite!<br /> +All round we find cold Nature slight<br /> +The feelings of the totter-knee’d.</p> +<p class="poetry">O it were pleasant with you<br /> +To fly from this tussle of foes,<br /> +The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle!<br /> +To dwell in yon dribble of dew<br /> +On the cheek of your sovereign rose,<br /> +And live the young life of a twinkle.</p> +<h3><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +159</span>YOUNG REYNARD</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Gracefullest</span> leaper, +the dappled fox-cub<br /> +Curves over brambles with berries and buds,<br /> +Light as a bubble that flies from the tub,<br /> +Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds.<br /> +Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease,<br /> +Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce;<br /> +Nature’s own prince of the dance: then he sees<br /> +Me, and retires as if making excuse.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Never closed minuet courtlier! Soon<br /> +Cub-hunting troops were abroad, and a yelp<br /> +Told of sure scent: ere the stroke upon noon<br /> +Reynard the younger lay far beyond help.<br /> +Wild, my poor friend, has the fate to be chased;<br /> +Civil will conquer: were ’t other ’twere worse;<br /> +Fair, by the flushed early morning embraced,<br /> +Haply you live a day longer in verse.</p> +<h3><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +160</span>MANFRED</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Projected</span> from the +bilious Childe,<br /> +This clatterjaw his foot could set<br /> +On Alps, without a breast beguiled<br /> +To glow in shedding rascal sweat.<br /> +Somewhere about his grinder teeth,<br /> +He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath,<br /> +And summoned Nature to her feud<br /> +With bile and buskin Attitude.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Considerably was the world<br /> +Of spinsterdom and clergy racked<br /> +While he his hinted horrors hurled,<br /> +And she pictorially attacked.<br /> +A duel hugeous. Tragic? Ho!<br /> +The cities, not the mountains, blow<br /> +Such bladders; in their shapes confessed<br /> +An after-dinner’s indigest.</p> +<h3><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +161</span>HERNANI</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Cistercians</span> might +crack their sides<br /> +With laughter, and exemption get,<br /> +At sight of heroes clasping brides,<br /> +And hearing—O the horn! the horn!<br /> +The horn of their obstructive debt!</p> +<p class="poetry">But quit the stage, that note applies<br /> +For sermons cosmopolitan,<br /> +Hernani. Have we filched our prize,<br /> +Forgetting . . .? O the horn! the horn!<br /> +The horn of the Old Gentleman!</p> +<h3><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>THE +NUPTIALS OF ATTILA</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Flat</span> as to an +eagle’s eye,<br /> + Earth hung under Attila.<br /> +Sign for carnage gave he none.<br /> +In the peace of his disdain,<br /> +Sun and rain, and rain and sun,<br /> +Cherished men to wax again,<br /> +Crawl, and in their manner die.<br /> +On his people stood a frost.<br /> +Like the charger cut in stone,<br /> +Rearing stiff, the warrior host,<br /> +Which had life from him alone,<br /> +Craved the trumpet’s eager note,<br /> +As the bridled earth the Spring.<br /> +Rusty was the trumpet’s throat.<br /> +He let chief and prophet rave;<br /> +Venturous earth around him string<br /> +Threads of grass and slender rye,<br /> +Wave them, and untrampled wave.<br /> +O for the time when God did cry,<br /> + Eye and have, my Attila!</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Scorn of conquest filled like sleep<br /> +Him that drank of havoc deep<br /> +When the Green Cat pawed the globe:<br /> +When the horsemen from his bow<br /> +<a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>Shot in +sheaves and made the foe<br /> +Crimson fringes of a robe,<br /> +Trailed o’er towns and fields in woe;<br /> +When they streaked the rivers red,<br /> +When the saddle was the bed.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">He breathed peace and pulled a flower.<br /> + Eye and have, my Attila!<br /> +This was the damsel Ildico,<br /> +Rich in bloom until that hour:<br /> +Shyer than the forest doe<br /> +Twinkling slim through branches green.<br /> +Yet the shyest shall be seen.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Seen of Attila, desired,<br /> +She was led to him straightway:<br /> +Radiantly was she attired;<br /> +Rifled lands were her array,<br /> +Jewels bled from weeping crowns,<br /> +Gold of woeful fields and towns.<br /> +She stood pallid in the light.<br /> +How she walked, how withered white,<br /> +From the blessing to the board,<br /> +She who would have proudly blushed,<br /> +Women whispered, asking why,<br /> +Hinting of a youth, and hushed.<br /> +Was it terror of her lord?<br /> +Was she childish? was she sly?<br /> +<a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>Was it +the bright mantle’s dye<br /> +Drained her blood to hues of grief<br /> +Like the ash that shoots the spark?<br /> +See the green tree all in leaf:<br /> +See the green tree stripped of bark!—<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Round the banquet-table’s load<br /> +Scores of iron horsemen rode;<br /> +Chosen warriors, keen and hard;<br /> +Grain of threshing battle-dints;<br /> +Attila’s fierce body-guard,<br /> +Smelling war like fire in flints.<br /> +Grant them peace be fugitive!<br /> +Iron-capped and iron-heeled,<br /> +Each against his fellow’s shield<br /> +Smote the spear-head, shouting, Live,<br /> + Attila! my Attila!<br /> +Eagle, eagle of our breed,<br /> +Eagle, beak the lamb, and feed!<br /> +Have her, and unleash us! live,<br /> + Attila! my Attila!</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">He was of the blood to shine<br /> +Bronze in joy, like skies that scorch.<br /> +Beaming with the goblet wine<br /> +In the wavering of the torch,<br /> +Looked he backward on his bride.<br /> + Eye and have, my Attila!<br /> +Fair in her wide robe was she:<br /> +Where the robe and vest divide,<br /> +<a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>Fair she +seemed surpassingly:<br /> +Soft, yet vivid as the stream<br /> +Danube rolls in the moonbeam<br /> +Through rock-barriers: but she smiled<br /> +Never, she sat cold as salt:<br /> +Open-mouthed as a young child<br /> +Wondering with a mind at fault.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Under the thin hoop of gold<br /> +Whence in waves her hair outrolled,<br /> +’Twixt her brows the women saw<br /> +Shadows of a vulture’s claw<br /> +Gript in flight: strange knots that sped<br /> +Closing and dissolving aye:<br /> +Such as wicked dreams betray<br /> +When pale dawn creeps o’er the bed.<br /> +They might show the common pang<br /> +Known to virgins, in whom dread<br /> +Hunts their bliss like famished hounds;<br /> +While the chiefs with roaring rounds<br /> +Tossed her to her lord, and sang<br /> +Praise of him whose hand was large,<br /> +Cheers for beauty brought to yield,<br /> +Chirrups of the trot afield,<br /> +Hurrahs of the battle-charge.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Those rock-faces hung with weed<br /> +Reddened: their great days of speed,<br /> +Slaughter, triumph, flood and flame,<br /> +Like a jealous frenzy wrought,<br /> +<a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>Scoffed +at them and did them shame,<br /> +Quaffing idle, conquering nought.<br /> +O for the time when God decreed<br /> + Earth the prey of Attila!<br /> +God called on thee in his wrath,<br /> +Trample it to mire! ’Twas done.<br /> +Swift as Danube clove our path<br /> +Down from East to Western sun.<br /> +Huns! behold your pasture, gaze,<br /> +Take, our king said: heel to flank<br /> +(Whisper it, the war-horse neighs!)<br /> +Forth we drove, and blood we drank<br /> +Fresh as dawn-dew: earth was ours:<br /> +Men were flocks we lashed and spurned:<br /> +Fast as windy flame devours,<br /> +Flame along the wind, we burned.<br /> +Arrow javelin, spear, and sword!<br /> +Here the snows and there the plains;<br /> +On! our signal: onward poured<br /> +Torrents of the tightened reins,<br /> +Foaming over vine and corn<br /> +Hot against the city-wall.<br /> +Whisper it, you sound a horn<br /> +To the grey beast in the stall!<br /> +Yea, he whinnies at a nod.<br /> +O for sound of the trumpet-notes!<br /> +O for the time when thunder-shod,<br /> +He that scarce can munch his oats,<br /> +Hung on the peaks, brooded aloof,<br /> +Champed the grain of the wrath of God,<br /> +Pressed a cloud on the cowering roof,<br /> +Snorted out of the blackness fire!<br /> +Scarlet broke the sky, and down,<br /> +Hammering West with print of his hoof,<br /> +He burst out of the bosom of ire<br /> +<a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>Sharp as +eyelight under thy frown,<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Ravaged cities rolling smoke<br /> +Thick on cornfields dry and black,<br /> +Wave his banners, bear his yoke.<br /> +Track the lightning, and you track<br /> +Attila. They moan: ’tis he!<br /> +Bleed: ’tis he! Beneath his foot<br /> +Leagues are deserts charred and mute;<br /> +Where he passed, there passed a sea.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Who breathed on the king cold breath?<br +/> +Said a voice amid the host,<br /> +He is Death that weds a ghost,<br /> +Else a ghost that weds with Death?<br /> +Ildico’s chill little hand<br /> +Shuddering he beheld: austere<br /> +Stared, as one who would command<br /> +Sight of what has filled his ear:<br /> +Plucked his thin beard, laughed disdain.<br /> +Feast, ye Huns! His arm be raised,<br /> +Like the warrior, battle-dazed,<br /> +Joining to the fight amain.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Silent Ildico stood up.<br /> +King and chief to pledge her well,<br /> +Shocked sword sword and cup on cup,<br /> +Clamouring like a brazen bell.<br /> +<a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>Silent +stepped the queenly slave.<br /> +Fair, by heaven! she was to meet<br /> +On a midnight, near a grave,<br /> +Flapping wide the winding-sheet.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Death and she walked through the crowd,<br /> +Out beyond the flush of light.<br /> +Ceremonious women bowed<br /> +Following her: ’twas middle night.<br /> +Then the warriors each on each<br /> +Spied, nor overloudly laughed;<br /> +Like the victims of the leech,<br /> +Who have drunk of a strange draught.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Attila remained. Even so<br /> +Frowned he when he struck the blow,<br /> +Brained his horse, that stumbled twice,<br /> +On a bloody day in Gaul,<br /> +Bellowing, Perish omens! All<br /> +Marvelled at the sacrifice,<br /> +But the battle, swinging dim,<br /> +Rang off that axe-blow for him.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Brightening over Danube wheeled<br /> +Star by star; and she, most fair,<br /> +Sweet as victory half-revealed,<br /> +Seized to make him glad and young;<br /> +She, O sweet as the dark sign<br /> +<a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>Given +him oft in battles gone,<br /> +When the voice within said, Dare!<br /> +And the trumpet-notes were sprung<br /> +Rapturous for the charge in line:<br /> +She lay waiting: fair as dawn<br /> +Wrapped in folds of night she lay;<br /> +Secret, lustrous; flaglike there,<br /> +Waiting him to stream and ray,<br /> +With one loosening blush outflung,<br /> +Colours of his hordes of horse<br /> +Ranked for combat; still he hung<br /> +Like the fever dreading air,<br /> +Cursed of heat; and as a corse<br /> +Gathers vultures, in his brain<br /> +Images of her eyes and kiss<br /> +Plucked at the limbs that could remain<br /> +Loitering nigh the doors of bliss.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Passion on one hand, on one,<br /> +Destiny led forth the Hun.<br /> +Heard ye outcries of affright,<br /> +Voices that through many a fray,<br /> +In the press of flag and spear,<br /> +Warned the king of peril near?<br /> +Men were dumb, they gave him way,<br /> +Eager heads to left and right,<br /> +Like the bearded standard, thrust,<br /> +As in battle, for a nod<br /> +From their lord of battle-dust.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Slow between the lines he trod.<br /> +Saw ye not the sun drop slow<br /> +<a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>On this +nuptial day, ere eve<br /> +Pierced him on the couch aglow?<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Here and there his heart would cleave<br /> +Clotted memory for a space:<br /> +Some stout chief’s familiar face,<br /> +Choicest of his fighting brood,<br /> +Touched him, as ’twere one to know<br /> +Ere he met his bride’s embrace.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Twisting fingers in a beard<br /> +Scant as winter underwood,<br /> +With a narrowed eye he peered;<br /> +Like the sunset’s graver red<br /> +Up old pine-stems. Grave he stood<br /> +Eyeing them on whom was shed<br /> +Burning light from him alone.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Red were they whose mouths recalled<br /> +Where the slaughter mounted high,<br /> +High on it, o’er earth appalled,<br /> +He; heaven’s finger in their sight<br /> +Raising him on waves of dead,<br /> +Up to heaven his trumpets blown.<br /> +O for the time when God’s delight<br /> + Crowned the head of Attila!<br /> +Hungry river of the crag<br /> +Stretching hands for earth he came:<br /> +Force and Speed astride his name<br /> +Pointed back to spear and flag.<br /> +He came out of miracle cloud,<br /> +Lightning-swift and spectre-lean.<br /> +Now those days are in a shroud:<br /> +Have him to his ghostly queen.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +171</span>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">One, with winecups overstrung,<br /> +Cried him farewell in Rome’s tongue.<br /> +Who? for the great king turned as though<br /> +Wrath to the shaft’s head strained the bow.<br /> +Nay, not wrath the king possessed,<br /> +But a radiance of the breast.<br /> +In that sound he had the key<br /> +Of his cunning malady.<br /> +Lo, where gleamed the sapphire lake,<br /> +Leo, with his Rome at stake,<br /> +Drew blank air to hues and forms;<br /> +Whereof Two that shone distinct,<br /> +Linked as orbed stars are linked,<br /> +Clear among the myriad swarms,<br /> +In a constellation, dashed<br /> +Full on horse and rider’s eyes<br /> +Sunless light, but light it was—<br /> +Light that blinded and abashed,<br /> +Froze his members, bade him pause,<br /> +Caught him mid-gallop, blazed him home.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +What are streams that cease to flow?<br /> +What was Attila, rolled thence,<br /> +Cheated by a juggler’s show?<br /> +Like that lake of blue intense,<br /> +Under tempest lashed to foam,<br /> +Lurid radiance, as he passed,<br /> +Filled him, and around was glassed,<br /> +When deep-voiced he uttered, Rome!</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Rome! the word was: and like meat<br /> +Flung to dogs the word was torn.<br /> +<a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>Soon +Rome’s magic priests shall bleat<br /> +Round their magic Pope forlorn!<br /> +Loud they swore the king had sworn<br /> +Vengeance on the Roman cheat,<br /> +Ere he passed, as, grave and still,<br /> +Danube through the shouting hill:<br /> +Sworn it by his naked life!<br /> +Eagle, snakes these women are:<br /> +Take them on the wing! but war,<br /> +Smoking war’s the warrior’s wife!<br /> +Then for plunder! then for brides<br /> +Won without a winking priest!—<br /> +Danube whirled his train of tides<br /> +Black toward the yellow East.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Chirrups of the trot afield,<br /> +Hurrahs of the battle-charge,<br /> +How they answered, how they pealed,<br /> +When the morning rose and drew<br /> +Bow and javelin, lance and targe,<br /> +In the nuptial casement’s view!<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Down the hillspurs, out of tents<br /> +Glimmering in mid-forest, through<br /> +Mists of the cool morning scents,<br /> +Forth from city-alley, court,<br /> +Arch, the bounding horsemen flew,<br /> +Joined along the plains of dew,<br /> +Raced and gave the rein to sport,<br /> +Closed and streamed like curtain-rents<br /> +Fluttered by a wind, and flowed<br /> +Into squadrons: trumpets blew,<br /> +<a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>Chargers +neighed, and trappings glowed<br /> +Brave as the bright Orient’s.<br /> +Look on the seas that run to greet<br /> +Sunrise: look on the leagues of wheat:<br /> +Look on the lines and squares that fret<br /> +Leaping to level the lance blood-wet.<br /> +Tens of thousands, man and steed,<br /> +Tossing like field-flowers in Spring;<br /> +Ready to be hurled at need<br /> +Whither their great lord may sling.<br /> +Finger Romeward, Romeward, King!<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Still the woman holds him fast<br /> +As a night-flag round the mast.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Nigh upon the fiery noon,<br /> +Out of ranks a roaring burst.<br /> +’Ware white women like the moon!<br /> +They are poison: they have thirst<br /> +First for love, and next for rule.<br /> +Jealous of the army, she?<br /> +Ho, the little wanton fool!<br /> +We were his before she squealed<br /> +Blind for mother’s milk, and heeled<br /> +Kicking on her mother’s knee.<br /> +His in life and death are we:<br /> +She but one flower of a field.<br /> +We have given him bliss tenfold<br /> +In an hour to match her night:<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Still her arms the master hold,<br /> +As on wounds the scarf winds tight.</p> +<h4><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +174</span>XX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Over Danube day no more,<br /> +Like the warrior’s planted spear,<br /> +Stood to hail the King: in fear<br /> +Western day knocked at his door.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Sudden in the army’s eyes<br /> +Rolled a blast of lights and cries:<br /> +Flashing through them: Dead are ye!<br /> +Dead, ye Huns, and torn piecemeal!<br /> +See the ordered army reel<br /> +Stricken through the ribs: and see,<br /> +Wild for speed to cheat despair,<br /> +Horsemen, clutching knee to chin,<br /> +Crouch and dart they know not where.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Faces covered, faces bare,<br /> +Light the palace-front like jets<br /> +Of a dreadful fire within.<br /> +Beating hands and driving hair<br /> +Start on roof and parapets.<br /> +Dust rolls up; the slaughter din.<br /> +—Death to them who call him dead!<br /> +Death to them who doubt the tale!<br /> +Choking in his dusty veil,<br /> +Sank the sun on his death-bed.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XXI</h4> +<p class="poetry">’Tis the room where thunder sleeps.<br /> +Frenzy, as a wave to shore<br /> +Surging, burst the silent door,<br /> +And drew back to awful deeps<br /> +<a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>Breath +beaten out, foam-white. Anew<br /> +Howled and pressed the ghastly crew,<br /> +Like storm-waters over rocks.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +One long shaft of sunset red<br /> +Laid a finger on the bed.<br /> +Horror, with the snaky locks,<br /> +Shocked the surge to stiffened heaps,<br /> +Hoary as the glacier’s head<br /> +Faced to the moon. Insane they look.<br /> +God it is in heaven who weeps<br /> +Fallen from his hand the Scourge he shook.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XXII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Square along the couch, and stark,<br /> +Like the sea-rejected thing<br /> +Sea-sucked white, behold their King.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Beams that panted black and bright,<br /> +Scornful lightnings danced their sight:<br /> +Him they see an oak in bud,<br /> +Him an oaklog stripped of bark:<br /> +Him, their lord of day and night,<br /> +White, and lifting up his blood<br /> +Dumb for vengeance. Name us that,<br /> +Huddled in the corner dark<br /> +Humped and grinning like a cat,<br /> +Teeth for lips!—’tis she! she stares,<br /> +Glittering through her bristled hairs.<br /> +Rend her! Pierce her to the hilt!<br /> +She is Murder: have her out!<br /> +What! this little fist, as big<br /> +As the southern summer fig!<br /> +<a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>She is +Madness, none may doubt.<br /> +Death, who dares deny her guilt!<br /> +Death, who says his blood she spilt!<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XXIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Torch and lamp and sunset-red<br /> +Fell three-fingered on the bed.<br /> +In the torch the beard-hair scant<br /> +With the great breast seemed to pant:<br /> +In the yellow lamp the limbs<br /> +Wavered, as the lake-flower swims:<br /> +In the sunset red the dead<br /> +Dead avowed him, dry blood-red.</p> +<h4>XXIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Hatred of that abject slave,<br /> +Earth, was in each chieftain’s heart.<br /> +Earth has got him, whom God gave,<br /> +Earth may sing, and earth shall smart!<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4>XXV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thus their prayer was raved and ceased.<br /> +Then had Vengeance of her feast<br /> +Scent in their quick pang to smite<br /> +Which they knew not, but huge pain<br /> +Urged them for some victim slain<br /> +Swift, and blotted from the sight.<br /> +Each at each, a crouching beast,<br /> +Glared, and quivered for the word.<br /> +Each at each, and all on that,<br /> +Humped and grinning like a cat,<br /> +<a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +177</span>Head-bound with its bridal-wreath.<br /> +Then the bitter chamber heard<br /> +Vengeance in a cauldron seethe.<br /> +Hurried counsel rage and craft<br /> +Yelped to hungry men, whose teeth<br /> +Hard the grey lip-ringlet gnawed,<br /> +Gleaming till their fury laughed.<br /> +With the steel-hilt in the clutch,<br /> +Eyes were shot on her that froze<br /> +In their blood-thirst overawed;<br /> +Burned to rend, yet feared to touch.<br /> +She that was his nuptial rose,<br /> +She was of his heart’s blood clad:<br /> +Oh! the last of him she had!—<br /> +Could a little fist as big<br /> +As the southern summer fig,<br /> +Push a dagger’s point to pierce<br /> +Ribs like those? Who else! They glared<br /> +Each at each. Suspicion fierce<br /> +Many a black remembrance bared.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!<br /> +Death, who dares deny her guilt!<br /> +Death, who says his blood she spilt!<br /> +Traitor he, who stands between!<br /> +Swift to hell, who harms the Queen!<br /> +She, the wild contention’s cause,<br /> +Combed her hair with quiet paws.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XXVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Night was on the host in arms.<br /> +Night, as never night before,<br /> +Hearkened to an army’s roar<br /> +Breaking up in snaky swarms:<br /> +<a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>Torch +and steel and snorting steed,<br /> +Hunted by the cry of blood,<br /> +Cursed with blindness, mad for day.<br /> +Where the torches ran a flood,<br /> +Tales of him and of the deed<br /> +Showered like a torrent spray.<br /> +Fear of silence made them strive<br /> +Loud in warrior-hymns that grew<br /> +Hoarse for slaughter yet unwreaked.<br /> +Ghostly Night across the hive,<br /> +With a crimson finger drew<br /> +Letters on her breast and shrieked.<br /> +Night was on them like the mould<br /> +On the buried half alive.<br /> +Night, their bloody Queen, her fold<br /> +Wound on them and struck them through.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h4>XXVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Earth has got him whom God gave,<br /> +Earth may sing, and earth shall smart!<br /> +None of earth shall know his grave.<br /> +They that dig with Death depart.<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4>XXVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thus their prayer was raved and passed:<br /> +Passed in peace their red sunset:<br /> +Hewn and earthed those men of sweat<br /> +Who had housed him in the vast,<br /> +Where no mortal might declare,<br /> +There lies he—his end was there!<br /> + Attila, my Attila!</p> +<h4><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +179</span>XXIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Kingless was the army left:<br /> +Of its head the race bereft.<br /> +Every fury of the pit<br /> +Tortured and dismembered it.<br /> +Lo, upon a silent hour,<br /> +When the pitch of frost subsides,<br /> +Danube with a shout of power<br /> +Loosens his imprisoned tides:<br /> +Wide around the frighted plains<br /> +Shake to hear his riven chains,<br /> +Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath,<br /> +As he makes himself a path:<br /> +High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile<br /> +Floes to bergs, and giant peers<br /> +Wrestle on a drifted isle;<br /> +Island on ice-island rears;<br /> +Dissolution battles fast:<br /> +Big the senseless Titans loom,<br /> +Through a mist of common doom<br /> +Striving which shall die the last:<br /> +Till a gentle-breathing morn<br /> +Frees the stream from bank to bank.<br /> +So the Empire built of scorn<br /> +Agonized, dissolved and sank.<br /> +Of the Queen no more was told<br /> +Than of leaf on Danube rolled.<br /> + Make the bed for Attila!</p> +<h3><a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +180</span>ANEURIN’S HARP</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Prince</span> of Bards was +old Aneurin;<br /> +He the grand Gododin sang;<br /> +All his numbers threw such fire in,<br /> +Struck his harp so wild a twang;—<br /> +Still the wakeful Briton borrows<br /> +Wisdom from its ancient heat:<br /> +Still it haunts our source of sorrows,<br /> +Deep excess of liquor sweet!</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Here the Briton, there the Saxon,<br /> +Face to face, three fields apart,<br /> +Thirst for light to lay their thwacks on<br /> +Each the other with good heart.<br /> +Dry the Saxon sits, ’mid dinful<br /> +Noise of iron knits his steel:<br /> +Fresh and roaring with a skinful,<br /> +Britons round the hirlas reel.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Yellow flamed the meady sunset;<br /> +Red runs up the flag of morn.<br /> +Signal for the British onset<br /> +Hiccups through the British horn.<br /> +<a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>Down +these hillmen pour like cattle<br /> +Sniffing pasture: grim below,<br /> +Showing eager teeth of battle,<br /> +In his spear-heads lies the foe.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">—Monster of the sea! we drive him<br /> +Back into his hungry brine.<br /> +—You shall lodge him, feed him, wive him,<br /> +Look on us; we stand in line.<br /> +—Pale sea-monster! foul the waters<br /> +Cast him; foul he leaves our land.<br /> +—You shall yield us land and daughters:<br /> +Stay the tongue, and try the hand.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Swift as torrent-streams our warriors,<br /> +Tossing torrent lights, find way;<br /> +Burst the ridges, crowd the barriers,<br /> +Pierce them where the spear-heads play;<br /> +Turn them as the clods in furrow,<br /> +Top them like the leaping foam;<br /> +Sorrow to the mother, sorrow,<br /> +Sorrow to the wife at home!</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Stags, they butted; bulls, they bellowed;<br /> +Hounds, we baited them; oh, brave!<br /> +Every second man, unfellowed,<br /> +Took the strokes of two, and gave.<br /> +Bare as hop-stakes in November’s<br /> +Mists they met our battle-flood:<br /> +Hoary-red as Winter’s embers<br /> +Lay their dead lines done in blood.</p> +<h4><a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +182</span>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thou, my Bard, didst hang thy lyre in<br /> +Oak-leaves, and with crimson brand<br /> +Rhythmic fury spent, Aneurin;<br /> +Songs the churls could understand:<br /> +Thrumming on their Saxon sconces<br /> +Straight, the invariable blow,<br /> +Till they snorted true responses.<br /> +Ever thus the Bard they know!</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">But ere nightfall, harper lusty!<br /> +When the sun was like a ball<br /> +Dropping on the battle dusty,<br /> +What was yon discordant call?<br /> +Cambria’s old metheglin demon<br /> +Breathed against our rushing tide;<br /> +Clove us midst the threshing seamen:—<br /> +Gashed, we saw our ranks divide!</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Britain then with valedictory<br /> +Shriek veiled off her face and knelt.<br /> +Full of liquor, full of victory,<br /> +Chief on chief old vengeance dealt.<br /> +Backward swung their hurly-burly;<br /> +None but dead men kept the fight.<br /> +They that drink their cup too early,<br /> +Darkness they shall see ere night.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Loud we heard the yellow rover<br /> +Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick,<br /> +Thick as ants the ant-hill over,<br /> +Asking who has thrust the stick.<br /> +<a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>Lo, as +frogs that Winter cumbers<br /> +Meet the Spring with stiffen’d yawn,<br /> +We from our hard night of slumbers<br /> +Marched into the bloody dawn.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Day on day we fought, though shattered:<br /> +Pushed and met repulses sharp,<br /> +Till our Raven’s plumes were scattered:<br /> +All, save old Aneurin’s harp.<br /> +Hear it wailing like a mother<br /> +O’er the strings of children slain!<br /> +He in one tongue, in another,<br /> +Alien, I; one blood, yet twain.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Old Aneurin! droop no longer.<br /> +That squat ocean-scum, we own,<br /> +Had fine stoutness, made us stronger,<br /> +Brought us much-required backbone:<br /> +Claimed of Power their dues, and granted<br /> +Dues to Power in turn, when rose<br /> +Mightier rovers; they that planted<br /> +Sovereign here the Norman nose.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Glorious men, with heads of eagles,<br /> +Chopping arms, and cupboard lips;<br /> +Warriors, hunters, keen as beagles,<br /> +Mounted aye on horse or ships.<br /> +Active, being hungry creatures;<br /> +Silent, having nought to say:<br /> +High they raised the lord of features,<br /> +Saxon-worshipped to this day.</p> +<h4><a name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +184</span>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Hear its deeds, the great recital!<br /> +Stout as bergs of Arctic ice<br /> +Once it led, and lived; a title<br /> +Now it is, and names its price.<br /> +This our Saxon brothers cherish:<br /> +This, when by the worth of wits<br /> +Lands are reared aloft, or perish,<br /> +Sole illumes their lucre-pits.</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Know we not our wrongs, unwritten<br /> +Though they be, Aneurin? Sword,<br /> +Song, and subtle mind, the Briton<br /> +Brings to market, all ignored.<br /> +’Gainst the Saxon’s bone impinging,<br /> +Still is our Gododin played;<br /> +Shamed we see him humbly cringing<br /> +In a shadowy nose’s shade.</p> +<h4>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Bitter is the weight that crushes<br /> +Low, my Bard, thy race of fire.<br /> +Here no fair young future blushes<br /> +Bridal to a man’s desire.<br /> +Neither chief, nor aim, nor splendour<br /> +Dressing distance, we perceive.<br /> +Neither honour, nor the tender<br /> +Bloom of promise, morn or eve.</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Joined we are; a tide of races<br /> +Rolled to meet a common fate;<br /> +England clasps in her embraces<br /> +Many: what is England’s state?<br /> +<a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>England +her distended middle<br /> +Thumps with pride as Mammon’s wife;<br /> +Says that thus she reads thy riddle,<br /> +Heaven! ’tis heaven to plump her life.</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">O my Bard! a yellow liquor,<br /> +Like to that we drank of old—<br /> +Gold is her metheglin beaker,<br /> +She destruction drinks in gold.<br /> +Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing<br /> +Hotly for his dues this hour;<br /> +Tell her that no drunken blessing<br /> +Stops the onward march of Power.</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Has she ears to take forewarnings<br /> +She will cleanse her of her stains,<br /> +Feed and speed for braver mornings<br /> +Valorously the growth of brains.<br /> +Power, the hard man knit for action,<br /> +Reads each nation on the brow.<br /> +Cripple, fool, and petrifaction<br /> +Fall to him—are falling now!</p> +<h3><a name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>MEN +AND MAN</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Men</span> the Angels +eyed;<br /> +And here they were wild waves,<br /> +And there as marsh descried;<br /> +Men the Angels eyed,<br /> +And liked the picture best<br /> +Where they were greenly dressed<br /> +In brotherhood of graves.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Man the Angels marked:<br /> +He led a host through murk,<br /> +On fearful seas embarked;<br /> +Man the Angels marked;<br /> +To think without a nay,<br /> +That he was good as they,<br /> +And help him at his work.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Man and Angels, ye<br /> +A sluggish fen shall drain,<br /> +Shall quell a warring sea.<br /> +Man and Angels, ye,<br /> +Whom stain of strife befouls,<br /> +A light to kindle souls<br /> +Bear radiant in the stain.</p> +<h3><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>THE +LAST CONTENTION</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Young</span> captain of a +crazy bark!<br /> +O tameless heart in battered frame!<br /> +Thy sailing orders have a mark,<br /> + And hers is not the name.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">For action all thine iron clanks<br /> +In cravings for a splendid prize;<br /> +Again to race or bump thy planks<br /> + With any flag that flies.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Consult them; they are eloquent<br /> +For senses not inebriate.<br /> +They trust thee on the star intent,<br /> + That leads to land their freight.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">And they have known thee high peruse<br /> +The heavens, and deep the earth, till thou<br /> +Didst into the flushed circle cruise<br /> + Where reason quits the brow.</p> +<h4><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +188</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thou animatest ancient tales,<br /> +To prove our world of linear seed:<br /> +Thy very virtue now assails,<br /> + A tempter to mislead.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">But thou hast answer I am I;<br /> +My passion hallows, bids command:<br /> +And she is gracious, she is nigh:<br /> + One motion of the hand!</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">It will suffice; a whirly tune<br /> +These winds will pipe, and thou perform<br /> +The nodded part of pantaloon<br /> + In thy created storm.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Admires thee Nature with much pride;<br /> +She clasps thee for a gift of morn,<br /> +Till thou art set against the tide,<br /> + And then beware her scorn.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sad issue, should that strife befall<br /> +Between thy mortal ship and thee!<br /> +It writes the melancholy scrawl<br /> + Of wreckage over sea.</p> +<h4><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +189</span>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">This lady of the luting tongue,<br /> +The flash in darkness, billow’s grace,<br /> +For thee the worship; for the young<br /> + In muscle the embrace.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Soar on thy manhood clear from those<br /> +Whose toothless Winter claws at May,<br /> +And take her as the vein of rose<br /> + Athwart an evening grey.</p> +<h3><a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +190</span>PERIANDER</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">How</span> died Melissa +none dares shape in words.<br /> +A woman who is wife despotic lords<br /> +Count faggot at the question, Shall she live!<br /> +Her son, because his brows were black of her,<br /> +Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive,<br /> +And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">There is no Corinth save the whip and curb<br +/> +Of Corinth, high Periander; the superb<br /> +In magnanimity, in rule severe.<br /> +Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits,<br /> +The city under him: a white yoked steer,<br /> +That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Bloom of the generous fires of his fair +Spring<br /> +Still coloured him when men forbore to sting;<br /> +Admiring meekly where the ordered seeds<br /> +Of his good sovereignty showed gardens trim;<br /> +And owning that the hoe he struck at weeds<br /> +Was author of the flowers raised face to him.</p> +<h4><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +191</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">His Corinth, to each mood subservient<br /> +In homage, made he as an instrument<br /> +To yield him music with scarce touch of stops.<br /> +He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly:<br /> +At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops;<br /> +At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">His wisdom men acknowledged; only one,<br /> +The creature, issue of him, Lycophron,<br /> +That rebel with his mother in his brows,<br /> +Contested: such an infamous would foul<br /> +Pirene! Little heed where he might house<br /> +The prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl!</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">To prove the Gods benignant to his rule,<br /> +The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool,<br /> +Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power.<br /> +A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had:<br /> +One greyer pointed on the pallid hour<br /> +To come: a river dried of waters glad.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">For which of his male issue promised grip<br /> +To stride yon people, with the curb and whip?<br /> +This Lycophron! he sole, the father like,<br /> +Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide,<br /> +By right of mastery; stern will to strike;<br /> +Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride!</p> +<h4><a name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +192</span>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Himself the prince beheld a failing fount.<br +/> +His line stretched back unto its holy mount:<br /> +The thirsty onward waved for him no sign.<br /> +Then stood before his vision that hard son.<br /> +The seizure of a passion for his line<br /> +Impelled him to the path of Lycophron.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea;<br /> +A figure shunned along the busy quay,<br /> +Perforce of the harsh edict for who dared<br /> +Address him outcast. Naming it, he crossed<br /> +His father’s look with look that proved them paired<br /> +For stiffness, and another pebble tossed.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">An exile to the Island ere nightfall<br /> +He passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all.<br /> +It had resemblance to a death: and on,<br /> +Against a coast where sapphire shattered white,<br /> +The seasons rolled like troops of billows blown<br /> +To spraymist. The prince gazed on capping night.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy +son!<br /> +Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done.<br /> +He heard historic echoes moan his name,<br /> +As of the prince in whom the race had pause;<br /> +Till Tyranny paternity became,<br /> +And him he hated loved he for the cause.</p> +<h4><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +193</span>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Not Lycophron the exile now appeared,<br /> +But young Periander, from the shadow cleared,<br /> +That haunted his rebellious brows. The prince<br /> +Grew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth,<br /> +Return: and of pure pardon to convince,<br /> +Despatched the messenger most dear with both.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">His daughter, from the exile’s Island +home,<br /> +Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o’er the foam,<br /> +Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed;<br /> +Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced.<br /> +To bring him back a prince the father vowed,<br /> +Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">He waved the fleet to strain its westward +way<br /> +On to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay:<br /> +Soil of those hospitable islanders<br /> +Whom now his heart, for honour to his blood,<br /> +Thanked. They should learn what boons a prince confers<br +/> +When happiness enjoins him gratitude!</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">In watch upon the offing, worn with haste<br /> +To see his youth revived, and, close embraced,<br /> +Pardon who had subdued him, who had gained<br /> +Surely the stoutest battle between two<br /> +Since Titan pierced by young Apollo stained<br /> +Earth’s breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked +through.</p> +<h4><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +194</span>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Errors aforetime unperceived were bared,<br /> +To be by his young masterful repaired:<br /> +Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke;<br /> +His policy confirmed amid the surge<br /> +Of States and people fretting at his yoke.<br /> +And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge!</p> +<h4>XVII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without +cheer<br /> +For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier.<br /> +They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress<br /> +Of numbers the free islanders dismayed<br /> +At Tyranny come masking to oppress,<br /> +Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid.</p> +<h4>XVIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Who smote the man thrown open to young joy?<br +/> +The image of the mother of his boy<br /> +Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths,<br /> +With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct,<br /> +Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes?<br /> +Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked!</p> +<h4>XIX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Dead was he, and demanding earth. +Demand<br /> +Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand,<br /> +The Tyrant in the father heard him cry,<br /> +And raged a plague; to prove on free Hellenes<br /> +How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye;<br /> +How black his Gods behind their marble screens.</p> +<h3><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +195</span>SOLON</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> Tyrant passed, +and friendlier was his eye<br /> +On the great man of Athens, whom for foe<br /> +He knew, than on the sycophantic fry<br /> +That broke as waters round a galley’s flow,<br /> +Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake.<br /> +Solidity the Thunderer could not shake,<br /> +Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare,<br /> +His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look,<br /> +From thought drew, and a countenance could wear<br /> +Not less at peace than fields in Attic air<br /> +Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper’s hook.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Most enviable so; yet much insane<br /> +To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep,<br /> +By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein;<br /> +Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap,<br /> +My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood.<br /> +For ones and twos and threes thy words are good;<br /> +For thine own government are pillars: mine<br /> +Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst,<br /> +Rejecting elegiacs, though they shine<br /> +On polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine,<br /> +In showering columns from their fountain burst.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely +plumed,<br /> +To his high seat upon the sacred rock:<br /> +<a name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>And +Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed<br /> +The meditation which that passing mock<br /> +Had buffeted awhile to sallowness.<br /> +He little loved the man, his office less,<br /> +Yet owned him for a flower of his kind.<br /> +Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he!<br /> +The people grew not in themselves, but, blind,<br /> +Accepted sight from him, to him resigned<br /> +Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">As under sea lay Solon’s work, or +seemed<br /> +By turbid shore-waves beaten day by day;<br /> +Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed,<br /> +Or child that fashioned in another clay<br /> +Appears, by strangers’ hands to home returned.<br /> +But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned<br /> +It was in some way, justly says the sage.<br /> +One sees not how, while husbanding regrets;<br /> +While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage,<br /> +High vision is obscured; for this is age<br /> +When robbed—more infant than the babe it frets!</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Yet see Athenians treading the black path<br /> +Laid by a prince’s shadow! well content<br /> +To wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath:<br /> +They bow to their accepted Orient<br /> +With offer of the all that renders bright:<br /> +Forgetful of the growth of men to light,<br /> +As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow.<br /> +Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast.<br /> +But still may they who sowed behind the plough<br /> +True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW<br /> +To make the plagues afflicting us things past.</p> +<h3><a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +197</span>BELLEROPHON</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Maimed</span>, beggared, +grey; seeking an alms; with nod<br /> +Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread;<br /> + Upon the stature of a God,<br /> +He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless +tongue<br /> +Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc:<br /> + Once radiant as the javelin flung<br /> +Right at the centre breastplate of his mark.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look,<br +/> +Some undermountain narrative he tells,<br /> + As gapped by Lykian heat the brook<br /> +Cut from the source that in the upland swells.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust<br +/> +With patient inattention hear him prate:<br /> + And comes the snow, and comes the dust,<br /> +Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.</p> +<h4><a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +198</span>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">A crazy beggar grateful for a meal<br /> +Has ever of himself a world to say.<br /> + For them he is an ancient wheel<br /> +Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect;<br /> +For never singer in the land had been<br /> + Who him for theme did not reject:<br /> +Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Albeit a theme of flame to bring them +straight<br /> +The snorting white-winged brother of the wave,<br /> + They hear him as a thing by fate<br /> +Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">As men that spied the wings, that heard the +snort,<br /> +Their sires have told; and of a martial prince<br /> + Bestriding him; and old report<br /> +Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">There is that story of the golden bit<br /> +By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:<br /> + A mortal who could mount, and sit<br /> +Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.</p> +<h4><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +199</span>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">He rose like the loosed fountain’s utmost +leap;<br /> +He played the star at span of heaven right o’er<br /> + Men’s heads: they saw the snowy steep,<br /> +Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell:<br +/> +And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins;<br /> + And in his breast a mouthless well<br /> +Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs<br +/> +Of recollections richer than our skies<br /> + To feed the flow of tuneful strings,<br /> +Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies.</p> +<h4><a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +200</span>PHAÉTHÔN<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC +MEASURE</span></h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">At</span> the coming up of +Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer,<br /> +Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes,<br /> +And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent!<br +/> +For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder +to black;<br /> +In the light of him there is music thro’ the poplar and +river-sedge,<br /> +Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an +ocean-song.<br /> +Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly,<br /> +In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios.