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diff --git a/1383-0.txt b/1383-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cc8c445 --- /dev/null +++ b/1383-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9041 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poems, Volume 3 [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 3 [of 3] + + +Author: George Meredith + + + +Release Date: January 10, 2015 [eBook #1383] +[This file was first posted on May 12, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 3 [OF 3]*** + + +Transcribed from the 1912 Times Book Club “Surrey” edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + [Picture: The South Wester] + + + + + + POEMS + VOL. III + + + 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 +A STAVE OF ROVING TIM, 1 + + The wind is East, the wind is West, +JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE, 5 + + A revelation came on Jane, +THE RIDDLE FOR MEN, 14 + + This Riddle rede or die, +THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY, 15 + + One fairest of the ripe unwedded left +‘LOVE IS WINGED FOR TWO,’ 30 +‘ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE,’ 30 +‘JOY IS FLEET,’ 31 +THE LESSON OF GRIEF, 31 + + Not ere the bitter herb we taste, +WIND ON THE LYRE, 32 + + That was the chirp of Ariel +THE YOUTHFUL QUEST, 33 + + His Lady queen of woods to meet, +THE EMPTY PURSE, 34 + + Thou, run to the dry on this wayside bank, +TO THE COMIC SPIRIT, 56 + + Sword of Common Sense!— +YOUTH IN MEMORY, 68 + + Days, when the ball of our vision +PENETRATION AND TRUST, 75 + + Sleek as a lizard at round of a stone, +NIGHT OF FROST IN MAY, 76 + + With splendour of a silver day, +THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE, 79 + + A Satyr spied a Goddess in her bath, +BREATH OF THE BRIAR, 81 + + O briar-scents, on yon wet wing +EMPEDOCLES, 82 + + He leaped. With none to hinder, +ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM, 83 + + The day that is the night of days, +TARDY SPRING, 85 + + Now the North wind ceases, +THE LABOURER, 87 + + For a Heracles in his fighting ire there is never the + glory that follows +FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE, 89 + + Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain, +THE WARNING, 99 + + We have seen mighty men ballooning high, +OUTSIDE THE CROWD, 99 + + To sit on History in an easy chair, +TRAFALGAR DAY, 100 + + He leads: we hear our Seaman’s call + Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History +THE REVOLUTION, 105 + + Not yet had History’s Aetna smoked the skies, +NAPOLÉON, 116 + + Cannon his name, +FRANCE, 140 + + We look for her that sunlike stood +ALSACE-LORRAINE, 150 + + The sister Hours in circles linked, +THE CAGEING OF ARES, 170 + + How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed +THE NIGHT-WALK, 175 + + Awakes for me and leaps from shroud +AT THE CLOSE, 178 + + To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, +A GARDEN IDYL, 179 + + With sagest craft Arachne worked + A Reading of Life +THE VITAL CHOICE, 185 + + Or shall we run with Artemis +WITH THE HUNTRESS, 186 + + Through the water-eye of night, +WITH THE PERSUADER, 189 + + Who murmurs, hither, hither: who +THE TEST OF MANHOOD, 200 + + Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks, +THE HUELESS LOVE, 208 + + Unto that love must we through fire attain, +UNION IN DISSEVERANCE, 209 + + Sunset worn to its last vermilion he; +SONG IN THE SONGLESS, 210 + + They have no song, the sedges dry, +THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH, 210 + + If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know +THE MAIN REGRET, 211 + + Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of + omission +ALTERNATION, 211 + + Between the fountain and the rill +FOREST HISTORY, 212 + + Beneath the vans of doom did men pass in. + Fragments of the Iliad in English Hexameter Verse +THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES, 221 + + ‘Heigh me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how + can one, + + ‘Bibber besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a + deer, thou! +MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS, 225 + + Like as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, +AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT, 227 + + These, then, he left, and away where ranks were now + clashing the thickest, +PARIS AND DIOMEDES, 228 + + So he, with a clear shout of laughter, +HYPNOS ON IDA, 230 + + They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild + beasts, +CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS, 231 + + Not the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon + shingle, +THE HORSES OF ACHILLES, 232 + + So now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the + war-ground, +THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE, 234 + + A hundred mares, all white! their manes +‘ATKINS’, 236 + + Yonder’s the man with his life in his hand, +THE VOYAGE OF THE ‘OPHIR’, 237 + + Men of our race, we send you one +THE CRISIS, 239 + + Spirit of Russia, now has come +OCTOBER 21, 1905, 241 + + The hundred years have passed, and he +THE CENTENARY OF GARIBALDI, 243 + + We who have seen Italia in the throes, +THE WILD ROSE, 245 + + High climbs June’s wild rose, +THE CALL, 247 + + Under what spell are we debased +ON COMO, 250 + + A rainless darkness drew o’er the lake +MILTON, 251 + + What