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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. 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