<br /> +Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite’s +loved one it is!<br /> +To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon,<br +/> +Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary,<br /> +Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his +parentage,<br /> +He would grant his son’s petition, whatsoever the sign +thereof.<br /> +Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: ‘Rule of day give +me; give it me,<br /> +Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and +transcendingly<br /> +I, divine, proclaim my birthright.’ Darkened Helios, +and his utterance<br /> +<a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>Choked +prophetic: ‘O half mortal!’ he exclaimed in an +agony,<br /> +‘O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for +another thing:<br /> +Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift +impious!<br /> +Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous<br /> +Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a +joy?<br /> +Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently;<br +/> +As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them;<br +/> +Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine +origin<br /> +Shall be known even as when <i>I</i> strike on the string’d +shell with melody,<br /> +And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the +cavities,<br /> +Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships +thereon.’<br /> +Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his +eloquence<br /> +Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks +away.<br /> +What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in +delirium,<br /> +Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent,<br /> +‘By the oath! the oath! thine oath!’ cried. The +effulgent foreseër then,<br /> +Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy’s beaming +countenance<br /> +Looked and moaned, and urged him for love’s sake, for sweet +life’s sake, to yield the claim,<br /> +<a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>To +abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity.<br /> +But he, vehement, passionate, called out: ‘Let me show I am +what I say,<br /> +That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their +whispering.<br /> +Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving +wheels,<br /> +How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily,<br +/> +Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial,<br +/> +And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear +dew-drinkers:<br /> +Yea, for this I gaze on life’s light; throw for this any +sacrifice.’</p> +<p class="poetry">All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath +irrevocable<br /> +Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless.<br /> +Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so +decreed.<br /> +They were yoked before the glad youth by his +sister-ancillaries.<br /> +Swift the ripple ripples follow’d, as of aureate +Helicon,<br /> +Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the +distances,<br /> +And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight!<br +/> +Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air!<br /> +Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory!<br +/> +Chafed the youth with their spirit súrcharged, as when +blossom is shaken by winds,<br /> +Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, +quick<br /> +On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning +rose:<br /> +<a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>Seeing +whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest +fields,<br /> +When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs +it:<br /> +Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to +indicate<br /> +(If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil),<br /> +Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to +manipulate:<br /> +Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution’d urgently +betweenwhiles:<br /> +Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, +wickedness,<br /> +That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice of +Gods;<br /> +None but Gods can curb. He spake: vain were the words: +scarcely listening,<br /> +Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, ‘Behold me, +companions,<br /> +It is I here, I!’ he shouted, glancing down with +supremacy;<br /> +‘Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of +men;<br /> +I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!’<br +/> +Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly<br +/> +Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and +that;—<br /> +At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand,<br /> +Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and +yon;<br /> +Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled +East:—<br /> +Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer,<br +/> +<a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +204</span>Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his +arid wits;<br /> +The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the +mastery,<br /> +Till a thunder off the tense chords thro’ his ears +dinnèd horrible.<br /> +Panic seized him: fled his vision of inviolability;<br /> +Fled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances predominant;<br +/> +And he cried, ‘Had I petitioned for a cup of chill +aconite,<br /> +My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go<br /> +With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate.<br /> +Oh, my sisters! Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was +enviable,<br /> +From whose arms I rushed befrenzied, what a wreck will this body +be,<br /> +That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thy +mysteries<br /> +Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged!<br /> +Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering;<br +/> +Not again hear thy half-murmurs—I am lost!—never, +never more.<br /> +I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of +flame!<br /> +Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, +Cypria!’</p> +<p class="poetry">Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus +the Thunderer<br /> +Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car +superimpending<br /> +<a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>Over +Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales;<br /> +Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately;<br /> +Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move<br /> +With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable,<br +/> +The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the +firmament.<br /> +For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its +beacon-fire,<br /> +And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day’s +apparition forth.<br /> +Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering:<br +/> +Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate +hours:<br /> +Lo, the ravish’d beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the +chariot-wheels:<br /> +Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets!<br +/> +Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo,<br +/> +Torrid brilliancies thro’ the vapours lighten swifter, +penetrate them,<br /> +Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth’s frame +crackling busily.<br /> +He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe,<br /> +Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft:<br /> +Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him.<br +/> +Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under +their paws.<br /> +White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind:<br /> +Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate +shock.<br /> +<a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>To the +bolt he launched, ‘Strike dead, thou,’ uttered Zeus, +very terrible;<br /> +‘Perish folly, else ’tis man’s fate’; and +the bolt flew unerringly.<br /> +Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measureless +altitudes<br /> +Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised +not a cry.<br /> +Like the flower on the river’s surface when expanding it +vanishes,<br /> +Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched: and so fell he +precipitate,<br /> +Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it +comes:<br /> +So he showered above them, shadowed o’er the blue +archipelagoes,<br /> +O’er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the +isles;<br /> +So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth.</p> +<p class="poetry">Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters +shivering weep,<br /> +By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria,<br /> +Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the +tremulous<br /> +Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen.</p> +<h2><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>A +READING OF EARTH</h2> +<h3><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +209</span>SEED-TIME</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Flowers</span> of the +willow-herb are wool;<br /> +Flowers of the briar berries red;<br /> +Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule,<br /> +Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread.<br /> +Flowers of the clematis drip in beard,<br /> +Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed;<br /> +Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared;<br /> +Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Where were skies of the mantle stained<br /> +Orange and scarlet, a coat of frieze<br /> +Travels from North till day has waned,<br /> +Tattered, soaked in the ditch’s dyes;<br /> +Tumbles the rook under grey or slate;<br /> +Else enfolding us, damps to the bone;<br /> +Narrows the world to my neighbour’s gate;<br /> +Paints me Life as a wheezy crone.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now seems none but the spider lord;<br /> +Star in circle his web waits prey,<br /> +Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward;<br /> +Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray.<br /> +Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh,<br /> +Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed,<br /> +He who frolicked the jewelled fly;<br /> +All is adroop on the down and the weald.</p> +<h4><a name="page210"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +210</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap<br /> +Nights that tardily let slip a morn<br /> +Paler than moons, and on noontide’s lap<br /> +Flame dies cold, like the rose late born.<br /> +Rose born late, born withered in bud!—<br /> +I, even I, for a zenith of sun<br /> +Cry, to fulfil me, nourish my blood:<br /> +O for a day of the long light, one!</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Master the blood, nor read by chills,<br /> +Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed,<br /> +Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills,<br /> +Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud.<br /> +Steadily eyeing, before that wail<br /> +Animal-infant, thy mind began,<br /> +Momently nearer me: should sight fail,<br /> +Plod in the track of the husbandman.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Verily now is our season of seed,<br /> +Now in our Autumn; and Earth discerns<br /> +Them that have served her in them that can read,<br /> +Glassing, where under the surface she burns,<br /> +Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay,<br /> +Brightens the fire of renewal: and we?<br /> +Death is the word of a bovine day,<br /> +Know you the breast of the springing To-be.</p> +<h3><a name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 211</span>HARD +WEATHER</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Bursts</span> from a +rending East in flaws<br /> +The young green leaflet’s harrier, sworn<br /> +To strew the garden, strip the shaws,<br /> +And show our Spring with banner torn.<br /> +Was ever such virago morn?<br /> +The wind has teeth, the wind has claws.<br /> +All the wind’s wolves through woods are loose,<br /> +The wild wind’s falconry aloft.<br /> +Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews,<br /> +At gallop, clumped, and down the croft<br /> +Bestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed;<br /> +It seems a scythe, it seems a rod.<br /> +The howl is up at the howl’s accost;<br /> +The shivers greet and the shivers nod.</p> +<p class="poetry">Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive<br /> +Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum;<br /> +Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive,<br /> +Or down in dregs, or on in scum.<br /> +And drums the distant, pipes the near,<br /> +And vale and hill are grey in grey,<br /> +As when the surge is crumbling sheer,<br /> +And sea-mews wing the haze of spray.<br /> +Clouds—are they bony witches?—swarms,<br /> +Darting swift on the robber’s flight,<br /> +Hurry an infant sky in arms:<br /> +It peeps, it becks; ’tis day, ’tis night.<br /> +<a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 212</span>Black +while over the loop of blue<br /> +The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse.<br /> +Lo, as if swift the Furies flew,<br /> +The Fates at heel at a cry to horse!</p> +<p class="poetry">Interpret me the savage whirr:<br /> +And is it Nature scourged, or she,<br /> +Her offspring’s executioner,<br /> +Reducing land to barren sea?<br /> +But is there meaning in a day<br /> +When this fierce angel of the air,<br /> +Intent to throw, and haply slay,<br /> +Can for what breath of life we bear,<br /> +Exact the wrestle?—Call to mind<br /> +The many meanings glistening up<br /> +When Nature to her nurslings kind,<br /> +Hands them the fruitage and the cup!<br /> +And seek we rich significance<br /> +Not otherwhere than with those tides<br /> +Of pleasure on the sunned expanse,<br /> +Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides?</p> +<p class="poetry">Look in the face of men who fare<br /> +Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews<br /> +For this fierce angel of the air,<br /> +To twist with him and take his bruise.<br /> +That is the face beloved of old<br /> +Of Earth, young mother of her brood:<br /> +Nor broken for us shows the mould<br /> +When muscle is in mind renewed:<br /> +Though farther from her nature rude,<br /> +Yet nearer to her spirit’s hold:<br /> +And though of gentler mood serene,<br /> +Still forceful of her fountain-jet.<br /> +So shall her blows be shrewdly met,<br /> +<a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 213</span>Be +luminously read the scene<br /> +Where Life is at her grindstone set,<br /> +That she may give us edgeing keen,<br /> +String us for battle, till as play<br /> +The common strokes of fortune shower.<br /> +Such meaning in a dagger-day<br /> +Our wits may clasp to wax in power.<br /> +Yea, feel us warmer at her breast,<br /> +By spin of blood in lusty drill,<br /> +Than when her honeyed hands caressed,<br /> +And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill.</p> +<p class="poetry">Behold the life at ease; it drifts.<br /> +The sharpened life commands its course.<br /> +She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts,<br /> +To dip her chosen in her source:<br /> +Contention is the vital force,<br /> +Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts,<br /> +Sky of the senses! on which height,<br /> +Not disconnected, yet released,<br /> +They see how spirit comes to light,<br /> +Through conquest of the inner beast,<br /> +Which Measure tames to movement sane,<br /> +In harmony with what is fair.<br /> +Never is Earth misread by brain:<br /> +That is the welling of her, there<br /> +The mirror: with one step beyond,<br /> +For likewise is it voice; and more,<br /> +Benignest kinship bids respond,<br /> +When wail the weak, and them restore<br /> +Whom days as fell as this may rive,<br /> +While Earth sits ebon in her gloom,<br /> +Us atomies of life alive<br /> +Unheeding, bent on life to come.<br /> +Her children of the labouring brain,<br /> +<a name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>These +are the champions of the race,<br /> +True parents, and the sole humane,<br /> +With understanding for their base.<br /> +Earth yields the milk, but all her mind<br /> +Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock.<br /> +Her passion for old giantkind,<br /> +That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock,<br /> +Devolves on them who read aright<br /> +Her meaning and devoutly serve;<br /> +Nor in her starlessness of night<br /> +Peruse her with the craven nerve:<br /> +But even as she from grass to corn,<br /> +To eagle high from grubbing mole,<br /> +Prove in strong brain her noblest born,<br /> +The station for the flight of soul.</p> +<h3><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>THE +SOUTH-WESTER</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Day</span> of the cloud in +fleets! O day<br /> +Of wedded white and blue, that sail<br /> +Immingled, with a footing ray<br /> +In shadow-sandals down our vale!—<br /> +And swift to ravish golden meads,<br /> +Swift up the run of turf it speeds,<br /> +Thy bright of head and dark of heel,<br /> +To where the hilltop flings on sky,<br /> +As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel,<br /> +The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:—<br /> +Thee the last thunder’s caverned peal<br /> +Delivered from a wailful night:<br /> +All dusky round thy cradled light,<br /> +Those brine-born issues, now in bloom<br /> +Transfigured, wreathed as raven’s plume<br /> +And briony-leaf to watch thee lie:<br /> +Dark eyebrows o’er a dreamful eye<br /> +Nigh opening: till in the braid<br /> +Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed:<br /> +Till that new babe a Goddess maid<br /> +Appeared and vividly disclosed<br /> +Her beat of life: then crimson played<br /> +On edges of the plume and leaf:<br /> +Shape had they and fair feature brief,<br /> +The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast,<br /> +<a name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +216</span>Earth’s milk. But what imperial march<br /> +Their standards led for earth, none guessed<br /> +Ere upward of a coloured arch,<br /> +An arrow straining eager head<br /> +Lightened, and high for zenith sped.<br /> +Fierier followed; followed Fire.<br /> +Name the young lord of Earth’s desire,<br /> +Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth<br /> +Her music! Beauteous was she seen<br /> +Beneath her midway West of South;<br /> +And sister was her quivered green<br /> +To sapphire of the Nereid eyes<br /> +On sea when sun is breeze; she winked<br /> +As they, and waved, heaved waterwise<br /> +Her flood of leaves and grasses linked:<br /> +A myriad lustrous butterflies<br /> +A moment in the fluttering sheen;<br /> +Becapped with the slate air that throws<br /> +The reindeer’s antlers black between<br /> +Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows,<br /> +A minute after; hooded, stoled<br /> +To suit a graveside Season’s dirge.<br /> +Lo, but the breaking of a surge,<br /> +And she is in her lover’s fold,<br /> +Illumined o’er a boundless range<br /> +Anew: and through quick morning hours<br /> +The Tropic-Arctic countercharge<br /> +Did seem to pant in beams and showers.</p> +<p class="poetry">But noon beheld a larger heaven;<br /> +Beheld on our reflecting field<br /> +The Sower to the Bearer given,<br /> +And both their inner sweetest yield,<br /> +Fresh as when dews were grey or first<br /> +Received the flush of hues athirst.<br /> +<a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>Heard we +the woodland, eyeing sun,<br /> +As harp and harper were they one.<br /> +A murky cloud a fair pursued,<br /> +Assailed, and felt the limbs elude:<br /> +He sat him down to pipe his woe,<br /> +And some strange beast of sky became:<br /> +A giant’s club withheld the blow;<br /> +A milky cloud went all to flame.<br /> +And there were groups where silvery springs<br /> +The ethereal forest showed begirt<br /> +By companies in choric rings,<br /> +Whom but to see made ear alert.<br /> +For music did each movement rouse,<br /> +And motion was a minstrel’s rage<br /> +To have our spirits out of house,<br /> +And bathe them on the open page.<br /> +This was a day that knew not age.<br /> +Since flew the vapoury twos and threes<br /> +From western pile to eastern rack;<br /> +As on from peaks of Pyrenees<br /> +To Graians; youngness ruled the track.<br /> +When songful beams were shut in caves,<br /> +And rainy drapery swept across;<br /> +When the ranked clouds were downy waves,<br /> +Breast of swan, eagle, albatross,<br /> +In ordered lines to screen the blue,<br /> +Youngest of light was nigh, we knew.<br /> +The silver finger of it laughed<br /> +Along the narrow rift: it shot,<br /> +Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft,<br /> +Then haled on high the volumed blot,<br /> +To build the hurling palace, cleave<br /> +The dazzling chasm; the flying nests,<br /> +The many glory-garlands weave,<br /> +<a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>Whose +presence not our sight attests<br /> +Till wonder with the splendour blent,<br /> +And passion for the beauty flown,<br /> +Make evanescence permanent,<br /> +The thing at heart our endless own.</p> +<p class="poetry">Only at gathered eve knew we<br /> +The marvels of the day: for then<br /> +Mount upon mountain out of sea<br /> +Arose, and to our spacious ken<br /> +Trebled sublime Olympus round<br /> +In towering amphitheatre.<br /> +Colossal on enormous mound,<br /> +Majestic gods we saw confer.<br /> +They wafted the Dream-messenger<br /> +From off the loftiest, the crowned:<br /> +That Lady of the hues of foam<br /> +In sun-rays: who, close under dome,<br /> +A figure on the foot’s descent,<br /> +Irradiate to vapour went,<br /> +As one whose mission was resigned,<br /> +Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads;<br /> +Melting she passed into the mind,<br /> +Where immortal with mortal weds.</p> +<p class="poetry">Whereby was known that we had viewed<br /> +The union of our earth and skies<br /> +Renewed: nor less alive renewed<br /> +Than when old bards, in nature wise,<br /> +Conceived pure beauty given to eyes,<br /> +And with undyingness imbued.<br /> +Pageant of man’s poetic brain,<br /> +His grand procession of the song,<br /> +It was; the Muses and their train;<br /> +<a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 219</span>Their +God to lead the glittering throng:<br /> +At whiles a beat of forest gong;<br /> +At whiles a glimpse of Python slain.<br /> +Mostly divinest harmony,<br /> +The lyre, the dance. We could believe<br /> +A life in orb and brook and tree,<br /> +And cloud; and still holds Memory<br /> +A morning in the eyes of eve.</p> +<h3><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 220</span>THE +THRUSH IN FEBRUARY</h3> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">know</span> him, +February’s thrush,<br /> +And loud at eve he valentines<br /> +On sprays that paw the naked bush<br /> +Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now ere the foreign singer thrills<br /> +Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours,<br /> +A herald of the million bills;<br /> +And heed him not, the loss is yours.</p> +<p class="poetry">My study, flanked with ivied fir<br /> +And budded beech with dry leaves curled,<br /> +Perched over yew and juniper,<br /> +He neighbours, piping to his world:—</p> +<p class="poetry">The wooded pathways dank on brown,<br /> +The branches on grey cloud a web,<br /> +The long green roller of the down,<br /> +An image of the deluge-ebb:—</p> +<p class="poetry">And farther, they may hear along<br /> +The stream beneath the poplar row.<br /> +By fits, like welling rocks, the song<br /> +Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow.</p> +<p class="poetry">But most he loves to front the vale<br /> +When waves of warm South-western rains<br /> +Have left our heavens clear in pale,<br /> +With faintest beck of moist red veins:</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +221</span>Vermilion wings, by distance held<br /> +To pause aflight while fleeting swift:<br /> +And high aloft the pearl inshelled<br /> +Her lucid glow in glow will lift;</p> +<p class="poetry">A little south of coloured sky;<br /> +Directing, gravely amorous,<br /> +The human of a tender eye<br /> +Through pure celestial on us:</p> +<p class="poetry">Remote, not alien; still, not cold;<br /> +Unraying yet, more pearl than star;<br /> +She seems a while the vale to hold<br /> +In trance, and homelier makes the far.</p> +<p class="poetry">Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes,<br /> +An orb of lustre quits the height;<br /> +And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths<br /> +The sky takes darkness, long ere quite.</p> +<p class="poetry">His Island voice then shall you hear,<br /> +Nor ever after separate<br /> +From such a twilight of the year<br /> +Advancing to the vernal gate.</p> +<p class="poetry">He sings me, out of Winter’s throat,<br +/> +The young time with the life ahead;<br /> +And my young time his leaping note<br /> +Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead.</p> +<p class="poetry">Imbedded in a land of greed,<br /> +Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth’s,<br /> +My care was but to soothe my need;<br /> +At peace among the littleworths.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page222"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +222</span>To light and song my yearning aimed;<br /> +To that deep breast of song and light<br /> +Which men have barrenest proclaimed;<br /> +As ’tis to senses pricked with fright.</p> +<p class="poetry">So mine are these new fruitings rich<br /> +The simple to the common brings;<br /> +I keep the youth of souls who pitch<br /> +Their joy in this old heart of things:</p> +<p class="poetry">Who feel the Coming young as aye,<br /> +Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough;<br /> +Alive for life, awake to die;<br /> +One voice to cheer the seedling Now.</p> +<p class="poetry">Full lasting is the song, though he,<br /> +The singer, passes: lasting too,<br /> +For souls not lent in usury,<br /> +The rapture of the forward view.</p> +<p class="poetry">With that I bear my senses fraught<br /> +Till what I am fast shoreward drives.<br /> +They are the vessel of the Thought.<br /> +The vessel splits, the Thought survives.</p> +<p class="poetry">Nought else are we when sailing brave,<br /> +Save husks to raise and bid it burn.<br /> +Glimpse of its livingness will wave<br /> +A light the senses can discern</p> +<p class="poetry">Across the river of the death,<br /> +Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird<br /> +Of promise! bird of happy breath!<br /> +I hear, I would the City heard.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +223</span>The City of the smoky fray;<br /> +A prodded ox, it drags and moans:<br /> +Its Morrow no man’s child; its Day<br /> +A vulture’s morsel beaked to bones.</p> +<p class="poetry">It strives without a mark for strife;<br /> +It feasts beside a famished host:<br /> +The loose restraint of wanton life,<br /> +That threatened penance in the ghost!</p> +<p class="poetry">Yet there our battle urges; there<br /> +Spring heroes many: issuing thence,<br /> +Names that should leave no vacant air<br /> +For fresh delight in confidence.</p> +<p class="poetry">Life was to them the bag of grain,<br /> +And Death the weedy harrow’s tooth.<br /> +Those warriors of the sighting brain<br /> +Give worn Humanity new youth.</p> +<p class="poetry">Our song and star are they to lead<br /> +The tidal multitude and blind<br /> +From bestial to the higher breed<br /> +By fighting souls of love divined,</p> +<p class="poetry">They scorned the ventral dream of peace,<br /> +Unknown in nature. This they knew:<br /> +That life begets with fair increase<br /> +Beyond the flesh, if life be true.</p> +<p class="poetry">Just reason based on valiant blood,<br /> +The instinct bred afield would match<br /> +To pipe thereof a swelling flood,<br /> +Were men of Earth made wise in watch.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +224</span>Though now the numbers count as drops<br /> +An urn might bear, they father Time.<br /> +She shapes anew her dusty crops;<br /> +Her quick in their own likeness climb.</p> +<p class="poetry">Of their own force do they create;<br /> +They climb to light, in her their root.<br /> +Your brutish cry at muffled fate<br /> +She smites with pangs of worse than brute.</p> +<p class="poetry">She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears<br /> +A Mother whom no cry can melt;<br /> +But read her past desires and fears,<br /> +The letters on her breast are spelt.</p> +<p class="poetry">A slayer, yea, as when she pressed<br /> +Her savage to the slaughter-heaps,<br /> +To sacrifice she prompts her best:<br /> +She reaps them as the sower reaps.</p> +<p class="poetry">But read her thought to speed the race,<br /> +And stars rush forth of blackest night:<br /> +You chill not at a cold embrace<br /> +To come, nor dread a dubious might.</p> +<p class="poetry">Her double visage, double voice,<br /> +In oneness rise to quench the doubt.<br /> +This breath, her gift, has only choice<br /> +Of service, breathe we in or out.</p> +<p class="poetry">Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand<br /> +Led our wild steps from slimy rock<br /> +To yonder sweeps of gardenland,<br /> +We breathe but to be sword or block.</p> +<p class="poetry"><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +225</span>The sighting brain her good decree<br /> +Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith,<br /> +By reason hourly fed, that she,<br /> +To some the clod, to some the wraith,</p> +<p class="poetry">Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream.<br /> +Flame, stream, are we, in mid career<br /> +From torrent source, delirious dream,<br /> +To heaven-reflecting currents clear.</p> +<p class="poetry">And why the sons of Strength have been<br /> +Her cherished offspring ever; how<br /> +The Spirit served by her is seen<br /> +Through Law; perusing love will show.</p> +<p class="poetry">Love born of knowledge, love that gains<br /> +Vitality as Earth it mates,<br /> +The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains,<br /> +The Life, the Death, illuminates.</p> +<p class="poetry">For love we Earth, then serve we all;<br /> +Her mystic secret then is ours:<br /> +We fall, or view our treasures fall,<br /> +Unclouded, as beholds her flowers</p> +<p class="poetry">Earth, from a night of frosty wreck,<br /> +Enrobed in morning’s mounted fire,<br /> +When lowly, with a broken neck,<br /> +The crocus lays her cheek to mire.</p> +<h3><a name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>THE +APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Demeter</span> devastated +our good land,<br /> +In blackness for her daughter snatched below.<br /> +Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand,<br /> +Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw<br /> +The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer’s ray.<br /> +Now whether night advancing, whether day,<br /> + Scarce did the +baldness show:<br /> +The hand of man was a defeated hand.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Necessity, the primal goad to growth,<br /> +Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one;<br /> +Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth;<br /> +Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun,<br /> +Or why men drew the breath to carry pain.<br /> +High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain,<br /> + Idly the +flax-wheel spun<br /> +Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Lean grassblades losing green on their bent +flags,<br /> +Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees<br /> +Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags;<br /> +Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees,<br /> +<a name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 227</span>More +sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled.<br /> +Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world,<br /> + Careless to lure +or please.<br /> +A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags.</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw,<br /> +Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom,<br /> +In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw,<br /> +Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom,<br /> +And whose pale place of habitation mute,<br /> +She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit<br /> + Anciently, gaped +for bloom:<br /> +Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl’s claw.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">The wrathful Queen descended on a vale,<br /> +That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved.<br /> +Iambe, maiden of the merry tale,<br /> +Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved.<br /> +It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn.<br /> +Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone.<br /> + More than for +her who grieved,<br /> +She could for this waste home have piped the wail.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet<br /> +To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld<br /> +A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet,<br /> +And seed like infant’s teeth, that never swelled,<br /> +Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round.<br /> +Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground<br /> + Rocky in spikes +rebelled<br /> +Against the hand here slack as rotted net.</p> +<h4><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +228</span>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">The valley people up the ashen scoop<br /> +She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win<br /> +Her Mistress in compassion of yon group<br /> +So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin,<br /> +For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe,<br /> +White as in chalk outlining little O,<br /> + Dumb, from a +falling chin;<br /> +Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop.</p> +<h4>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced +as when<br /> +Dark underwaters the recesses choke;<br /> +With cluck and upper quiver of a hen<br /> +In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak.<br /> +Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount<br /> +Bountiful of old days, heard them recount<br /> + This and that +cruel stroke:<br /> +Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned<br +/> +Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold<br /> +An earth in awe before the claps resound<br /> +And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled,<br /> +The barren Nourisher unmelted shed<br /> +Death from the looks that wandered with the dead<br /> + Out of the +realms of gold,<br /> +In famine for her lost, her lost unfound.</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised<br +/> +The cattle-call above the moan of prayer;<br /> +And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed,<br /> +Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare:<br /> +<a name="page229"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 229</span>The +wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view<br /> +Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through<br /> + Shoots the swift +foamspit: bare<br /> +They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Howbeit the season of the dancing blood,<br /> +Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse:<br /> +Reversed, each head at either’s flank, they stood.<br /> +Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse,<br /> +Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked.<br /> +Neighing within, at either’s flank they licked;<br /> + Played on a +moment’s force<br /> +At courtship, withering to the crazy nod.</p> +<h4>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">The nod was that we gather for consent;<br /> +And mournfully amid the group a dame,<br /> +Interpreting the thing in nature meant,<br /> +Her hands held out like bearers of the flame,<br /> +And nodded for the negative sideways.<br /> +Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays<br /> + From the Great +Mother came:<br /> +Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">She laughed: since our first harvesting heard +none<br /> +Like thunder of the song of heart: her face,<br /> +The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun,<br /> +And peal on peal across the hills held chase.<br /> +She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire;<br /> +Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire<br /> + Full of the +marrowy race.<br /> +Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton.</p> +<h4><a name="page230"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +230</span>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">The valley people huddled, broke, afraid,<br /> +Assured, and taking lightning in the veins,<br /> +They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed,<br /> +Unwitting happiness till golden rains<br /> +Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote<br /> +Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat<br /> + Pouring to heal +their pains:<br /> +And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid.</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts<br /> +Inspire the valley people, still on seas,<br /> +Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts,<br /> +With rapture in their wonderment; but these,<br /> +Low homage being rendered, ran to plough,<br /> +Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow<br /> + Calves at the +teats they tease:<br /> +Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts.</p> +<h4>XVI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red,<br +/> +The tree of water and the tree of wood:<br /> +And soon among the branches overhead<br /> +Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food.<br /> +O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth.<br /> +Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth!<br /> + Good for the +spirit, good<br /> +For body, thou! to both art wine and bread!</p> +<h3><a name="page231"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +231</span>EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> shepherd, with +his eye on hazy South,<br /> +Has told of rain upon the fall of day.<br /> +But promise is there none for Susan’s drouth,<br /> +That he will come, who keeps in dry delay.<br /> +The freshest of the village three years gone,<br /> +She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived;<br /> + And she and Earth are one<br /> + In withering unrevived.<br /> +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!<br /> +And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting +maid,<br /> +When she who wedded with the soldier hides<br /> +At home as good as widowed in the shade,<br /> +A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides:<br /> +Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor<br /> +To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan,<br /> + Her husband in the war,<br /> + And she to lie alone.<br /> +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!<br /> +And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">They have not known; they are not in the +stream;<br /> +Light as the flying seed-ball is their play,<br /> +<a name="page232"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 232</span>The +silly maids! and happy souls they seem;<br /> +Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they.<br /> +They have not struck the roots which meet the fires<br /> +Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know<br /> + The strength of her desires,<br /> + The sternness of her woe.<br /> +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!<br /> +And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain!</p> +<h4>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without +shower<br /> +A borderless low blotting Westward spreads.<br /> +The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour;<br /> +Across an inner chamber thunder treads:<br /> +The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor<br /> +Of dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks,<br /> + And drives the dames to door,<br +/> + Their kerchiefs flapped at +cheeks.<br /> +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!<br /> +And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain!</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Through night, with bedroom window wide for +air,<br /> +Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend:<br /> +And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare,<br /> +Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life’s end,<br /> +From her heaved breast of sacred common mould;<br /> +Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel<br /> + Unworded things and old<br /> + To her pained heart appeal.<br /> +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!<br /> +And down in deluges of blessed rain!</p> +<h4><a name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +233</span>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">At morn she stood to live for ear and sight,<br +/> +Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched.<br /> +A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light<br /> +Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched.<br /> +But she would muse when neighbours praised her face,<br /> +Her services, and staunchness to her mate:<br /> + Knowing by some dim trace,<br /> + The change might bear a date.<br +/> +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain!<br /> +Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain!</p> +<h3><a name="page234"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +234</span>MOTHER TO BABE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Fleck</span> of sky you +are,<br /> +Dropped through branches dark,<br /> + O my little one, mine!<br /> +Promise of the star,<br /> +Outpour of the lark;<br /> + Beam and song divine.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">See this precious gift,<br /> +Steeping in new birth<br /> + All my being, for sign<br /> +Earth to heaven can lift,<br /> +Heaven descend on earth,<br /> + Both in one be mine!</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Life in light you glass<br /> +When you peep and coo,<br /> + You, my little one, mine!<br /> +Brooklet chirps to grass,<br /> +Daisy looks in dew<br /> + Up to dear sunshine.</p> +<h3><a name="page235"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +235</span>WOODLAND PEACE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sweet</span> as Eden is the +air,<br /> + And Eden-sweet the ray.<br /> +No Paradise is lost for them<br /> +Who foot by branching root and stem,<br /> +And lightly with the woodland share<br /> + The change of night and day.</p> +<p class="poetry">Here all say,<br /> +We serve her, even as I:<br /> +We brood, we strive to sky,<br /> +We gaze upon decay,<br /> +We wot of life through death,<br /> +How each feeds each we spy;<br /> +And is a tangle round,<br /> +Are patient; what is dumb<br /> +We question not, nor ask<br /> +The silent to give sound,<br /> +The hidden to unmask,<br /> +The distant to draw near.</p> +<p class="poetry">And this the woodland saith:<br /> +I know not hope or fear;<br /> +I take whate’er may come;<br /> +I raise my head to aspects fair,<br /> +From foul I turn away.</p> +<p class="poetry">Sweet as Eden is the air,<br /> + And Eden-sweet the ray.</p> +<h3><a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 236</span>THE +QUESTION WHITHER</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> we have thrown +off this old suit,<br /> + So much in need of mending,<br /> +To sink among the naked mute,<br /> + Is that, think you, our ending?<br /> +We follow many, more we lead,<br /> + And you who sadly turf us,<br /> +Believe not that all living seed<br /> + Must flower above the surface.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Sensation is a gracious gift,<br /> + But were it cramped to station,<br /> +The prayer to have it cast adrift<br /> + Would spout from all sensation.<br /> +Enough if we have winked to sun,<br /> + Have sped the plough a season;<br /> +There is a soul for labour done,<br /> + Endureth fixed as reason.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">Then let our trust be firm in Good,<br /> + Though we be of the fasting;<br /> +Our questions are a mortal brood,<br /> + Our work is everlasting.<br /> +We children of Beneficence<br /> + Are in its being sharers;<br /> +And Whither vainer sounds than Whence,<br /> + For word with such wayfarers.</p> +<h3><a name="page237"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +237</span>OUTER AND INNER</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">From</span> twig to twig +the spider weaves<br /> + At noon his webbing fine.<br /> +So near to mute the zephyrs flute<br /> + That only leaflets dance.<br /> +The sun draws out of hazel leaves<br /> + A smell of woodland wine.<br /> +I wake a swarm to sudden storm<br /> + At any step’s advance.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Along my path is bugloss blue,<br /> + The star with fruit in moss;<br /> +The foxgloves drop from throat to top<br /> + A daily lesser bell.<br /> +The blackest shadow, nurse of dew,<br /> + Has orange skeins across;<br /> +And keenly red is one thin thread<br /> + That flashing seems to swell.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">My world I note ere fancy comes,<br /> + Minutest hushed observe:<br /> +What busy bits of motioned wits<br /> + Through antlered mosswork strive.<br /> +But now so low the stillness hums,<br /> + My springs of seeing swerve,<br /> +For half a wink to thrill and think<br /> + The woods with nymphs alive.</p> +<h4><a name="page238"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +238</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">I neighbour the invisible<br /> + So close that my consent<br /> +Is only asked for spirits masked<br /> + To leap from trees and flowers.<br /> +And this because with them I dwell<br /> + In thought, while calmly bent<br /> +To read the lines dear Earth designs<br /> + Shall speak her life on ours.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Accept, she says; it is not hard<br /> + In woods; but she in towns<br /> +Repeats, accept; and have we wept,<br /> + And have we quailed with fears,<br /> +Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward<br /> + We have whom knowledge crowns;<br /> +Who see in mould the rose unfold,<br /> + The soul through blood and tears.</p> +<h3><a name="page239"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +239</span>NATURE AND LIFE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Leave</span> the uproar: at +a leap<br /> +Thou shalt strike a woodland path,<br /> +Enter silence, not of sleep,<br /> +Under shadows, not of wrath;<br /> +Breath which is the spirit’s bath<br /> +In the old Beginnings find,<br /> +And endow them with a mind,<br /> +Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe.<br /> +That gives Nature to us, this<br /> +Give we her, and so we kiss.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">Fruitful is it so: but hear<br /> +How within the shell thou art,<br /> +Music sounds; nor other near<br /> +Can to such a tremor start.<br /> +Of the waves our life is part;<br /> +They our running harvests bear:<br /> +Back to them for manful air,<br /> +Laden with the woodland’s heart!<br /> +That gives Battle to us, this<br /> +Give we it, and good the kiss.</p> +<h3><a name="page240"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +240</span>DIRGE IN WOODS</h3> +<p class="poetry">A wind sways the pines,<br /> + And below<br /> +Not a breath of wild air;<br /> +Still as the mosses that glow<br /> +On the flooring and over the lines<br /> +Of the roots here and there.<br /> +The pine-tree drops its dead;<br /> +They are quiet, as under the sea.<br /> +Overhead, overhead<br /> +Rushes life in a race,<br /> +As the clouds the clouds chase;<br /> + And we go,<br /> +And we drop like the fruits of the tree,<br /> + Even we,<br /> + Even so.</p> +<h3><a name="page241"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 241</span>A +FAITH ON TRIAL</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">On</span> the morning of +May,<br /> +Ere the children had entered my gate<br /> +With their wreaths and mechanical lay,<br /> +A metal ding-dong of the date!<br /> +I mounted our hill, bearing heart<br /> +That had little of life save its weight:<br /> +The crowned Shadow poising dart<br /> +Hung over her: she, my own,<br /> +My good companion, mate,<br /> +Pulse of me: she who had shown<br /> +Fortitude quiet as Earth’s<br /> +At the shedding of leaves. And around<br /> +The sky was in garlands of cloud,<br /> +Winning scents from unnumbered new births,<br /> +Pointed buds, where the woods were browned<br /> +By a mouldered beechen shroud;<br /> +Or over our meads of the vale,<br /> +Such an answer to sun as he,<br /> +Brave in his gold; to a sound,<br /> +None sweeter, of woods flapping sail,<br /> +With the first full flood of our year,<br /> +For their voyage on lustreful sea:<br /> +Unto what curtained haven in chief,<br /> +Will be writ in the book of the sere.<br /> +But surely the crew are we,<br /> +Eager or stamped or bowed;<br /> +Counted thinner at fall of the leaf.<br /> +Grief heard them, and passed like a bier.