splendour of imperial station man, +IRELAND, 253 + + Fire in her ashes Ireland feels +THE YEARS HAD WORN THEIR SEASONS’ BELT, 255 + + The years had worn their seasons’ belt, +FRAGMENTS, 257 + + Open horizons round, + + A wilding little stubble flower + + From labours through the night, outworn, + + This love of nature, that allures to take +IL Y A CENT ANS, 259 + + That march of the funereal Past behold; +YOUTH IN AGE, 261 + + Once I was part of the music I heard + Epitaphs +TO A FRIEND LOST, 265 + + When I remember, friend, whom lost I call, +M. M., 265 + + Who call her Mother and who calls her Wife +THE LADY C. M., 266 + + To them that knew her, there is vital flame +ON THE TOMBSTONE OF JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON, 266 + + Thou our beloved and light of Earth hast crossed +GORDON OF KHARTOUM, 266 + + Of men he would have raised to light he fell: +J. C. M., 267 + + A fountain of our sweetest, quick to spring +THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME, 267 + + With Alfred and St. Louis he doth win +ISLET THE DACHS, 267 + + Our Islet out of Helgoland, dismissed +ON HEARING THE NEWS FROM VENICE, 268 + + Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak, +HAWARDEN, 269 + + When comes the lighted day for men to read +AT THE FUNERAL, 270 + + Her sacred body bear: the tenement +ANGELA BURDETT-COUTTS, 270 + + Long with us, now she leaves us; she has rest +THE YEAR’S SHEDDINGS, 270 + + The varied colours are a fitful heap: + + + + +A STAVE OF ROVING TIM +(ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN FRIENDLY TRAMPS.) + + +I + + + THE wind is East, the wind is West, + Blows in and out of haven; + The wind that blows is the wind that’s best, + And croak, my jolly raven! + If here awhile we jigged and laughed, + The like we will do yonder; + For he’s the man who masters a craft, + And light as a lord can wander. + So, foot the measure, Roving Tim, + And croak, my jolly raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +II + + + You live in rows of snug abodes, + With gold, maybe, for counting; + And mine’s the beck of the rainy roads + Against the sun a-mounting. + I take the day as it behaves, + Nor shiver when ’tis airy; + But comes a breeze, all you are on waves, + Sick chickens o’ Mother Carey! + So, now for next, cries Roving Tim, + And croak, my jolly raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +III + + + Sweet lass, you screw a lovely leer, + To make a man consider. + If you were up with the auctioneer, + I’d be a handsome bidder. + But wedlock clips the rover’s wing; + She tricks him fly to spider; + And when we get to fights in the Ring, + It’s trumps when you play outsider. + So, wrench and split, cries Roving Tim, + And croak, my jolly raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +IV + + + Along my winding way I know + A shady dell that’s winking; + The very corner for Self and Co + To do a world of thinking. + And shall I this? and shall I that? + Till Nature answers, ne’ther! + Strike match and light your pipe in your hat, + Rejoicing in sound shoe-leather! + So lead along, cries Roving Tim, + And croak, my jolly raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +V + + + A cunning hand ’ll hand you bread, + With freedom for your capers. + I’m not so sure of a cunning head; + It steers to pits or vapours. + But as for Life, we’ll bear in sight + The lesson Nature teaches; + Regard it in a sailoring light, + And treat it like thirsty leeches. + So, fly your jib, cries Roving Tim, + And top your boom, old raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +VI + + + She’ll take, to please her dame and dad, + The shopman nicely shaven. + She’ll learn to think o’ the marching lad + When perchers show they’re craven. + You say the shopman piles a heap, + While I perhaps am fasting; + And bless your wits, it haunts him in sleep, + His tin-kettle chance of lasting! + So hail the road, cries Roving Tim, + And hail the rain, old raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +VII + + + He’s half a wife, yon pecker bill; + A book and likewise preacher. + With any soul, in a game of skill, + He’ll prove your over-reacher. + The reason is, his brains are bent + On doing things right single. + You’d wish for them when pitching your tent + At night in a whirly dingle! + So, off we go, cries Roving Tim, + And on we go, old raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + +VIII + + + Lord, no, man’s lot is not for bliss; + To call it woe is blindness: + It’ll here a kick, and it’s there a kiss, + And here and there a kindness. + He starts a hare and calls her joy; + He runs her down to sorrow: + The dogs within him bother the boy, + But ’tis a new day to-morrow. + So, I at helm, cries Roving Tim, + And you at bow, old raven! + The wind according to its whim + Is in and out of haven. + + + + +JUMP-TO-GLORY JANE + + +I + + + A REVELATION came on Jane, + The widow of a labouring swain: + And first her body trembled sharp, + Then all the woman was a harp + With winds along the strings; she heard, + Though there was neither tone nor word. + + + +II + + + For past our hearing was the air, + Beyond our speaking what it bare, + And she within herself had sight + Of heaven at work to cleanse outright, + To make of her a mansion fit + For angel hosts inside to sit. + + + +III + + + They entered, and forthwith entranced, + Her body braced, her members danced; + Surprisingly