<br /> +Due Summerward, lo, they were set,<br /> +In volumes of foliage proud,<br /> +<a name="page242"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 242</span>On the +heave of their favouring tides,<br /> +And their song broadened out to the cheer<br /> +When a neck of the ramping surf<br /> +Rattles thunder a boat overrides.<br /> +All smiles ran the highways wet;<br /> +The worm drew its links from the turf;<br /> +The bird of felicity loud<br /> +Spun high, and a South wind blew.<br /> +Weak out of sheath downy leaves<br /> +Of the beech quivered lucid as dew,<br /> +Their radiance asking, who grieves;<br /> +For nought of a sorrow they knew:<br /> +No space to the dread wrestle vowed,<br /> +No chamber in shadow of night.<br /> +At times as the steadier breeze<br /> +Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd,<br /> +The beam of them wafted my sight<br /> +To league-long sun upon seas:<br /> +The golden path we had crossed<br /> +Many years, till her birthland swung<br /> +Recovered to vision from lost,<br /> +A light in her filial glance.<br /> +And sweet was her voice with the tongue,<br /> +The speechful tongue of her France,<br /> +Soon at ripple about us, like rills<br /> +Ever busy with little: away<br /> +Through her Normandy, down where the mills<br /> +Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey<br /> +As its bordering poplars bent<br /> +To gusts off the plains above.<br /> +Old stone château and farms,<br /> +Home of her birth and her love!<br /> +On the thread of the pasture you trace,<br /> +By the river, their milk, for miles,<br /> +Spotted once with the English tent,<br /> +<a name="page243"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 243</span>In days +of the tocsin’s alarms,<br /> +To tower of the tallest of piles,<br /> +The country’s surveyor breast-high.<br /> +Home of her birth and her love!<br /> +Home of a diligent race;<br /> +Thrifty, deft-handed to ply<br /> +Shuttle or needle, and woo<br /> +Sun to the roots of the pear<br /> +Frogging each mud-walled cot.<br /> +The elders had known her in arms.<br /> +There plucked we the bluet, her hue<br /> +Of the deeper forget-me-not;<br /> +Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair.</p> +<p class="poetry">I saw, unsighting: her heart<br /> +I saw, and the home of her love<br /> +There printed, mournfully rent:<br /> +Her ebbing adieu, her adieu,<br /> +And the stride of the Shadow athwart.<br /> +For one of our Autumns there! . . .<br /> +Straight as the flight of a dove<br /> +We went, swift winging we went.<br /> +We trod solid ground, we breathed air,<br /> +The heavens were unbroken. Break they,<br /> +The word of the world is adieu:<br /> +Her word: and the torrents are round,<br /> +The jawed wolf-waters of prey.<br /> +We stand upon isles, who stand:<br /> +A Shadow before us, and back,<br /> +A phantom the habited land.<br /> +We may cry to the Sunderer, spare<br /> +That dearest! he loosens his pack.<br /> +Arrows we breathe, not air.<br /> +The memories tenderly bound<br /> +To us are a drifting crew,<br /> +<a name="page244"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 244</span>Amid +grey-gapped waters for ground.<br /> +Alone do we stand, each one,<br /> +Till rootless as they we strew<br /> +Those deeps of the corse-like stare<br /> +At a foreign and stony sun.</p> +<p class="poetry">Eyes had I but for the scene<br /> +Of my circle, what neighbourly grew.<br /> +If haply no finger lay out<br /> +To the figures of days that had been,<br /> +I gathered my herb, and endured;<br /> +My old cloak wrapped me about.<br /> +Unfooted was ground-ivy blue,<br /> +Whose rustic shrewd odour allured<br /> +In Spring’s fresh of morning: unseen<br /> +Her favourite wood-sorrel bell<br /> +As yet, though the leaves’ green floor<br /> +Awaited their flower, that would tell<br /> +Of a red-veined moist yestreen,<br /> +With its droop and the hues it wore,<br /> +When we two stood overnight<br /> +One, in the dark van-glow<br /> +On our hill-top, seeing beneath<br /> +Our household’s twinkle of light<br /> +Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath.</p> +<p class="poetry">Budding, the service-tree, white<br /> +Almost as whitebeam, threw,<br /> +From the under of leaf upright,<br /> +Flecks like a showering snow<br /> +On the flame-shaped junipers green,<br /> +On the sombre mounds of the yew.<br /> +Like silvery tapers bright<br /> +By a solemn cathedral screen,<br /> +They glistened to closer view.<br /> +<a name="page245"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 245</span>Turf for +a rooks’ revel striped<br /> +Pleased those devourers astute.<br /> +Chorister blackbird and thrush<br /> +Together or alternate piped;<br /> +A free-hearted harmony large,<br /> +With meaning for man, for brute,<br /> +When the primitive forces are brimmed.<br /> +Like featherings hither and yon<br /> +Of aëry tree-twigs over marge,<br /> +To the comb of the winds, untrimmed,<br /> +Their measure is found in the vast.<br /> +Grief heard them, and stepped her way on.<br /> +She has but a narrow embrace.<br /> +Distrustful of hearing she passed.<br /> +They piped her young Earth’s Bacchic rout;<br /> +The race, and the prize of the race;<br /> +Earth’s lustihead pressing to sprout.</p> +<p class="poetry">But sight holds a soberer space.<br /> +Colourless dogwood low<br /> +Curled up a twisted root,<br /> +Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush<br /> +Redder than sun upon rocks,<br /> +When the creeper clematis-shoot<br /> +Shall climb, cap his branches, and show,<br /> +Beside veteran green of the box,<br /> +At close of the year’s maple blush,<br /> +A bleeding greybeard is he,<br /> +Now hale in the leafage lush.<br /> +Our parasites paint us. Hard by,<br /> +A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel<br /> +Of our naked forefathers in fight;<br /> +With stains of the fray sweating free;<br /> +And him came no parasite nigh:<br /> +Firm on the hard knotted knee,<br /> +<a name="page246"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 246</span>He stood +in the crown of his dun;<br /> +Earth’s toughest to stay her wheel:<br /> +Under whom the full day is night;<br /> +Whom the century-tempests call son,<br /> +Having striven to rend him in vain.</p> +<p class="poetry">I walked to observe, not to feel,<br /> +Not to fancy, if simple of eye<br /> +One may be among images reaped<br /> +For a shift of the glance, as grain:<br /> +Profitless froth you espy<br /> +Ashore after billows have leaped.<br /> +I fled nothing, nothing pursued:<br /> +The changeful visible face<br /> +Of our Mother I sought for my food;<br /> +Crumbs by the way to sustain.<br /> +Her sentence I knew past grace.<br /> +Myself I had lost of us twain,<br /> +Once bound in mirroring thought.<br /> +She had flung me to dust in her wake;<br /> +And I, as your convict drags<br /> +His chain, by the scourge untaught,<br /> +Bore life for a goad, without aim.<br /> +I champed the sensations that make<br /> +Of a ruffled philosophy rags.<br /> +For them was no meaning too blunt,<br /> +Nor aspect too cutting of steel.<br /> +This Earth of the beautiful breasts,<br /> +Shining up in all colours aflame,<br /> +To them had visage of hags:<br /> +A Mother of aches and jests:<br /> +Soulless, heading a hunt<br /> +Aimless except for the meal.<br /> +Hope, with the star on her front;<br /> +Fear, with an eye in the heel;<br /> +<a name="page247"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 247</span>Our +links to a Mother of grace;<br /> +They were dead on the nerve, and dead<br /> +For the nature divided in three;<br /> +Gone out of heart, out of brain,<br /> +Out of soul: I had in their place<br /> +The calm of an empty room.<br /> +We were joined but by that thin thread,<br /> +My disciplined habit to see.<br /> +And those conjure images, those,<br /> +The puppets of loss or gain;<br /> +Not he who is bare to his doom;<br /> +For whom never semblance plays<br /> +To bewitch, overcloud, illume.<br /> +The dusty mote-images rose;<br /> +Sheer film of the surface awag:<br /> +They sank as they rose; their pain<br /> +Declaring them mine of old days.</p> +<p class="poetry">Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom,<br /> +As flower-bush in sun-specked crag,<br /> +Up the spine of the double combe<br /> +With yew-boughs heavily cloaked,<br /> +A young apparition shone:<br /> +Known, yet wonderful, white<br /> +Surpassingly; doubtfully known,<br /> +For it struck as the birth of Light:<br /> +Even Day from the dark unyoked.<br /> +It waved like a pilgrim flag<br /> +O’er processional penitents flown<br /> +When of old they broke rounding yon spine:<br /> +O the pure wild-cherry in bloom!</p> +<p class="poetry">For their Eastward march to the shrine<br /> +Of the footsore far-eyed Faith,<br /> +Was banner so brave, so fair,<br /> +So quick with celestial sign<br /> +<a name="page248"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 248</span>Of +victorious rays over death?<br /> +For a conquest of coward despair;—<br /> +Division of soul from wits,<br /> +And these made rulers;—full sure,<br /> +More starlike never did shine<br /> +To illumine the sinister field<br /> +Where our life’s old night-bird flits.<br /> +I knew it: with her, my own,<br /> +Had hailed it pure of the pure;<br /> +Our beacon yearly: but strange<br /> +When it strikes to within is the known;<br /> +Richer than newness revealed.<br /> +There was needed darkness like mine.<br /> +Its beauty to vividness blown<br /> +Drew the life in me forward, chased,<br /> +From aloft on a pinnacle’s range,<br /> +That hindward spidery line,<br /> +The length of the ways I had paced,<br /> +A footfarer out of the dawn,<br /> +To Youth’s wild forest, where sprang,<br /> +For the morning of May long gone,<br /> +The forest’s white virgin; she<br /> +Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang;<br /> +She in me, I in her; what songs<br /> +The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive<br /> +To pour forth their tune-footed throngs;<br /> +Inspire to the dreaming of good<br /> +Illimitable to come:<br /> +She, the white wild cherry, a tree,<br /> +Earth-rooted, tangibly wood,<br /> +Yet a presence throbbing alive;<br /> +Nor she in our language dumb:<br /> +A spirit born of a tree;<br /> +Because earth-rooted alive:<br /> +Huntress of things worth pursuit<br /> +<a name="page249"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 249</span>Of +souls; in our naming, dreams.<br /> +And each unto other was lute,<br /> +By fits quick as breezy gleams.<br /> +My quiver of aims and desires<br /> +Had colour that she would have owned;<br /> +And if by humaner fires<br /> +Hued later, these held her enthroned:<br /> +My crescent of Earth; my blood<br /> +At the silvery early stir;<br /> +Hour of the thrill of the bud<br /> +About to burst, and by her<br /> +Directed, attuned, englobed:<br /> +My Goddess, the chaste, not chill;<br /> +Choir over choir white-robed;<br /> +White-bosomed fold within fold:<br /> +For so could I dream, breast-bare,<br /> +In my time of blooming; dream still<br /> +Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck,<br /> +Despite, since manhood was bold,<br /> +The yoke of the flesh on my neck.<br /> +She beckoned, I gazed, unaware<br /> +How a shaft of the blossoming tree<br /> +Was shot from the yew-wood’s core.<br /> +I stood to the touch of a key<br /> +Turned in a fast-shut door.</p> +<p class="poetry">They rounded my garden, content,<br /> +The small fry, clutching their fee,<br /> +Their fruit of the wreath and the pole;<br /> +And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent,<br /> +In a buzz of young company glee,<br /> +Their natural music, swift shoal<br /> +To the next easy shedders of pence.<br /> +Why not? for they had me in tune<br /> +With the hungers of my kind.<br /> +<a name="page250"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 250</span>Do +readings of earth draw thence,<br /> +Then a concord deeper than cries<br /> +Of the Whither whose echo is Whence,<br /> +To jar unanswered, shall rise<br /> +As a fountain-jet in the mind<br /> +Bowed dark o’er the falling and strewn.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p class="poetry">Unwitting where it might lead,<br /> +How it came, for the anguish to cease,<br /> +And the Questions that sow not nor spin,<br /> +This wisdom, rough-written, and black,<br /> +As of veins that from venom bleed,<br /> +I had with the peace within;<br /> +Or patience, mortal of peace,<br /> +Compressing the surgent strife<br /> +In a heart laid open, not mailed,<br /> +To the last blank hour of the rack,<br /> +When struck the dividing knife:<br /> +When the hand that never had failed<br /> +In its pressure to mine hung slack.</p> +<p class="poetry">But this in myself did I know,<br /> +Not needing a studious brow,<br /> +Or trust in a governing star,<br /> +While my ears held the jangled shout<br /> +The children were lifting afar:<br /> +That natures at interflow<br /> +With all of their past and the now,<br /> +Are chords to the Nature without,<br /> +Orbs to the greater whole:<br /> +First then, nor utterly then<br /> +Till our lord of sensations at war,<br /> +The rebel, the heart, yields place<br /> +To brain, each prompting the soul.<br /> +<a name="page251"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 251</span>Thus our +dear Earth we embrace<br /> +For the milk, her strength to men.</p> +<p class="poetry">And crave we her medical herb,<br /> +We have but to see and hear,<br /> +Though pierced by the cruel acerb,<br /> +The troops of the memories armed<br /> +Hostile to strike at the nest<br /> +That nourished and flew them warmed.<br /> +Not she gives the tear for the tear.<br /> +Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught,<br /> +She is moveless. Not of her breast<br /> +Are the symbols we conjure when Fear<br /> +Takes leaven of Hope. I caught,<br /> +With Death in me shrinking from Death,<br /> +As cold from cold, for a sign<br /> +Of the life beyond ashes: I cast,<br /> +Believing the vision divine,<br /> +Wings of that dream of my Youth<br /> +To the spirit beloved: ’twas unglassed<br /> +On her breast, in her depths austere:<br /> +A flash through the mist, mere breath,<br /> +Breath on a buckler of steel.<br /> +For the flesh in revolt at her laws,<br /> +Neither song nor smile in ruth,<br /> +Nor promise of things to reveal,<br /> +Has she, nor a word she saith:<br /> +We are asking her wheels to pause.<br /> +Well knows she the cry of unfaith.<br /> +If we strain to the farther shore,<br /> +We are catching at comfort near.<br /> +Assurances, symbols, saws,<br /> +Revelations in legends, light<br /> +To eyes rolling darkness, these<br /> +Desired of the flesh in affright,<br /> +<a name="page252"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 252</span>For the +which it will swear to adore,<br /> +She yields not for prayers at her knees;<br /> +The woolly beast bleating will shear.<br /> +These are our sensual dreams;<br /> +Of the yearning to touch, to feel<br /> +The dark Impalpable sure,<br /> +And have the Unveiled appear;<br /> +Whereon ever black she beams,<br /> +Doth of her terrible deal,<br /> +She who dotes over ripeness at play,<br /> +Rosiness fondles and feeds,<br /> +Guides it with shepherding crook,<br /> +To her sports and her pastures alway.<br /> +Not she gives the tear for the tear:<br /> +Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more;<br /> +In one the spur and the curb:<br /> +An answer to thoughts or deeds;<br /> +To the Legends an alien look;<br /> +To the Questions a figure of clay.<br /> +Yet we have but to see and hear,<br /> +Crave we her medical herb.<br /> +For the road to her soul is the Real:<br /> +The root of the growth of man:<br /> +And the senses must traverse it fresh<br /> +With a love that no scourge shall abate,<br /> +To reach the lone heights where we scan<br /> +In the mind’s rarer vision this flesh;<br /> +In the charge of the Mother our fate;<br /> +Her law as the one common weal.</p> +<p class="poetry">We, whom the view benumbs,<br /> +We, quivering upward, each hour<br /> +Know battle in air and in ground<br /> +For the breath that goes as it comes,<br /> +For the choice between sweet and sour,<br /> +<a name="page253"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 253</span>For the +smallest grain of our worth:<br /> +And he who the reckoning sums<br /> +Finds nought in his hand save Earth.<br /> +Of Earth are we stripped or crowned.<br /> +The fleeting Present we crave,<br /> +Barter our best to wed,<br /> +In hope of a cushioned bower,<br /> +What is it but Future and Past<br /> +Like wind and tide at a wave!<br /> +Idea of the senses, bred<br /> +For the senses to snap and devour:<br /> +Thin as the shell of a sound<br /> +In delivery, withered in light.<br /> +Cry we for permanence fast,<br /> +Permanence hangs by the grave;<br /> +Sits on the grave green-grassed,<br /> +On the roll of the heaved grave-mound.<br /> +By Death, as by Life, are we fed:<br /> +The two are one spring; our bond<br /> +With the numbers; with whom to unite<br /> +Here feathers wings for beyond:<br /> +Only they can waft us in flight.<br /> +For they are Reality’s flower.<br /> +Of them, and the contact with them,<br /> +Issues Earth’s dearest daughter, the firm<br /> +In footing, the stately of stem;<br /> +Unshaken though elements lour;<br /> +A warrior heart unquelled;<br /> +Mirror of Earth, and guide<br /> +To the Holies from sense withheld:<br /> +Reason, man’s germinant fruit.<br /> +She wrestles with our old worm<br /> +Self in the narrow and wide:<br /> +Relentless quencher of lies,<br /> +With laughter she pierces the brute;<br /> +<a name="page254"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 254</span>And hear +we her laughter peal,<br /> +’Tis Light in us dancing to scour<br /> +The loathed recess of his dens;<br /> +Scatter his monstrous bed,<br /> +And hound him to harrow and plough.<br /> +She is the world’s one prize;<br /> +Our champion, rightfully head;<br /> +The vessel whose piloted prow,<br /> +Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot,<br /> +Leaves legible print at the keel.<br /> +Nor least is the service she does,<br /> +That service to her may cleanse<br /> +The well of the Sorrows in us;<br /> +For a common delight will drain<br /> +The rank individual fens<br /> +Of a wound refusing to heal<br /> +While the old worm slavers its root.</p> +<p class="poetry">I bowed as a leaf in rain;<br /> +As a tree when the leaf is shed<br /> +To winds in the season at wane:<br /> +And when from my soul I said,<br /> +May the worm be trampled: smite,<br /> +Sacred Reality! power<br /> +Filled me to front it aright.<br /> +I had come of my faith’s ordeal.</p> +<p class="poetry">It is not to stand on a tower<br /> +And see the flat universe reel;<br /> +Our mortal sublimities drop<br /> +Like raiment by glisterlings worn,<br /> +At a sweep of the scythe for the crop.<br /> +Wisdom is won of its fight,<br /> +The combat incessant; and dries<br /> +To mummywrap perching a height.<br /> +<a name="page255"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 255</span>It chews +the contemplative cud<br /> +In peril of isolate scorn,<br /> +Unfed of the onward flood.<br /> +Nor view we a different morn<br /> +If we gaze with the deeper sight,<br /> +With the deeper thought forewise:<br /> +The world is the same, seen through;<br /> +The features of men are the same.<br /> +But let their historian new<br /> +In the language of nakedness write,<br /> +Rejoice we to know not shame,<br /> +Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done<br /> +With the tortures of thought in the throes,<br /> +Our animal tangle, and grasp<br /> +Very sap of the vital in this:<br /> +That from flesh unto spirit man grows<br /> +Even here on the sod under sun:<br /> +That she of the wanton’s kiss,<br /> +Broken through with the bite of an asp,<br /> +Is Mother of simple truth,<br /> +Relentless quencher of lies;<br /> +Eternal in thought; discerned<br /> +In thought mid-ferry between<br /> +The Life and the Death, which are one,<br /> +As our breath in and out, joy or teen.<br /> +She gives the rich vision to youth,<br /> +If we will, of her prompting wise;<br /> +Or men by the lash made lean,<br /> +Who in harness the mind subserve,<br /> +Their title to read her have earned;<br /> +Having mastered sensation—insane<br /> +At a stroke of the terrified nerve;<br /> +And out of the sensual hive<br /> +Grown to the flower of brain;<br /> +To know her a thing alive,<br /> +<a name="page256"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 256</span>Whose +aspects mutably swerve,<br /> +Whose laws immutably reign.<br /> +Our sentencer, clother in mist,<br /> +Her morn bends breast to her noon,<br /> +Noon to the hour dark-dyed,<br /> +If we will, of her promptings wise:<br /> +Her light is our own if we list.<br /> +The legends that sweep her aside,<br /> +Crying loud for an opiate boon,<br /> +To comfort the human want,<br /> +From the bosom of magical skies,<br /> +She smiles on, marking their source:<br /> +They read her with infant eyes.<br /> +Good ships of morality they,<br /> +For our crude developing force;<br /> +Granite the thought to stay,<br /> +That she is a thing alive<br /> +To the living, the falling and strewn.<br /> +But the Questions, the broods that haunt<br /> +Sensation insurgent, may drive,<br /> +The way of the channelling mole,<br /> +Head in a ground-vault gaunt<br /> +As your telescope’s skeleton moon.<br /> +Barren comfort to these will she dole;<br /> +Dead is her face to their cries.<br /> +Intelligence pushing to taste<br /> +A lesson from beasts might heed.<br /> +They scatter a voice in the waste,<br /> +Where any dry swish of a reed<br /> +By grey-glassy water replies.</p> +<p class="poetry">‘They see not above or below;<br /> +Farthest are they from my soul,’<br /> +Earth whispers: ‘they scarce have the thirst,<br /> +Except to unriddle a rune;<br /> +<a name="page257"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 257</span>And I +spin none; only show,<br /> +Would humanity soar from its worst,<br /> +Winged above darkness and dole,<br /> +How flesh unto spirit must grow.<br /> +Spirit raves not for a goal.<br /> +Shapes in man’s likeness hewn<br /> +Desires not; neither desires<br /> +The sleep or the glory: it trusts;<br /> +Uses my gifts, yet aspires;<br /> +Dreams of a higher than it.<br /> +The dream is an atmosphere;<br /> +A scale still ascending to knit<br /> +The clear to the loftier Clear.<br /> +’Tis Reason herself, tiptoe<br /> +At the ultimate bound of her wit,<br /> +On the verges of Night and Day.<br /> +But is it a dream of the lusts,<br /> +To my dustiest ’tis decreed;<br /> +And them that so shuffle astray<br /> +I touch with no key of gold<br /> +For the wealth of the secret nook;<br /> +Though I dote over ripeness at play,<br /> +Rosiness fondle and feed,<br /> +Guide it with shepherding crook<br /> +To my sports and my pastures alway.<br /> +The key will shriek in the lock,<br /> +The door will rustily hinge,<br /> +Will open on features of mould,<br /> +To vanish corrupt at a glimpse,<br /> +And mock as the wild echoes mock,<br /> +Soulless in mimic, doth Greed<br /> +Or the passion for fruitage tinge<br /> +That dream, for your parricide imps<br /> +To wing through the body of Time,<br /> +Yourselves in slaying him slay.<br /> +<a name="page258"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 258</span>Much are +you shots of your prime,<br /> +You men of the act and the dream:<br /> +And please you to fatten a weed<br /> +That perishes, pledged to decay,<br /> +’Tis dearth in your season of need,<br /> +Down the slopes of the shoreward way;—<br /> +Nigh on the misty stream,<br /> +Where Ferryman under his hood,<br /> +With a call to be ready to pay<br /> +The small coin, whitens red blood.<br /> +But the young ethereal seed<br /> +Shall bring you the bread no buyer<br /> +Can have for his craving supreme;<br /> +To my quenchless quick shall speed<br /> +The soul at her wrestle rude<br /> +With devil, with angel more dire;<br /> +With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed.<br /> +The dream of the blossom of Good<br /> +Is your banner of battle unrolled<br /> +In its waver and current and curve<br /> +(Choir over choir white-winged,<br /> +White-bosomed fold within fold):<br /> +Hopeful of victory most<br /> +When hard is the task to sustain<br /> +Assaults of the fearful sense<br /> +At a mind in desolate mood<br /> +With the Whither, whose echo is Whence;<br /> +And humanity’s clamour, lost, lost;<br /> +And its clasp of the staves that snap;<br /> +And evil abroad, as a main<br /> +Uproarious, bursting its dyke.<br /> +For back do you look, and lo,<br /> +Forward the harvest of grain!—<br /> +Numbers in council, awake<br /> +To love more than things of my lap,<br /> +<a name="page259"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 259</span>Love me; +and to let the types break,<br /> +Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow;<br /> +All save the dream sink alike<br /> +To the source of my vital in sap:<br /> +Their battle, their loss, their ache,<br /> +For my pledge of vitality know.<br /> +The dream is the thought in the ghost;<br /> +The thought sent flying for food;<br /> +Eyeless, but sprung of an aim<br /> +Supernal of Reason, to find<br /> +The great Over-Reason we name<br /> +Beneficence: mind seeking Mind.<br /> +Dream of the blossom of Good,<br /> +In its waver and current and curve,<br /> +With the hopes of my offspring enscrolled!<br /> +Soon to be seen of a host<br /> +The flag of the Master I serve!<br /> +And life in them doubled on Life,<br /> +As flame upon flame, to behold,<br /> +High over Time-tumbled sea,<br /> +The bliss of his headship of strife,<br /> +Him through handmaiden me.’</p> +<h3><a name="page260"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +260</span>CHANGE IN RECURRENCE</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">stood</span> at the gate +of the cot<br /> +Where my darling, with side-glance demure,<br /> +Would spy, on her trim garden-plot,<br /> +The busy wild things chase and lure.<br /> +For these with their ways were her feast;<br /> +They had surety no enemy lurked.<br /> +Their deftest of tricks to their least<br /> +She gathered in watch as she worked.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">When berries were red on her ash,<br /> +The blackbird would rifle them rough,<br /> +Till the ground underneath looked a gash,<br /> +And her rogue grew the round of a chough.<br /> +The squirrel cocked ear o’er his hoop,<br /> +Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush.<br /> +She knew any tit of the troop<br /> +All as well as the snail-tapping thrush.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">I gazed: ’twas the scene of the frame,<br +/> +With the face, the dear life for me, fled.<br /> +No window a lute to my name,<br /> +No watcher there plying the thread.<br /> +But the blackbird hung peeking at will;<br /> +The squirrel from cone hopped to cone;<br /> +The thrush had a snail in his bill,<br /> +And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone.</p> +<h3><a name="page261"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 261</span>HYMN +TO COLOUR</h3> +<h4>I</h4> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">With</span> Life and Death +I walked when Love appeared,<br /> +And made them on each side a shadow seem.<br /> +Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,<br /> +Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream<br /> +To fall on daylight; and night puts away<br /> + Her darker veil +for grey.</p> +<h4>II</h4> +<p class="poetry">In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we +by;<br /> +We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead<br /> +Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky:<br /> +Around, save for those shapes, with him who led<br /> +And linked them, desert varied by no sign<br /> + Of other life +than mine.</p> +<h4>III</h4> +<p class="poetry">By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide,<br +/> +From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne,<br /> +Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried,<br /> +Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn:<br /> +And those two shapes the splendour interweaved,<br /> + Hung web-like, +sank and heaved.</p> +<h4><a name="page262"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +262</span>IV</h4> +<p class="poetry">Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun<br +/> +To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow.<br /> +Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one.<br /> +Whichever is, the other is: but know,<br /> +It is thy craving self that thou dost see,<br /> + Not in them +seeing me.</p> +<h4>V</h4> +<p class="poetry">Shall man into the mystery of breath,<br /> +From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy?<br /> +Or learn the secret of the shrouded death,<br /> +By lifting up the lid of a white eye?<br /> +Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire<br /> + Of fire to reach +to fire.</p> +<h4>VI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Look now where Colour, the soul’s +bridegroom, makes<br /> +The house of heaven splendid for the bride.<br /> +To him as leaps a fountain she awakes,<br /> +In knotting arms, yet boundless: him beside,<br /> +She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power<br /> + Brings heaven to +the flower.</p> +<h4>VII</h4> +<p class="poetry">He gives her homeliness in desert air,<br /> +And sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads<br /> +Through widening chambers of surprise to where<br /> +Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes,<br /> +Because his touch is infinite and lends<br /> + A yonder to all +ends.</p> +<h4><a name="page263"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +263</span>VIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death +persuades<br /> +To keep long day with his caresses graced.<br /> +He is the heart of light, the wing of shades,<br /> +The crown of beauty: never soul embraced<br /> +Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him<br /> + Possessed walks +never dim.</p> +<h4>IX</h4> +<p class="poetry">Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang:<br /> +O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf<br /> +Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang<br /> +The space of dewdrops running over leaf;<br /> +Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost<br /> + Than Time with +all his host!</p> +<h4>X</h4> +<p class="poetry">Of thee to say behold, has said adieu:<br /> +But love remembers how the sky was green,<br /> +And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue;<br /> +How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen<br /> +Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came<br /> + Between a blush +and flame.</p> +<h4>XI</h4> +<p class="poetry">Love saw the emissary eglantine<br /> +Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom;<br /> +Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line<br /> +With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom,<br /> +Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down,<br /> + Earth under +rolling brown.</p> +<h4><a name="page264"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +264</span>XII</h4> +<p class="poetry">They do not look through love to look on +thee,<br /> +Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight,<br /> +Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be<br /> +Its wrecking and last issue of delight.<br /> +Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot<br /> + Of colour +unforgot.</p> +<h4>XIII</h4> +<p class="poetry">This way have men come out of brutishness<br /> +To spell the letters of the sky and read<br /> +A reflex upon earth else meaningless.<br /> +With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead,<br /> +Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged<br /> + Shall on through +brave wars waged.</p> +<h4>XIV</h4> +<p class="poetry">More gardens will they win than any lost;<br /> +The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain.<br /> +Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed,<br /> +To stature of the Gods will they attain.<br /> +They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord,<br /> + Themselves the +attuning chord!</p> +<h4>XV</h4> +<p class="poetry">The song had ceased; my vision with the +song.<br /> +Then of those Shadows, which one made descent<br /> +Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long<br /> +Came on me in the public ways and bent<br /> +Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too,<br /> + And saw the dawn +glow through.</p> +<h3><a name="page265"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +265</span>MEDITATION UNDER STARS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">What</span> links are ours +with orbs that are<br /> + So resolutely far:<br /> +The solitary asks, and they<br /> +Give radiance as from a shield:<br /> + Still at the death of day,<br /> + The seen, the unrevealed.<br /> + Implacable they shine<br /> +To us who would of Life obtain<br /> +An answer for the life we strain<br /> + To nourish with one sign.<br /> +Nor can imagination throw<br /> +The penetrative shaft: we pass<br /> +The breath of thought, who would divine<br /> + If haply they may grow<br /> +As Earth; have our desire to know;<br /> +If life comes there to grain from grass,<br /> +And flowers like ours of toil and pain;<br /> + Has passion to beat bar,<br /> + Win space from cleaving brain;<br /> + The mystic link attain,<br /> + Whereby star holds on star.</p> +<p class="poetry">Those visible immortals beam<br /> + Allurement to the dream:<br /> +Ireful at human hungers brook<br /> + No question in the look.<br /> +For ever virgin to our sense,<br /> +Remote they wane to gaze intense:<br /> +<a name="page266"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 266</span>Prolong +it, and in ruthlessness they smite<br /> +The beating heart behind the ball of sight:<br /> + Till we conceive their heavens hoar,<br /> + Those lights they raise but sparkles frore,<br /> +And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey<br /> +To that frigidity of brainless ray.</p> +<p class="poetry"> Yet space is given for breath +of thought<br /> + Beyond our bounds when musing: more<br /> + When to that musing love is brought,<br /> + And love is asked of love’s wherefore.<br /> + ’Tis Earth’s, her gift; else have we +nought:<br /> + Her gift, her secret, here our tie.<br /> + And not with her and yonder sky?<br /> + Bethink you: were it Earth alone<br /> + Breeds love, would not her region be<br /> + The sole delight and throne<br /> + Of generous Deity?</p> +<p class="poetry"> To deeper than this ball of +sight<br /> +Appeal the lustrous people of the night.<br /> +Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails,<br /> + It is our ravenous that quails,<br /> +Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught.<br /> + The spirit leaps +alight,<br /> + Doubts not in +them is he,<br /> +The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right:<br /> +Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought,<br /> +To feel it large of the great life they hold:<br /> +In them to come, or vaster intervolved,<br /> +The issues known in us, our unsolved solved:<br /> +That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree,<br /> +Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped.<br /> +So may we read and little find them cold:<br /> +Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide<br /> +<a name="page267"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 267</span>Our +eyes; no branch of Reason’s growing lopped;<br /> +Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified<br /> +By day to penetrate black midnight; see,<br /> +Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we,<br /> +The specks of dust upon a mound of mould,<br /> +We who reflect those rays, though low our place,<br /> + To them are lastingly allied.</p> +<p class="poetry">So may we read, and little find them cold:<br +/> +Not frosty lamps illumining dead space,<br /> +Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers.<br /> +The fire is in them whereof we are born;<br /> +The music of their motion may be ours.<br /> +Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced<br /> +Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced.<br /> +Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold<br /> + The love that lends her grace<br /> + Among the starry fold.<br /> +Then at new flood of customary morn,<br /> + Look at her through her showers,<br /> + Her mists, her streaming gold,<br /> +A wonder edges the familiar face:<br /> +She wears no more that robe of printed hours;<br /> +Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.</p> +<h3><a name="page268"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +268</span>WOODMAN AND ECHO</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Close</span> Echo hears the +woodman’s axe,<br /> +To double on it, as in glee,<br /> +With clap of hands, and little lacks<br /> +Of meaning in her repartee.<br /> + For all shall fall,<br /> + As one has done,<br /> + The tree of me,<br /> + Of thee the tree;<br /> + And unto all<br /> + The fate we wait<br /> + Reveals the wheels<br /> + Whereon we run:<br /> + We tower to flower,<br /> + We spread the shade,<br /> + We drop for crop,<br /> + At length are laid;<br /> + Are rolled in mould,<br /> + From chop and lop:<br /> +And are we thick in woodland tracks,<br /> +Or tempting of our stature we,<br /> +The end is one, we do but wax<br /> +For service over land and sea.<br /> + So, strike! the like<br /> + Shall thus of us,<br /> +My brawny woodman, claim the tax.<br /> + Nor foe thy blow,<br /> + Though wood be good,<br /> +<a name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 269</span>And +shriekingly the timber cracks:<br /> + The ground we crowned<br /> + Shall speed the seed<br /> +Of younger into swelling sacks.</p> +<p class="poetry"> For use he hews,<br /> + To make awake<br /> +The spirit of what stuff we be:<br /> + Our earth of mirth<br /> + And tears he clears<br /> +For braver, let our minds agree;<br /> + And then will men<br /> + Within them win<br /> +An Echo clapping harmony.</p> +<h3><a name="page270"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 270</span>THE +WISDOM OF ELD</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">We</span> spend our lives +in learning pilotage,<br /> +And grow good steersmen when the vessel’s crank!<br /> +Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank<br /> +Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age.<br /> +It is the sentence which completes that stage;<br /> +A testament of wisdom reading blank.<br /> +The seniors of the race, on their last plank,<br /> +Pass mumbling it as nature’s final page.<br /> +These, bent by such experience, are the band<br /> +Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain<br /> +What things we view, and Earth’s decree withstand,<br /> +Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay,<br /> +Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain,<br /> +And ancients musical at close of day.</p> +<h3>EARTH’S PREFERENCE</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Earth</span> loves her +young: a preference manifest:<br /> +She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds;<br /> +Their beauty with her choicest interthreads,<br /> +And makes her revel of their merry zest;<br /> +As in our East much were it in our West,<br /> +If men had risen to do the work of heads.<br /> +Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads<br /> +The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed.<br /> +How wrought they in their zenith? ’Tis not writ;<br +/> +Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read:<br /> +Have they but held her laws and nature dear,<br /> +They mouth no sentence of inverted wit.<br /> +More prizes she her beasts than this high breed<br /> +Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.</p> +<h3><a name="page271"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +271</span>SOCIETY</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Historic</span> be the +survey of our kind,<br /> +And how their brave Society took shape.<br /> +Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape,<br /> +The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find,<br /> +Who, with some jars in harmony, combined,<br /> +Their primal instincts taming, to escape<br /> +The brawl indecent, and hot passions drape.<br /> +Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind.<br /> +Thus entered they the field of milder beasts,<br /> +Which in some sort of civil order graze,<br /> +And do half-homage to the God of Laws.<br /> +But are they still for their old ravenous feasts,<br /> +Earth gives the edifice they build no base:<br /> +They spring another flood of fangs and claws.</p> +<h3>WINTER HEAVENS</h3> +<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Sharp</span> is the night, +but stars with frost alive<br /> +Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.<br /> +It is a night to make the heavens our home<br /> +More than the nest whereto apace we strive.<br /> +Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,<br /> +In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.<br /> +They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:<br /> +The living throb in me, the dead revive.<br /> +Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,<br /> +Life glistens on the river of the death.<br /> +It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,<br /> +Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs<br /> +Of radiance, the radiance enrings:<br /> +And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.</p> +<h2><a name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +272</span>NOTES</h2> +<h3>PHAETHON<br /> +<i>The Galliambic Measure</i></h3> +<p>Hermann (<i>Elementa Doctrinae Metricae</i>), after citing +lines from the Tragic poet Phrynichus and from the Comic, +observes:</p> +<p>Dixi supra, Phrynichorum versus videri puros Ionicos +esse. Id si verum est, Galliambi non alia re ab his +differunt, quam quod anaclasin, contractionesque et solutiones +recipiunt. Itaque versus Galliambicus ex duobus versibus +Anacreonteis constat, quorum secundus catalecticus est, hac +forma:</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p272b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Graphic depiction of scheme" +title= +"Graphic depiction of scheme" + src="images/p272s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p>The wonderful <i>Attis</i> of Catullus is the one classic +example. A few lines have been gathered elsewhere. +Lord Tennyson’s <i>Boadicea</i> rides over many +difficulties and is a noble poem. Catullus makes general +use of the variant second of the above metrical forms:</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Mihi januae frequentes</i>, <i>mihi limina +tepida</i>:</p> +</blockquote> +<p>With stress on the emotion;</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Jam</i>, <i>jam dolet quod egi</i>, <i>jam +jamque poenitet</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A perfect conquest of the measure is not possible in our +tongue. For the sake of an occasional success in the +velocity, sweep, volume of the line, it seems worth an effort; +and, if to some degree serviceable for narrative verse, it is one +of the exercises of a writer which readers may be invited to +share.</p> +<h3>THEODOLINDA</h3> +<p>The legend of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, formed of a nail of +the true Cross by order of the devout Queen Theodolinda, is well +known. In this dramatic song she is seen passing through +one of the higher temptations of the believing Christian.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> + +<div class="gapmediumline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">Printed by +T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">at the Edinburgh University +Press</span></p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 2 [OF 3]***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1382-h.htm or 1382-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/8/1382 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +</pre></body> +</html> diff --git a/1382-h/images/coverb.jpg b/1382-h/images/coverb.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c224f60 --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/images/coverb.jpg diff --git a/1382-h/images/covers.jpg b/1382-h/images/covers.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f2140b --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/images/covers.jpg diff --git a/1382-h/images/fpb.jpg b/1382-h/images/fpb.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..70290da --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/images/fpb.jpg diff --git a/1382-h/images/fps.jpg b/1382-h/images/fps.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..778320a --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/images/fps.jpg diff --git a/1382-h/images/p272b.jpg b/1382-h/images/p272b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f4c1c0b --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/images/p272b.jpg diff --git a/1382-h/images/p272s.jpg b/1382-h/images/p272s.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..014b482 --- /dev/null +++ b/1382-h/images/p272s.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d11d402 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #1382 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1382) diff --git a/old/pmgm210.txt b/old/pmgm210.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ef149e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pmgm210.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9147 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Etext of Poems by George Meredith, Volume 2 +#4 in our series by George Meredith + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Poems + +by George Meredith + +July, 1998 [Etext #1382] + + +Project Gutenberg's Etext of Poems by George Meredith, Volume 2 +*****This file should be named pmgm210.txt or pmgm210.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, pmgm211.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, pmgm210a.txt + + +This etext was prepared from the 1912 Times Book Club "Surrey" edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do NOT keep these books +in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, for time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text +files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1998 for a total of 1500+ +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach over 150 billion Etexts given away. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001 +should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it +will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001. + + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +We would prefer to send you this information by email +(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail). + +****** +If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please +FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: +[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type] + +ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd etext/etext90 through /etext96 +or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information] +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET INDEX?00.GUT +for a list of books +and +GET NEW GUT for general information +and +MGET GUT* for newsletters. + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +Poems by George Meredith - Volume 2 + + + + +TO J. M. + + + +Let Fate or Insufficiency provide +Mean ends for men who what they are would be: +Penned in their narrow day no change they see +Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. +Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide: +And whether Earth's great offspring, by decree, +Must rot if they abjure rapacity, +Not argument but effort shall decide. +They number many heads in that hard flock: +Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel. +Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel +The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew +A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, +And bring the army of the faithful through. + + + +LINES TO A FRIEND VISITING AMERICA + + + +I + +Now farewell to you! you are +One of my dearest, whom I trust: +Now follow you the Western star, +And cast the old world off as dust. + +II + +From many friends adieu! adieu! +The quick heart of the word therein. +Much that we hope for hangs with you: +We lose you, but we lose to win. + +III + +The beggar-king, November, frets: +His tatters rich with Indian dyes +Goes hugging: we our season's debts +Pay calmly, of the Spring forewise. + +IV + +We send our worthiest; can no less, +If we would now be read aright, - +To that great people who may bless +Or curse mankind: they have the might. + +V + +The proudest seasons find their graves, +And we, who would not be wooed, must court. +We have let the blunderers and the waves +Divide us, and the devil had sport. + +VI + +The blunderers and the waves no more +Shall sever kindred sending forth +Their worthiest from shore to shore +For welcome, bent to prove their worth. + +VII + +Go you and such as you afloat, +Our lost kinsfellowship to revive. +The battle of the antidote +Is tough, though silent: may you thrive! + +VIII + +I, when in this North wind I see +The straining red woods blown awry, +Feel shuddering like the winter tree, +All vein and artery on cold sky. + +IX + +The leaf that clothed me is torn away; +My friend is as a flying seed. +Ay, true; to bring replenished day +Light ebbs, but I am bare, and bleed. + +X + +What husky habitations seem +These comfortable sayings! they fell, +In some rich year become a dream:- +So cries my heart, the infidel! . . . + +XI + +Oh! for the strenuous mind in quest, +Arabian visions could not vie +With those broad wonders of the West, +And would I bid you stay? Not I! + +XII + +The strange experimental land +Where men continually dare take +Niagara leaps;--unshattered stand +'Twixt fall and fall;--for conscience' sake, + +XIII + +Drive onward like a flood's increase; - +Fresh rapids and abysms engage; - +(We live--we die) scorn fireside peace, +And, as a garment, put on rage, + +XIV + +Rather than bear God's reprimand, +By rearing on a full fat soil +Concrete of sin and sloth;--this land, +You will observe it coil in coil. + +XV + +The land has been discover'd long, +The people we have yet to know; +Themselves they know not, save that strong +For good and evil still they grow. + +XVI + +Nor know they us. Yea, well enough +In that inveterate machine +Through which we speak the printed stuff +Daily, with voice most hugeous, mien + +XVII + +Tremendous:- as a lion's show +The grand menagerie paintings hide: +Hear the drum beat, the trombones blow! +The poor old Lion lies inside! . . . + +XVIII + +It is not England that they hear, +But mighty Mammon's pipers, trained +To trumpet out his moods, and stir +His sluggish soul: HER voice is chained: + +XIX + +Almost her spirit seems moribund! +O teach them, 'tis not she displays +The panic of a purse rotund, +Eternal dread of evil days, - + +XX + +That haunting spectre of success +Which shows a heart sunk low in the girths: +Not England answers nobleness, - +'Live for thyself: thou art not earth's.' + +XXI + +Not she, when struggling manhood tries +For freedom, air, a hopefuller fate, +Points out the planet, Compromise, +And shakes a mild reproving pate: + +XXII + +Says never: 'I am well at ease, +My sneers upon the weak I shed: +The strong have my cajoleries: +And those beneath my feet I tread.' + +XXIII + +Nay, but 'tis said for her, great Lord! +The misery's there! The shameless one +Adjures mankind to sheathe the sword, +Herself not yielding what it won:- + +XXIV + +Her sermon at cock-crow doth preach, +On sweet Prosperity--or greed. +'Lo! as the beasts feed, each for each, +God's blessings let us take, and feed!' + +XXV + +Ungrateful creatures crave a part - +She tells them firmly she is full; +Lost sheared sheep hurt her tender heart +With bleating, stops her ears with wool:- + +XXVI + +Seized sometimes by prodigious qualms +(Nightmares of bankruptcy and death), - +Showers down in lumps a load of alms, +Then pants as one who has lost a breath; + +XXVII + +Believes high heaven, whence favours flow, +Too kind to ask a sacrifice +For what it specially doth bestow; - +Gives SHE, 'tis generous, cheese to mice. + +XXVIII + +She saw the young Dominion strip +For battle with a grievous wrong, +And curled a noble Norman lip, +And looked with half an eye sidelong; + +XXIX + +And in stout Saxon wrote her sneers, +Denounced the waste of blood and coin, +Implored the combatants, with tears, +Never to think they could rejoin. + +XXX + +Oh! was it England that, alas! +Turned sharp the victor to cajole? +Behold her features in the glass: +A monstrous semblance mocks her soul! + +XXXI + +A false majority, by stealth, +Have got her fast, and sway the rod: +A headless tyrant built of wealth, +The hypocrite, the belly-God. + +XXXII + +To him the daily hymns they raise: +His tastes are sought: his will is done: +He sniffs the putrid steam of praise, +Place for true England here is none! + +XXXIII + +But can a distant race discern +The difference 'twixt her and him? +My friend, that will you bid them learn. +He shames and binds her, head and limb. + +XXXIV + +Old wood has blossoms of this sort. +Though sound at core, she is old wood. +If freemen hate her, one retort +She has; but one!--'You are my blood.' + +XXXV + +A poet, half a prophet, rose +In recent days, and called for power. +I love him; but his mountain prose - +His Alp and valley and wild flower - + +XXXVI + +Proclaimed our weakness, not its source. +What medicine for disease had he? +Whom summoned for a show of force? +Our titular aristocracy! + +XXXVII + +Why, these are great at City feasts; +From City riches mainly rise: +'Tis well to hear them, when the beasts +That die for us they eulogize! + +XXXVIII + +But these, of all the liveried crew +Obeisant in Mammon's walk, +Most deferent ply the facial screw, +The spinal bend, submissive talk. + +XXXIX + +Small fear that they will run to books +(At least the better form of seed)! +I, too, have hoped from their good looks, +And fables of their Northman breed; - + +XL + +Have hoped that they the land would head +In acts magnanimous; but, lo, +When fainting heroes beg for bread +They frown: where they are driven they go. + +XLI + +Good health, my friend! and may your lot +Be cheerful o'er the Western rounds. +This butter-woman's market-trot +Of verse is passing market-bounds. + +XLII + +Adieu! the sun sets; he is gone. +On banks of fog faint lines extend: +Adieu! bring back a braver dawn +To England, and to me my friend. + +November 15th, 1867. + + + +TIME AND SENTIMENT + + + +I see a fair young couple in a wood, +And as they go, one bends to take a flower, +That so may be embalmed their happy hour, +And in another day, a kindred mood, +Haply together, or in solitude, +Recovered what the teeth of Time devour, +The joy, the bloom, and the illusive power, +Wherewith by their young blood they are endued +To move all enviable, framed in May, +And of an aspect sisterly with Truth: +Yet seek they with Time's laughing things to wed: +Who will be prompted on some pallid day +To lift the hueless flower and show that dead, +Even such, and by this token, is their youth. + + + +LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT + + + +On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose. +Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend +Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened, +Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose. +Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those. +And now upon his western wing he leaned, +Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened, +Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows. +Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars +With memory of the old revolt from Awe, +He reached a middle height, and at the stars, +Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank. +Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank, +The army of unalterable law. + + + +THE STAR SIRIUS + + + +Bright Sirius! that when Orion pales +To dotlings under moonlight still art keen +With cheerful fervour of a warrior's mien +Who holds in his great heart the battle-scales: +Unquenched of flame though swift the flood assails, +Reducing many lustrous to the lean: +Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen +To show what source divine is, and prevails. +Long watches through, at one with godly night, +I mark thee planting joy in constant fire; +And thy quick beams, whose jets of life inspire +Life to the spirit, passion for the light, +Dark Earth since first she lost her lord from sight +Has viewed and felt them sweep her as a lyre. + + + +SENSE AND SPIRIT + + + +The senses loving Earth or well or ill +Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. +The mind is in their trammels, and lights not +By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will +To find in nature things which less may chill +An ardour that desires, unknowing what. +Till we conceive her living we go distraught, +At best but circle-windsails of a mill. +Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life +Creatively has given us blood and breath +For endless war and never wound unhealed, +The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field +Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife +To read her own and trust her down to death. + + + +EARTH'S SECRET + + + +Not solitarily in fields we find +Earth's secret open, though one page is there; +Her plainest, such as children spell, and share +With bird and beast; raised letters for the blind. +Not where the troubled passions toss the mind, +In turbid cities, can the key be bare. +It hangs for those who hither thither fare, +Close interthreading nature with our kind. +They, hearing History speak, of what men were, +And have become, are wise. The gain is great +In vision and solidity; it lives. +Yet at a thought of life apart from her, +Solidity and vision lose their state, +For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives. + + + +INTERNAL HARMONY + + + +Assured of worthiness we do not dread +Competitors; we rather give them hail +And greeting in the lists where we may fail: +Must, if we bear an aim beyond the head! +My betters are my masters: purely fed +By their sustainment I likewise shall scale +Some rocky steps between the mount and vale; +Meanwhile the mark I have and I will wed. +So that I draw the breath of finer air, +Station is nought, nor footways laurel-strewn, +Nor rivals tightly belted for the race. +Good speed to them! My place is here or there; +My pride is that among them I have place: +And thus I keep this instrument in tune. + + + +GRACE AND LOVE + + + +Two flower-enfolding crystal vases she +I love fills daily, mindful but of one: +And close behind pale morn she, like the sun +Priming our world with light, pours, sweet to see, +Clear water in the cup, and into me +The image of herself: and that being done, +Choice of what blooms round her fair garden run +In climbers or in creepers or the tree +She ranges with unerring fingers fine, +To harmony so vivid that through sight +I hear, I have her heavenliness to fold +Beyond the senses, where such love as mine, +Such grace as hers, should the strange Fates withhold +Their starry more from her and me, unite. + + + +APPRECIATION + + + +Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, +Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was born: +And thou when I lay hidden wast as morn +At city-windows, touching eyelids bleared; +To none by her fresh wingedness endeared; +Unwelcome unto revellers outworn. +I the last echoes of Diana's horn +In woodland heard, and saw thee come, and cheered. +No longer wast thou then mere light, fair soul! +And more than simple duty moved thy feet. +New colours rose in thee, from fear, from shame, +From hope, effused: though not less pure a scroll +May men read on the heart I taught to beat: +That change in thee, if not thyself, I claim. + + + +THE DISCIPLINE OF WISDOM + + + +Rich labour is the struggle to be wise, +While we make sure the struggle cannot cease. +Else better were it in some bower of peace +Slothful to swing, contending with the flies. +You point at Wisdom fixed on lofty skies, +As mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: +She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, +Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. +So following her, your hewing may attain +The right to speak unto the mute, and shun +That sly temptation of the illumined brain, +Deliveries oracular, self-spun. +Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain +To shed the words which are ripe fruit of sun. + + + +THE STATE OF AGE + + + +Rub thou thy battered lamp: nor claim nor beg +Honours from aught about thee. Light the young. +Thy frame is as a dusty mantle hung, +O grey one! pendant on a loosened peg. +Thou art for this our life an ancient egg, +Or a tough bird: thou hast a rudderless tongue, +Turning dead trifles, like the cock of dung, +Which runs, Time's contrast to thy halting leg. +Nature, it is most sure, not thee admires. +But hast thou in thy season set her fires +To burn from Self to Spirit through the lash, +Honoured the sons of Earth shall hold thee high: +Yea, to spread light when thy proud letter I +Drops prone and void as any thoughtless dash. + + + +PROGRESS + + + +In Progress you have little faith, say you: +Men will maintain dear interests, wreak base hates, +By force, and gentle women choose their mates +Most amorously from the gilded fighting crew: +The human heart Bellona's mad halloo +Will ever fire to dicing with the Fates. +'Now at this time,' says History, 'those two States +Stood ready their past wrestling to renew. +They sharpened arms and showed them, like the brutes +Whose haunches quiver. But a yellow blight +Fell on their waxing harvests. They deferred +The bloody settlement of their disputes +Till God should bless them better.' They did right. +And naming Progress, both shall have the word. + + + +THE WORLD'S ADVANCE + + + +Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline +To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack. +You have perchance observed the inebriate's track +At night when he has quitted the inn-sign: +He plays diversions on the homeward line, +Still that way bent albeit his legs are slack: +A hedge may take him, but he turns not back, +Nor turns this burdened world, of curving spine. +'Spiral,' the memorable Lady terms +Our mind's ascent: our world's advance presents +That figure on a flat; the way of worms. +Cherish the promise of its good intents, +And warn it, not one instinct to efface +Ere Reason ripens for the vacant place. + + + +A CERTAIN PEOPLE + + + +As Puritans they prominently wax, +And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks. +Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks, +They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks. +But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks +When Peace another door in them unlocks, +Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox +Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe. +Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness, +Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut. +They need their pious exercises less +Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief +That these are devilish only to their thief, +Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput. + + + +THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS + + + +That Garden of sedate Philosophy +Once flourished, fenced from passion and mishap, +A shining spot upon a shaggy map; +Where mind and body, in fair junction free, +Luted their joyful concord; like the tree +From root to flowering twigs a flowing sap. +Clear Wisdom found in tended Nature's lap +Of gentlemen the happy nursery. +That Garden would on light supremest verge, +Were the long drawing of an equal breath +Healthful for Wisdom's head, her heart, her aims. +Our world which for its Babels wants a scourge, +And for its wilds a husbandman, acclaims +The crucifix that came of Nazareth. + + + +A LATER ALEXANDRIAN + + + +An inspiration caught from dubious hues +Filled him, and mystic wrynesses he chased; +For they lead farther than the single-faced, +Wave subtler promise when desire pursues. +The moon of cloud discoloured was his Muse, +His pipe the reed of the old moaning waste. +Love was to him with anguish fast enlaced, +And Beauty where she walked blood-shot the dews. +Men railed at such a singer; women thrilled +Responsively: he sang not Nature's own +Divinest, but his lyric had a tone, +As 'twere a forest-echo of her voice: +What barrenly they yearn for seemed distilled +From what they dread, who do through tears rejoice. + + + +AN ORSON OF THE MUSE + + + +Her son, albeit the Muse's livery +And measured courtly paces rouse his taunts, +Naked and hairy in his savage haunts, +To Nature only will he bend the knee; +Spouting the founts of her distillery +Like rough rock-sources; and his woes and wants +Being Nature's, civil limitation daunts +His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he. +Him, when he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate, +The Muse will hearken to with graver ear +Than many of her train can waken: him +Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear +Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight, +If in no vessel built for sea they swim. + + + +THE POINT OF TASTE + + + +Unhappy poets of a sunken prime! +You to reviewers are as ball to bat. +They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat +With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime +On you the excommunicates of Rhyme, +Because you sing not in the living Fat. +The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat +Is verse that shuns their self-producing time. +Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump, +Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs, +You win their pleased attention. But, bright God +O' the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud! +Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump +Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs. + + + +CAMELUS SALTAT + + + +What say you, critic, now you have become +An author and maternal?--in this trap +(To quote you) of poor hollow folk who rap +On instruments as like as drum to drum. +You snarled tut-tut for welcome to tum-tum, +So like the nose fly-teased in its noon's nap. +You scratched an insect-slaughtering thunder-clap +With that between the fingers and the thumb. +It seemeth mad to quit the Olympian couch, +Which bade our public gobble or reject. +O spectacle of Peter, shrewdly pecked, +Piper, by his own pepper from his pouch! +What of the sneer, the jeer, the voice austere, +You dealt?--the voice austere, the jeer, the sneer. + + + +CONTINUED + + + +Oracle of the market! thence you drew +The taste which stamped you guide of the inept. - +A North-sea pilot, Hildebrand yclept, +A sturdy and a briny, once men knew. +He loved small beer, and for that copious brew, +To roll ingurgitation till he slept, +Rations exchanged with flavour for the adept: +And merrily plied him captain, mate and crew. +At last this dancer to the Polar star +Sank, washed out within, and overboard was pitched, +To drink the sea and pilot him to land. +O captain-critic! printed, neatly stitched, +Know while the pillory-eggs fly fast, they are +Not eggs, but the drowned soul of Hildebrand. + + + +MY THEME + + + +Of me and of my theme think what thou wilt: +The song of gladness one straight bolt can check. +But I have never stood at Fortune's beck: +Were she and her light crew to run atilt +At my poor holding little would be spilt; +Small were the praise for singing o'er that wreck. +Who courts her dooms to strife his bended neck; +He grasps a blade, not always by the hilt. +Nathless she strikes at random, can be fell +With other than those votaries she deals +The black or brilliant from her thunder-rift. +I say but that this love of Earth reveals +A soul beside our own to quicken, quell, +Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift. + + + +CONTINUED + + + +'Tis true the wisdom that my mind exacts +Through contemplation from a heart unbent +By many tempests may be stained and rent: +The summer flies it mightily attracts. +Yet they seem choicer than your sons of facts, +Which scarce give breathing of the sty's content +For their diurnal carnal nourishment: +Which treat with Nature in official pacts. +The deader body Nature could proclaim. +Much life have neither. Let the heavens of wrath +Rattle, then both scud scattering to froth. +But during calms the flies of idle aim +Less put the spirit out, less baffle thirst +For light than swinish grunters, blest or curst. + + + +ON THE DANGER OF WAR + + + +Avert, High Wisdom, never vainly wooed, +This threat of War, that shows a land brain-sick. +When nations gain the pitch where rhetoric +Seems reason they are ripe for cannon's food. +Dark looms the issue though the cause be good, +But with the doubt 'tis our old devil's trick. +O now the down-slope of the lunatic +Illumine lest we redden of that brood. +For not since man in his first view of thee +Ascended to the heavens giving sign +Within him of deep sky and sounded sea, +Did he unforfeiting thy laws transgress; +In peril of his blood his ears incline +To drums whose loudness is their emptiness. + + + +TO CARDINAL MANNING + + + +I, wakeful for the skylark voice in men, +Or straining for the angel of the light, +Rebuked am I by hungry ear and sight, +When I behold one lamp that through our fen +Goes hourly where most noisome; hear again +A tongue that loathsomeness will not affright +From speaking to the soul of us forthright +What things our craven senses keep from ken. +This is the doing of the Christ; the way +He went on earth; the service above guile +To prop a tyrant creed: it sings, it shines; +Cries to the Mammonites: Allay, allay +Such misery as by these present signs +Brings vengeance down; nor them who rouse revile. + + + +TO COLONEL CHARLES (DYING GENERAL C.B.B.) + + + +I + +An English heart, my commandant, +A soldier's eye you have, awake +To right and left; with looks askant +On bulwarks not of adamant, +Where white our Channel waters break. + +II + +Where Grisnez winks at Dungeness +Across the ruffled strip of salt, +You look, and like the prospect less. +On men and guns would you lay stress, +To bid the Island's foemen halt. + +III + +While loud the Year is raising cry +At birth to know if it must bear +In history the bloody dye, +An English heart, a soldier's eye, +For the old country first will care. + +IV + +And how stands she, artillerist, +Among the vapours waxing dense, +With cannon charged? 'Tis hist! and hist! +And now she screws a gouty fist, +And now she counts to clutch her pence. + +V + +With shudders chill as aconite, +The couchant chewer of the cud +Will start at times in pussy fright +Before the dogs, when reads her sprite +The streaks predicting streams of blood. + +VI + +She thinks they may mean something; thinks +They may mean nothing: haply both. +Where darkness all her daylight drinks, +She fain would find a leader lynx, +Not too much taxing mental sloth. + +VII + +Cleft like the fated house in twain, +One half is, Arm! and one, Retrench! +Gambetta's word on dull MacMahon: +'The cow that sees a passing train': +So spies she Russian, German, French. + +VIII + +She? no, her weakness: she unbraced +Among those athletes fronting storms! +The muscles less of steel than paste, +Why, they of nature feel distaste +For flash, much more for push, of arms. + +IX + +The poet sings, and well know we, +That 'iron draws men after it.' +But towering wealth may seem the tree +Which bears the fruit INDEMNITY, +And draw as fast as battle's fit, + +X + +If feeble be the hand on guard, +Alas, alas! And nations are +Still the mad forces, though the scarred. +Should they once deem our emblem Pard +Wagger of tail for all save war; - + +XI + +Mechanically screwed to flail +His flanks by Presses conjuring fear; - +A money-bag with head and tail; - +Too late may valour then avail! +As you beheld, my cannonier, + +XII + +When with the staff of Benedek, +On the plateau of Koniggratz, +You saw below that wedgeing speck; +Foresaw proud Austria rammed to wreck, +Where Chlum drove deep in smoky jets. + +February 1887. + + + +TO CHILDREN: FOR TYRANTS + + + +I + +Strike not thy dog with a stick! +I did it yesterday: +Not to undo though I gained +The Paradise: heavy it rained +On Kobold's flanks, and he lay. + +II + +Little Bruno, our long-ear pup, +From his hunt had come back to my heel. +I heard a sharp worrying sound, +And Bruno foamed on the ground, +With Koby as making a meal. + +III + +I did what I could not undo +Were the gates of the Paradise shut +Behind me: I deemed it was just. +I left Koby crouched in the dust, +Some yards from the woodman's hut. + +IV + +He bewhimpered his welting, and I +Scarce thought it enough for him: so, +By degrees, through the upper box-grove, +Within me an old story hove, +Of a man and a dog: you shall know. + +V + +The dog was of novel breed, +The Shannon retriever, untried: +His master, an old Irish lord, +In an oaken armchair snored +At midnight, whisky beside. + +VI + +Perched up a desolate tower, +Where the black storm-wind was a whip +To set it nigh spinning, these two +Were alone, like the last of a crew, +Outworn in a wave-beaten ship. + +VII + +The dog lifted muzzle, and sniffed; +He quitted his couch on the rug, +Nose to floor, nose aloft; whined, barked; +And, finding the signals unmarked, +Caught a hand in a death-grapple tug. + +VIII + +He pulled till his master jumped +For fury of wrath, and laid on +With the length of a tough knotted staff, +Fit to drive the life flying like chaff, +And leave a sheer carcase anon. + +IX + +That done, he sat, panted, and cursed +The vile cross of this brute: nevermore +Would he house it to rear such a cur! +The dog dragged his legs, pained to stir, +Eyed his master, dropped, barked at the door. + +X + +Then his master raised head too, and sniffed: +It struck him the dog had a sense +That honoured both dam and sire. +You have guessed how the tower was afire. +The Shannon retriever dates thence. + +XI + +I mused: saw the pup ease his heart +Of his instinct for chasing, and sink +Overwrought by excitement so new: +A scene that for Koby to view +Was the seizure of nerves in a link. + +XII + +And part sympathetic, and part +Imitatively, raged my poor brute; +And I, not thinking of ill, +Doing eviller: nerves are still +Our savage too quick at the root. + +XIII + +They spring us: I proved it, albeit +I played executioner then +For discipline, justice, the like. +Yon stick I had handy to strike +Should have warned of the tyrant in men. + +XIV + +You read in your History books, +How the Prince in his youth had a mind +For governing gently his land. +Ah, the use of that weapon at hand, +When the temper is other than kind! + +XV + +At home all was well; Koby's ribs +Not so sore as my thoughts: if, beguiled, +He forgives me, his criminal air +Throws a shade of Llewellyn's despair +For the hound slain for saving his child. + + + +THE WOODS OF WESTERMAIN + + + +I + +Enter these enchanted woods, +You who dare. +Nothing harms beneath the leaves +More than waves a swimmer cleaves. +Toss your heart up with the lark, +Foot at peace with mouse and worm, +Fair you fare. +Only at a dread of dark +Quaver, and they quit their form: +Thousand eyeballs under hoods +Have you by the hair. +Enter these enchanted woods, +You who dare. + +II + +Here the snake across your path +Stretches in his golden bath: +Mossy-footed squirrels leap +Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep: +Yaffles on a chuckle skim +Low to laugh from branches dim: +Up the pine, where sits the star, +Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. +Each has business of his own; +But should you distrust a tone, +Then beware. +Shudder all the haunted roods, +All the eyeballs under hoods +Shroud you in their glare. +Enter these enchanted woods, +You who dare. + +III + +Open hither, open hence, +Scarce a bramble weaves a fence, +Where the strawberry runs red, +With white star-flower overhead; +Cumbered by dry twig and cone, +Shredded husks of seedlings flown, +Mine of mole and spotted flint: +Of dire wizardry no hint, +Save mayhap the print that shows +Hasty outward-tripping toes, +Heels to terror on the mould. +These, the woods of Westermain, +Are as others to behold, +Rich of wreathing sun and rain; +Foliage lustreful around +Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound. +Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins, +Shelter eager minikins, +Myriads, free to peck and pipe: +Would you better? would you worse? +You with them may gather ripe +Pleasures flowing not from purse. +Quick and far as Colour flies +Taking the delighted eyes, +You of any well that springs +May unfold the heaven of things; +Have it homely and within, +And thereof its likeness win, +Will you so in soul's desire: +This do sages grant t' the lyre. +This is being bird and more, +More than glad musician this; +Granaries you will have a store +Past the world of woe and bliss; +Sharing still its bliss and woe; +Harnessed to its hungers, no. +On the throne Success usurps, +You shall seat the joy you feel +Where a race of water chirps, +Twisting hues of flourished steel: +Or where light is caught in hoop +Up a clearing's leafy rise, +Where the crossing deerherds troop +Classic splendours, knightly dyes. +Or, where old-eyed oxen chew +Speculation with the cud, +Read their pool of vision through, +Back to hours when mind was mud; +Nigh the knot, which did untwine +Timelessly to drowsy suns; +Seeing Earth a slimy spine, +Heaven a space for winging tons. +Farther, deeper, may you read, +Have you sight for things afield, +Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed, +Cloaked, but in the peep revealed; +Showing a kind face and sweet: +Look you with the soul you see't. +Glory narrowing to grace, +Grace to glory magnified, +Following that will you embrace +Close in arms or aery wide. +Banished is the white Foam-born +Not from here, nor under ban +Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn, +Pipings of the reedy Pan. +Loved of Earth of old they were, +Loving did interpret her; +And the sterner worship bars +None whom Song has made her stars. +You have seen the huntress moon +Radiantly facing dawn, +Dusky meads between them strewn +Glimmering like downy awn: +Argent Westward glows the hunt, +East the blush about to climb; +One another fair they front, +Transient, yet outshine the time; +Even as dewlight off the rose +In the mind a jewel sows. +Thus opposing grandeurs live +Here if Beauty be their dower: +Doth she of her spirit give, +Fleetingness will spare her flower. +This is in the tune we play, +Which no spring of strength would quell; +In subduing does not slay; +Guides the channel, guards the well: +Tempered holds the young blood-heat, +Yet through measured grave accord, +Hears the heart of wildness beat +Like a centaur's hoof on sward. +Drink the sense the notes infuse, +You a larger self will find: +Sweetest fellowship ensues +With the creatures of your kind. +Ay, and Love, if Love it be +Flaming over I and ME, +Love meet they who do not shove +Cravings in the van of Love. +Courtly dames are here to woo, +Knowing love if it be true. +Reverence the blossom-shoot +Fervently, they are the fruit. +Mark them stepping, hear them talk, +Goddess, is no myth inane, +You will say of those who walk +In the woods of Westermain. +Waters that from throat and thigh +Dart the sun his arrows back; +Leaves that on a woodland sigh +Chat of secret things no lack; +Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear, +Bare or veiled they move sincere; +Not by slavish terrors tripped +Being anew in nature dipped, +Growths of what they step on, these; +With the roots the grace of trees. +Casket-breasts they give, nor hide, +For a tyrant's flattered pride, +Mind, which nourished not by light, +Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite: +Whereof are strange tales to tell; +Some in blood writ, tombed in bell. +Here the ancient battle ends, +Joining two astonished friends, +Who the kiss can give and take +With more warmth than in that world +Where the tiger claws the snake, +Snake her tiger clasps infurled, +And the issue of their fight +People lands in snarling plight. +Here her splendid beast she leads +Silken-leashed and decked with weeds +Wild as he, but breathing faint +Sweetness of unfelt constraint. +Love, the great volcano, flings +Fires of lower Earth to sky; +Love, the sole permitted, sings +Sovereignly of ME and I. +Bowers he has of sacred shade, +Spaces of superb parade, +Voiceful . . . But bring you a note +Wrangling, howsoe'er remote, +Discords out of discord spin +Round and round derisive din: +Sudden will a pallor pant +Chill at screeches miscreant; +Owls or spectres, thick they flee; +Nightmare upon horror broods; +Hooded laughter, monkish glee, +Gaps the vital air. +Enter these enchanted woods +You who dare. + +IV + +You must love the light so well +That no darkness will seem fell. +Love it so you could accost +Fellowly a livid ghost. +Whish! the phantom wisps away, +Owns him smoke to cocks of day. +In your breast the light must burn +Fed of you, like corn in quern +Ever plumping while the wheel +Speeds the mill and drains the meal. +Light to light sees little strange, +Only features heavenly new; +Then you touch the nerve of Change, +Then of Earth you have the clue; +Then her two-sexed meanings melt +Through you, wed the thought and felt. +Sameness locks no scurfy pond +Here for Custom, crazy-fond: +Change is on the wing to bud +Rose in brain from rose in blood. +Wisdom throbbing shall you see +Central in complexity; +From her pasture 'mid the beasts +Rise to her ethereal feasts, +Not, though lightnings track your wit +Starward, scorning them you quit: +For be sure the bravest wing +Preens it in our common spring, +Thence along the vault to soar, +You with others, gathering more, +Glad of more, till you reject +Your proud title of elect, +Perilous even here while few +Roam the arched greenwood with you. +Heed that snare. +Muffled by his cavern-cowl +Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl, +Who was lord ere light you drank, +And lest blood of knightly rank +Stream, let not your fair princess +Stray: he holds the leagues in stress, +Watches keenly there. +Oft has he been riven; slain +Is no force in Westermain. +Wait, and we shall forge him curbs, +Put his fangs to uses, tame, +Teach him, quick as cunning herbs, +How to cure him sick and lame. +Much restricted, much enringed, +Much he frets, the hooked and winged, +Never known to spare. +'Tis enough: the name of Sage +Hits no thing in nature, nought; +Man the least, save when grave Age +From yon Dragon guards his thought. +Eye him when you hearken dumb +To what words from Wisdom come. +When she says how few are by +Listening to her, eye his eye. +Self, his name declare. +Him shall Change, transforming late, +Wonderously renovate. +Hug himself the creature may: +What he hugs is loathed decay. +Crying, slip thy scales, and slough! +Change will strip his armour off; +Make of him who was all maw, +Inly only thrilling-shrewd, +Such a servant as none saw +Through his days of dragonhood. +Days when growling o'er his bone, +Sharpened he for mine and thine; +Sensitive within alone; +Scaly as the bark of pine. +Change, the strongest son of Life, +Has the Spirit here to wife. +Lo, their young of vivid breed, +Bear the lights that onward speed, +Threading thickets, mounting glades, +Up the verdurous colonnades, +Round the fluttered curves, and down, +Out of sight of Earth's blue crown, +Whither, in her central space, +Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase. +Fount unresting, Lure divine! +There meet all: too late look most. +Fire in water hued as wine, +Springs amid a shadowy host, +Circled: one close-headed mob, +Breathless, scanning divers heaps, +Where a Heart begins to throb, +Where it ceases, slow, with leaps. +And 'tis very strange, 'tis said, +How you spy in each of them +Semblance of that Dragon red, +As the oak in bracken-stem. +And, 'tis said, how each and each: +Which commences, which subsides: +First my Dragon! doth beseech +Her who food for all provides. +And she answers with no sign; +Utters neither yea nor nay; +Fires the water hued as wine; +Kneads another spark in clay. +Terror is about her hid; +Silence of the thunders locked; +Lightnings lining the shut lid; +Fixity on quaking rocked. +Lo, you look at Flow and Drought +Interflashed and interwrought: +Ended is begun, begun +Ended, quick as torrents run. +Young Impulsion spouts to sink; +Luridness and lustre link; +'Tis your come and go of breath; +Mirrored pants the Life, the Death; +Each of either reaped and sown: +Rosiest rosy wanes to crone. +See you so? your senses drift; +'Tis a shuttle weaving swift. +Look with spirit past the sense, +Spirit shines in permanence. +That is She, the view of whom +Is the dust within the tomb, +Is the inner blush above, +Look to loathe, or look to love; +Think her Lump, or know her Flame; +Dread her scourge, or read her aim; +Shoot your hungers from their nerve; +Or, in her example, serve. +Some have found her sitting grave; +Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat, +Hurling dust of fool and knave +In a hissing smithy's jet. +More it were not well to speak; +Burn to see, you need but seek. +Once beheld she gives the key +Airing every doorway, she. +Little can you stop or steer +Ere of her you are the seer. +On the surface she will witch, +Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze +Under, and the soul is rich +Past computing, past amaze. +Then is courage that endures +Even her awful tremble yours. +Then, the reflex of that Fount +Spied below, will Reason mount +Lordly and a quenchless force, +Lighting Pain to its mad source, +Scaring Fear till Fear escapes, +Shot through all its phantom shapes. +Then your spirit will perceive +Fleshly seed of fleshly sins; +Where the passions interweave, +How the serpent tangle spins +Of the sense of Earth misprised, +Brainlessly unrecognized; +She being Spirit in her clods, +Footway to the God of Gods. +Then for you are pleasures pure, +Sureties as the stars are sure: +Not the wanton beckoning flags +Which, of flattery and delight, +Wax to the grim Habit-Hags +Riding souls of men to night: +Pleasures that through blood run sane, +Quickening spirit from the brain. +Each of each in sequent birth, +Blood and brain and spirit, three, +(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth), +Join for true felicity. +Are they parted, then expect +Some one sailing will be wrecked: +Separate hunting are they sped, +Scan the morsel coveted. +Earth that Triad is: she hides +Joy from him who that divides; +Showers it when the three are one +Glassing her in union. +Earth your haven, Earth your helm, +You command a double realm; +Labouring here to pay your debt, +Till your little sun shall set; +Leaving her the future task: +Loving her too well to ask. +Eglantine that climbs the yew, +She her darkest wreathes for those +Knowing her the Ever-new, +And themselves the kin o' the rose. +Life, the chisel, axe and sword, +Wield who have her depths explored: +Life, the dream, shall be their robe +Large as air about the globe; +Life, the question, hear its cry +Echoed with concordant Why; +Life, the small self-dragon ramped, +Thrill for service to be stamped. +Ay, and over every height +Life for them shall wave a wand: +That, the last, where sits affright, +Homely shows the stream beyond. +Love the light and be its lynx, +You will track her and attain; +Read her as no cruel Sphinx +In the woods of Westermain, +Daily fresh the woods are ranged; +Glooms which otherwhere appal, +Sounded: here, their worths exchanged +Urban joins with pastoral: +Little lost, save what may drop +Husk-like, and the mind preserves. +Natural overgrowths they lop, +Yet from nature neither swerves, +Trained or savage: for this cause: +Of our Earth they ply the laws, +Have in Earth their feeding root, +Mind of man and bent of brute. +Hear that song; both wild and ruled. +Hear it: is it wail or mirth? +Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled? +None, and all: it springs of Earth. +O but hear it! 'tis the mind; +Mind that with deep Earth unites, +Round the solid trunk to wind +Rings of clasping parasites. +Music have you there to feed +Simplest and most soaring need. +Free to wind, and in desire +Winding, they to her attached +Feel the trunk a spring of fire, +And ascend to heights unmatched, +Whence the tidal world is viewed +As a sea of windy wheat, +Momently black, barren, rude; +Golden-brown, for harvest meet, +Dragon-reaped from folly-sown; +Bride-like to the sickle-blade: +Quick it varies, while the moan, +Moan of a sad creature strayed, +Chiefly is its voice. So flesh +Conjures tempest-flails to thresh +Good from worthless. Some clear lamps +Light it; more of dead marsh-damps. +Monster is it still, and blind, +Fit but to be led by Pain. +Glance we at the paths behind, +Fruitful sight has Westermain. +There we laboured, and in turn +Forward our blown lamps discern, +As you see on the dark deep +Far the loftier billows leap, +Foam for beacon bear. +Hither, hither, if you will, +Drink instruction, or instil, +Run the woods like vernal sap, +Crying, hail to luminousness! +But have care. +In yourself may lurk the trap: +On conditions they caress. +Here you meet the light invoked +Here is never secret cloaked. +Doubt you with the monster's fry +All his orbit may exclude; +Are you of the stiff, the dry, +Cursing the not understood; +Grasp you with the monster's claws; +Govern with his truncheon-saws; +Hate, the shadow of a grain; +You are lost in Westermain: +Earthward swoops a vulture sun, +Nighted upon carrion: +Straightway venom wine-cups shout +Toasts to One whose eyes are out: +Flowers along the reeling floor +Drip henbane and hellebore: +Beauty, of her tresses shorn, +Shrieks as nature's maniac: +Hideousness on hoof and horn +Tumbles, yapping in her track: +Haggard Wisdom, stately once, +Leers fantastical and trips: +Allegory drums the sconce, +Impiousness nibblenips. +Imp that dances, imp that flits, +Imp o' the demon-growing girl, +Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits +Round you, and with them you whirl +Fast where pours the fountain-rout +Out of Him whose eyes are out: +Multitudes on multitudes, +Drenched in wallowing devilry: +And you ask where you may be, +In what reek of a lair +Given to bones and ogre-broods: +And they yell you Where. +Enter these enchanted woods, +You who dare. + + + +A BALLAD OF PAST MERIDIAN + + + +I + +Last night returning from my twilight walk +I met the grey mist Death, whose eyeless brow +Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk +He reached me flowers as from a withered bough: +O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou! + +II + +Death said, I gather, and pursued his way. +Another stood by me, a shape in stone, +Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay, +And metal veins that sometimes fiery shone: +O Life, how naked and how hard when known! + +III + +Life said, As thou hast carved me, such am I. +Then memory, like the nightjar on the pine, +And sightless hope, a woodlark in night sky, +Joined notes of Death and Life till night's decline +Of Death, of Life, those inwound notes are mine. + + + +THE DAY OF THE DAUGHTER OF HADES + + + +I + +He who has looked upon Earth +Deeper than flower and fruit, +Losing some hue of his mirth, +As the tree striking rock at the root, +Unto him shall the marvellous tale +Of Callistes more humanly come +With the touch on his breast than a hail +From the markets that hum. + +II + +Now the youth footed swift to the dawn. +'Twas the season when wintertide, +In the higher rock-hollows updrawn, +Leaves meadows to bud, and he spied, +By light throwing shallow shade, +Between the beam and the gloom, +Sicilian Enna, whose Maid +Such aspect wears in her bloom +Underneath since the Charioteer +Of Darkness whirled her away, +On a reaped afternoon of the year, +Nigh the poppy-droop of Day. +O and naked of her, all dust, +The majestic Mother and Nurse, +Ringing cries to the God, the Just, +Curled the land with the blight of her curse: +Recollected of this glad isle +Still quaking. But now more fair, +And momently fraying the while +The veil of the shadows there, +Soft Enna that prostrate grief +Sang through, and revealed round the vines, +Bronze-orange, the crisp young leaf, +The wheat-blades tripping in lines, +A hue unillumined by sun +Of the flowers flooding grass as from founts: +All the penetrable dun +Of the morn ere she mounts. + +III + +Nor had saffron and sapphire and red +Waved aloft to their sisters below, +When gaped by the rock-channel head +Of the lake, black, a cave at one blow, +Reverberant over the plain: +A sound oft fearfully swung +For the coming of wrathful rain: +And forth, like the dragon-tongue +Of a fire beaten flat by the gale, +But more as the smoke to behold, +A chariot burst. Then a wail +Quivered high of the love that would fold +Bliss immeasurable, bigger than heart, +Though a God's: and the wheels were stayed, +And the team of the chariot swart +Reared in marble, the six, dismayed, +Like hoofs that by night plashing sea +Curve and ramp from the vast swan-wave: +For, lo, the Great Mother, She! +And Callistes gazed, he gave +His eyeballs up to the sight: +The embrace of the Twain, of whom +To men are their day, their night, +Mellow fruits and the shearing tomb: +Our Lady of the Sheaves +And the Lily of Hades, the Sweet +Of Enna: he saw through leaves +The Mother and Daughter meet. +They stood by the chariot-wheel, +Embraced, very tall, most like +Fellow poplars, wind-taken, that reel +Down their shivering columns and strike +Head to head, crossing throats: and apart, +For the feast of the look, they drew, +Which Darkness no longer could thwart; +And they broke together anew, +Exulting to tears, flower and bud. +But the mate of the Rayless was grave: +She smiled like Sleep on its flood, +That washes of all we crave: +Like the trance of eyes awake +And the spirit enshrouded, she cast +The wan underworld on the lake. +They were so, and they passed. + +IV + +He tells it, who knew the law +Upon mortals: he stood alive +Declaring that this he saw: +He could see, and survive. + +V + +Now the youth was not ware of the beams +With the grasses intertwined, +For each thing seen, as in dreams, +Came stepping to rear through his mind, +Till it struck his remembered prayer +To be witness of this which had flown +Like a smoke melted thinner than air, +That the vacancy doth disown. +And viewing a maiden, he thought +It might now be morn, and afar +Within him the memory wrought +Of a something that slipped from the car +When those, the august, moved by: +Perchance a scarf, and perchance +This maiden. She did not fly, +Nor started at his advance: +She looked, as when infinite thirst +Pants pausing to bless the springs, +Refreshed, unsated. Then first +He trembled with awe of the things +He had seen; and he did transfer, +Divining and doubting in turn, +His reverence unto her; +Nor asked what he crouched to learn: +The whence of her, whither, and why +Her presence there, and her name, +Her parentage: under which sky +Her birth, and how hither she came, +So young, a virgin, alone, +Unfriended, having no fear, +As Oreads have; no moan, +Like the lost upon earth; no tear; +Not a sign of the torch in the blood, +Though her stature had reached the height +When mantles a tender rud +In maids that of youths have sight, +If maids of our seed they be: +For he said: A glad vision art thou! +And she answered him: Thou to me! +As men utter a vow. + +VI + +Then said she, quick as the cries +Of the rainy cranes: Light! light! +And Helios rose in her eyes, +That were full as the dew-balls bright, +Relucent to him as dews +Unshaded. Breathing, she sent +Her voice to the God of the Muse, +And along the vale it went, +Strange to hear: not thin, not shrill: +Sweet, but no young maid's throat: +The echo beyond the hill +Ran falling on half the note: +And under the shaken ground +Where the Hundred-headed groans +By the roots of great AEtna bound, +As of him were hollow tones +Of wondering roared: a tale +Repeated to sunless halls. +But now off the face of the vale +Shadows fled in a breath, and the walls +Of the lake's rock-head were gold, +And the breast of the lake, that swell +Of the crestless long wave rolled +To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. +A morning of radiant lids +O'er the dance of the earth opened wide: +The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids +Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, +Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: +There was milk, honey, music to make: +Up their branches the little birds billed: +Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake. +O shining in sunlight, chief +After water and water's caress, +Was the young bronze-orange leaf, +That clung to the tree as a tress, +Shooting lucid tendrils to wed +With the vine-hook tree or pole, +Like Arachne launched out on her thread. +Then the maiden her dusky stole +In the span of the black-starred zone, +Gathered up for her footing fleet. +As one that had toil of her own +She followed the lines of wheat +Tripping straight through the fields, green blades, +To the groves of olive grey, +Downy-grey, golden-tinged: and to glades +Where the pear-blossom thickens the spray +In a night, like the snow-packed storm: +Pear, apple, almond, plum: +Not wintry now: pushing, warm! +And she touched them with finger and thumb, +As the vine-hook closes: she smiled, +Recounting again and again, +Corn, wine, fruit, oil! like a child, +With the meaning known to men. +For hours in the track of the plough +And the pruning-knife she stepped, +And of how the seed works, and of how +Yields the soil, she seemed adept. +Then she murmured that name of the dearth, +The Beneficent, Hers, who bade +Our husbandmen sow for the birth +Of the grain making earth full glad. +She murmured that Other's: the dirge +Of life-light: for whose dark lap +Our locks are clipped on the verge +Of the realm where runs no sap. +She said: We have looked on both! +And her eyes had a wavering beam +Of various lights, like the froth +Of the storm-swollen ravine stream +In flame of the bolt. What links +Were these which had made him her friend? +He eyed her, as one who drinks, +And would drink to the end. + +VII + +Now the meadows with crocus besprent, +And the asphodel woodsides she left, +And the lake-slopes, the ravishing scent +Of narcissus, dark-sweet, for the cleft +That tutors the torrent-brook, +Delaying its forceful spleen +With many a wind and crook +Through rock to the broad ravine. +By the hyacinth-bells in the brakes, +And the shade-loved white windflower, half hid, +And the sun-loving lizards and snakes +On the cleft's barren ledges, that slid +Out of sight, smooth as waterdrops, all, +At a snap of twig or bark +In the track of the foreign foot-fall, +She climbed to the pineforest dark, +Overbrowing an emerald chine +Of the grass-billows. Thence, as a wreath, +Running poplar and cypress to pine, +The lake-banks are seen, and beneath, +Vineyard, village, groves, rivers, towers, farms, +The citadel watching the bay, +The bay with the town in its arms, +The town shining white as the spray +Of the sapphire sea-wave on the rock, +Where the rock stars the girdle of sea, +White-ringed, as the midday flock, +Clipped by heat, rings the round of the tree. +That hour of the piercing shaft +Transfixes bough-shadows, confused +In veins of fire, and she laughed, +With her quiet mouth amused +To see the whole flock, adroop, +Asleep, hug the tree-stem as one, +Imperceptibly filling the loop +Of its shade at a slant of sun. +The pipes under pent of the crag, +Where the goatherds in piping recline, +Have whimsical stops, burst and flag +Uncorrected as outstretched swine: +For the fingers are slack and unsure, +And the wind issues querulous:- thorns +And snakes!--but she listened demure, +Comparing day's music with morn's. +Of the gentle spirit that slips +From the bark of the tree she discoursed, +And of her of the wells, whose lips +Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced. +And much of the sacred loon, +The frolic, the Goatfoot God, +For stories of indolent noon +In the pineforest's odorous nod, +She questioned, not knowing: he can +Be waspish, irascible, rude, +He is oftener friendly to man, +And ever to beasts and their brood. +For the which did she love him well, +She said, and his pipes of the reed, +His twitched lips puffing to tell +In music his tears and his need, +Against the sharp catch of his hurt. +Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak, +Nor spake as the schools, to divert, +But fondly, perceiving him weak +Before Gods, and to shepherds a fear, +A holiness, horn and heel. +All this she had learnt in her ear +From Callistes, and taught him to feel. +Yea, the solemn divinity flushed +Through the shaggy brown skin of the beast, +And the steeps where the cataract rushed, +And the wilds where the forest is priest, +Were his temple to clothe him in awe, +While she spake: 'twas a wonder: she read +The haunts of the beak and the claw +As plain as the land of bread, +But Cities and martial States, +Whither soon the youth veered his theme, +Were impervious barrier-gates +To her: and that ship, a trireme, +Nearing harbour, scarce wakened her glance, +Though he dwelt on the message it bore +Of sceptre and sword and lance +To the bee-swarms black on the shore, +Which were audible almost, +So black they were. It befel +That he called up the warrior host +Of the Song pouring hydromel +In thunder, the wide-winged Song. +And he named with his boyish pride +The heroes, the noble throng +Past Acheron now, foul tide! +With his joy of the godlike band +And the verse divine, he named +The chiefs pressing hot on the strand, +Seen of Gods, of Gods aided, and maimed. +The fleetfoot and ireful; the King; +Him, the prompter in stratagem, +Many-shifted and masterful: Sing, +O Muse! But she cried: Not of them +She breathed as if breath had failed, +And her eyes, while she bade him desist, +Held the lost-to-light ghosts grey-mailed, +As you see the grey river-mist +Hold shapes on the yonder bank. +A moment her body waned, +The light of her sprang and sank: +Then she looked at the sun, she regained +Clear feature, and she breathed deep. +She wore the wan smile he had seen, +As the flow of the river of Sleep, +On the mouth of the Shadow-Queen. +In sunlight she craved to bask, +Saying: Life! And who was she? who? +Of what issue? He dared not ask, +For that partly he knew. + +VIII + +A noise of the hollow ground +Turned the eye to the ear in debate: +Not the soft overflowing of sound +Of the pines, ranked, lofty, straight, +Barely swayed to some whispers remote, +Some swarming whispers above: +Not the pines with the faint airs afloat, +Hush-hushing the nested dove: +It was not the pines, or the rout +Oft heard from mid-forest in chase, +But the long muffled roar of a shout +Subterranean. Sharp grew her face. +She rose, yet not moved by affright; +'Twas rather good haste to use +Her holiday of delight +In the beams of the God of the Muse. +And the steeps of the forest she crossed, +On its dry red sheddings and cones +Up the paths by roots green-mossed, +Spotted amber, and old mossed stones. +Then out where the brook-torrent starts +To her leap, and from bend to curve +A hurrying elbow darts +For the instant-glancing swerve, +Decisive, with violent will +In the action formed, like hers, +The maiden's, ascending; and still +Ascending, the bud of the furze, +The broom, and all blue-berried shoots +Of stubborn and prickly kind, +The juniper flat on its roots, +The dwarf rhododaphne, behind +She left, and the mountain sheep +Far behind, goat, herbage and flower. +The island was hers, and the deep, +All heaven, a golden hour. +Then with wonderful voice, that rang +Through air as the swan's nigh death, +Of the glory of Light she sang, +She sang of the rapture of Breath. +Nor ever, says he who heard, +Heard Earth in her boundaries broad, +From bosom of singer or bird +A sweetness thus rich of the God +Whose harmonies always are sane. +She sang of furrow and seed, +The burial, birth of the grain, +The growth, and the showers that feed, +And the green blades waxing mature +For the husbandman's armful brown. +O, the song in its burden ran pure, +And burden to song was a crown. +Callistes, a singer, skilled +In the gift he could measure and praise, +By a rival's art was thrilled, +Though she sang but a Song of Days, +Where the husbandman's toil and strife +Little varies to strife and toil: +But the milky kernel of life, +With her numbered: corn, wine, fruit, oil +The song did give him to eat: +Gave the first rapt vision of Good, +And the fresh young sense of Sweet +The grace of the battle for food, +With the issue Earth cannot refuse +When men to their labour are sworn. +'Twas a song of the God of the Muse +To the forehead of Morn. + +IX + +Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled: +Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack: +The fishing-boat heavenward sailed, +Bent abeam, with a whitened track, +Surprised, fast hauling the net, +As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook. +She said: Is it night? O not yet! +With a travail of thoughts in her look. +The mountain heaved up to its peak: +Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl; +Of bird or of branch rose the shriek. +Night? but never so fell a scowl +Wore night, nor the sky since then +When ocean ran swallowing shore, +And the Gods looked down for men. +Broke tempest with that stern roar +Never yet, save when black on the whirl +Rode wrath of a sovereign Power. +Then the youth and the shuddering girl, +Dim as shades in the angry shower, +Joined hands and descended a maze +Of the paths that were racing alive +Round boulder and bush, cleaving ways, +Incessant, with sound of a hive. +The height was a fountain-urn +Pouring streams, and the whole solid height +Leaped, chasing at every turn +The pair in one spirit of flight +To the folding pineforest. Yet here, +Like the pause to things hunted, in doubt, +The stillness bred spectral fear +Of the awfulness ranging without, +And imminent. Downward they fled, +From under the haunted roof, +To the valley aquake with the tread +Of an iron-resounding hoof, +As of legions of thunderful horse +Broken loose and in line tramping hard. +For the rage of a hungry force +Roamed blind of its mark over sward: +They saw it rush dense in the cloak +Of its travelling swathe of steam; +All the vale through a thin thread-smoke +Was thrown back to distance extreme: +And dull the full breast of it blinked, +Like a buckler of steel breathed o'er, +Diminished, in strangeness distinct, +Glowing cold, unearthly, hoar: +An Enna of fields beyond sun, +Out of light, in a lurid web; +And the traversing fury spun +Up and down with a wave's flow and ebb; +As the wave breaks to grasp and to spurn, +Retire, and in ravenous greed, +Inveterate, swell its return. +Up and down, as if wringing from speed +Sights that made the unsighted appear, +Delude and dissolve, on it scoured. +Lo, a sea upon land held career +Through the plain of the vale half-devoured. +Callistes of home and escape +Muttered swiftly, unwitting of speech. +She gazed at the Void of shape, +She put her white hand to his reach, +Saying: Now have we looked on the Three. +And divided from day, from night, +From air that is breath, stood she, +Like the vale, out of light. + +X + +Then again in disorderly words +He muttered of home, and was mute, +With the heart of the cowering birds +Ere they burst off the fowler's foot. +He gave her some redness that streamed +Through her limbs in a flitting glow. +The sigh of our life she seemed, +The bliss of it clothing in woe. +Frailer than flower when the round +Of the sickle encircles it: strong +To tell of the things profound, +Our inmost uttering song, +Unspoken. So stood she awhile +In the gloom of the terror afield, +And the silence about her smile +Said more than of tongue is revealed. +I have breathed: I have gazed: I have been: +It said: and not joylessly shone +The remembrance of light through the screen +Of a face that seemed shadow and stone. +She led the youth trembling, appalled, +To the lake-banks he saw sink and rise +Like a panic-struck breast. Then she called, +And the hurricane blackness had eyes. +It launched like the Thunderer's bolt. +Pale she drooped, and the youth by her side +Would have clasped her and dared a revolt +Sacrilegious as ever defied +High Olympus, but vainly for strength +His compassionate heart shook a frame +Stricken rigid to ice all its length. +On amain the black traveller came. +Lo, a chariot, cleaving the storm, +Clove the fountaining lake with a plough, +And the lord of the steeds was in form +He, the God of implacable brow, +Darkness: he: he in person: he raged +Through the wave like a boar of the wilds +From the hunters and hounds disengaged, +And a name shouted hoarsely: his child's. +Horror melted in anguish to hear. +Lo, the wave hissed apart for the path +Of the terrible Charioteer, +With the foam and torn features of wrath, +Hurled aloft on each arm in a sheet; +And the steeds clove it, rushing at land +Like the teeth of the famished at meat. +Then he swept out his hand. + +XI + +This, no more, doth Callistes recall: +He saw, ere he dropped in swoon, +On the maiden the chariot fall, +As a thundercloud swings on the moon. +Forth, free of the deluge, one cry +From the vanishing gallop rose clear: +And: Skiegeneia! the sky +Rang; Skiegeneia! the sphere. +And she left him therewith, to rejoice, +Repine, yearn, and know not his aim, +The life of their day in her voice, +Left her life in her name. + +XII + +Now the valley in ruin of fields +And fair meadowland, showing at eve +Like the spear-pitted warrior's shields +After battle, bade men believe +That no other than wrathfullest God +Had been loose on her beautiful breast, +Where the flowery grass was clod, +Wheat and vine as a trailing nest. +The valley, discreet in grief, +Disclosed but the open truth, +And Enna had hope of the sheaf: +There was none for the desolate youth +Devoted to mourn and to crave. +Of the secret he had divined +Of his friend of a day would he rave: +How for light of our earth she pined: +For the olive, the vine and the wheat, +Burning through with inherited fire: +And when Mother went Mother to meet, +She was prompted by simple desire +In the day-destined car to have place +At the skirts of the Goddess, unseen, +And be drawn to the dear earth's face. +She was fire for the blue and the green +Of our earth, dark fire; athirst +As a seed of her bosom for dawn, +White air that had robed and nursed +Her mother. Now was she gone +With the Silent, the God without tear, +Like a bud peeping out of its sheath +To be sundered and stamped with the sere. +And Callistes to her beneath, +As she to our beams, extinct, +Strained arms: he was shade of her shade. +In division so were they linked. +But the song which had betrayed +Her flight to the cavernous ear +For its own keenly wakeful: that song +Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer +Of the husbandman's heart made strong +Through droughts and deluging rains +With his faith in the Great Mother's love: +O the joy of the breath she sustains, +And the lyre of the light above, +And the first rapt vision of Good, +And the fresh young sense of Sweet: +That song the youth ever pursued +In the track of her footing fleet. +For men to be profited much +By her day upon earth did he sing: +Of her voice, and her steps, and her touch +On the blossoms of tender Spring, +Immortal: and how in her soul +She is with them, and tearless abides, +Folding grain of a love for one goal +In patience, past flowing of tides. +And if unto him she was tears, +He wept not: he wasted within: +Seeming sane in the song, to his peers, +Only crazed where the cravings begin. +Our Lady of Gifts prized he less +Than her issue in darkness: the dim +Lost Skiegencia's caress +Of our earth made it richest for him. +And for that was a curse on him raised, +And he withered rathe, dry to his prime, +Though the bounteous Giver be praised +Through the island with rites of old time +Exceedingly fervent, and reaped +Veneration for teachings devout, +Pious hymns when the corn-sheaves are heaped +And the wine-presses ruddily spout, +And the olive and apple are juice +At a touch light as hers lost below. +Whatsoever to men is of use +Sprang his worship of them who bestow, +In a measure of songs unexcelled: +But that soul loving earth and the sun +From her home of the shadows he held +For his beacon where beam there is none: +And to join her, or have her brought back, +In his frenzy the singer would call, +Till he followed where never was track, +On the path trod of all. + + + +THE LARK ASCENDING + + + +He rises and begins to round, +He drops the silver chain of sound, +Of many links without a break, +In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake, +All intervolved and spreading wide, +Like water-dimples down a tide +Where ripple ripple overcurls +And eddy into eddy whirls; +A press of hurried notes that run +So fleet they scarce are more than one, +Yet changeingly the trills repeat +And linger ringing while they fleet, +Sweet to the quick o' the ear, and dear +To her beyond the handmaid ear, +Who sits beside our inner springs, +Too often dry for this he brings, +Which seems the very jet of earth +At sight of sun, her music's mirth, +As up he wings the spiral stair, +A song of light, and pierces air +With fountain ardour, fountain play, +To reach the shining tops of day, +And drink in everything discerned +An ecstasy to music turned, +Impelled by what his happy bill +Disperses; drinking, showering still, +Unthinking save that he may give +His voice the outlet, there to live +Renewed in endless notes of glee, +So thirsty of his voice is he, +For all to hear and all to know +That he is joy, awake, aglow; +The tumult of the heart to hear +Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, +And know the pleasure sprinkled bright +By simple singing of delight; +Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, +Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained +Without a break, without a fall, +Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, +Perennial, quavering up the chord +Like myriad dews of sunny sward +That trembling into fulness shine, +And sparkle dropping argentine; +Such wooing as the ear receives +From zephyr caught in choric leaves +Of aspens when their chattering net +Is flushed to white with shivers wet; +And such the water-spirit's chime +On mountain heights in morning's prime, +Too freshly sweet to seem excess, +Too animate to need a stress; +But wider over many heads +The starry voice ascending spreads, +Awakening, as it waxes thin, +The best in us to him akin; +And every face to watch him raised, +Puts on the light of children praised; +So rich our human pleasure ripes +When sweetness on sincereness pipes, +Though nought be promised from the seas, +But only a soft-ruffling breeze +Sweep glittering on a still content, +Serenity in ravishment +For singing till his heaven fills, +'Tis love of earth that he instils, +And ever winging up and up, +Our valley is his golden cup, +And he the wine which overflows +To lift us with him as he goes: +The woods and brooks, the sheep and kine, +He is, the hills, the human line, +The meadows green, the fallows brown, +The dreams of labour in the town; +He sings the sap, the quickened veins; +The wedding song of sun and rains +He is, the dance of children, thanks +Of sowers, shout of primrose-banks, +And eye of violets while they breathe; +All these the circling song will wreathe, +And you shall hear the herb and tree, +The better heart of men shall see, +Shall feel celestially, as long +As you crave nothing save the song. + +Was never voice of ours could say +Our inmost in the sweetest way, +Like yonder voice aloft, and link +All hearers in the song they drink. +Our wisdom speaks from failing blood, +Our passion is too full in flood, +We want the key of his wild note +Of truthful in a tuneful throat; +The song seraphically free +Of taint of personality, +So pure that it salutes the suns +The voice of one for millions, +In whom the millions rejoice +For giving their one spirit voice. +Yet men have we, whom we revere, +Now names, and men still housing here, +Whose lives, by many a battle-dint +Defaced, and grinding wheels on flint, +Yield substance, though they sing not, sweet +For song our highest heaven to greet: +Whom heavenly singing gives us new, +Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, +From firmest base to farthest leap, +Because their love of Earth is deep, +And they are warriors in accord +With life to serve, and, pass reward, +So touching purest and so heard +In the brain's reflex of yon bird: +Wherefore their soul in me, or mine, +Through self-forgetfulness divine, +In them, that song aloft maintains, +To fill the sky and thrill the plains +With showerings drawn from human stores, +As he to silence nearer soars, +Extends the world at wings and dome, +More spacious making more our home, +Till lost on his aerial rings +In light, and then the fancy sings. + + + +PHOEBUS WITH ADMETUS + + + +I + +When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, +Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, +Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, +Who: and what a track showed the upturned sod! +Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe +Bent a burning eyebrow to brown evetide, +How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere, +Sister of his own, till her rays fell wide. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +II + +Chirping none, the scarlet cicadas crouched in ranks: +Slack the thistle-head piled its down-silk grey: +Scarce the stony lizard sucked hollows in his flanks: +Thick on spots of umbrage our drowsed flocks lay. +Sudden bowed the chestnuts beneath a wind unheard, +Lengthened ran the grasses, the sky grew slate: +Then amid a swift flight of winged seed white as curd, +Clear of limb a Youth smote the master's gate. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +III + +Water, first of singers, o'er rocky mount and mead, +First of earthly singers, the sun-loved rill, +Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed, +Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill. +Water, sweetest soother to kiss a wound and cool, +Sweetest and divinest, the sky-born brook, +Chuckled, with a whimper, and made a mirror-pool +Round the guest we welcomed, the strange hand shook. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +IV + +Many swarms of wild bees descended on our fields: +Stately stood the wheatstalk with head bent high: +Big of heart we laboured at storing mighty yields, +Wool and corn, and clusters to make men cry! +Hand-like rushed the vintage; we strung the bellied skins +Plump, and at the sealing the Youth's voice rose: +Maidens clung in circle, on little fists their chins; +Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +V + +Foot to fire in snowtime we trimmed the slender shaft: +Often down the pit spied the lean wolf's teeth +Grin against his will, trapped by masterstrokes of craft; +Helpless in his froth-wrath as green logs seethe! +Safe the tender lambs tugged the teats, and winter sped +Whirled before the crocus, the year's new gold. +Hung the hooky beak up aloft, the arrowhead +Reddened through his feathers for our dear fold. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +VI + +Tales we drank of giants at war with Gods above: +Rocks were they to look on, and earth climbed air! +Tales of search for simples, and those who sought of love +Ease because the creature was all too fair. +Pleasant ran our thinking that while our work was good, +Sure as fruits for sweat would the praise come fast. +He that wrestled stoutest and tamed the billow-brood +Danced in rings with girls, like a sail-flapped mast. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +VII + +Lo, the herb of healing, when once the herb is known, +Shines in shady woods bright as new-sprung flame. +Ere the string was tightened we heard the mellow tone, +After he had taught how the sweet sounds came +Stretched about his feet, labour done, 'twas as you see +Red pomegranates tumble and burst hard rind. +So began contention to give delight and be +Excellent in things aimed to make life kind. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + +VIII + +You with shelly horns, rams! and, promontory goats, +You whose browsing beards dip in coldest dew! +Bulls, that walk the pastures in kingly-flashing coats! +Laurel, ivy, vine, wreathed for feasts not few! +You that build the shade-roof, and you that court the rays, +You that leap besprinkling the rock stream-rent: +He has been our fellow, the morning of our days! +Us he chose for housemates, and this way went. +God! of whom music +And song and blood are pure, +The day is never darkened +That had thee here obscure. + + + +MELAMPUS + + + +I + +With love exceeding a simple love of the things +That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; +Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings +From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; +Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; +Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; +The good physician Melampus, loving them all, +Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. + +II + +For him the woods were a home and gave him the key +Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. +The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we +To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours: +And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined +Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows +In them, in us, from the source by man unattained +Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose. + +III + +And this he deemed might be boon of love to a breast +Embracing tenderly each little motive shape, +The prone, the flitting, who seek their food whither best +Their wits direct, whither best from their foes escape. +For closer drawn to our mother's natural milk, +As babes they learn where her motherly help is great: +They know the juice for the honey, juice for the silk, +And need they medical antidotes, find them straight. + +IV + +Of earth and sun they are wise, they nourish their broods, +Weave, build, hive, burrow and battle, take joy and pain +Like swimmers varying billows: never in woods +Runs white insanity fleeing itself: all sane +The woods revolve: as the tree its shadowing limns +To some resemblance in motion, the rooted life +Restrains disorder: you hear the primitive hymns +Of earth in woods issue wild of the web of strife. + +V + +Now sleeping once on a day of marvellous fire, +A brood of snakes he had cherished in grave regret +That death his people had dealt their dam and their sire, +Through savage dread of them, crept to his neck, and set +Their tongues to lick him: the swift affectionate tongue +Of each ran licking the slumberer: then his ears +A forked red tongue tickled shrewdly: sudden upsprung, +He heard a voice piping: Ay, for he has no fears! + +VI + +A bird said that, in the notes of birds, and the speech +Of men, it seemed: and another renewed: He moves +To learn and not to pursue, he gathers to teach; +He feeds his young as do we, and as we love loves. +No fears have I of a man who goes with his head +To earth, chance looking aloft at us, kind of hand: +I feel to him as to earth of whom we are fed; +I pipe him much for his good could he understand. + +VII + +Melampus touched at his ears, laid finger on wrist +He was not dreaming, he sensibly felt and heard. +Above, through leaves, where the tree-twigs inter-twist, +He spied the birds and the bill of the speaking bird. +His cushion mosses in shades of various green, +The lumped, the antlered, he pressed, while the sunny snake +Slipped under: draughts he had drunk of clear Hippocrene, +It seemed, and sat with a gift of the Gods awake. + +VIII + +Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full, +As quick well-waters that come of the heart of earth, +Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool +To light and sound, wedding both at the leap of birth. +The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream; +The soul of sound from a musical shell outflew; +Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam, +The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew. + +IX + +He knew the Hours: they were round him, laden with seed +Of hours bestrewn upon vapour, and one by one +They winged as ripened in fruit the burden decreed +For each to scatter; they flushed like the buds in sun, +Bequeathing seed to successive similar rings, +Their sisters, bearers to men of what men have earned: +He knew them, talked with the yet unreddened; the stings, +The sweets, they warmed at their bosoms divined, discerned. + +X + +Not unsolicited, sought by diligent feet, +By riddling fingers expanded, oft watched in growth +With brooding deep as the noon-ray's quickening wheat, +Ere touch'd, the pendulous flower of the plants of sloth, +The plants of rigidness, answered question and squeeze, +Revealing wherefore it bloomed, uninviting, bent, +Yet making harmony breathe of life and disease, +The deeper chord of a wonderful instrument. + +XI + +So passed he luminous-eyed for earth and the fates +We arm to bruise or caress us: his ears were charged +With tones of love in a whirl of voluble hates, +With music wrought of distraction his heart enlarged. +Celestial-shining, though mortal, singer, though mute, +He drew the Master of harmonies, voiced or stilled, +To seek him; heard at the silent medicine-root +A song, beheld in fulfilment the unfulfilled. + +XII + +Him Phoebus, lending to darkness colour and form +Of light's excess, many lessons and counsels gave, +Showed Wisdom lord of the human intricate swarm, +And whence prophetic it looks on the hives that rave, +And how acquired, of the zeal of love to acquire, +And where it stands, in the centre of life a sphere; +And Measure, mood of the lyre, the rapturous lyre, +He said was Wisdom, and struck him the notes to hear. + +XIII + +Sweet, sweet: 'twas glory of vision, honey, the breeze +In heat, the run of the river on root and stone, +All senses joined, as the sister Pierides +Are one, uplifting their chorus, the Nine, his own. +In stately order, evolved of sound into sight, +From sight to sound intershifting, the man descried +The growths of earth, his adored, like day out of night, +Ascend in song, seeing nature and song allied. + +XIV + +And there vitality, there, there solely in song, +Resides, where earth and her uses to men, their needs, +Their forceful cravings, the theme are: there is it strong, +The Master said: and the studious eye that reads, +(Yea, even as earth to the crown of Gods on the mount), +In links divine with the lyrical tongue is bound. +Pursue thy craft: it is music drawn of a fount +To spring perennial; well-spring is common ground. + +XV + +Melampus dwelt among men: physician and sage, +He served them, loving them, healing them; sick or maimed, +Or them that frenzied in some delirious rage +Outran the measure, his juice of the woods reclaimed. +He played on men, as his master, Phoebus, on strings +Melodious: as the God did he drive and check, +Through love exceeding a simple love of the things +That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck. + + + +LOVE IN THE VALLEY + + + +Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward, +Couched with her arms behind her golden head, +Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly, +Lies my young love sleeping in the shade. +Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her, +Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow, +Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me: +Then would she hold me and never let me go? + +* * * + +Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, +Swift as the swallow along the river's light +Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, +Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. +Shy as the squirrel that leaps among the pine-tops, +Wayward as the swallow overhead at set of sun, +She whom I love is hard to catch and conquer, +Hard, but O the glory of the winning were she won! + +* * * + +When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror, +Tying up her laces, looping up her hair, +Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, +More love should I have, and much less care. +When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror, +Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, +Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded, +I should miss but one for the many boys and girls. + +* * * + +Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows +Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon. +No, she is athirst and drinking up her wonder: +Earth to her is young as the slip of the new moon. +Deals she an unkindness, 'tis but her rapid measure, +Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less: +Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones +Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless. + +* * * + +Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping +Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. +Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, +Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar. +Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: +So were it with me if forgetting could be willed. +Tell the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring, +Tell it to forget the source that keeps it filled. + +* * * + +Stepping down the hill with her fair companions, +Arm in arm, all against the raying West, +Boldly she sings, to the merry tune she marches, +Brave in her shape, and sweeter unpossessed. +Sweeter, for she is what my heart first awaking +Whispered the world was; morning light is she. +Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless; +Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free. + +* * * + +Happy happy time, when the white star hovers +Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew, +Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness, +Threading it with colour, like yewberries the yew. +Thicker crowd the shades as the grave East deepens +Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells. +Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret; +Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells. + +* * * + +Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting +Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along, +Oft ends the day of your shifting brilliant laughter +Chill as a dull face frowning on a song. +Ay, but shows the South-west a ripple-feathered bosom +Blown to silver while the clouds are shaken and ascend +Scaling the mid-heavens as they stream, there comes a sunset +Rich, deep like love in beauty without end. + +* * * + +When at dawn she sighs, and like an infant to the window +Turns grave eyes craving light, released from dreams, +Beautiful she looks, like a white water-lily +Bursting out of bud in havens of the streams. +When from bed she rises clothed from neck to ankle +In her long nightgown sweet as boughs of May, +Beautiful she looks, like a tall garden lily +Pure from the night, and splendid for the day. + +* * * + +Mother of the dews, dark eye-lashed twilight, +Low-lidded twilight, o'er the valley's brim, +Rounding on thy breast sings the dew-delighted skylark, +Clear as though the dewdrops had their voice in him. +Hidden where the rose-flush drinks the rayless planet, +Fountain-full he pours the spraying fountain-showers. +Let me hear her laughter, I would have her ever +Cool as dew in twilight, the lark above the flowers. + +* * * + +All the girls are out with their baskets for the primrose; +Up lanes, woods through, they troop in joyful bands. +My sweet leads: she knows not why, but now she loiters, +Eyes bent anemones, and hangs her hands. +Such a look will tell that the violets are peeping, +Coming the rose: and unaware a cry +Springs in her bosom for odours and for colour, +Covert and the nightingale; she knows not why. + +* * * + +Kerchiefed head and chin, she darts between her tulips, +Streaming like a willow grey in arrowy rain: +Some bend beaten cheek to gravel, and their angel +She will be; she lifts them, and on she speeds again. +Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gate-way: +She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth. +So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder, +Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth. + +* * * + +Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden, +Trained to stand in rows, and asking if they please. +I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones. +O my wild ones! they tell me more than these. +You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose, +Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they, +They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness, +You are of life's, on the banks that line the way. + +* * * + +Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose, +Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three. +Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine +Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me. +Sweeter unpossessed, have I said of her my sweetest +Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes, +Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine +Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths. + +* * * + +Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades; +Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf: +Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow; +Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf. +Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle; +Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine: +Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens, +Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine. + +* * * + +This I may know: her dressing and undressing +Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport +Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder +Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port +White sails furl; or on the ocean borders +White sails lean along the waves leaping green. +Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight +Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen. + +* * * + +Front door and back of the mossed old farmhouse +Open with the morn, and in a breezy link +Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadowed orchard, +Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. +Busy in the grass the early sun of summer +Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes +Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge: +Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats! + +* * * + +Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy +Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, +Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine; +O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool! +Spying from the farm, herself she fetched a pitcher +Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak. +Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe, +Said, 'I will kiss you': she laughed and leaned her cheek. + +* * * + +Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof +Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. +Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy road-way +Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. +Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, +Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. +Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, +Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. + +* * * + +O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful! +O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! +O the treasure-tresses one another over +Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist! +Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet +Quick amid the wheatears: wound about the waist, +Gathered, see these brides of earth one blush of ripeness! +O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced! + +* * * + +Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops, +Clipped by naked hills, on violet shaded snow: +Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moon-rise, +Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow. +Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree +Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I. +Here may life on death or death on life be painted. +Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die! + +* * * + +Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber +Where there is no window, read not heaven or her. +'When she was a tiny,' one aged woman quavers, +Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear. +Faults she had once as she learnt to run and tumbled: +Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete. +Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy +Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet. + +* * * + +Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers, +Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise +High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger; +Yet am I the light and living of her eyes. +Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming, +Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames. - +Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting, +Arms up, she dropped: our souls were in our names. + +* * * + +Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise. +Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, +Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, +Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. +Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset. +Swift with the to-morrow, green-winged Spring! +Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants, +Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing. + +* * * + +Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April +Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you +Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields, +Youngest green transfused in silver shining through: +Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry: +Fair as in image my seraph love appears +Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eye-lids: +Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears. + +* * * + +Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, +I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. +Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood, +Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. +Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October; +Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; +Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: +All seem to know what is for heaven alone. + + + +THE THREE SINGERS TO YOUNG BLOOD + + + +Carols nature, counsel men. +Different notes as rook from wren +Hear we when our steps begin, +And the choice is cast within, +Where a robber raven's tale +Urges passion's nightingale. + +Hark to the three. Chimed they in one, +Life were music of the sun. +Liquid first, and then the caw, +Then the cry that knows not law. + +I + +As the birds do, so do we, +Bill our mate, and choose our tree. +Swift to building work addressed, +Any straw will help a nest. +Mates are warm, and this is truth, +Glad the young that come of youth. +They have bloom i' the blood and sap +Chilling at no thunder-clap. +Man and woman on the thorn +Trust not Earth, and have her scorn. +They who in her lead confide, +Wither me if they spread not wide! +Look for aid to little things, +You will get them quick as wings, +Thick as feathers; would you feed, +Take the leap that springs the need. + +II + +Contemplate the rutted road: +Life is both a lure and goad. +Each to hold in measure just, +Trample appetite to dust. +Mark the fool and wanton spin: +Keep to harness as a skin. +Ere you follow nature's lead, +Of her powers in you have heed; +Else a shiverer you will find +You have challenged humankind. +Mates are chosen marketwise: +Coolest bargainer best buys. +Leap not, nor let leap the heart: +Trot your track, and drag your cart. +So your end may be in wool, +Honoured, and with manger full. + +III + +O the rosy light! it fleets, +Dearer dying than all sweets. +That is life: it waves and goes; +Solely in that cherished Rose +Palpitates, or else 'tis death. +Call it love with all thy breath. +Love! it lingers: Love! it nears: +Love! O Love! the Rose appears, +Blushful, magic, reddening air. +Now the choice is on thee: dare! +Mortal seems the touch, but makes +Immortal the hand that takes. +Feel what sea within thee shames +Of its force all other claims, +Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be +Heavenly Rose to swelling sea. + + + +THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH + + + +I chanced upon an early walk to spy +A troop of children through an orchard gate: +The boughs hung low, the grass was high; +They had but to lift hands or wait +For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky. + +They shouted, running on from tree to tree, +And played the game the wind plays, on and round. +'Twas visible invisible glee +Pursuing; and a fountain's sound +Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me. + +I could have watched them till the daylight fled, +Their pretty bower made such a light of day. +A small one tumbling sang, 'Oh! head!' +The rest to comfort her straightway +Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red. + +The tiny creature flashing through green grass, +And laughing with her feet and eyes among +Fresh apples, while a little lass +Over as o'er breeze-ripples hung: +That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass. + +My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes, +Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers; +Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains, +Across a heath I walked for hours, +And met its rival tenants, rays and rains. + +Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared, +When, under a patched channel-bank enriched +With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared, +Behold, a family had pitched +Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared. + +Here, too, were many children, quick to scan +A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth: +In many-coloured rags they ran, +Like iron runlets of the heath. +Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can. + +Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea +Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid +From either ridge unequally), +Lean, swift and voluble, bestrid +A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee. + +They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke +In act to follow, but as one they snuffed +Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke +Of provender, its pale flame puffed, +And rolled athwart dwarf furzes grey-blue smoke. + +Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam, +The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat, +Paused for its bubbling-up supreme: +A dog upright in circle sat, +And oft his nose went with the flying steam. + +I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now +The moor-faced sunset broadened with red light; +Threw high aloft a golden bough, +And seemed the desert of the night +Far down with mellow orchards to endow. + + + +EARTH AND MAN + + + +I + +On her great venture, Man, +Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast +Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, +And fair to scan. + +II + +More aid than that embrace, +That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart +Involves his fate; and she who urged the start +Abides the race. + +III + +For he is in the lists +Contentious with the elements, whose dower +First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour +If he desists. + +IV + +His breath of instant thirst +Is warning of a creature matched with strife, +To meet it as a bride, or let fall life +On life's accursed. + +V + +No longer forth he bounds +The lusty animal, afield to roam, +But peering in Earth's entrails, where the gnome +Strange themes propounds. + +VI + +By hunger sharply sped +To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use, +In each new ring he bears a giant's thews, +An infant's head. + +VII + +And ever that old task +Of reading what he is and whence he came, +Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame +Across her mask. + +VIII + +She hears his wailful prayer, +When now to the Invisible he raves +To rend him from her, now of his mother craves +Her calm, her care. + +IX + +The thing that shudders most +Within him is the burden of his cry. +Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye +The eyeless Ghost. + +X + +Or sometimes she will seem +Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, +Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, +With gold-buds dim. + +XI + +Once worshipped Prime of Powers, +She still was the Implacable: as a beast, +She struck him down and dragged him from the feast +She crowned with flowers. + +XII + +Her pomp of glorious hues, +Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile, +Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile +With symbol-clues. + +XIII + +The mystery she holds +For him, inveterately he strains to see, +And sight of his obtuseness is the key +Among those folds. + +XIV + +He may entreat, aspire, +He may despair, and she has never heed. +She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, +Not his desire. + +XV + +She prompts him to rejoice, +Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud. +He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed +A wanton's choice. + +XVI + +Albeit thereof he has found +Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain; +Has half transferred the battle to his brain, +From bloody ground; + +XVII + +He will not read her good, +Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; +Through that old devil of the thousand lures, +Through that dense hood: + +XVIII + +Through terror, through distrust; +The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live: +Through all that makes of him a sensitive +Abhorring dust. + +XIX + +Behold his wormy home! +And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave +Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave +To waste in foam. + +XX + +Therefore the wretch inclined +Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith, +Can raise him high: with vows of living faith +For little signs. + +XXI + +Some signs he must demand, +Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few, +To satisfy the senses it is true, +And in his hand, + +XXII + +This miracle which saves +Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch, +By virtue of his worth, contrasting much +With brutes and knaves. + +XXIII + +From dust, of him abhorred, +He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth. +'Sever me from the hollowness of Earth! +Me take, dear Lord!' + +XXIV + +She hears him. Him she owes +For half her loveliness a love well won +By work that lights the shapeless and the dun, +Their common foes. + +XXV + +He builds the soaring spires, +That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws, +Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, +Her purest fires. + +XXVI + +Through him hath she exchanged, +For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown, +Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown +Where monsters ranged. + +XXVII + +And order, high discourse, +And decency, than which is life less dear, +She has of him: the lyre of language clear, +Love's tongue and source. + +XXVIII + +She hears him, and can hear +With glory in his gains by work achieved: +With grief for grief that is the unperceived +In her so near. + +XXIX + +If he aloft for aid +Imploring storms, her essence is the spur. +His cry to heaven is a cry to her +He would evade. + +XXX + +Not elsewhere can he tend. +Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins; +Those her revulsions from the skull that grins +To ape his end. + +XXXI + +And her desires are those +For happiness, for lastingness, for light. +'Tis she who kindles in his haunting night +The hoped dawn-rose. + +XXXII + +Fair fountains of the dark +Daily she waves him, that his inner dream +May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam, +A quivering lark: + +XXIII + +This life and her to know +For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee +To feel stern joy her origin: not he +The child of woe. + +XXXIV + +But that the senses still +Usurp the station of their issue mind, +He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind: +As yet he will; + +XXXV + +As yet he will, she prays, +Yet will when his distempered devil of Self; - +The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf +In shifting rays; - + +XXXVI + +That captain of the scorned; +The coveter of life in soul and shell, +The fratricide, the thief, the infidel, +The hoofed and horned; - + +XXXVII + +He singularly doomed +To what he execrates and writhes to shun; - +When fire has passed him vapour to the sun, +And sun relumed, + +XXXVIII + +Then shall the horrid pall +Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine, +'Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,' +Will hear her call. + +XXXIX + +Whence looks he on a land +Whereon his labour is a carven page; +And forth from heritage to heritage +Nought writ on sand. + +XL + +His fables of the Above, +And his gapped readings of the crown and sword, +The hell detested and the heaven adored, +The hate, the love, + +XLI + +The bright wing, the black hoof, +He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined, +And never unfaith clamouring to be coined +To faith by proof. + +XLII + +She her just Lord may view, +Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned +With all her gifts to reach the light discerned +Her spirit through. + +XLIIII + +Then in him time shall run +As in the hour that to young sunlight crows; +And--'If thou hast good faith it can repose,' +She tells her son. + +XLIV + +Meanwhile on him, her chief +Expression, her great word of life, looks she; +Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree, +Or dated leaf. + + + +A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT + + + +I + +See the sweet women, friend, that lean beneath +The ever-falling fountain of green leaves +Round the white bending stem, and like a wreath +Of our most blushful flower shine trembling through, +To teach philosophers the thirst of thieves: +Is one for me? is one for you? + +II + +- Fair sirs, we give you welcome, yield you place, +And you shall choose among us which you will, +Without the idle pastime of the chase, +If to this treaty you can well agree: +To wed our cause, and its high task fulfil. +He who's for us, for him are we! + +III + +- Most gracious ladies, nigh when light has birth, +A troop of maids, brown as burnt heather-bells, +And rich with life as moss-roots breathe of earth +In the first plucking of them, past us flew +To labour, singing rustic ritornells: +Had they a cause? are they of you? + +IV + +- Sirs, they are as unthinking armies are +To thoughtful leaders, and our cause is theirs. +When they know men they know the state of war: +But now they dream like sunlight on a sea, +And deem you hold the half of happy pairs. +He who's for us, for him are we! + +V + +- Ladies, I listened to a ring of dames; +Judicial in the robe and wig; secure +As venerated portraits in their frames; +And they denounced some insurrection new +Against sound laws which keep you good and pure. +Are you of them? are they of you? + +VI + +- Sirs, they are of us, as their dress denotes, +And by as much: let them together chime: +It is an ancient bell within their throats, +Pulled by an aged ringer; with what glee +Befits the yellow yesterdays of time. +He who's for us, for him are we! + +VII + +- Sweet ladies, you with beauty, you with wit; +Dowered of all favours and all blessed things +Whereat the ruddy torch of Love is lit; +Wherefore this vain and outworn strife renew, +Which stays the tide no more than eddy-rings? +Who is for love must be for you. + +VIII + +- The manners of the market, honest sirs, +'Tis hard to quit when you behold the wares. +You flatter us, or perchance our milliners +You flatter; so this vain and outworn She +May still be the charmed snake to your soft airs! +A higher lord than Love claim we. + +IX + +- One day, dear lady, missing the broad track, +I came on a wood's border, by a mead, +Where golden May ran up to moted black: +And there I saw Queen Beauty hold review, +With Love before her throne in act to plead. +Take him for me, take her for you. + +X + +- Ingenious gentleman, the tale is known. +Love pleaded sweetly: Beauty would not melt: +She would not melt: he turned in wrath: her throne +The shadow of his back froze witheringly, +And sobbing at his feet Queen Beauty knelt. +O not such slaves of Love are we! + +XI + +- Love, lady, like the star above that lance +Of radiance flung by sunset on ridged cloud, +Sad as the last line of a brave romance! - +Young Love hung dim, yet quivering round him threw +Beams of fresh fire, while Beauty waned and bowed. +Scorn Love, and dread the doom for you. + +XII + +- Called she not for her mirror, sir? Forth ran +Her women: I am lost, she cried, when lo, +Love in the form of an admiring man +Once more in adoration bent the knee, +And brought the faded Pagan to full blow: +For which her throne she gave: not we! + +XIII + +- My version, madam, runs not to that end. +A certain madness of an hour half past, +Caught her like fever; her just lord no friend +She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew +The prim acerbity, sweet Love's outcast. +Great heaven ward off that stroke from you! + +XIV + +- Your prayer to heaven, good sir, is generous: +How generous likewise that you do not name +Offended nature! She from all of us +Couched idle underneath our showering tree, +May quite withhold her most destructive flame; +And then what woeful women we! + +XV + +- Quite, could not be, fair lady; yet your youth +May run to drought in visionary schemes: +And a late waking to perceive the truth, +When day falls shrouding her supreme adieu, +Shows darker wastes than unaccomplished dreams: +And that may be in store for you. + +XVI + +- O sir, the truth, the truth! is't in the skies, +Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours? +But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes +That look on it! the diverse things they see, +According to their thirst for fruit or flowers! +Pass on: it is the truth seek we. + +XVII + +- Lady, there is a truth of settled laws +That down the past burns like a great watch-fire. +Let youth hail changeful mornings; but your cause, +Whetting its edge to cut the race in two, +Is felony: you forfeit the bright lyre, +Much honour and much glory you! + +XVIII + +- Sir, was it glory, was it honour, pride, +And not as cat and serpent and poor slave, +Wherewith we walked in union by your side? +Spare to false womanliness her delicacy, +Or bid true manliness give ear, we crave: +In our defence thus chained are we. + +XIX + +- Yours, madam, were the privileges of life +Proper to man's ideal; you were the mark +Of action, and the banner in the strife: +Yea, of your very weakness once you drew +The strength that sounds the wells, outflies the lark: +Wrapped in a robe of flame were you! + +XX + +- Your friend looks thoughtful. Sir, when we were chill, +You clothed us warmly; all in honour! when +We starved you fed us; all in honour still: +Oh, all in honour, ultra-honourably! +Deep is the gratitude we owe to men, +For privileged indeed were we! + +XXI + +- You cite exceptions, madam, that are sad, +But come in the red struggle of our growth. +Alas, that I should have to say it! bad +Is two-sexed upon earth: this which you do, +Shows animal impatience, mental sloth: +Man monstrous! pining seraphs you! + +XXII + +- I fain would ask your friend . . . but I will ask +You, sir, how if in place of numbers vague, +Your sad exceptions were to break that mask +They wear for your cool mind historically, +And blaze like black lists of a PRESENT plague? +But in that light behold them we. + +XXIII + +- Your spirit breathes a mist upon our world, +Lady, and like a rain to pierce the roof +And drench the bed where toil-tossed man lies curled +In his hard-earned oblivion! You are few, +Scattered, ill-counselled, blinded: for a proof, +I have lived, and have known none like you. + +XXIV + +- We may be blind to men, sir: we embrace +A future now beyond the fowler's nets. +Though few, we hold a promise for the race +That was not at our rising: you are free +To win brave mates; you lose but marionnettes. +He who's for us, for him are we. + +XXV + +- Ah! madam, were they puppets who withstood +Youth's cravings for adventure to preserve +The dedicated ways of womanhood? +The light which leads us from the paths of rue, +That light above us, never seen to swerve, +Should be the home-lamp trimmed by you. + +XXVI + +- Ah! sir, our worshipped posture we perchance +Shall not abandon, though we see not how, +Being to that lamp-post fixed, we may advance +Beside our lords in any real degree, +Unless we move: and to advance is now +A sovereign need, think more than we. + +XXVII + +- So push you out of harbour in small craft, +With little seamanship; and comes a gale, +The world will laugh, the world has often laughed, +Lady, to see how bold when skies are blue, +When black winds churn the deeps how panic-pale, +How swift to the old nest fly you! + +XXVIII + +- What thinks your friend, kind sir? We have escaped +But partly that old half-tamed wild beast's paw +Whereunder woman, the weak thing, was shaped: +Men, too, have known the cramping enemy +In grim brute force, whom force of brain shall awe: +Him our deliverer, await we! + +XXIX + +- Delusions are with eloquence endowed, +And yours might pluck an angel from the spheres +To play in this revolt whereto you are vowed, +Deliverer, lady! but like summer dew +O'er fields that crack for rain your friends drop tears, +Who see the awakening for you. + +XXX + +- Is he our friend, there silent? he weeps not. +O sir, delusion mounting like a sun +On a mind blank as the white wife of Lot, +Giving it warmth and movement! if this be +Delusion, think of what thereby was won +For men, and dream of what win we. + +XXXI + +- Lady, the destiny of minor powers, +Who would recast us, is but to convulse: +You enter on a strife that frets and sours; +You can but win sick disappointment's hue; +And simply an accelerated pulse, +Some tonic you have drunk moves you. + +XXXII + +- Thinks your friend so? Good sir, your wit is bright; +But wit that strives to speak the popular voice, +Puts on its nightcap and puts out its light. +Curfew, would seem your conqueror's decree +To women likewise: and we have no choice +Save darkness or rebellion, we! + +XXXIII + +- A plain safe intermediate way is cleft +By reason foiling passion: you that rave +Of mad alternatives to right and left +Echo the tempter, madam: and 'tis due +Unto your sex to shun it as the grave, +This later apple offered you. + +XXXIV + +- This apple is not ripe, it is not sweet; +Nor rosy, sir, nor golden: eye and mouth +Are little wooed by it; yet we would eat. +We are somewhat tired of Eden, is our plea. +We have thirsted long; this apple suits our drouth: +'Tis good for men to halve, think we. + +XXXV + +- But say, what seek you, madam? 'Tis enough +That you should have dominion o'er the springs +Domestic and man's heart: those ways, how rough, +How vile, outside the stately avenue +Where you walk sheltered by your angel's wings, +Are happily unknown to you. + +XXXVI + +- We hear women's shrieks on them. We like your phrase, +Dominion domestic! And that roar, +'What seek you?' is of tyrants in all days. +Sir, get you something of our purity +And we will of your strength: we ask no more. +That is the sum of what seek we. + +XXXVII + +- O for an image, madam, in one word, +To show you as the lightning night reveals, +Your error and your perils: you have erred +In mind only, and the perils that ensue +Swift heels may soften; wherefore to swift heels +Address your hopes of safety you! + +XXXVIII + +- To err in mind, sir . . . your friend smiles: he may! +To err in mind, if err in mind we can, +Is grievous error you do well to stay. +But O how different from reality +Men's fiction is! how like you in the plan, +Is woman, knew you her as we! + +XXXIX + +- Look, lady, where yon river winds its line +Toward sunset, and receives on breast and face +The splendour of fair life: to be divine, +'Tis nature bids you be to nature true, +Flowing with beauty, lending earth your grace, +Reflecting heaven in clearness you. + +XL + +- Sir, you speak well: your friend no word vouchsafes. +To flow with beauty, breeding fools and worse, +Cowards and worse: at such fair life she chafes, +Who is not wholly of the nursery, +Nor of your schools: we share the primal curse; +Together shake it off, say we! + +XLI + +- Hear, then, my friend, madam! Tongue-restrained he stands +Till words are thoughts, and thoughts, like swords enriched +With traceries of the artificer's hands, +Are fire-proved steel to cut, fair flowers to view. - +Do I hear him? Oh, he is bewitched, bewitched! +Heed him not! Traitress beauties you! + +XLII + +- We have won a champion, sisters, and a sage! +- Ladies, you win a guest to a good feast! +- Sir spokesman, sneers are weakness veiling rage. +- Of weakness, and wise men, you have the key. +- Then are there fresher mornings mounting East +Than ever yet have dawned, sing we! + +XLIII + +- False ends as false began, madam, be sure! +- What lure there is the pure cause purifies! +- Who purifies the victim of the lure? +- That soul which bids us our high light pursue. +- Some heights are measured down: the wary wise +Shun Reason in the masque with you! + +XLIV + +- Sir, for the friend you bring us, take our thanks. +Yes, Beauty was of old this barren goal; +A thing with claws; and brute-like in her pranks! +But could she give more loyal guarantee +Than wooing Wisdom, that in her a soul +Has risen? Adieu: content are we! + +XLV + +Those ladies led their captive to the flood's +Green edge. He floating with them seemed the most +Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds. +Happier than I! Then, why not wiser too? +For he that lives with Beauty, he may boast +His comrade over me and you. + +XLVI + +Have women nursed some dream since Helen sailed +Over the sea of blood the blushing star, +That beauty, whom frail man as Goddess hailed, +When not possessing her (for such is he!), +Might in a wondering season seen afar, +Be tamed to say not 'I,' but 'we'? + +XLVII + +And shall they make of Beauty their estate, +The fortress and the weapon of their sex? +Shall she in her frost-brilliancy dictate, +More queenly than of old, how we must woo, +Ere she will melt? The halter's on our necks, +Kick as it likes us, I and you. + +XLVIII + +Certain it is, if Beauty has disdained +Her ancient conquests, with an aim thus high: +If this, if that, if more, the fight is gained. +But can she keep her followers without fee? +Yet ah! to hear anew those ladies cry, +He who's for us, for him are we! + + + +THE TWO MASKS + + + +Melpomene among her livid people, +Ere stroke of lyre, upon Thaleia looks, +Warned by old contests that one museful ripple +Along those lips of rose with tendril hooks +Forebodes disturbance in the springs of pathos, +Perchance may change of masks midway demand, +Albeit the man rise mountainous as Athos, +The woman wild as Cape Leucadia stand. + +II + +For this the Comic Muse exacts of creatures +Appealing to the fount of tears: that they +Strive never to outleap our human features, +And do Right Reason's ordinance obey, +In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. +But prove they under stress of action's fire +Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest, +She bows: she waves them for the loftier lyre. + + + +ARCHDUCHESS ANNE + + + +1--I + +In middle age an evil thing +Befell Archduchess Anne: +She looked outside her wedding-ring +Upon a princely man. + +II + +Count Louis was for horse and arms; +And if its beacon waved, +For love; but ladies had not charms +To match a danger braved. + +III + +On battlefields he was the bow +Bestrung to fly the shaft: +In idle hours his heart would flow +As winds on currents waft. + +IV + +His blood was of those warrior tribes +That streamed from morning's fire, +Whom now with traps and now with bribes +The wily Council wire. + +V + +Archduchess Anne the Council ruled, +Count Louis his great dame; +And woe to both when one had cooled! +Little was she to blame. + +VI + +Among her chiefs who spun their plots, +Old Kraken stood the sword: +As sharp his wits for cutting knots +Of babble he abhorred. + +VII + +He reverenced her name and line, +Nor other merit had +Save soldierwise to wait her sign, +And do the deed she bade. + +VIII + +He saw her hand jump at her side +Ere royally she smiled +On Louis and his fair young bride +Where courtly ranks defiled. + +IX + +That was a moment when a shock +Through the procession ran, +And thrilled the plumes, and stayed the clock, +Yet smiled Archduchess Anne. + +X + +No touch gave she to hound in leash, +No wink to sword in sheath: +She seemed a woman scarce of flesh; +Above it, or beneath. + +XI + +Old Kraken spied with kennelled snarl, +His Lady deemed disgraced. +He footed as on burning marl, +When out of Hall he paced. + +XII + +'Twas seen he hammered striding legs, +And stopped, and strode again. +Now Vengeance has a brood of eggs, +But Patience must be hen. + +XIII + +Too slow are they for wrath to hatch, +Too hot for time to rear. +Old Kraken kept unwinding watch; +He marked his day appear. + +XIV + +He neighed a laugh, though moods were rough +With standards in revolt: +His nostrils took the news for snuff, +His smacking lips for salt. + +XV + +Count Louis' wavy cock's plumes led +His troops of black-haired manes, +A rebel; and old Kraken sped +To front him on the plains. + +XVI + +Then camp opposed to camp did they +Fret earth with panther claws +For signal of a bloody day, +Each reading from the Laws. + +XVII + +'Forefend it, heaven!' Count Louis cried, +'And let the righteous plead: +My country is a willing bride, +Was never slave decreed. + +XVIII + +'Not we for thirst of blood appeal +To sword and slaughter curst; +We have God's blessing on our steel, +Do we our pleading first.' + +XIX + +Count Louis, soul of chivalry, +Put trust in plighted word; +By starlight on the broad brown lea, +To bar the strife he spurred. + +XX + +Across his breast a crimson spot, +That in a quiver glowed, +The ruddy crested camp-fires shot, +As he to darkness rode. + +XXI + +He rode while omens called, beware +Old Kraken's pledge of faith! +A smile and waving hand in air, +And outward flew the wraith. + +XXII + +Before pale morn had mixed with gold, +His army roared, and chilled, +As men who have a woe foretold, +And see it red fulfilled. + +XXIII + +Away and to his young wife speed, +And say that Honour's dead! +Another word she will not need +To bow a widow's head. + +XXIV + +Old Kraken roped his white moustache +Right, left, for savage glee: +- To swing him in his soldier's sash +Were kind for such as he! + +XXV + +Old Kraken's look hard Winter wears +When sweeps the wild snow-blast: +He had the hug of Arctic bears +For captives he held fast. + +2--I + +Archduchess Anne sat carved in frost, +Shut off from priest and spouse. +Her lips were locked, her arms were crossed, +Her eyes were in her brows. + +II + +One hand enclosed a paper scroll, +Held as a strangled asp. +So may we see the woman's soul +In her dire tempter's grasp. + +III + +Along that scroll Count Louis' doom +Throbbed till the letters flamed. +She saw him in his scornful bloom, +She saw him chained and shamed. + +IV + +Around that scroll Count Louis' fate +Was acted to her stare, +And hate in love and love in hate +Fought fell to smite or spare. + +V + +Between the day that struck her old, +And this black star of days, +Her heart swung like a storm-bell tolled +Above a town ablaze. + +VI + +His beauty pressed to intercede, +His beauty served him ill. +- Not Vengeance, 'tis his rebel's deed, +'Tis Justice, not our will! + +VII + +Yet who had sprung to life's full force +A breast that loveless dried? +But who had sapped it at the source, +With scarlet to her pride! + +VIII + +He brought her waning heart as 'twere +New message from the skies. +And he betrayed, and left on her +The burden of their sighs. + +IX + +In floods her tender memories poured; +They foamed with waves of spite: +She crushed them, high her heart outsoared, +To keep her mind alight. + +X + +- The crawling creature, called in scorn +A woman!--with this pen +We sign a paper that may warn +His crowing fellowmen. + +XI + +- We read them lesson of a power +They slight who do us wrong. +That bitter hour this bitter hour +Provokes; by turns the strong! + +XII + +- That we were woman once is known: +That we are Justice now, +Above our sex, above the throne, +Men quaking shall avow. + +XIII + +Archduchess Anne ascending flew, +Her heart outsoared, but felt +The demon of her sex pursue, +Incensing or to melt. + +XIV + +Those counterfloods below at leap +Still in her breast blew storm, +And farther up the heavenly steep +Wrestled in angels' form. + +XV + +To disentangle one clear wish +Not of her sex, she sought; +And womanish to womanish +Discerned in lighted thought. + +XVI + +With Louis' chance it went not well +When at herself she raged; +A woman, of whom men might tell +She doted, crazed and aged. + +XVII + +Or else enamoured of a sweet +Withdrawn, a vengeful crone! +And say, what figure at her feet +Is this that utters moan? + +XVIII + +The Countess Louis from her head +Drew veil: 'Great Lady, hear! +My husband deems you Justice dread, +I know you Mercy dear. + +XIX + +'His error upon him may fall; +He will not breathe a nay. +I am his helpless mate in all, +Except for grace to pray. + +XX + +'Perchance on me his choice inclined, +To give his House an heir: +I had not marriage with his mind, +His counsel could not share. + +XXI + +'I brought no portion for his weal +But this one instinct true, +Which bids me in my weakness kneel, +Archduchess Anne, to you.' + +XXII + +The frowning Lady uttered, 'Forth!' +Her look forbade delay: +'It is not mine to weigh your worth; +Your husband's others weigh. + +XXIII + +'Hence with the woman in your speech,' +For nothing it avails +In woman's fashion to beseech +Where Justice holds the scales.' + +XXIV + +Then bent and went the lady wan, +Whose girlishness made grey +The thoughts that through Archduchess Anne +Shattered like stormy spray. + +XXV + +Long sat she there, as flame that strives +To hold on beating wind: +- His wife must be the fool of wives, +Or cunningly designed! + +XXVI + +She sat until the tempest-pitch +In her torn bosom fell; +- His wife must be a subtle witch +Or else God loves her well! + +3--I + +Old Kraken read a missive penned +By his great Lady's hand. +Her condescension called him friend, +To raise the crest she fanned. + +II + +Swiftly to where he lay encamped +It flew, yet breathed aloof +From woman's feeling, and he stamped +A heel more like a hoof. + +III + +She wrote of Mercy: 'She was loth +Too hard to goad a foe.' +He stamped, as when men drive an oath +Devils transcribe below. + +IV + +She wrote: 'We have him half by theft.' +His wrinkles glistened keen: +And see the Winter storm-cloud cleft +To lurid skies between! + +V + +When read old Kraken: 'Christ our Guide,' +His eyes were spikes of spar: +And see the white snow-storm divide +About an icy star! + +VI + +'She trusted him to understand,' +She wrote, and further prayed +That policy might rule the land. +Old Kraken's laughter neighed. + +VII + +Her words he took; her nods and winks +Treated as woman's fog. +The man-dog for his mistress thinks, +Not less her faithful dog. + +VIII + +She hugged a cloak old Kraken ripped; +Disguise to him he loathed. +- Your mercy, madam, shows you stripped, +While mine will keep you clothed. + +IX + +A rough ill-soldered scar in haste +He rubbed on his cheek-bone. +- Our policy the man shall taste; +Our mercy shall be shown. + +X + +'Count Louis, honour to your race +Decrees the Council-hall: +You 'scape the rope by special grace, +And like a soldier fall.' + +XI + +- I am a man of many sins, +Who for one virtue die, +Count Louis said.--They play at shins, +Who kick, was the reply. + +XII + +Uprose the day of crimson sight, +The day without a God. +At morn the hero said Good-night: +See there that stain on sod! + +XIII + +At morn the Countess Louis heard +Young light sing in the lark. +Ere eve it was that other bird, +Which brings the starless dark. + +XIV + +To heaven she vowed herself, and yearned +Beside her lord to lie. +Archduchess Anne on Kraken turned, +All white as a dead eye. + +XV + +If I could kill thee! shrieked her look: +If lightning sprang from Will! +An oaken head old Kraken shook, +And she might thank or kill. + +XVI + +The pride that fenced her heart in mail +By mortal pain was torn. +Forth from her bosom leaped a wail, +As of a babe new-born. + +XVII + +She clad herself in courtly use, +And one who heard them prate +Had said they differed upon views +Where statecraft raised debate. + +XVIII + +The wretch detested must she trust, +The servant master own: +Confide to godless cause so just, +And for God's blessing moan. + +XIX + +Austerely she her heart kept down, +Her woman's tongue was mute +When voice of People, voice of Crown, +In cannon held dispute. + +XX + +The Crown on seas of blood, like swine, +Swam forefoot at the throat: +It drank of its dear veins for wine, +Enough if it might float! + +XXI + +It sank with piteous yelp, resurged +Electrical with fear. +O had she on old Kraken urged +Her word of mercy clear! + +XXII + +O had they with Count Louis been +Accordant in his plea! +Cursed are the women vowed to screen +A heart that all can see! + +XXIII + +The godless drove unto a goal +Was worse than vile defeat. +Did vengeance prick Count Louis' soul +They dressed him luscious meat. + +XXIV + +Worms will the faithless find their lies +In the close treasure-chest. +Without a God no day can rise, +Though it should slay our best. + +XXV + +The Crown it furled a draggled flag, +It sheathed a broken blade. +Behold its triumph in the hag +That lives with looks decayed! + +XXVI + +And lo, the man of oaken head, +Of soldier's honour bare, +He fled his land, but most he fled +His Lady's frigid stare. + +XXVII + +Judged by the issue we discern +God's blessing, and the bane. +Count Louis' dust would fill an urn, +His deeds are waving grain. + +XXVIII + +And she that helped to slay, yet bade +To spare the fated man, +Great were her errors, but she had +Great heart, Archduchess Anne. + + + +THE SONG OF THEODOLINDA + + + +I + +Queen Theodolind has built +In the earth a furnace-bed: +There the Traitor Nail that spilt +Blood of the anointed Head, +Red of heat, resolves in shame: +White of heat, awakes to flame. +Beat, beat! white of heat, +Red of heat, beat, beat! + +II + +Mark the skeleton of fire +Lightening from its thunder-roof: +So comes this that saw expire +Him we love, for our behoof! +Red of heat, O white of heat, +This from off the Cross we greet. + +III + +Brown-cowled hammermen around +Nerve their naked arms to strike +Death with Resurrection crowned, +Each upon that cruel spike. +Red of heat the furnace leaps, +White of heat transfigured sleeps. + +IV + +Hard against the furnace core +Holds the Queen her streaming eyes: +Lo! that thing of piteous gore +In the lap of radiance lies, +Red of heat, as when He takes, +White of heat, whom earth forsakes. + +V + +Forth with it, and crushing ring +Iron hymns, for men to hear +Echoes of the deeds that sting +Earth into its graves, and fear! +Red of heat, He maketh thus, +White of heat, a crown of us. + +VI + +This that killed Thee, kissed Thee, Lord! +Touched Thee, and we touch it: dear, +Dark it is; adored, abhorred: +Vilest, yet most sainted here. +Red of heat, O white of heat, +In it hell and heaven meet. + +VII + +I behold our morning day +When they chased Him out with rods +Up to where this traitor lay +Thirsting; and the blood was God's! +Red of heat, it shall be pressed, +White of heat, once on my breast! + +VIII + +Quick! the reptile in me shrieks, +Not the soul. Again; the Cross +Burn there. Oh! this pain it wreaks +Rapture is: pain is not loss. +Red of heat, the tooth of Death, +White of heat, has caught my breath. + +IX + +Brand me, bite me, bitter thing! +Thus He felt, and thus I am +One with Him in suffering, +One with Him in bliss, the Lamb. +Red of heat, O white of heat, +Thus is bitterness made sweet. + +X + +Now am I, who bear that stamp +Scorched in me, the living sign +Sole on earth--the lighted lamp +Of the dreadful Day divine. +White of heat, beat on it fast! +Red of heat, its shape has passed. + +XI + +Out in angry sparks they fly, +They that sentenced Him to bleed: +Pontius and his troop: they die, +Damned for ever for the deed! +White of heat in vain they soar: +Red of heat they strew the floor. + +XII + +Fury on it! have its debt! +Thunder on the Hill accurst, +Golgotha, be ye! and sweat +Blood, and thirst the Passion's thirst. +Red of heat and white of heat, +Champ it like fierce teeth that eat. + +XIII + +Strike it as the ages crush +Towers! for while a shape is seen +I am rivalled. Quench its blush, +Devil! But it crowns me Queen, +Red of heat, as none before, +White of heat, the circlet wore. + +XIV + +Lowly I will be, and quail, +Crawling, with a beggar's hand: +On my breast the branded Nail, +On my head the iron band. +Red of heat, are none so base! +White of heat, none know such grace! + +XV + +In their heaven the sainted hosts, +Robed in violet unflecked, +Gaze on humankind as ghosts: +I draw down a ray direct. +Red of heat, across my brow, +White of heat, I touch Him now. + +XVI + +Robed in violet, robed in gold, +Robed in pearl, they make our dawn. +What am I to them? Behold +What ye are to me, and fawn. +Red of heat, be humble, ye! +White of heat, O teach it me! + +XVII + +Martyrs! hungry peaks in air, +Rent with lightnings, clad with snow, +Crowned with stars! you strip me bare, +Pierce me, shame me, stretch me low, +Red of heat, but it may be, +White of heat, some envy me! + +XVIII + +O poor enviers! God's own gifts +Have a devil for the weak. +Yea, the very force that lifts +Finds the vessel's secret leak. +Red of heat, I rise o'er all: +White of heat, I faint, I fall. + +XIX + +Those old Martyrs sloughed their pride, +Taking humbleness like mirth. +I am to His Glory tied, +I that witness Him on earth! +Red of heat, my pride of dust, +White of heat, feeds fire in trust. + +XX + +Kindle me to constant fire, +Lest the nail be but a nail! +Give me wings of great desire, +Lest I look within, and fail! +Red of heat, the furnace light, +White of heat, fix on my sight. + +XXI + +Never for the Chosen peace! +Know, by me tormented know, +Never shall the wrestling cease +Till with our outlasting Foe, +Red of heat to white of heat, +Roll we to the Godhead's feet! +Beat, beat! white of heat, +Red of heat, beat, beat! + + + +A PREACHING FROM A SPANISH BALLAD + + + +I + +Ladies who in chains of wedlock +Chafe at an unequal yoke, +Not to nightingales give hearing; +Better this, the raven's croak. + +II + +Down the Prado strolled my seigneur, +Arm at lordly bow on hip, +Fingers trimming his moustachios, +Eyes for pirate fellowship. + +III + +Home sat she that owned him master; +Like the flower bent to ground +Rain-surcharged and sun-forsaken; +Heedless of her hair unbound. + +IV + +Sudden at her feet a lover +Palpitating knelt and wooed; +Seemed a very gift from heaven +To the starved of common food. + +V + +Love me? she his vows repeated: +Fiery vows oft sung and thrummed: +Wondered, as on earth a stranger; +Thirsted, trusted, and succumbed. + +VI + +O beloved youth! my lover! +Mine! my lover! take my life +Wholly: thine in soul and body, +By this oath of more than wife! + +VII + +Know me for no helpless woman; +Nay, nor coward, though I sink +Awed beside thee, like an infant +Learning shame ere it can think. + +VIII + +Swing me hence to do thee service, +Be thy succour, prove thy shield; +Heaven will hear!--in house thy handmaid, +Squire upon the battlefield. + +IX + +At my breasts I cool thy footsoles; +Wine I pour, I dress thy meats; +Humbly, when my lord it pleaseth, +Lie with him on perfumed sheets: + +X + +Pray for him, my blood's dear fountain, +While he sleeps, and watch his yawn +In that wakening babelike moment, +Sweeter to my thought than dawn! - + +XI + +Thundered then her lord of thunders; +Burst the door, and, flashing sword, +Loud disgorged the woman's title: +Condemnation in one word. + +XII + +Grand by righteous wrath transfigured, +Towers the husband who provides +In his person judge and witness, +Death's black doorkeeper besides! + +XIII + +Round his head the ancient terrors, +Conjured of the stronger's law, +Circle, to abash the creature +Daring twist beneath his paw. + +XIV + +How though he hath squandered Honour +High of Honour let him scold: +Gilding of the man's possession, +'Tis the woman's coin of gold. + +XV + +She inheriting from many +Bleeding mothers bleeding sense +Feels 'twixt her and sharp-fanged nature +Honour first did plant the fence. + +XVI + +Nature, that so shrieks for justice; +Honour's thirst, that blood will slake; +These are women's riddles, roughly +Mixed to write them saint or snake. + +XVII + +Never nature cherished woman: +She throughout the sexes' war +Serves as temptress and betrayer, +Favouring man, the muscular. + +XVIII + +Lureful is she, bent for folly; +Doating on the child which crows: +Yours to teach him grace in fealty, +What the bloom is, what the rose. + +XIX + +Hard the task: your prison-chamber +Widens not for lifted latch +Till the giant thews and sinews +Meet their Godlike overmatch. + +XX + +Read that riddle, scorning pity's +Tears, of cockatrices shed: +When the heart is vowed for freedom, +Captaincy it yields to head. + +XXI + +Meanwhile you, freaked nature's martyrs, +Honour's army, flower and weed, +Gentle ladies, wedded ladies, +See for you this fair one bleed. + +XXII + +Sole stood her offence, she faltered; +Prayed her lord the youth to spare; +Prayed that in the orange garden +She might lie, and ceased her prayer. + +XXIII + +Then commanding to all women +Chastity, her breasts she laid +Bare unto the self-avenger. +Man in metal was the blade. + + + +THE YOUNG PRINCESS--A BALLAD OF OLD LAWS OF LOVE + + + +1--I + +When the South sang like a nightingale +Above a bower in May, +The training of Love's vine of flame +Was writ in laws, for lord and dame +To say their yea and nay. + +II + +When the South sang like a nightingale +Across the flowering night, +And lord and dame held gentle sport, +There came a young princess to Court, +A frost of beauty white. + +III + +The South sang like a nightingale +To thaw her glittering dream: +No vine of Love her bosom gave, +She drank no wine of Love, but grave +She held them to Love's theme. + +IV + +The South grew all a nightingale +Beneath a moon unmoved: +Like the banner of war she led them on; +She left them to lie, like the light that has gone +From wine-cups overproved. + +V + +When the South was a fervid nightingale, +And she a chilling moon, +'Twas pity to see on the garden swards, +Against Love's laws, those rival lords +As willow-wands lie strewn. + +VI + +The South had throat of a nightingale +For her, the young princess: +She gave no vine of Love to rear, +Love's wine drank not, yet bent her ear +To themes of Love no less. + +2--I + +The lords of the Court they sighed heart-sick, +Heart-free Lord Dusiote laughed: +I prize her no more than a fling o' the dice, +But, or shame to my manhood, a lady of ice, +We master her by craft! + +II + +Heart-sick the lords of joyance yawned, +Lord Dusiote laughed heart-free: +I count her as much as a crack o' my thumb, +But, or shame of my manhood, to me she shall come +Like the bird to roost in the tree! + +III + +At dead of night when the palace-guard +Had passed the measured rounds, +The young princess awoke to feel +A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel +Within the garden-bounds. + +IV + +It ceased, and she thought of whom was need, +The friar or the leech; +When lo, stood her tirewoman breathless by: +Lord Dusiote, madam, to death is nigh, +Of you he would have speech. + +V + +He prays you of your gentleness, +To light him to his dark end. +The princess rose, and forth she went, +For charity was her intent, +Devoutly to befriend. + +VI + +Lord Dusiote hung on his good squire's arm, +The priest beside him knelt: +A weeping handkerchief was pressed +To stay the red flood at his breast, +And bid cold ladies melt. + +VII + +O lady, though you are ice to men, +All pure to heaven as light +Within the dew within the flower, +Of you 'tis whispered that love has power +When secret is the night. + +VIII + +I have silenced the slanderers, peace to their souls! +Save one was too cunning for me. +I die, whose love is late avowed, +He lives, who boasts the lily has bowed +To the oath of a bended knee. + +IX + +Lord Dusiote drew breath with pain, +And she with pain drew breath: +On him she looked, on his like above; +She flew in the folds of a marvel of love +Revealed to pass to death. + +X + +You are dying, O great-hearted lord, +You are dying for me, she cried; +O take my hand, O take my kiss, +And take of your right for love like this, +The vow that plights me bride. + +XI + +She bade the priest recite his words +While hand in hand were they, +Lord Dusiote's soul to waft to bliss; +He had her hand, her vow, her kiss, +And his body was borne away. + +3--I + +Lord Dusiote sprang from priest and squire; +He gazed at her lighted room: +The laughter in his heart grew slack; +He knew not the force that pushed him back +From her and the morn in bloom. + +II + +Like a drowned man's length on the strong flood-tide, +Like the shade of a bird in the sun, +He fled from his lady whom he might claim +As ghost, and who made the daybeams flame +To scare what he had done. + +III + +There was grief at Court for one so gay, +Though he was a lord less keen +For training the vine than at vintage-press; +But in her soul the young princess +Believed that love had been. + +IV + +Lord Dusiote fled the Court and land, +He crossed the woeful seas, +Till his traitorous doing seemed clearer to burn, +And the lady beloved drew his heart for return, +Like the banner of war in the breeze. + +V + +He neared the palace, he spied the Court, +And music he heard, and they told +Of foreign lords arrived to bring +The nuptial gifts of a bridegroom king +To the princess grave and cold. + +VI + +The masque and the dance were cloud on wave, +And down the masque and the dance +Lord Dusiote stepped from dame to dame, +And to the young princess he came, +With a bow and a burning glance. + +VII + +Do you take a new husband to-morrow, lady? +She shrank as at prick of steel. +Must the first yield place to the second, he sighed. +Her eyes were like the grave that is wide +For the corpse from head to heel. + +VIII + +My lady, my love, that little hand +Has mine ringed fast in plight: +I bear for your lips a lawful thirst, +And as justly the second should follow the first, +I come to your door this night. + +IX + +If a ghost should come a ghost will go: +No more the lady said, +Save that ever when he in wrath began +To swear by the faith of a living man, +She answered him, You are dead. + +4--I + +The soft night-wind went laden to death +With smell of the orange in flower; +The light leaves prattled to neighbour ears; +The bird of the passion sang over his tears; +The night named hour by hour. + +II + +Sang loud, sang low the rapturous bird +Till the yellow hour was nigh, +Behind the folds of a darker cloud: +He chuckled, he sobbed, alow, aloud; +The voice between earth and sky. + +III + +O will you, will you, women are weak; +The proudest are yielding mates +For a forward foot and a tongue of fire: +So thought Lord Dusiote's trusty squire, +At watch by the palace-gates. + +IV + +The song of the bird was wine in his blood, +And woman the odorous bloom: +His master's great adventure stirred +Within him to mingle the bloom and bird, +And morn ere its coming illume. + +V + +Beside him strangely a piece of the dark +Had moved, and the undertones +Of a priest in prayer, like a cavernous wave, +He heard, as were there a soul to save +For urgency now in the groans. + +VI + +No priest was hired for the play this night: +And the squire tossed head like a deer +At sniff of the tainted wind; he gazed +Where cresset-lamps in a door were raised, +Belike on a passing bier. + +VII + +All cloaked and masked, with naked blades, +That flashed of a judgement done, +The lords of the Court, from the palace-door, +Came issuing silently, bearers four, +And flat on their shoulders one. + +VIII + +They marched the body to squire and priest, +They lowered it sad to earth: +The priest they gave the burial dole, +Bade wrestle hourly for his soul, +Who was a lord of worth. + +IX + +One said, farewell to a gallant knight! +And one, but a restless ghost! +'Tis a year and a day since in this place +He died, sped high by a lady of grace +To join the blissful host. + +X + +Not vainly on us she charged her cause, +The lady whom we revere +For faith in the mask of a love untrue +To the Love we honour, the Love her due, +The Love we have vowed to rear. + +XI + +A trap for the sweet tooth, lures for the light, +For the fortress defiant a mine: +Right well! But not in the South, princess, +Shall the lady snared of her nobleness +Ever shamed or a captive pine. + +XII + +When the South had voice of a nightingale +Above a Maying bower, +On the heights of Love walked radiant peers; +The bird of the passion sang over his tears +To the breeze and the orange-flower. + + + +KING HARALD'S TRANCE + + + +I + +Sword in length a reaping-hook amain +Harald sheared his field, blood up to shank: +'Mid the swathes of slain, +First at moonrise drank. + +II + +Thereof hunger, as for meats the knife, +Pricked his ribs, in one sharp spur to reach +Home and his young wife, +Nigh the sea-ford beach. + +III + +After battle keen to feed was he: +Smoking flesh the thresher washed down fast, +Like an angry sea +Ships from keel to mast. + +IV + +Name us glory, singer, name us pride +Matching Harald's in his deeds of strength; +Chiefs, wife, sword by side, +Foemen stretched their length! + +V + +Half a winter night the toasts hurrahed, +Crowned him, clothed him, trumpeted him high, +Till awink he bade +Wife to chamber fly. + +VI + +Twice the sun had mounted, twice had sunk, +Ere his ears took sound; he lay for dead; +Mountain on his trunk, +Ocean on his head. + +VII + +Clamped to couch, his fiery hearing sucked +Whispers that at heart made iron-clang: +Here fool-women clucked, +There men held harangue. + +VIII + +Burial to fit their lord of war +They decreed him: hailed the kingling: ha! +Hateful! but this Thor +Failed a weak lamb's baa. + +IX + +King they hailed a branchlet, shaped to fare, +Weighted so, like quaking shingle spume, +When his blood's own heir +Ripened in the womb! + +X + +Still he heard, and doglike, hoglike, ran +Nose of hearing till his blind sight saw: +Woman stood with man +Mouthing low, at paw. + +XI + +Woman, man, they mouthed; they spake a thing +Armed to split a mountain, sunder seas: +Still the frozen king +Lay and felt him freeze. + +XII + +Doglike, hoglike, horselike now he raced, +Riderless, in ghost across a ground +Flint of breast, blank-faced, +Past the fleshly bound. + +XIII + +Smell of brine his nostrils filled with might: +Nostrils quickened eyelids, eyelids hand: +Hand for sword at right +Groped, the great haft spanned. + +XIV + +Wonder struck to ice his people's eyes: +Him they saw, the prone upon the bier, +Sheer from backbone rise, +Sword uplifting peer. + +XV + +Sitting did he breathe against the blade, +Standing kiss it for that proof of life: +Strode, as netters wade, +Straightway to his wife. + +XVI + +Her he eyed: his judgement was one word, +Foulbed! and she fell: the blow clove two. +Fearful for the third, +All their breath indrew. + +XVII + +Morning danced along the waves to beach; +Dumb his chiefs fetched breath for what might hap: +Glassily on each +Stared the iron cap. + +XVIII + +Sudden, as it were a monster oak +Split to yield a limb by stress of heat, +Strained he, staggered, broke +Doubled at their feet. + + + +WHIMPER OF SYMPATHY + + + +Hawk or shrike has done this deed +Of downy feathers: rueful sight! +Sweet sentimentalist, invite +Your bosom's Power to intercede. + +So hard it seems that one must bleed +Because another needs will bite! +All round we find cold Nature slight +The feelings of the totter-knee'd. + +O it were pleasant with you +To fly from this tussle of foes, +The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle! +To dwell in yon dribble of dew +On the cheek of your sovereign rose, +And live the young life of a twinkle. + + + +YOUNG REYNARD + + + +I + +Gracefullest leaper, the dappled fox-cub +Curves over brambles with berries and buds, +Light as a bubble that flies from the tub, +Whisked by the laundry-wife out of her suds. +Wavy he comes, woolly, all at his ease, +Elegant, fashioned to foot with the deuce; +Nature's own prince of the dance: then he sees +Me, and retires as if making excuse. + +II + +Never closed minuet courtlier! Soon +Cub-hunting troops were abroad, and a yelp +Told of sure scent: ere the stroke upon noon +Reynard the younger lay far beyond help. +Wild, my poor friend, has the fate to be chased; +Civil will conquer: were 't other 'twere worse; +Fair, by the flushed early morning embraced, +Haply you live a day longer in verse. + + + +MANFRED + + + +I + +Projected from the bilious Childe, +This clatterjaw his foot could set +On Alps, without a breast beguiled +To glow in shedding rascal sweat. +Somewhere about his grinder teeth, +He mouthed of thoughts that grilled beneath, +And summoned Nature to her feud +With bile and buskin Attitude. + +II + +Considerably was the world +Of spinsterdom and clergy racked +While he his hinted horrors hurled, +And she pictorially attacked. +A duel hugeous. Tragic? Ho! +The cities, not the mountains, blow +Such bladders; in their shapes confessed +An after-dinner's indigest. + + + +HERNANI + + + +Cistercians might crack their sides +With laughter, and exemption get, +At sight of heroes clasping brides, +And hearing--O the horn! the horn! +The horn of their obstructive debt! + +But quit the stage, that note applies +For sermons cosmopolitan, +Hernani. Have we filched our prize, +Forgetting . . .? O the horn! the horn! +The horn of the Old Gentleman! + + + +THE NUPTIALS OF ATTILA + + + +I + +Flat as to an eagle's eye, +Earth hung under Attila. +Sign for carnage gave he none. +In the peace of his disdain, +Sun and rain, and rain and sun, +Cherished men to wax again, +Crawl, and in their manner die. +On his people stood a frost. +Like the charger cut in stone, +Rearing stiff, the warrior host, +Which had life from him alone, +Craved the trumpet's eager note, +As the bridled earth the Spring. +Rusty was the trumpet's throat. +He let chief and prophet rave; +Venturous earth around him string +Threads of grass and slender rye, +Wave them, and untrampled wave. +O for the time when God did cry, +Eye and have, my Attila! + +II + +Scorn of conquest filled like sleep +Him that drank of havoc deep +When the Green Cat pawed the globe: +When the horsemen from his bow +Shot in sheaves and made the foe +Crimson fringes of a robe, +Trailed o'er towns and fields in woe; +When they streaked the rivers red, +When the saddle was the bed. +Attila, my Attila! + +III + +He breathed peace and pulled a flower. +Eye and have, my Attila! +This was the damsel Ildico, +Rich in bloom until that hour: +Shyer than the forest doe +Twinkling slim through branches green. +Yet the shyest shall be seen. +Make the bed for Attila! + +IV + +Seen of Attila, desired, +She was led to him straightway: +Radiantly was she attired; +Rifled lands were her array, +Jewels bled from weeping crowns, +Gold of woeful fields and towns. +She stood pallid in the light. +How she walked, how withered white, +From the blessing to the board, +She who would have proudly blushed, +Women whispered, asking why, +Hinting of a youth, and hushed. +Was it terror of her lord? +Was she childish? was she sly? +Was it the bright mantle's dye +Drained her blood to hues of grief +Like the ash that shoots the spark? +See the green tree all in leaf: +See the green tree stripped of bark! - +Make the bed for Attila! + +V + +Round the banquet-table's load +Scores of iron horsemen rode; +Chosen warriors, keen and hard; +Grain of threshing battle-dints; +Attila's fierce body-guard, +Smelling war like fire in flints. +Grant them peace be fugitive! +Iron-capped and iron-heeled, +Each against his fellow's shield +Smote the spear-head, shouting, Live, +Attila! my Attila! +Eagle, eagle of our breed, +Eagle, beak the lamb, and feed! +Have her, and unleash us! live, +Attila! my Attila! + +VI + +He was of the blood to shine +Bronze in joy, like skies that scorch. +Beaming with the goblet wine +In the wavering of the torch, +Looked he backward on his bride. +Eye and have, my Attila! +Fair in her wide robe was she: +Where the robe and vest divide, +Fair she seemed surpassingly: +Soft, yet vivid as the stream +Danube rolls in the moonbeam +Through rock-barriers: but she smiled +Never, she sat cold as salt: +Open-mouthed as a young child +Wondering with a mind at fault. +Make the bed for Attila! + +VII + +Under the thin hoop of gold +Whence in waves her hair outrolled, +'Twixt her brows the women saw +Shadows of a vulture's claw +Gript in flight: strange knots that sped +Closing and dissolving aye: +Such as wicked dreams betray +When pale dawn creeps o'er the bed. +They might show the common pang +Known to virgins, in whom dread +Hunts their bliss like famished hounds; +While the chiefs with roaring rounds +Tossed her to her lord, and sang +Praise of him whose hand was large, +Cheers for beauty brought to yield, +Chirrups of the trot afield, +Hurrahs of the battle-charge. + +VIII + +Those rock-faces hung with weed +Reddened: their great days of speed, +Slaughter, triumph, flood and flame, +Like a jealous frenzy wrought, +Scoffed at them and did them shame, +Quaffing idle, conquering nought. +O for the time when God decreed +Earth the prey of Attila! +God called on thee in his wrath, +Trample it to mire! 'Twas done. +Swift as Danube clove our path +Down from East to Western sun. +Huns! behold your pasture, gaze, +Take, our king said: heel to flank +(Whisper it, the war-horse neighs!) +Forth we drove, and blood we drank +Fresh as dawn-dew: earth was ours: +Men were flocks we lashed and spurned: +Fast as windy flame devours, +Flame along the wind, we burned. +Arrow javelin, spear, and sword! +Here the snows and there the plains; +On! our signal: onward poured +Torrents of the tightened reins, +Foaming over vine and corn +Hot against the city-wall. +Whisper it, you sound a horn +To the grey beast in the stall! +Yea, he whinnies at a nod. +O for sound of the trumpet-notes! +O for the time when thunder-shod, +He that scarce can munch his oats, +Hung on the peaks, brooded aloof, +Champed the grain of the wrath of God, +Pressed a cloud on the cowering roof, +Snorted out of the blackness fire! +Scarlet broke the sky, and down, +Hammering West with print of his hoof, +He burst out of the bosom of ire +Sharp as eyelight under thy frown, +Attila, my Attila! + +IX + +Ravaged cities rolling smoke +Thick on cornfields dry and black, +Wave his banners, bear his yoke. +Track the lightning, and you track +Attila. They moan: 'tis he! +Bleed: 'tis he! Beneath his foot +Leagues are deserts charred and mute; +Where he passed, there passed a sea. +Attila, my Attila! + +X + +- Who breathed on the king cold breath? +Said a voice amid the host, +He is Death that weds a ghost, +Else a ghost that weds with Death? +Ildico's chill little hand +Shuddering he beheld: austere +Stared, as one who would command +Sight of what has filled his ear: +Plucked his thin beard, laughed disdain. +Feast, ye Huns! His arm be raised, +Like the warrior, battle-dazed, +Joining to the fight amain. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XI + +Silent Ildico stood up. +King and chief to pledge her well, +Shocked sword sword and cup on cup, +Clamouring like a brazen bell. +Silent stepped the queenly slave. +Fair, by heaven! she was to meet +On a midnight, near a grave, +Flapping wide the winding-sheet. + +XII + +Death and she walked through the crowd, +Out beyond the flush of light. +Ceremonious women bowed +Following her: 'twas middle night. +Then the warriors each on each +Spied, nor overloudly laughed; +Like the victims of the leech, +Who have drunk of a strange draught. + +XIII + +Attila remained. Even so +Frowned he when he struck the blow, +Brained his horse, that stumbled twice, +On a bloody day in Gaul, +Bellowing, Perish omens! All +Marvelled at the sacrifice, +But the battle, swinging dim, +Rang off that axe-blow for him. +Attila, my Attila! + +XIV + +Brightening over Danube wheeled +Star by star; and she, most fair, +Sweet as victory half-revealed, +Seized to make him glad and young; +She, O sweet as the dark sign +Given him oft in battles gone, +When the voice within said, Dare! +And the trumpet-notes were sprung +Rapturous for the charge in line: +She lay waiting: fair as dawn +Wrapped in folds of night she lay; +Secret, lustrous; flaglike there, +Waiting him to stream and ray, +With one loosening blush outflung, +Colours of his hordes of horse +Ranked for combat; still he hung +Like the fever dreading air, +Cursed of heat; and as a corse +Gathers vultures, in his brain +Images of her eyes and kiss +Plucked at the limbs that could remain +Loitering nigh the doors of bliss. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XV + +Passion on one hand, on one, +Destiny led forth the Hun. +Heard ye outcries of affright, +Voices that through many a fray, +In the press of flag and spear, +Warned the king of peril near? +Men were dumb, they gave him way, +Eager heads to left and right, +Like the bearded standard, thrust, +As in battle, for a nod +From their lord of battle-dust. +Attila, my Attila! +Slow between the lines he trod. +Saw ye not the sun drop slow +On this nuptial day, ere eve +Pierced him on the couch aglow? +Attila, my Attila! +Here and there his heart would cleave +Clotted memory for a space: +Some stout chief's familiar face, +Choicest of his fighting brood, +Touched him, as 'twere one to know +Ere he met his bride's embrace. +Attila, my Attila! +Twisting fingers in a beard +Scant as winter underwood, +With a narrowed eye he peered; +Like the sunset's graver red +Up old pine-stems. Grave he stood +Eyeing them on whom was shed +Burning light from him alone. +Attila, my Attila! +Red were they whose mouths recalled +Where the slaughter mounted high, +High on it, o'er earth appalled, +He; heaven's finger in their sight +Raising him on waves of dead, +Up to heaven his trumpets blown. +O for the time when God's delight +Crowned the head of Attila! +Hungry river of the crag +Stretching hands for earth he came: +Force and Speed astride his name +Pointed back to spear and flag. +He came out of miracle cloud, +Lightning-swift and spectre-lean. +Now those days are in a shroud: +Have him to his ghostly queen. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XVI + +One, with winecups overstrung, +Cried him farewell in Rome's tongue. +Who? for the great king turned as though +Wrath to the shaft's head strained the bow. +Nay, not wrath the king possessed, +But a radiance of the breast. +In that sound he had the key +Of his cunning malady. +Lo, where gleamed the sapphire lake, +Leo, with his Rome at stake, +Drew blank air to hues and forms; +Whereof Two that shone distinct, +Linked as orbed stars are linked, +Clear among the myriad swarms, +In a constellation, dashed +Full on horse and rider's eyes +Sunless light, but light it was - +Light that blinded and abashed, +Froze his members, bade him pause, +Caught him mid-gallop, blazed him home. +Attila, my Attila! +What are streams that cease to flow? +What was Attila, rolled thence, +Cheated by a juggler's show? +Like that lake of blue intense, +Under tempest lashed to foam, +Lurid radiance, as he passed, +Filled him, and around was glassed, +When deep-voiced he uttered, Rome! + +XVII + +Rome! the word was: and like meat +Flung to dogs the word was torn. +Soon Rome's magic priests shall bleat +Round their magic Pope forlorn! +Loud they swore the king had sworn +Vengeance on the Roman cheat, +Ere he passed, as, grave and still, +Danube through the shouting hill: +Sworn it by his naked life! +Eagle, snakes these women are: +Take them on the wing! but war, +Smoking war's the warrior's wife! +Then for plunder! then for brides +Won without a winking priest! - +Danube whirled his train of tides +Black toward the yellow East. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XVIII + +Chirrups of the trot afield, +Hurrahs of the battle-charge, +How they answered, how they pealed, +When the morning rose and drew +Bow and javelin, lance and targe, +In the nuptial casement's view! +Attila, my Attila! +Down the hillspurs, out of tents +Glimmering in mid-forest, through +Mists of the cool morning scents, +Forth from city-alley, court, +Arch, the bounding horsemen flew, +Joined along the plains of dew, +Raced and gave the rein to sport, +Closed and streamed like curtain-rents +Fluttered by a wind, and flowed +Into squadrons: trumpets blew, +Chargers neighed, and trappings glowed +Brave as the bright Orient's. +Look on the seas that run to greet +Sunrise: look on the leagues of wheat: +Look on the lines and squares that fret +Leaping to level the lance blood-wet. +Tens of thousands, man and steed, +Tossing like field-flowers in Spring; +Ready to be hurled at need +Whither their great lord may sling. +Finger Romeward, Romeward, King! +Attila, my Attila! +Still the woman holds him fast +As a night-flag round the mast. + +XIX + +Nigh upon the fiery noon, +Out of ranks a roaring burst. +'Ware white women like the moon! +They are poison: they have thirst +First for love, and next for rule. +Jealous of the army, she? +Ho, the little wanton fool! +We were his before she squealed +Blind for mother's milk, and heeled +Kicking on her mother's knee. +His in life and death are we: +She but one flower of a field. +We have given him bliss tenfold +In an hour to match her night: +Attila, my Attila! +Still her arms the master hold, +As on wounds the scarf winds tight. + +XX + +Over Danube day no more, +Like the warrior's planted spear, +Stood to hail the King: in fear +Western day knocked at his door. +Attila, my Attila! +Sudden in the army's eyes +Rolled a blast of lights and cries: +Flashing through them: Dead are ye! +Dead, ye Huns, and torn piecemeal! +See the ordered army reel +Stricken through the ribs: and see, +Wild for speed to cheat despair, +Horsemen, clutching knee to chin, +Crouch and dart they know not where. +Attila, my Attila! +Faces covered, faces bare, +Light the palace-front like jets +Of a dreadful fire within. +Beating hands and driving hair +Start on roof and parapets. +Dust rolls up; the slaughter din. +- Death to them who call him dead! +Death to them who doubt the tale! +Choking in his dusty veil, +Sank the sun on his death-bed. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XXI + +'Tis the room where thunder sleeps. +Frenzy, as a wave to shore +Surging, burst the silent door, +And drew back to awful deeps +Breath beaten out, foam-white. Anew +Howled and pressed the ghastly crew, +Like storm-waters over rocks. +Attila, my Attila! +One long shaft of sunset red +Laid a finger on the bed. +Horror, with the snaky locks, +Shocked the surge to stiffened heaps, +Hoary as the glacier's head +Faced to the moon. Insane they look. +God it is in heaven who weeps +Fallen from his hand the Scourge he shook. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XXII + +Square along the couch, and stark, +Like the sea-rejected thing +Sea-sucked white, behold their King. +Attila, my Attila! +Beams that panted black and bright, +Scornful lightnings danced their sight: +Him they see an oak in bud, +Him an oaklog stripped of bark: +Him, their lord of day and night, +White, and lifting up his blood +Dumb for vengeance. Name us that, +Huddled in the corner dark +Humped and grinning like a cat, +Teeth for lips!--'tis she! she stares, +Glittering through her bristled hairs. +Rend her! Pierce her to the hilt! +She is Murder: have her out! +What! this little fist, as big +As the southern summer fig! +She is Madness, none may doubt. +Death, who dares deny her guilt! +Death, who says his blood she spilt! +Make the bed for Attila! + +XXIII + +Torch and lamp and sunset-red +Fell three-fingered on the bed. +In the torch the beard-hair scant +With the great breast seemed to pant: +In the yellow lamp the limbs +Wavered, as the lake-flower swims: +In the sunset red the dead +Dead avowed him, dry blood-red. + +XXIV + +Hatred of that abject slave, +Earth, was in each chieftain's heart. +Earth has got him, whom God gave, +Earth may sing, and earth shall smart! +Attila, my Attila! + +XXV + +Thus their prayer was raved and ceased. +Then had Vengeance of her feast +Scent in their quick pang to smite +Which they knew not, but huge pain +Urged them for some victim slain +Swift, and blotted from the sight. +Each at each, a crouching beast, +Glared, and quivered for the word. +Each at each, and all on that, +Humped and grinning like a cat, +Head-bound with its bridal-wreath. +Then the bitter chamber heard +Vengeance in a cauldron seethe. +Hurried counsel rage and craft +Yelped to hungry men, whose teeth +Hard the grey lip-ringlet gnawed, +Gleaming till their fury laughed. +With the steel-hilt in the clutch, +Eyes were shot on her that froze +In their blood-thirst overawed; +Burned to rend, yet feared to touch. +She that was his nuptial rose, +She was of his heart's blood clad: +Oh! the last of him she had! - +Could a little fist as big +As the southern summer fig, +Push a dagger's point to pierce +Ribs like those? Who else! They glared +Each at each. Suspicion fierce +Many a black remembrance bared. +Attila, my Attila! +Death, who dares deny her guilt! +Death, who says his blood she spilt! +Traitor he, who stands between! +Swift to hell, who harms the Queen! +She, the wild contention's cause, +Combed her hair with quiet paws. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XXVI + +Night was on the host in arms. +Night, as never night before, +Hearkened to an army's roar +Breaking up in snaky swarms: +Torch and steel and snorting steed, +Hunted by the cry of blood, +Cursed with blindness, mad for day. +Where the torches ran a flood, +Tales of him and of the deed +Showered like a torrent spray. +Fear of silence made them strive +Loud in warrior-hymns that grew +Hoarse for slaughter yet unwreaked. +Ghostly Night across the hive, +With a crimson finger drew +Letters on her breast and shrieked. +Night was on them like the mould +On the buried half alive. +Night, their bloody Queen, her fold +Wound on them and struck them through. +Make the bed for Attila! + +XXVII + +Earth has got him whom God gave, +Earth may sing, and earth shall smart! +None of earth shall know his grave. +They that dig with Death depart. +Attila, my Attila! + +XXVIII + +Thus their prayer was raved and passed: +Passed in peace their red sunset: +Hewn and earthed those men of sweat +Who had housed him in the vast, +Where no mortal might declare, +There lies he--his end was there! +Attila, my Attila! + +XXIX + +Kingless was the army left: +Of its head the race bereft. +Every fury of the pit +Tortured and dismembered it. +Lo, upon a silent hour, +When the pitch of frost subsides, +Danube with a shout of power +Loosens his imprisoned tides: +Wide around the frighted plains +Shake to hear his riven chains, +Dreadfuller than heaven in wrath, +As he makes himself a path: +High leap the ice-cracks, towering pile +Floes to bergs, and giant peers +Wrestle on a drifted isle; +Island on ice-island rears; +Dissolution battles fast: +Big the senseless Titans loom, +Through a mist of common doom +Striving which shall die the last: +Till a gentle-breathing morn +Frees the stream from bank to bank. +So the Empire built of scorn +Agonized, dissolved and sank. +Of the Queen no more was told +Than of leaf on Danube rolled. +Make the bed for Attila! + + + +ANEURIN'S HARP + + + +I + +Prince of Bards was old Aneurin; +He the grand Gododin sang; +All his numbers threw such fire in, +Struck his harp so wild a twang; - +Still the wakeful Briton borrows +Wisdom from its ancient heat: +Still it haunts our source of sorrows, +Deep excess of liquor sweet! + +II + +Here the Briton, there the Saxon, +Face to face, three fields apart, +Thirst for light to lay their thwacks on +Each the other with good heart. +Dry the Saxon sits, 'mid dinful +Noise of iron knits his steel: +Fresh and roaring with a skinful, +Britons round the hirlas reel. + +III + +Yellow flamed the meady sunset; +Red runs up the flag of morn. +Signal for the British onset +Hiccups through the British horn. +Down these hillmen pour like cattle +Sniffing pasture: grim below, +Showing eager teeth of battle, +In his spear-heads lies the foe. + +IV + +- Monster of the sea! we drive him +Back into his hungry brine. +- You shall lodge him, feed him, wive him, +Look on us; we stand in line. +- Pale sea-monster! foul the waters +Cast him; foul he leaves our land. +- You shall yield us land and daughters: +Stay the tongue, and try the hand. + +V + +Swift as torrent-streams our warriors, +Tossing torrent lights, find way; +Burst the ridges, crowd the barriers, +Pierce them where the spear-heads play; +Turn them as the clods in furrow, +Top them like the leaping foam; +Sorrow to the mother, sorrow, +Sorrow to the wife at home! + +VI + +Stags, they butted; bulls, they bellowed; +Hounds, we baited them; oh, brave! +Every second man, unfellowed, +Took the strokes of two, and gave. +Bare as hop-stakes in November's +Mists they met our battle-flood: +Hoary-red as Winter's embers +Lay their dead lines done in blood. + +VII + +Thou, my Bard, didst hang thy lyre in +Oak-leaves, and with crimson brand +Rhythmic fury spent, Aneurin; +Songs the churls could understand: +Thrumming on their Saxon sconces +Straight, the invariable blow, +Till they snorted true responses. +Ever thus the Bard they know! + +VIII + +But ere nightfall, harper lusty! +When the sun was like a ball +Dropping on the battle dusty, +What was yon discordant call? +Cambria's old metheglin demon +Breathed against our rushing tide; +Clove us midst the threshing seamen:- +Gashed, we saw our ranks divide! + +IX + +Britain then with valedictory +Shriek veiled off her face and knelt. +Full of liquor, full of victory, +Chief on chief old vengeance dealt. +Backward swung their hurly-burly; +None but dead men kept the fight. +They that drink their cup too early, +Darkness they shall see ere night. + +X + +Loud we heard the yellow rover +Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick, +Thick as ants the ant-hill over, +Asking who has thrust the stick. +Lo, as frogs that Winter cumbers +Meet the Spring with stiffen'd yawn, +We from our hard night of slumbers +Marched into the bloody dawn. + +XI + +Day on day we fought, though shattered: +Pushed and met repulses sharp, +Till our Raven's plumes were scattered: +All, save old Aneurin's harp. +Hear it wailing like a mother +O'er the strings of children slain! +He in one tongue, in another, +Alien, I; one blood, yet twain. + +XII + +Old Aneurin! droop no longer. +That squat ocean-scum, we own, +Had fine stoutness, made us stronger, +Brought us much-required backbone: +Claimed of Power their dues, and granted +Dues to Power in turn, when rose +Mightier rovers; they that planted +Sovereign here the Norman nose. + +XIII + +Glorious men, with heads of eagles, +Chopping arms, and cupboard lips; +Warriors, hunters, keen as beagles, +Mounted aye on horse or ships. +Active, being hungry creatures; +Silent, having nought to say: +High they raised the lord of features, +Saxon-worshipped to this day. + +XIV + +Hear its deeds, the great recital! +Stout as bergs of Arctic ice +Once it led, and lived; a title +Now it is, and names its price. +This our Saxon brothers cherish: +This, when by the worth of wits +Lands are reared aloft, or perish, +Sole illumes their lucre-pits. + +XV + +Know we not our wrongs, unwritten +Though they be, Aneurin? Sword, +Song, and subtle mind, the Briton +Brings to market, all ignored. +'Gainst the Saxon's bone impinging, +Still is our Gododin played; +Shamed we see him humbly cringing +In a shadowy nose's shade. + +XVI + +Bitter is the weight that crushes +Low, my Bard, thy race of fire. +Here no fair young future blushes +Bridal to a man's desire. +Neither chief, nor aim, nor splendour +Dressing distance, we perceive. +Neither honour, nor the tender +Bloom of promise, morn or eve. + +XVII + +Joined we are; a tide of races +Rolled to meet a common fate; +England clasps in her embraces +Many: what is England's state? +England her distended middle +Thumps with pride as Mammon's wife; +Says that thus she reads thy riddle, +Heaven! 'tis heaven to plump her life. + +XVIII + +O my Bard! a yellow liquor, +Like to that we drank of old - +Gold is her metheglin beaker, +She destruction drinks in gold. +Warn her, Bard, that Power is pressing +Hotly for his dues this hour; +Tell her that no drunken blessing +Stops the onward march of Power. + +XIX + +Has she ears to take forewarnings +She will cleanse her of her stains, +Feed and speed for braver mornings +Valorously the growth of brains. +Power, the hard man knit for action, +Reads each nation on the brow. +Cripple, fool, and petrifaction +Fall to him--are falling now! + + + +MEN AND MAN + + + +I + +Men the Angels eyed; +And here they were wild waves, +And there as marsh descried; +Men the Angels eyed, +And liked the picture best +Where they were greenly dressed +In brotherhood of graves. + +II + +Man the Angels marked: +He led a host through murk, +On fearful seas embarked; +Man the Angels marked; +To think without a nay, +That he was good as they, +And help him at his work. + +III + +Man and Angels, ye +A sluggish fen shall drain, +Shall quell a warring sea. +Man and Angels, ye, +Whom stain of strife befouls, +A light to kindle souls +Bear radiant in the stain. + + + +THE LAST CONTENTION + + + +I + +Young captain of a crazy bark! +O tameless heart in battered frame! +Thy sailing orders have a mark, +And hers is not the name. + +II + +For action all thine iron clanks +In cravings for a splendid prize; +Again to race or bump thy planks +With any flag that flies. + +III + +Consult them; they are eloquent +For senses not inebriate. +They trust thee on the star intent, +That leads to land their freight. + +IV + +And they have known thee high peruse +The heavens, and deep the earth, till thou +Didst into the flushed circle cruise +Where reason quits the brow. + +V + +Thou animatest ancient tales, +To prove our world of linear seed: +Thy very virtue now assails, +A tempter to mislead. + +VI + +But thou hast answer I am I; +My passion hallows, bids command: +And she is gracious, she is nigh: +One motion of the hand! + +VII + +It will suffice; a whirly tune +These winds will pipe, and thou perform +The nodded part of pantaloon +In thy created storm. + +VIII + +Admires thee Nature with much pride; +She clasps thee for a gift of morn, +Till thou art set against the tide, +And then beware her scorn. + +IX + +Sad issue, should that strife befall +Between thy mortal ship and thee! +It writes the melancholy scrawl +Of wreckage over sea. + +X + +This lady of the luting tongue, +The flash in darkness, billow's grace, +For thee the worship; for the young +In muscle the embrace. + +XI + +Soar on thy manhood clear from those +Whose toothless Winter claws at May, +And take her as the vein of rose +Athwart an evening grey. + + + +PERIANDER + + + +I + +How died Melissa none dares shape in words. +A woman who is wife despotic lords +Count faggot at the question, Shall she live! +Her son, because his brows were black of her, +Runs barking for his bread, a fugitive, +And Corinth frowns on them that feed the cur. + +II + +There is no Corinth save the whip and curb +Of Corinth, high Periander; the superb +In magnanimity, in rule severe. +Up on his marble fortress-tower he sits, +The city under him: a white yoked steer, +That bears his heart for pulse, his head for wits. + +III + +Bloom of the generous fires of his fair Spring +Still coloured him when men forbore to sting; +Admiring meekly where the ordered seeds +Of his good sovereignty showed gardens trim; +And owning that the hoe he struck at weeds +Was author of the flowers raised face to him. + +IV + +His Corinth, to each mood subservient +In homage, made he as an instrument +To yield him music with scarce touch of stops. +He breathed, it piped; he moved, it rose to fly: +At whiles a bloodhorse racing till it drops; +At whiles a crouching dog, on him all eye. + +V + +His wisdom men acknowledged; only one, +The creature, issue of him, Lycophron, +That rebel with his mother in his brows, +Contested: such an infamous would foul +Pirene! Little heed where he might house +The prince gave, hearing: so the fox, the owl! + +VI + +To prove the Gods benignant to his rule, +The years, which fasten rigid whom they cool, +Reviewing, saw him hold the seat of power. +A grey one asked: Who next? nor answer had: +One greyer pointed on the pallid hour +To come: a river dried of waters glad. + +VII + +For which of his male issue promised grip +To stride yon people, with the curb and whip? +This Lycophron! he sole, the father like, +Fired prospect of a line in one strong tide, +By right of mastery; stern will to strike; +Pride to support the stroke: yea, Godlike pride! + +VIII + +Himself the prince beheld a failing fount. +His line stretched back unto its holy mount: +The thirsty onward waved for him no sign. +Then stood before his vision that hard son. +The seizure of a passion for his line +Impelled him to the path of Lycophron. + +IX + +The youth was tossing pebbles in the sea; +A figure shunned along the busy quay, +Perforce of the harsh edict for who dared +Address him outcast. Naming it, he crossed +His father's look with look that proved them paired +For stiffness, and another pebble tossed. + +X + +An exile to the Island ere nightfall +He passed from sight, from the hushed mouths of all. +It had resemblance to a death: and on, +Against a coast where sapphire shattered white, +The seasons rolled like troops of billows blown +To spraymist. The prince gazed on capping night. + +XI + +Deaf Age spake in his ear with shouts: Thy son! +Deep from his heart Life raved of work not done. +He heard historic echoes moan his name, +As of the prince in whom the race had pause; +Till Tyranny paternity became, +And him he hated loved he for the cause. + +XII + +Not Lycophron the exile now appeared, +But young Periander, from the shadow cleared, +That haunted his rebellious brows. The prince +Grew bright for him; saw youth, if seeming loth, +Return: and of pure pardon to convince, +Despatched the messenger most dear with both. + +XIII + +His daughter, from the exile's Island home, +Wrote, as a flight of halcyons o'er the foam, +Sweet words: her brother to his father bowed; +Accepted his peace-offering, and rejoiced. +To bring him back a prince the father vowed, +Commanded man the oars, the white sails hoist. + +XIV + +He waved the fleet to strain its westward way +On to the sea-hued hills that crown the bay: +Soil of those hospitable islanders +Whom now his heart, for honour to his blood, +Thanked. They should learn what boons a prince confers +When happiness enjoins him gratitude! + +XV + +In watch upon the offing, worn with haste +To see his youth revived, and, close embraced, +Pardon who had subdued him, who had gained +Surely the stoutest battle between two +Since Titan pierced by young Apollo stained +Earth's breast, the prince looked forth, himself looked through. + +XVI + +Errors aforetime unperceived were bared, +To be by his young masterful repaired: +Renewed his great ideas gone to smoke; +His policy confirmed amid the surge +Of States and people fretting at his yoke. +And lo, the fleet brown-flocked on the sea-verge! + +XVII + +Oars pulled: they streamed in harbour; without cheer +For welcome shadowed round the heaving bier. +They, whose approach in such rare pomp and stress +Of numbers the free islanders dismayed +At Tyranny come masking to oppress, +Found Lycophron this breathless, this lone-laid. + +XVIII + +Who smote the man thrown open to young joy? +The image of the mother of his boy +Came forth from his unwary breast in wreaths, +With eyes. And shall a woman, that extinct, +Smite out of dust the Powerful who breathes? +Her loved the son; her served; they lay close-linked! + +XIX + +Dead was he, and demanding earth. Demand +Sharper for vengeance of an instant hand, +The Tyrant in the father heard him cry, +And raged a plague; to prove on free Hellenes +How prompt the Tyrant for the Persian dye; +How black his Gods behind their marble screens. + + + +SOLON + + + +I + +The Tyrant passed, and friendlier was his eye +On the great man of Athens, whom for foe +He knew, than on the sycophantic fry +That broke as waters round a galley's flow, +Bubbles at prow and foam along the wake. +Solidity the Thunderer could not shake, +Beneath an adverse wind still stripping bare, +His kinsman, of the light-in-cavern look, +From thought drew, and a countenance could wear +Not less at peace than fields in Attic air +Shorn, and shown fruitful by the reaper's hook. + +II + +Most enviable so; yet much insane +To deem of minds of men they grow! these sheep, +By fits wild horses, need the crook and rein; +Hot bulls by fits, pure wisdom hold they cheap, +My Lawgiver, when fiery is the mood. +For ones and twos and threes thy words are good; +For thine own government are pillars: mine +Stand acts to fit the herd; which has quick thirst, +Rejecting elegiacs, though they shine +On polished brass, and, worthy of the Nine, +In showering columns from their fountain burst. + +III + +Thus museful rode the Tyrant, princely plumed, +To his high seat upon the sacred rock: +And Solon, blank beside his rule, resumed +The meditation which that passing mock +Had buffeted awhile to sallowness. +He little loved the man, his office less, +Yet owned him for a flower of his kind. +Therefore the heavier curse on Athens he! +The people grew not in themselves, but, blind, +Accepted sight from him, to him resigned +Their hopes of stature, rootless as at sea. + +IV + +As under sea lay Solon's work, or seemed +By turbid shore-waves beaten day by day; +Defaced, half formless, like an image dreamed, +Or child that fashioned in another clay +Appears, by strangers' hands to home returned. +But shall the Present tyrannize us? earned +It was in some way, justly says the sage. +One sees not how, while husbanding regrets; +While tossing scorn abroad from righteous rage, +High vision is obscured; for this is age +When robbed--more infant than the babe it frets! + +V + +Yet see Athenians treading the black path +Laid by a prince's shadow! well content +To wait his pleasure, shivering at his wrath: +They bow to their accepted Orient +With offer of the all that renders bright: +Forgetful of the growth of men to light, +As creatures reared on Persian milk they bow. +Unripe! unripe! The times are overcast. +But still may they who sowed behind the plough +True seed fix in the mind an unborn NOW +To make the plagues afflicting us things past. + + + +BELLEROPHON + + + +I + +Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod +Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread; +Upon the stature of a God, +He whom the Gods have struck bends low his head. + +II + +Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue +Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc: +Once radiant as the javelin flung +Right at the centre breastplate of his mark. + +III + +Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look, +Some undermountain narrative he tells, +As gapped by Lykian heat the brook +Cut from the source that in the upland swells. + +IV + +The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust +With patient inattention hear him prate: +And comes the snow, and comes the dust, +Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late. + +V + +A crazy beggar grateful for a meal +Has ever of himself a world to say. +For them he is an ancient wheel +Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day. + +VI + +He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect; +For never singer in the land had been +Who him for theme did not reject: +Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene. + +VII + +Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight +The snorting white-winged brother of the wave, +They hear him as a thing by fate +Cursed in unholy babble to his grave. + +VIII + +As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort, +Their sires have told; and of a martial prince +Bestriding him; and old report +Speaks of a monster slain by one long since. + +IX + +There is that story of the golden bit +By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed: +A mortal who could mount, and sit +Flying, and up Olympus midway speed. + +X + +He rose like the loosed fountain's utmost leap; +He played the star at span of heaven right o'er +Men's heads: they saw the snowy steep, +Saw the winged shoulders: him they saw not more. + +XI + +He fell: and says the shattered man, I fell: +And sweeps an arm the height an eagle wins; +And in his breast a mouthless well +Heaves the worn patches of his coat of skins. + +XII + +Lo, this is he in whom the surgent springs +Of recollections richer than our skies +To feed the flow of tuneful strings, +Show but a pool of scum for shooting flies. + + + +PHAETHON--ATTEMPTED IN THE GALLIAMBIC MEASURE + + + +At the coming up of Phoebus the all-luminous charioteer, +Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes, +And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent! +For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to +black; +In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge, +Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest--an ocean-song. +Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, +In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios. +Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is! +To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender youth, Phaethon, +Rule of day this day surrenders as a thing hereditary, +Having sworn by Styx tremendous, for the proof of his parentage, +He would grant his son's petition, whatsoever the sign thereof. +Then, rejoiced, the stripling answered: 'Rule of day give me; give +it me, +Give me place that men may see me how I blaze, and transcendingly +I, divine, proclaim my birthright.' Darkened Helios, and his +utterance +Choked prophetic: 'O half mortal!' he exclaimed in an agony, +'O lost son of mine! lost son! No! put a prayer for another thing: +Not for this: insane to wish it, and to crave the gift impious! +Cannot other gifts my godhead shed upon thee? miraculous +Mighty gifts to prove a blessing, that to earth thou shalt be a joy? +Gifts of healing, wherewith men walk as the Gods beneficently; +As a God to sway to concord hearts of men, reconciling them; +Gifts of verse, the lyre, the laurel, therewithal that thine origin +Shall be known even as when I strike on the string'd shell with +melody, +And the golden notes, like medicine, darting straight to the +cavities, +Fill them up, till hearts of men bound as the billows, the ships +thereon.' +Thus intently urged the Sun-God; but the force of his eloquence +Was the pressing on of sea-waves scattered broad from the rocks +away. +What shall move a soul from madness? Lost, lost in delirium, +Rock-fast, the adolescent to his father, irreverent, +'By the oath! the oath! thine oath!' cried. The effulgent foreseer +then, +Quivering in his loins parental, on the boy's beaming countenance +Looked and moaned, and urged him for love's sake, for sweet life's +sake, to yield the claim, +To abandon his mad hunger, and avert the calamity. +But he, vehement, passionate, called out: 'Let me show I am what I +say, +That the taunts I hear be silenced: I am stung with their +whispering. +Only, Thou, my Father, Thou tell how aloft the revolving wheels, +How aloft the cleaving horse-crests I may guide peremptorily, +Till I drink the shadows, fire-hot, like a flower celestial, +And my fellows see me curbing the fierce steeds, the dear dew- +drinkers: +Yea, for this I gaze on life's light; throw for this any sacrifice.' + +All the end foreseeing, Phoebus to his oath irrevocable +Bowed obedient, deploring the insanity pitiless. +Then the flame-outsnorting horses were led forth: it was so +decreed. +They were yoked before the glad youth by his sister-ancillaries. +Swift the ripple ripples follow'd, as of aureate Helicon, +Down their flanks, while they impatient pawed desire of the +distances, +And the bit with fury champed. Oh! unimaginable delight! +Unimagined speed and splendour in the circle of upper air! +Glory grander than the armed host upon earth singing victory! +Chafed the youth with their spirit surcharged, as when blossom is +shaken by winds, +Marked that labour by his sister Phaethontiades finished, quick +On the slope of the car his forefoot set assured: and the morning +rose: +Seeing whom, and what a day dawned, stood the God, as in harvest +fields, +When the reaper grasps the full sheaf and the sickle that severs it: +Hugged the withered head with one hand, with the other, to indicate +(If this woe might be averted, this immeasurable evil), +Laid the kindling course in view, told how the reins to manipulate: +Named the horses fondly, fearful, caution'd urgently betweenwhiles: +Their diverging tempers dwelt on, and their wantonness, wickedness, +That the voice of Gods alone held in restraint; but the voice of +Gods; +None but Gods can curb. He spake: vain were the words: scarcely +listening, +Mounted Phaethon, swinging reins loose, and, 'Behold me, companions, +It is I here, I!' he shouted, glancing down with supremacy; +'Not to any of you was this gift granted ever in annals of men; +I alone what only Gods can, I alone am governing day!' +Short the triumph, brief his rapture: see a hurricane suddenly +Beat the lifting billow crestless, roll it broken this way and that; +- +At the leap on yielding ether, in despite of his reprimand, +Swayed tumultuous the fire-steeds, plunging reckless hither and yon; +Unto men a great amazement, all agaze at the Troubled East:- +Pitifully for mastery striving in ascension, the charioteer, +Reminiscent, drifts of counsel caught confused in his arid wits; +The reins stiff ahind his shoulder madly pulled for the mastery, +Till a thunder off the tense chords thro' his ears dinned horrible. +Panic seized him: fled his vision of inviolability; +Fled the dream that he of mortals rode mischances predominant; +And he cried, 'Had I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite, +My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go +With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate. +Oh, my sisters! Thou, my Goddess, in whose love I was enviable, +From whose arms I rushed befrenzied, what a wreck will this body be, +That admired of thee stood rose-warm in the courts where thy +mysteries +Celebration had from me, me the most splendidly privileged! +Never more shall I thy temple fill with incenses bewildering; +Not again hear thy half-murmurs--I am lost!--never, never more. +I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of +flame! +Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!' + +Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer +Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car +superimpending +Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales; +Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately; +Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing shadow move +With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable, +The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the +firmament. +For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon- +fire, +And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's apparition forth. +Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering: +Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate +hours: +Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragged in shame at the chariot- +wheels: +Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets! +Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo, +Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate +them, +Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame crackling +busily. +He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, +Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft: +Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him. +Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under +their paws. +White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind: +Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await the ultimate shock. +To the bolt he launched, 'Strike dead, thou,' uttered Zeus, very +terrible; +'Perish folly, else 'tis man's fate'; and the bolt flew unerringly. +Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measureless +altitudes +Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not a +cry. +Like the flower on the river's surface when expanding it vanishes, +Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched: and so fell he +precipitate, +Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it comes: +So he showered above them, shadowed o'er the blue archipelagoes, +O'er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles; +So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth. + +Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep, +By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria, +Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the +tremulous +Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen. + + + +SEED-TIME + + + +I + +Flowers of the willow-herb are wool; +Flowers of the briar berries red; +Speeding their seed as the breeze may rule, +Flowers of the thistle loosen the thread. +Flowers of the clematis drip in beard, +Slack from the fir-tree youngly climbed; +Chaplets in air, flies foliage seared; +Heeled upon earth, lie clusters rimed. + +II + +Where were skies of the mantle stained +Orange and scarlet, a coat of frieze +Travels from North till day has waned, +Tattered, soaked in the ditch's dyes; +Tumbles the rook under grey or slate; +Else enfolding us, damps to the bone; +Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate; +Paints me Life as a wheezy crone. + +III + +Now seems none but the spider lord; +Star in circle his web waits prey, +Silvering bush-mounds, blue brushing sward; +Slow runs the hour, swift flits the ray. +Now to his thread-shroud is he nigh, +Nigh to the tangle where wings are sealed, +He who frolicked the jewelled fly; +All is adroop on the down and the weald. + +IV + +Mists more lone for the sheep-bell enwrap +Nights that tardily let slip a morn +Paler than moons, and on noontide's lap +Flame dies cold, like the rose late born. +Rose born late, born withered in bud! - +I, even I, for a zenith of sun +Cry, to fulfil me, nourish my blood: +O for a day of the long light, one! + +V + +Master the blood, nor read by chills, +Earth admonishes: Hast thou ploughed, +Sown, reaped, harvested grain for the mills, +Thou hast the light over shadow of cloud. +Steadily eyeing, before that wail +Animal-infant, thy mind began, +Momently nearer me: should sight fail, +Plod in the track of the husbandman. + +VI + +Verily now is our season of seed, +Now in our Autumn; and Earth discerns +Them that have served her in them that can read, +Glassing, where under the surface she burns, +Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay, +Brightens the fire of renewal: and we? +Death is the word of a bovine day, +Know you the breast of the springing To-be. + + + +HARD WEATHER + + + +Bursts from a rending East in flaws +The young green leaflet's harrier, sworn +To strew the garden, strip the shaws, +And show our Spring with banner torn. +Was ever such virago morn? +The wind has teeth, the wind has claws. +All the wind's wolves through woods are loose, +The wild wind's falconry aloft. +Shrill underfoot the grassblade shrews, +At gallop, clumped, and down the croft +Bestrid by shadows, beaten, tossed; +It seems a scythe, it seems a rod. +The howl is up at the howl's accost; +The shivers greet and the shivers nod. + +Is the land ship? we are rolled, we drive +Tritonly, cleaving hiss and hum; +Whirl with the dead, or mount or dive, +Or down in dregs, or on in scum. +And drums the distant, pipes the near, +And vale and hill are grey in grey, +As when the surge is crumbling sheer, +And sea-mews wing the haze of spray. +Clouds--are they bony witches?--swarms, +Darting swift on the robber's flight, +Hurry an infant sky in arms: +It peeps, it becks; 'tis day, 'tis night. +Black while over the loop of blue +The swathe is closed, like shroud on corse. +Lo, as if swift the Furies flew, +The Fates at heel at a cry to horse! + +Interpret me the savage whirr: +And is it Nature scourged, or she, +Her offspring's executioner, +Reducing land to barren sea? +But is there meaning in a day +When this fierce angel of the air, +Intent to throw, and haply slay, +Can for what breath of life we bear, +Exact the wrestle?--Call to mind +The many meanings glistening up +When Nature to her nurslings kind, +Hands them the fruitage and the cup! +And seek we rich significance +Not otherwhere than with those tides +Of pleasure on the sunned expanse, +Whose flow deludes, whose ebb derides? + +Look in the face of men who fare +Lock-mouthed, a match in lungs and thews +For this fierce angel of the air, +To twist with him and take his bruise. +That is the face beloved of old +Of Earth, young mother of her brood: +Nor broken for us shows the mould +When muscle is in mind renewed: +Though farther from her nature rude, +Yet nearer to her spirit's hold: +And though of gentler mood serene, +Still forceful of her fountain-jet. +So shall her blows be shrewdly met, +Be luminously read the scene +Where Life is at her grindstone set, +That she may give us edgeing keen, +String us for battle, till as play +The common strokes of fortune shower. +Such meaning in a dagger-day +Our wits may clasp to wax in power. +Yea, feel us warmer at her breast, +By spin of blood in lusty drill, +Than when her honeyed hands caressed, +And Pleasure, sapping, seemed to fill. + +Behold the life at ease; it drifts. +The sharpened life commands its course. +She winnows, winnows roughly; sifts, +To dip her chosen in her source: +Contention is the vital force, +Whence pluck they brain, her prize of gifts, +Sky of the senses! on which height, +Not disconnected, yet released, +They see how spirit comes to light, +Through conquest of the inner beast, +Which Measure tames to movement sane, +In harmony with what is fair. +Never is Earth misread by brain: +That is the welling of her, there +The mirror: with one step beyond, +For likewise is it voice; and more, +Benignest kinship bids respond, +When wail the weak, and them restore +Whom days as fell as this may rive, +While Earth sits ebon in her gloom, +Us atomies of life alive +Unheeding, bent on life to come. +Her children of the labouring brain, +These are the champions of the race, +True parents, and the sole humane, +With understanding for their base. +Earth yields the milk, but all her mind +Is vowed to thresh for stouter stock. +Her passion for old giantkind, +That scaled the mount, uphurled the rock, +Devolves on them who read aright +Her meaning and devoutly serve; +Nor in her starlessness of night +Peruse her with the craven nerve: +But even as she from grass to corn, +To eagle high from grubbing mole, +Prove in strong brain her noblest born, +The station for the flight of soul. + + + +THE SOUTH-WESTER + + + +Day of the cloud in fleets! O day +Of wedded white and blue, that sail +Immingled, with a footing ray +In shadow-sandals down our vale! - +And swift to ravish golden meads, +Swift up the run of turf it speeds, +Thy bright of head and dark of heel, +To where the hilltop flings on sky, +As hawk from wrist or dust from wheel, +The tiptoe sealers tossed to fly:- +Thee the last thunder's caverned peal +Delivered from a wailful night: +All dusky round thy cradled light, +Those brine-born issues, now in bloom +Transfigured, wreathed as raven's plume +And briony-leaf to watch thee lie: +Dark eyebrows o'er a dreamful eye +Nigh opening: till in the braid +Of purpled vapours thou wert rosed: +Till that new babe a Goddess maid +Appeared and vividly disclosed +Her beat of life: then crimson played +On edges of the plume and leaf: +Shape had they and fair feature brief, +The wings, the smiles: they flew the breast, +Earth's milk. But what imperial march +Their standards led for earth, none guessed +Ere upward of a coloured arch, +An arrow straining eager head +Lightened, and high for zenith sped. +Fierier followed; followed Fire. +Name the young lord of Earth's desire, +Whose look her wine is, and whose mouth +Her music! Beauteous was she seen +Beneath her midway West of South; +And sister was her quivered green +To sapphire of the Nereid eyes +On sea when sun is breeze; she winked +As they, and waved, heaved waterwise +Her flood of leaves and grasses linked: +A myriad lustrous butterflies +A moment in the fluttering sheen; +Becapped with the slate air that throws +The reindeer's antlers black between +Low-frowning and wide-fallen snows, +A minute after; hooded, stoled +To suit a graveside Season's dirge. +Lo, but the breaking of a surge, +And she is in her lover's fold, +Illumined o'er a boundless range +Anew: and through quick morning hours +The Tropic-Arctic countercharge +Did seem to pant in beams and showers. + +But noon beheld a larger heaven; +Beheld on our reflecting field +The Sower to the Bearer given, +And both their inner sweetest yield, +Fresh as when dews were grey or first +Received the flush of hues athirst. +Heard we the woodland, eyeing sun, +As harp and harper were they one. +A murky cloud a fair pursued, +Assailed, and felt the limbs elude: +He sat him down to pipe his woe, +And some strange beast of sky became: +A giant's club withheld the blow; +A milky cloud went all to flame. +And there were groups where silvery springs +The ethereal forest showed begirt +By companies in choric rings, +Whom but to see made ear alert. +For music did each movement rouse, +And motion was a minstrel's rage +To have our spirits out of house, +And bathe them on the open page. +This was a day that knew not age. +Since flew the vapoury twos and threes +From western pile to eastern rack; +As on from peaks of Pyrenees +To Graians; youngness ruled the track. +When songful beams were shut in caves, +And rainy drapery swept across; +When the ranked clouds were downy waves, +Breast of swan, eagle, albatross, +In ordered lines to screen the blue, +Youngest of light was nigh, we knew. +The silver finger of it laughed +Along the narrow rift: it shot, +Slew the huge gloom with golden shaft, +Then haled on high the volumed blot, +To build the hurling palace, cleave +The dazzling chasm; the flying nests, +The many glory-garlands weave, +Whose presence not our sight attests +Till wonder with the splendour blent, +And passion for the beauty flown, +Make evanescence permanent, +The thing at heart our endless own. + +Only at gathered eve knew we +The marvels of the day: for then +Mount upon mountain out of sea +Arose, and to our spacious ken +Trebled sublime Olympus round +In towering amphitheatre. +Colossal on enormous mound, +Majestic gods we saw confer. +They wafted the Dream-messenger +From off the loftiest, the crowned: +That Lady of the hues of foam +In sun-rays: who, close under dome, +A figure on the foot's descent, +Irradiate to vapour went, +As one whose mission was resigned, +Dispieced, undraped, dissolved to threads; +Melting she passed into the mind, +Where immortal with mortal weds. + +Whereby was known that we had viewed +The union of our earth and skies +Renewed: nor less alive renewed +Than when old bards, in nature wise, +Conceived pure beauty given to eyes, +And with undyingness imbued. +Pageant of man's poetic brain, +His grand procession of the song, +It was; the Muses and their train; +Their God to lead the glittering throng: +At whiles a beat of forest gong; +At whiles a glimpse of Python slain. +Mostly divinest harmony, +The lyre, the dance. We could believe +A life in orb and brook and tree, +And cloud; and still holds Memory +A morning in the eyes of eve. + + + +THE THRUSH IN FEBRUARY + + + +I know him, February's thrush, +And loud at eve he valentines +On sprays that paw the naked bush +Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines. + +Now ere the foreign singer thrills +Our vale his plain-song pipe he pours, +A herald of the million bills; +And heed him not, the loss is yours. + +My study, flanked with ivied fir +And budded beech with dry leaves curled, +Perched over yew and juniper, +He neighbours, piping to his world:- + +The wooded pathways dank on brown, +The branches on grey cloud a web, +The long green roller of the down, +An image of the deluge-ebb:- + +And farther, they may hear along +The stream beneath the poplar row. +By fits, like welling rocks, the song +Spouts of a blushful Spring in flow. + +But most he loves to front the vale +When waves of warm South-western rains +Have left our heavens clear in pale, +With faintest beck of moist red veins: + +Vermilion wings, by distance held +To pause aflight while fleeting swift: +And high aloft the pearl inshelled +Her lucid glow in glow will lift; + +A little south of coloured sky; +Directing, gravely amorous, +The human of a tender eye +Through pure celestial on us: + +Remote, not alien; still, not cold; +Unraying yet, more pearl than star; +She seems a while the vale to hold +In trance, and homelier makes the far. + +Then Earth her sweet unscented breathes, +An orb of lustre quits the height; +And like blue iris-flags, in wreaths +The sky takes darkness, long ere quite. + +His Island voice then shall you hear, +Nor ever after separate +From such a twilight of the year +Advancing to the vernal gate. + +He sings me, out of Winter's throat, +The young time with the life ahead; +And my young time his leaping note +Recalls to spirit-mirth from dead. + +Imbedded in a land of greed, +Of mammon-quakings dire as Earth's, +My care was but to soothe my need; +At peace among the littleworths. + +To light and song my yearning aimed; +To that deep breast of song and light +Which men have barrenest proclaimed; +As 'tis to senses pricked with fright. + +So mine are these new fruitings rich +The simple to the common brings; +I keep the youth of souls who pitch +Their joy in this old heart of things: + +Who feel the Coming young as aye, +Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough; +Alive for life, awake to die; +One voice to cheer the seedling Now. + +Full lasting is the song, though he, +The singer, passes: lasting too, +For souls not lent in usury, +The rapture of the forward view. + +With that I bear my senses fraught +Till what I am fast shoreward drives. +They are the vessel of the Thought. +The vessel splits, the Thought survives. + +Nought else are we when sailing brave, +Save husks to raise and bid it burn. +Glimpse of its livingness will wave +A light the senses can discern + +Across the river of the death, +Their close. Meanwhile, O twilight bird +Of promise! bird of happy breath! +I hear, I would the City heard. + +The City of the smoky fray; +A prodded ox, it drags and moans: +Its Morrow no man's child; its Day +A vulture's morsel beaked to bones. + +It strives without a mark for strife; +It feasts beside a famished host: +The loose restraint of wanton life, +That threatened penance in the ghost! + +Yet there our battle urges; there +Spring heroes many: issuing thence, +Names that should leave no vacant air +For fresh delight in confidence. + +Life was to them the bag of grain, +And Death the weedy harrow's tooth. +Those warriors of the sighting brain +Give worn Humanity new youth. + +Our song and star are they to lead +The tidal multitude and blind +From bestial to the higher breed +By fighting souls of love divined, + +They scorned the ventral dream of peace, +Unknown in nature. This they knew: +That life begets with fair increase +Beyond the flesh, if life be true. + +Just reason based on valiant blood, +The instinct bred afield would match +To pipe thereof a swelling flood, +Were men of Earth made wise in watch. + +Though now the numbers count as drops +An urn might bear, they father Time. +She shapes anew her dusty crops; +Her quick in their own likeness climb. + +Of their own force do they create; +They climb to light, in her their root. +Your brutish cry at muffled fate +She smites with pangs of worse than brute. + +She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears +A Mother whom no cry can melt; +But read her past desires and fears, +The letters on her breast are spelt. + +A slayer, yea, as when she pressed +Her savage to the slaughter-heaps, +To sacrifice she prompts her best: +She reaps them as the sower reaps. + +But read her thought to speed the race, +And stars rush forth of blackest night: +You chill not at a cold embrace +To come, nor dread a dubious might. + +Her double visage, double voice, +In oneness rise to quench the doubt. +This breath, her gift, has only choice +Of service, breathe we in or out. + +Since Pain and Pleasure on each hand +Led our wild steps from slimy rock +To yonder sweeps of gardenland, +We breathe but to be sword or block. + +The sighting brain her good decree +Accepts; obeys those guides, in faith, +By reason hourly fed, that she, +To some the clod, to some the wraith, + +Is more, no mask; a flame, a stream. +Flame, stream, are we, in mid career +From torrent source, delirious dream, +To heaven-reflecting currents clear. + +And why the sons of Strength have been +Her cherished offspring ever; how +The Spirit served by her is seen +Through Law; perusing love will show. + +Love born of knowledge, love that gains +Vitality as Earth it mates, +The meaning of the Pleasures, Pains, +The Life, the Death, illuminates. + +For love we Earth, then serve we all; +Her mystic secret then is ours: +We fall, or view our treasures fall, +Unclouded, as beholds her flowers + +Earth, from a night of frosty wreck, +Enrobed in morning's mounted fire, +When lowly, with a broken neck, +The crocus lays her cheek to mire. + + + +THE APPEASEMENT OF DEMETER + + + +I + +Demeter devastated our good land, +In blackness for her daughter snatched below. +Smoke-pillar or loose hillock was the sand, +Where soil had been to clasp warm seed and throw +The wheat, vine, olive, ripe to Summer's ray. +Now whether night advancing, whether day, +Scarce did the baldness show: +The hand of man was a defeated hand. + +II + +Necessity, the primal goad to growth, +Stood shrunken; Youth and Age appeared as one; +Like Winter Summer; good as labour sloth; +Nor was there answer wherefore beamed the sun, +Or why men drew the breath to carry pain. +High reared the ploughshare, broken lay the wain, +Idly the flax-wheel spun +Unridered: starving lords were wasp and moth. + +III + +Lean grassblades losing green on their bent flags, +Sang chilly to themselves; lone honey-bees +Pursued the flowers that were not with dry bags; +Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, +More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. +Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, +Careless to lure or please. +A nature of gaunt ribs, an earth of crags. + +IV + +No smile Demeter cast: the gloom she saw, +Well draped her direful musing; for in gloom, +In thicker gloom, deep down the cavern-maw, +Her sweet had vanished; liker unto whom, +And whose pale place of habitation mute, +She and all seemed where Seasons, pledged for fruit +Anciently, gaped for bloom: +Where hand of man was as a plucked fowl's claw. + +V + +The wrathful Queen descended on a vale, +That ere the ravished hour for richness heaved. +Iambe, maiden of the merry tale, +Beside her eyed the once red-cheeked, green-leaved. +It looked as if the Deluge had withdrawn. +Pity caught at her throat; her jests were gone. +More than for her who grieved, +She could for this waste home have piped the wail. + +VI + +Iambe, her dear mountain-rivulet +To waken laughter from cold stones, beheld +A riven wheatfield cracking for the wet, +And seed like infant's teeth, that never swelled, +Apeep up flinty ridges, milkless round. +Teeth of the giants marked she where thin ground +Rocky in spikes rebelled +Against the hand here slack as rotted net. + +VII + +The valley people up the ashen scoop +She beckoned, aiming hopelessly to win +Her Mistress in compassion of yon group +So pinched and wizened; with their aged grin, +For lack of warmth to smile on mouths of woe, +White as in chalk outlining little O, +Dumb, from a falling chin; +Young, old, alike half-bent to make the hoop. + +VIII + +Their tongues of birds they wagged, weak-voiced as when +Dark underwaters the recesses choke; +With cluck and upper quiver of a hen +In grasp, past peeking: cry before the croak. +Relentlessly their gold-haired Heaven, their fount +Bountiful of old days, heard them recount +This and that cruel stroke: +Nor eye nor ear had she for piteous men. + +IX + +A figure of black rock by sunbeams crowned +Through stormclouds, where the volumed shades enfold +An earth in awe before the claps resound +And woods and dwellings are as billows rolled, +The barren Nourisher unmelted shed +Death from the looks that wandered with the dead +Out of the realms of gold, +In famine for her lost, her lost unfound. + +X + +Iambe from her Mistress tripped; she raised +The cattle-call above the moan of prayer; +And slowly out of fields their fancy grazed, +Among the droves, defiled a horse and mare: +The wrecks of horse and mare: such ribs as view +Seas that have struck brave ships ashore, while through +Shoots the swift foamspit: bare +They nodded, and Demeter on them gazed. + +XI + +Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, +Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse: +Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood. +Whereat the Goddess, in a dim remorse, +Laid hand on them, and smacked; and her touch pricked. +Neighing within, at either's flank they licked; +Played on a moment's force +At courtship, withering to the crazy nod. + +XII + +The nod was that we gather for consent; +And mournfully amid the group a dame, +Interpreting the thing in nature meant, +Her hands held out like bearers of the flame, +And nodded for the negative sideways. +Keen at her Mistress glanced Iambe: rays +From the Great Mother came: +Her lips were opened wide; the curse was rent. + +XIII + +She laughed: since our first harvesting heard none +Like thunder of the song of heart: her face, +The dreadful darkness, shook to mounted sun, +And peal on peal across the hills held chase. +She laughed herself to water; laughed to fire; +Laughed the torrential laugh of dam and sire +Full of the marrowy race. +Her laughter, Gods! was flesh on skeleton. + +XIV + +The valley people huddled, broke, afraid, +Assured, and taking lightning in the veins, +They puffed, they leaped, linked hands, together swayed, +Unwitting happiness till golden rains +Of tears in laughter, laughter weeping, smote +Knowledge of milky mercy from that throat +Pouring to heal their pains: +And one bold youth set mouth at a shy maid. + +XV + +Iambe clapped to see the kindly lusts +Inspire the valley people, still on seas, +Like poplar-tops relieved from stress of gusts, +With rapture in their wonderment; but these, +Low homage being rendered, ran to plough, +Fed by the laugh, as by the mother cow +Calves at the teats they tease: +Soon drove they through the yielding furrow-crusts. + +XVI + +Uprose the blade in green, the leaf in red, +The tree of water and the tree of wood: +And soon among the branches overhead +Gave beauty juicy issue sweet for food. +O Laughter! beauty plumped and love had birth. +Laughter! O thou reviver of sick Earth! +Good for the spirit, good +For body, thou! to both art wine and bread! + + + +EARTH AND A WEDDED WOMAN + + + +I + +The shepherd, with his eye on hazy South, +Has told of rain upon the fall of day. +But promise is there none for Susan's drouth, +That he will come, who keeps in dry delay. +The freshest of the village three years gone, +She hangs as the white field-rose hangs short-lived; +And she and Earth are one +In withering unrevived. +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! +And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! + +II + +Ah, what is Marriage, says each pouting maid, +When she who wedded with the soldier hides +At home as good as widowed in the shade, +A lighthouse to the girls that would be brides: +Nor dares to give a lad an ogle, nor +To dream of dancing, but must hang and moan, +Her husband in the war, +And she to lie alone. +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! +And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! + +III + +They have not known; they are not in the stream; +Light as the flying seed-ball is their play, +The silly maids! and happy souls they seem; +Yet Grief would not change fates with such as they. +They have not struck the roots which meet the fires +Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth, to know +The strength of her desires, +The sternness of her woe. +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! +And welcome waterspouts, had we sweet rain! + +IV + +Now, shepherd, see thy word, where without shower +A borderless low blotting Westward spreads. +The hall-clock holds the valley on the hour; +Across an inner chamber thunder treads: +The dead leaf trips, the tree-top swings, the floor +Of dust whirls, dropping lumped: near thunder speaks, +And drives the dames to door, +Their kerchiefs flapped at cheeks. +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! +And welcome waterspouts of blessed rain! + +V + +Through night, with bedroom window wide for air, +Lay Susan tranced to hear all heaven descend: +And gurgling voices came of Earth, and rare, +Past flowerful, breathings, deeper than life's end, +From her heaved breast of sacred common mould; +Whereby this lone-laid wife was moved to feel +Unworded things and old +To her pained heart appeal. +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! +And down in deluges of blessed rain! + +VI + +At morn she stood to live for ear and sight, +Love sky or cloud, or rose or grasses drenched. +A lureful devil, that in glow-worm light +Set languor writhing all its folds, she quenched. +But she would muse when neighbours praised her face, +Her services, and staunchness to her mate: +Knowing by some dim trace, +The change might bear a date. +Rain! O the glad refresher of the grain! +Thrice beauteous is our sunshine after rain! + + + +MOTHER TO BABE + + + +I + +Fleck of sky you are, +Dropped through branches dark, +O my little one, mine! +Promise of the star, +Outpour of the lark; +Beam and song divine. + +II + +See this precious gift, +Steeping in new birth +All my being, for sign +Earth to heaven can lift, +Heaven descend on earth, +Both in one be mine! + +III + +Life in light you glass +When you peep and coo, +You, my little one, mine! +Brooklet chirps to grass, +Daisy looks in dew +Up to dear sunshine. + + + +WOODLAND PEACE + + + +Sweet as Eden is the air, +And Eden-sweet the ray. +No Paradise is lost for them +Who foot by branching root and stem, +And lightly with the woodland share +The change of night and day. + +Here all say, +We serve her, even as I: +We brood, we strive to sky, +We gaze upon decay, +We wot of life through death, +How each feeds each we spy; +And is a tangle round, +Are patient; what is dumb +We question not, nor ask +The silent to give sound, +The hidden to unmask, +The distant to draw near. + +And this the woodland saith: +I know not hope or fear; +I take whate'er may come; +I raise my head to aspects fair, +From foul I turn away. + +Sweet as Eden is the air, +And Eden-sweet the ray. + + + +THE QUESTION WHITHER + + + +I + +When we have thrown off this old suit, +So much in need of mending, +To sink among the naked mute, +Is that, think you, our ending? +We follow many, more we lead, +And you who sadly turf us, +Believe not that all living seed +Must flower above the surface. + +II + +Sensation is a gracious gift, +But were it cramped to station, +The prayer to have it cast adrift +Would spout from all sensation. +Enough if we have winked to sun, +Have sped the plough a season; +There is a soul for labour done, +Endureth fixed as reason. + +III + +Then let our trust be firm in Good, +Though we be of the fasting; +Our questions are a mortal brood, +Our work is everlasting. +We children of Beneficence +Are in its being sharers; +And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, +For word with such wayfarers. + + + +OUTER AND INNER + + + +I + +From twig to twig the spider weaves +At noon his webbing fine. +So near to mute the zephyrs flute +That only leaflets dance. +The sun draws out of hazel leaves +A smell of woodland wine. +I wake a swarm to sudden storm +At any step's advance. + +II + +Along my path is bugloss blue, +The star with fruit in moss; +The foxgloves drop from throat to top +A daily lesser bell. +The blackest shadow, nurse of dew, +Has orange skeins across; +And keenly red is one thin thread +That flashing seems to swell. + +III + +My world I note ere fancy comes, +Minutest hushed observe: +What busy bits of motioned wits +Through antlered mosswork strive. +But now so low the stillness hums, +My springs of seeing swerve, +For half a wink to thrill and think +The woods with nymphs alive. + +IV + +I neighbour the invisible +So close that my consent +Is only asked for spirits masked +To leap from trees and flowers. +And this because with them I dwell +In thought, while calmly bent +To read the lines dear Earth designs +Shall speak her life on ours. + +V + +Accept, she says; it is not hard +In woods; but she in towns +Repeats, accept; and have we wept, +And have we quailed with fears, +Or shrunk with horrors, sure reward +We have whom knowledge crowns; +Who see in mould the rose unfold, +The soul through blood and tears. + + + +NATURE AND LIFE + + + +I + +Leave the uproar: at a leap +Thou shalt strike a woodland path, +Enter silence, not of sleep, +Under shadows, not of wrath; +Breath which is the spirit's bath +In the old Beginnings find, +And endow them with a mind, +Seed for seedling, swathe for swathe. +That gives Nature to us, this +Give we her, and so we kiss. + +II + +Fruitful is it so: but hear +How within the shell thou art, +Music sounds; nor other near +Can to such a tremor start. +Of the waves our life is part; +They our running harvests bear: +Back to them for manful air, +Laden with the woodland's heart! +That gives Battle to us, this +Give we it, and good the kiss. + + + +DIRGE IN WOODS + + + +A wind sways the pines, +And below +Not a breath of wild air; +Still as the mosses that glow +On the flooring and over the lines +Of the roots here and there. +The pine-tree drops its dead; +They are quiet, as under the sea. +Overhead, overhead +Rushes life in a race, +As the clouds the clouds chase; +And we go, +And we drop like the fruits of the tree, +Even we, +Even so. + + + +A FAITH ON TRIAL + + + +On the morning of May, +Ere the children had entered my gate +With their wreaths and mechanical lay, +A metal ding-dong of the date! +I mounted our hill, bearing heart +That had little of life save its weight: +The crowned Shadow poising dart +Hung over her: she, my own, +My good companion, mate, +Pulse of me: she who had shown +Fortitude quiet as Earth's +At the shedding of leaves. And around +The sky was in garlands of cloud, +Winning scents from unnumbered new births, +Pointed buds, where the woods were browned +By a mouldered beechen shroud; +Or over our meads of the vale, +Such an answer to sun as he, +Brave in his gold; to a sound, +None sweeter, of woods flapping sail, +With the first full flood of our year, +For their voyage on lustreful sea: +Unto what curtained haven in chief, +Will be writ in the book of the sere. +But surely the crew are we, +Eager or stamped or bowed; +Counted thinner at fall of the leaf. +Grief heard them, and passed like a bier. +Due Summerward, lo, they were set, +In volumes of foliage proud, +On the heave of their favouring tides, +And their song broadened out to the cheer +When a neck of the ramping surf +Rattles thunder a boat overrides. +All smiles ran the highways wet; +The worm drew its links from the turf; +The bird of felicity loud +Spun high, and a South wind blew. +Weak out of sheath downy leaves +Of the beech quivered lucid as dew, +Their radiance asking, who grieves; +For nought of a sorrow they knew: +No space to the dread wrestle vowed, +No chamber in shadow of night. +At times as the steadier breeze +Flutter-huddled their twigs to a crowd, +The beam of them wafted my sight +To league-long sun upon seas: +The golden path we had crossed +Many years, till her birthland swung +Recovered to vision from lost, +A light in her filial glance. +And sweet was her voice with the tongue, +The speechful tongue of her France, +Soon at ripple about us, like rills +Ever busy with little: away +Through her Normandy, down where the mills +Dot at lengths a rivercourse, grey +As its bordering poplars bent +To gusts off the plains above. +Old stone chateau and farms, +Home of her birth and her love! +On the thread of the pasture you trace, +By the river, their milk, for miles, +Spotted once with the English tent, +In days of the tocsin's alarms, +To tower of the tallest of piles, +The country's surveyor breast-high. +Home of her birth and her love! +Home of a diligent race; +Thrifty, deft-handed to ply +Shuttle or needle, and woo +Sun to the roots of the pear +Frogging each mud-walled cot. +The elders had known her in arms. +There plucked we the bluet, her hue +Of the deeper forget-me-not; +Well wedding her ripe-wheat hair. + +I saw, unsighting: her heart +I saw, and the home of her love +There printed, mournfully rent: +Her ebbing adieu, her adieu, +And the stride of the Shadow athwart. +For one of our Autumns there! . . . +Straight as the flight of a dove +We went, swift winging we went. +We trod solid ground, we breathed air, +The heavens were unbroken. Break they, +The word of the world is adieu: +Her word: and the torrents are round, +The jawed wolf-waters of prey. +We stand upon isles, who stand: +A Shadow before us, and back, +A phantom the habited land. +We may cry to the Sunderer, spare +That dearest! he loosens his pack. +Arrows we breathe, not air. +The memories tenderly bound +To us are a drifting crew, +Amid grey-gapped waters for ground. +Alone do we stand, each one, +Till rootless as they we strew +Those deeps of the corse-like stare +At a foreign and stony sun. + +Eyes had I but for the scene +Of my circle, what neighbourly grew. +If haply no finger lay out +To the figures of days that had been, +I gathered my herb, and endured; +My old cloak wrapped me about. +Unfooted was ground-ivy blue, +Whose rustic shrewd odour allured +In Spring's fresh of morning: unseen +Her favourite wood-sorrel bell +As yet, though the leaves' green floor +Awaited their flower, that would tell +Of a red-veined moist yestreen, +With its droop and the hues it wore, +When we two stood overnight +One, in the dark van-glow +On our hill-top, seeing beneath +Our household's twinkle of light +Through spruce-boughs, gem of a wreath. + +Budding, the service-tree, white +Almost as whitebeam, threw, +From the under of leaf upright, +Flecks like a showering snow +On the flame-shaped junipers green, +On the sombre mounds of the yew. +Like silvery tapers bright +By a solemn cathedral screen, +They glistened to closer view. +Turf for a rooks' revel striped +Pleased those devourers astute. +Chorister blackbird and thrush +Together or alternate piped; +A free-hearted harmony large, +With meaning for man, for brute, +When the primitive forces are brimmed. +Like featherings hither and yon +Of aery tree-twigs over marge, +To the comb of the winds, untrimmed, +Their measure is found in the vast. +Grief heard them, and stepped her way on. +She has but a narrow embrace. +Distrustful of hearing she passed. +They piped her young Earth's Bacchic rout; +The race, and the prize of the race; +Earth's lustihead pressing to sprout. + +But sight holds a soberer space. +Colourless dogwood low +Curled up a twisted root, +Nigh yellow-green mosses, to flush +Redder than sun upon rocks, +When the creeper clematis-shoot +Shall climb, cap his branches, and show, +Beside veteran green of the box, +At close of the year's maple blush, +A bleeding greybeard is he, +Now hale in the leafage lush. +Our parasites paint us. Hard by, +A wet yew-trunk flashed the peel +Of our naked forefathers in fight; +With stains of the fray sweating free; +And him came no parasite nigh: +Firm on the hard knotted knee, +He stood in the crown of his dun; +Earth's toughest to stay her wheel: +Under whom the full day is night; +Whom the century-tempests call son, +Having striven to rend him in vain. + +I walked to observe, not to feel, +Not to fancy, if simple of eye +One may be among images reaped +For a shift of the glance, as grain: +Profitless froth you espy +Ashore after billows have leaped. +I fled nothing, nothing pursued: +The changeful visible face +Of our Mother I sought for my food; +Crumbs by the way to sustain. +Her sentence I knew past grace. +Myself I had lost of us twain, +Once bound in mirroring thought. +She had flung me to dust in her wake; +And I, as your convict drags +His chain, by the scourge untaught, +Bore life for a goad, without aim. +I champed the sensations that make +Of a ruffled philosophy rags. +For them was no meaning too blunt, +Nor aspect too cutting of steel. +This Earth of the beautiful breasts, +Shining up in all colours aflame, +To them had visage of hags: +A Mother of aches and jests: +Soulless, heading a hunt +Aimless except for the meal. +Hope, with the star on her front; +Fear, with an eye in the heel; +Our links to a Mother of grace; +They were dead on the nerve, and dead +For the nature divided in three; +Gone out of heart, out of brain, +Out of soul: I had in their place +The calm of an empty room. +We were joined but by that thin thread, +My disciplined habit to see. +And those conjure images, those, +The puppets of loss or gain; +Not he who is bare to his doom; +For whom never semblance plays +To bewitch, overcloud, illume. +The dusty mote-images rose; +Sheer film of the surface awag: +They sank as they rose; their pain +Declaring them mine of old days. + +Now gazed I where, sole upon gloom, +As flower-bush in sun-specked crag, +Up the spine of the double combe +With yew-boughs heavily cloaked, +A young apparition shone: +Known, yet wonderful, white +Surpassingly; doubtfully known, +For it struck as the birth of Light: +Even Day from the dark unyoked. +It waved like a pilgrim flag +O'er processional penitents flown +When of old they broke rounding yon spine: +O the pure wild-cherry in bloom! + +For their Eastward march to the shrine +Of the footsore far-eyed Faith, +Was banner so brave, so fair, +So quick with celestial sign +Of victorious rays over death? +For a conquest of coward despair; - +Division of soul from wits, +And these made rulers;--full sure, +More starlike never did shine +To illumine the sinister field +Where our life's old night-bird flits. +I knew it: with her, my own, +Had hailed it pure of the pure; +Our beacon yearly: but strange +When it strikes to within is the known; +Richer than newness revealed. +There was needed darkness like mine. +Its beauty to vividness blown +Drew the life in me forward, chased, +From aloft on a pinnacle's range, +That hindward spidery line, +The length of the ways I had paced, +A footfarer out of the dawn, +To Youth's wild forest, where sprang, +For the morning of May long gone, +The forest's white virgin; she +Seen yonder; and sheltered me, sang; +She in me, I in her; what songs +The fawn-eared wood-hollows revive +To pour forth their tune-footed throngs; +Inspire to the dreaming of good +Illimitable to come: +She, the white wild cherry, a tree, +Earth-rooted, tangibly wood, +Yet a presence throbbing alive; +Nor she in our language dumb: +A spirit born of a tree; +Because earth-rooted alive: +Huntress of things worth pursuit +Of souls; in our naming, dreams. +And each unto other was lute, +By fits quick as breezy gleams. +My quiver of aims and desires +Had colour that she would have owned; +And if by humaner fires +Hued later, these held her enthroned: +My crescent of Earth; my blood +At the silvery early stir; +Hour of the thrill of the bud +About to burst, and by her +Directed, attuned, englobed: +My Goddess, the chaste, not chill; +Choir over choir white-robed; +White-bosomed fold within fold: +For so could I dream, breast-bare, +In my time of blooming; dream still +Through the maze, the mesh, and the wreck, +Despite, since manhood was bold, +The yoke of the flesh on my neck. +She beckoned, I gazed, unaware +How a shaft of the blossoming tree +Was shot from the yew-wood's core. +I stood to the touch of a key +Turned in a fast-shut door. + +They rounded my garden, content, +The small fry, clutching their fee, +Their fruit of the wreath and the pole; +And, chatter, hop, skip, they were sent, +In a buzz of young company glee, +Their natural music, swift shoal +To the next easy shedders of pence. +Why not? for they had me in tune +With the hungers of my kind. +Do readings of earth draw thence, +Then a concord deeper than cries +Of the Whither whose echo is Whence, +To jar unanswered, shall rise +As a fountain-jet in the mind +Bowed dark o'er the falling and strewn. + +* * * + +Unwitting where it might lead, +How it came, for the anguish to cease, +And the Questions that sow not nor spin, +This wisdom, rough-written, and black, +As of veins that from venom bleed, +I had with the peace within; +Or patience, mortal of peace, +Compressing the surgent strife +In a heart laid open, not mailed, +To the last blank hour of the rack, +When struck the dividing knife: +When the hand that never had failed +In its pressure to mine hung slack. + +But this in myself did I know, +Not needing a studious brow, +Or trust in a governing star, +While my ears held the jangled shout +The children were lifting afar: +That natures at interflow +With all of their past and the now, +Are chords to the Nature without, +Orbs to the greater whole: +First then, nor utterly then +Till our lord of sensations at war, +The rebel, the heart, yields place +To brain, each prompting the soul. +Thus our dear Earth we embrace +For the milk, her strength to men. + +And crave we her medical herb, +We have but to see and hear, +Though pierced by the cruel acerb, +The troops of the memories armed +Hostile to strike at the nest +That nourished and flew them warmed. +Not she gives the tear for the tear. +Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught, +She is moveless. Not of her breast +Are the symbols we conjure when Fear +Takes leaven of Hope. I caught, +With Death in me shrinking from Death, +As cold from cold, for a sign +Of the life beyond ashes: I cast, +Believing the vision divine, +Wings of that dream of my Youth +To the spirit beloved: 'twas unglassed +On her breast, in her depths austere: +A flash through the mist, mere breath, +Breath on a buckler of steel. +For the flesh in revolt at her laws, +Neither song nor smile in ruth, +Nor promise of things to reveal, +Has she, nor a word she saith: +We are asking her wheels to pause. +Well knows she the cry of unfaith. +If we strain to the farther shore, +We are catching at comfort near. +Assurances, symbols, saws, +Revelations in legends, light +To eyes rolling darkness, these +Desired of the flesh in affright, +For the which it will swear to adore, +She yields not for prayers at her knees; +The woolly beast bleating will shear. +These are our sensual dreams; +Of the yearning to touch, to feel +The dark Impalpable sure, +And have the Unveiled appear; +Whereon ever black she beams, +Doth of her terrible deal, +She who dotes over ripeness at play, +Rosiness fondles and feeds, +Guides it with shepherding crook, +To her sports and her pastures alway. +Not she gives the tear for the tear: +Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more; +In one the spur and the curb: +An answer to thoughts or deeds; +To the Legends an alien look; +To the Questions a figure of clay. +Yet we have but to see and hear, +Crave we her medical herb. +For the road to her soul is the Real: +The root of the growth of man: +And the senses must traverse it fresh +With a love that no scourge shall abate, +To reach the lone heights where we scan +In the mind's rarer vision this flesh; +In the charge of the Mother our fate; +Her law as the one common weal. + +We, whom the view benumbs, +We, quivering upward, each hour +Know battle in air and in ground +For the breath that goes as it comes, +For the choice between sweet and sour, +For the smallest grain of our worth: +And he who the reckoning sums +Finds nought in his hand save Earth. +Of Earth are we stripped or crowned. +The fleeting Present we crave, +Barter our best to wed, +In hope of a cushioned bower, +What is it but Future and Past +Like wind and tide at a wave! +Idea of the senses, bred +For the senses to snap and devour: +Thin as the shell of a sound +In delivery, withered in light. +Cry we for permanence fast, +Permanence hangs by the grave; +Sits on the grave green-grassed, +On the roll of the heaved grave-mound. +By Death, as by Life, are we fed: +The two are one spring; our bond +With the numbers; with whom to unite +Here feathers wings for beyond: +Only they can waft us in flight. +For they are Reality's flower. +Of them, and the contact with them, +Issues Earth's dearest daughter, the firm +In footing, the stately of stem; +Unshaken though elements lour; +A warrior heart unquelled; +Mirror of Earth, and guide +To the Holies from sense withheld: +Reason, man's germinant fruit. +She wrestles with our old worm +Self in the narrow and wide: +Relentless quencher of lies, +With laughter she pierces the brute; +And hear we her laughter peal, +'Tis Light in us dancing to scour +The loathed recess of his dens; +Scatter his monstrous bed, +And hound him to harrow and plough. +She is the world's one prize; +Our champion, rightfully head; +The vessel whose piloted prow, +Though Folly froth round, hiss and hoot, +Leaves legible print at the keel. +Nor least is the service she does, +That service to her may cleanse +The well of the Sorrows in us; +For a common delight will drain +The rank individual fens +Of a wound refusing to heal +While the old worm slavers its root. + +I bowed as a leaf in rain; +As a tree when the leaf is shed +To winds in the season at wane: +And when from my soul I said, +May the worm be trampled: smite, +Sacred Reality! power +Filled me to front it aright. +I had come of my faith's ordeal. + +It is not to stand on a tower +And see the flat universe reel; +Our mortal sublimities drop +Like raiment by glisterlings worn, +At a sweep of the scythe for the crop. +Wisdom is won of its fight, +The combat incessant; and dries +To mummywrap perching a height. +It chews the contemplative cud +In peril of isolate scorn, +Unfed of the onward flood. +Nor view we a different morn +If we gaze with the deeper sight, +With the deeper thought forewise: +The world is the same, seen through; +The features of men are the same. +But let their historian new +In the language of nakedness write, +Rejoice we to know not shame, +Not a dread, not a doubt: to have done +With the tortures of thought in the throes, +Our animal tangle, and grasp +Very sap of the vital in this: +That from flesh unto spirit man grows +Even here on the sod under sun: +That she of the wanton's kiss, +Broken through with the bite of an asp, +Is Mother of simple truth, +Relentless quencher of lies; +Eternal in thought; discerned +In thought mid-ferry between +The Life and the Death, which are one, +As our breath in and out, joy or teen. +She gives the rich vision to youth, +If we will, of her prompting wise; +Or men by the lash made lean, +Who in harness the mind subserve, +Their title to read her have earned; +Having mastered sensation--insane +At a stroke of the terrified nerve; +And out of the sensual hive +Grown to the flower of brain; +To know her a thing alive, +Whose aspects mutably swerve, +Whose laws immutably reign. +Our sentencer, clother in mist, +Her morn bends breast to her noon, +Noon to the hour dark-dyed, +If we will, of her promptings wise: +Her light is our own if we list. +The legends that sweep her aside, +Crying loud for an opiate boon, +To comfort the human want, +From the bosom of magical skies, +She smiles on, marking their source: +They read her with infant eyes. +Good ships of morality they, +For our crude developing force; +Granite the thought to stay, +That she is a thing alive +To the living, the falling and strewn. +But the Questions, the broods that haunt +Sensation insurgent, may drive, +The way of the channelling mole, +Head in a ground-vault gaunt +As your telescope's skeleton moon. +Barren comfort to these will she dole; +Dead is her face to their cries. +Intelligence pushing to taste +A lesson from beasts might heed. +They scatter a voice in the waste, +Where any dry swish of a reed +By grey-glassy water replies. + +'They see not above or below; +Farthest are they from my soul,' +Earth whispers: 'they scarce have the thirst, +Except to unriddle a rune; +And I spin none; only show, +Would humanity soar from its worst, +Winged above darkness and dole, +How flesh unto spirit must grow. +Spirit raves not for a goal. +Shapes in man's likeness hewn +Desires not; neither desires +The sleep or the glory: it trusts; +Uses my gifts, yet aspires; +Dreams of a higher than it. +The dream is an atmosphere; +A scale still ascending to knit +The clear to the loftier Clear. +'Tis Reason herself, tiptoe +At the ultimate bound of her wit, +On the verges of Night and Day. +But is it a dream of the lusts, +To my dustiest 'tis decreed; +And them that so shuffle astray +I touch with no key of gold +For the wealth of the secret nook; +Though I dote over ripeness at play, +Rosiness fondle and feed, +Guide it with shepherding crook +To my sports and my pastures alway. +The key will shriek in the lock, +The door will rustily hinge, +Will open on features of mould, +To vanish corrupt at a glimpse, +And mock as the wild echoes mock, +Soulless in mimic, doth Greed +Or the passion for fruitage tinge +That dream, for your parricide imps +To wing through the body of Time, +Yourselves in slaying him slay. +Much are you shots of your prime, +You men of the act and the dream: +And please you to fatten a weed +That perishes, pledged to decay, +'Tis dearth in your season of need, +Down the slopes of the shoreward way; - +Nigh on the misty stream, +Where Ferryman under his hood, +With a call to be ready to pay +The small coin, whitens red blood. +But the young ethereal seed +Shall bring you the bread no buyer +Can have for his craving supreme; +To my quenchless quick shall speed +The soul at her wrestle rude +With devil, with angel more dire; +With the flesh, with the Fates, enringed. +The dream of the blossom of Good +Is your banner of battle unrolled +In its waver and current and curve +(Choir over choir white-winged, +White-bosomed fold within fold): +Hopeful of victory most +When hard is the task to sustain +Assaults of the fearful sense +At a mind in desolate mood +With the Whither, whose echo is Whence; +And humanity's clamour, lost, lost; +And its clasp of the staves that snap; +And evil abroad, as a main +Uproarious, bursting its dyke. +For back do you look, and lo, +Forward the harvest of grain! - +Numbers in council, awake +To love more than things of my lap, +Love me; and to let the types break, +Men be grass, rocks rivers, all flow; +All save the dream sink alike +To the source of my vital in sap: +Their battle, their loss, their ache, +For my pledge of vitality know. +The dream is the thought in the ghost; +The thought sent flying for food; +Eyeless, but sprung of an aim +Supernal of Reason, to find +The great Over-Reason we name +Beneficence: mind seeking Mind. +Dream of the blossom of Good, +In its waver and current and curve, +With the hopes of my offspring enscrolled! +Soon to be seen of a host +The flag of the Master I serve! +And life in them doubled on Life, +As flame upon flame, to behold, +High over Time-tumbled sea, +The bliss of his headship of strife, +Him through handmaiden me.' + + + +CHANGE IN RECURRENCE + + + +I + +I stood at the gate of the cot +Where my darling, with side-glance demure, +Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, +The busy wild things chase and lure. +For these with their ways were her feast; +They had surety no enemy lurked. +Their deftest of tricks to their least +She gathered in watch as she worked. + +II + +When berries were red on her ash, +The blackbird would rifle them rough, +Till the ground underneath looked a gash, +And her rogue grew the round of a chough. +The squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop, +Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush. +She knew any tit of the troop +All as well as the snail-tapping thrush. + +III + +I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame, +With the face, the dear life for me, fled. +No window a lute to my name, +No watcher there plying the thread. +But the blackbird hung peeking at will; +The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; +The thrush had a snail in his bill, +And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone. + + + +HYMN TO COLOUR + + + +I + +With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared, +And made them on each side a shadow seem. +Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared, +Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream +To fall on daylight; and night puts away +Her darker veil for grey. + +II + +In that grey veil green grassblades brushed we by; +We came where woods breathed sharp, and overhead +Rocks raised clear horns on a transforming sky: +Around, save for those shapes, with him who led +And linked them, desert varied by no sign +Of other life than mine. + +III + +By this the dark-winged planet, raying wide, +From the mild pearl-glow to the rose upborne, +Drew in his fires, less faint than far descried, +Pure-fronted on a stronger wave of morn: +And those two shapes the splendour interweaved, +Hung web-like, sank and heaved. + +IV + +Love took my hand when hidden stood the sun +To fling his robe on shoulder-heights of snow. +Then said: There lie they, Life and Death in one. +Whichever is, the other is: but know, +It is thy craving self that thou dost see, +Not in them seeing me. + +V + +Shall man into the mystery of breath, +From his quick beating pulse a pathway spy? +Or learn the secret of the shrouded death, +By lifting up the lid of a white eye? +Cleave thou thy way with fathering desire +Of fire to reach to fire. + +VI + +Look now where Colour, the soul's bridegroom, makes +The house of heaven splendid for the bride. +To him as leaps a fountain she awakes, +In knotting arms, yet boundless: him beside, +She holds the flower to heaven, and by his power +Brings heaven to the flower. + +VII + +He gives her homeliness in desert air, +And sovereignty in spaciousness; he leads +Through widening chambers of surprise to where +Throbs rapture near an end that aye recedes, +Because his touch is infinite and lends +A yonder to all ends. + +VIII + +Death begs of Life his blush; Life Death persuades +To keep long day with his caresses graced. +He is the heart of light, the wing of shades, +The crown of beauty: never soul embraced +Of him can harbour unfaith; soul of him +Possessed walks never dim. + +IX + +Love eyed his rosy memories: he sang: +O bloom of dawn, breathed up from the gold sheaf +Held springing beneath Orient! that dost hang +The space of dewdrops running over leaf; +Thy fleetingness is bigger in the ghost +Than Time with all his host! + +X + +Of thee to say behold, has said adieu: +But love remembers how the sky was green, +And how the grasses glimmered lightest blue; +How saint-like grey took fervour: how the screen +Of cloud grew violet; how thy moment came +Between a blush and flame. + +XI + +Love saw the emissary eglantine +Break wave round thy white feet above the gloom; +Lay finger on thy star; thy raiment line +With cherub wing and limb; wed thy soft bloom, +Gold-quivering like sunrays in thistle-down, +Earth under rolling brown. + +XII + +They do not look through love to look on thee, +Grave heavenliness! nor know they joy of sight, +Who deem the wave of rapt desire must be +Its wrecking and last issue of delight. +Dead seasons quicken in one petal-spot +Of colour unforgot. + +XIII + +This way have men come out of brutishness +To spell the letters of the sky and read +A reflex upon earth else meaningless. +With thee, O fount of the Untimed! to lead, +Drink they of thee, thee eyeing, they unaged +Shall on through brave wars waged. + +XIV + +More gardens will they win than any lost; +The vile plucked out of them, the unlovely slain. +Not forfeiting the beast with which they are crossed, +To stature of the Gods will they attain. +They shall uplift their Earth to meet her Lord, +Themselves the attuning chord! + +XV + +The song had ceased; my vision with the song. +Then of those Shadows, which one made descent +Beside me I knew not: but Life ere long +Came on me in the public ways and bent +Eyes deeper than of old: Death met I too, +And saw the dawn glow through. + + + +MEDITATION UNDER STARS + + + +What links are ours with orbs that are +So resolutely far: +The solitary asks, and they +Give radiance as from a shield: +Still at the death of day, +The seen, the unrevealed. +Implacable they shine +To us who would of Life obtain +An answer for the life we strain +To nourish with one sign. +Nor can imagination throw +The penetrative shaft: we pass +The breath of thought, who would divine +If haply they may grow +As Earth; have our desire to know; +If life comes there to grain from grass, +And flowers like ours of toil and pain; +Has passion to beat bar, +Win space from cleaving brain; +The mystic link attain, +Whereby star holds on star. + +Those visible immortals beam +Allurement to the dream: +Ireful at human hungers brook +No question in the look. +For ever virgin to our sense, +Remote they wane to gaze intense: +Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite +The beating heart behind the ball of sight: +Till we conceive their heavens hoar, +Those lights they raise but sparkles frore, +And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey +To that frigidity of brainless ray. + +Yet space is given for breath of thought +Beyond our bounds when musing: more +When to that musing love is brought, +And love is asked of love's wherefore. +'Tis Earth's, her gift; else have we nought: +Her gift, her secret, here our tie. +And not with her and yonder sky? +Bethink you: were it Earth alone +Breeds love, would not her region be +The sole delight and throne +Of generous Deity? + +To deeper than this ball of sight +Appeal the lustrous people of the night. +Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails, +It is our ravenous that quails, +Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught. +The spirit leaps alight, +Doubts not in them is he, +The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right: +Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, +To feel it large of the great life they hold: +In them to come, or vaster intervolved, +The issues known in us, our unsolved solved: +That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree, +Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped. +So may we read and little find them cold: +Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide +Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped; +Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified +By day to penetrate black midnight; see, +Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we, +The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, +We who reflect those rays, though low our place, +To them are lastingly allied. + +So may we read, and little find them cold: +Not frosty lamps illumining dead space, +Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers. +The fire is in them whereof we are born; +The music of their motion may be ours. +Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced +Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. +Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold +The love that lends her grace +Among the starry fold. +Then at new flood of customary morn, +Look at her through her showers, +Her mists, her streaming gold, +A wonder edges the familiar face: +She wears no more that robe of printed hours; +Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers. + + + +WOODMAN AND ECHO + + + +Close Echo hears the woodman's axe, +To double on it, as in glee, +With clap of hands, and little lacks +Of meaning in her repartee. +For all shall fall, +As one has done, +The tree of me, +Of thee the tree; +And unto all +The fate we wait +Reveals the wheels +Whereon we run: +We tower to flower, +We spread the shade, +We drop for crop, +At length are laid; +Are rolled in mould, +From chop and lop: +And are we thick in woodland tracks, +Or tempting of our stature we, +The end is one, we do but wax +For service over land and sea. +So, strike! the like +Shall thus of us, +My brawny woodman, claim the tax. +Nor foe thy blow, +Though wood be good, +And shriekingly the timber cracks: +The ground we crowned +Shall speed the seed +Of younger into swelling sacks. + +For use he hews, +To make awake +The spirit of what stuff we be: +Our earth of mirth +And tears he clears +For braver, let our minds agree; +And then will men +Within them win +An Echo clapping harmony. + + + +THE WISDOM OF ELD + + + +We spend our lives in learning pilotage, +And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! +Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank +Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. +It is the sentence which completes that stage; +A testament of wisdom reading blank. +The seniors of the race, on their last plank, +Pass mumbling it as nature's final page. +These, bent by such experience, are the band +Who captain young enthusiasts to maintain +What things we view, and Earth's decree withstand, +Lest dreaded Change, long dammed by dull decay, +Should bring the world a vessel steered by brain, +And ancients musical at close of day. + + + +EARTH'S PREFERENCE + + + +Earth loves her young: a preference manifest: +She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds; +Their beauty with her choicest interthreads, +And makes her revel of their merry zest; +As in our East much were it in our West, +If men had risen to do the work of heads. +Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads +The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed. +How wrought they in their zenith? 'Tis not writ; +Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read: +Have they but held her laws and nature dear, +They mouth no sentence of inverted wit. +More prizes she her beasts than this high breed +Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear. + + + +SOCIETY + + + +Historic be the survey of our kind, +And how their brave Society took shape. +Lion, wolf, vulture, fox, jackal and ape, +The strong of limb, the keen of nose, we find, +Who, with some jars in harmony, combined, +Their primal instincts taming, to escape +The brawl indecent, and hot passions drape. +Convenience pricked conscience, that the mind. +Thus entered they the field of milder beasts, +Which in some sort of civil order graze, +And do half-homage to the God of Laws. +But are they still for their old ravenous feasts, +Earth gives the edifice they build no base: +They spring another flood of fangs and claws. + + + +WINTER HEAVENS + + + +Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive +Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. +It is a night to make the heavens our home +More than the nest whereto apace we strive. +Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, +In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. +They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: +The living throb in me, the dead revive. +Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath, +Life glistens on the river of the death. +It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, +Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs +Of radiance, the radiance enrings: +And this is the soul's haven to have felt. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg eText Poems by George Meredith - Volume 2 + diff --git a/old/pmgm210.zip b/old/pmgm210.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7faf406 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pmgm210.zip |