the woman leapt; + And countenance composed she kept: + As gossip neighbours in the lane + Declared, who saw and pitied Jane. + + + +IV + + + These knew she had been reading books, + The which was witnessed by her looks + Of late: she had a mania + For mad folk in America, + And said for sure they led the way, + But meat and beer were meant to stay. + + + +V + + + That she had visited a fair, + Had seen a gauzy lady there, + Alive with tricks on legs alone, + As good as wings, was also known: + And longwhiles in a sullen mood, + Before her jumping, Jane would brood. + + + +VI + + + A good knee’s height, they say, she sprang; + Her arms and feet like those who hang: + As if afire the body sped, + And neither pair contributed. + She jumped in silence: she was thought + A corpse to resurrection caught. + + + +VII + + + The villagers were mostly dazed; + They jeered, they wondered, and they praised. + ’Twas guessed by some she was inspired, + And some would have it she had hired + An engine in her petticoats, + To turn their wits and win their votes. + + + +VIII + + + Her first was Winny Earnes, a kind + Of woman not to dance inclined; + But she went up, entirely won, + Ere Jump-to-glory Jane had done; + And once a vixen wild for speech, + She found the better way to preach. + + + +IX + + + No long time after, Jane was seen + Directing jumps at Daddy Green; + And that old man, to watch her fly, + Had eyebrows made of arches high; + Till homeward he likewise did hop, + Oft calling on himself to stop! + + + +X + + + It was a scene when man and maid, + Abandoning all other trade, + And careless of the call to meals, + Went jumping at the woman’s heels. + By dozens they were counted soon, + Without a sound to tell their tune. + + + +XI + + + Along the roads they came, and crossed + The fields, and o’er the hills were lost, + And in the evening reappeared; + Then short like hobbled horses reared, + And down upon the grass they plumped: + Alone their Jane to glory jumped. + + + +XII + + + At morn they rose, to see her spring + All going as an engine thing; + And lighter than the gossamer + She led the bobbers following her, + Past old acquaintances, and where + They made the stranger stupid stare. + + + +XIII + + + When turnips were a filling crop, + In scorn they jumped a butcher’s shop: + Or, spite of threats to flog and souse, + They jumped for shame a public-house: + And much their legs were seized with rage + If passing by the vicarage. + + + +XIV + + + The tightness of a hempen rope + Their bodies got; but laundry soap + Not handsomer can rub the skin + For token of the washed within. + Occasionally coughers cast + A leg aloft and coughed their last. + + + +XV + + + The weaker maids and some old men, + Requiring rafters for the pen + On rainy nights, were those who fell. + The rest were quite a miracle, + Refreshed as you may search all round + On Club-feast days and cry, Not found! + + + +XVI + + + For these poor innocents, that slept + Against the sky, soft women wept: + For never did they any theft; + ’Twas known when they their camping left, + And jumped the cold out of their rags; + In spirit rich as money-bags. + + + +XVII + + + They jumped the question, jumped reply; + And whether to insist, deny, + Reprove, persuade, they jumped in ranks + Or singly, straight the arms to flanks, + And straight the legs, with just a knee + For bending in a mild degree. + + + +XVIII + + + The villagers might call them mad; + An endless holiday they had, + Of pleasure in a serious work: + They taught by leaps where perils lurk, + And with the lambkins practised sports + For ’scaping Satan’s pounds and quarts. + + + +XIX + + + It really seemed on certain days, + When they bobbed up their Lord to praise, + And bobbing up they caught the glance + Of light, our secret is to dance, + And hold the tongue from hindering peace; + To dance out preacher and police. + + + +XX + + + Those flies of boys disturbed them sore + On Sundays and when daylight wore: + With withies cut from hedge or copse, + They treated them as whipping-tops, + And flung big stones with cruel aim; + Yet all the flock jumped on the same. + + + +XXI + + + For what could persecution do + To worry such a blessed crew, + On whom it was as wind to fire, + Which set them always jumping higher? + The parson and the lawyer tried, + By meek persistency defied. + + + +XXII + + + But if they bore, they could pursue + As well, and this the Bishop too; + When inner warnings proved him plain + The chase for Jump-to-glory Jane. + She knew it by his being sent + To bless the feasting in the tent. + + + +XXIII + + + Not less than fifty years on end, + The Squire had been the Bishop’s friend: + And his poor tenants, harmless ones, + With souls to save! fed not on buns, + But angry meats: she took her place + Outside to show the way to grace. + + + +XXIV + + + In apron suit the Bishop stood; + The crowding people kindly viewed. + A gaunt grey woman he saw rise + On air, with most beseeching eyes: + And evident as light in dark + It was, she set to him for mark. + + + +XXV + + + Her highest leap had come: with ease + She jumped to reach the Bishop’s knees: + Compressing tight her arms and lips, + She sought to jump the Bishop’s hips: + Her aim flew at his apron-band, + That he might see and understand. + + + +XXVI + + + The mild inquiry of his gaze + Was altered to a peaked amaze, + At sight of thirty in ascent, + To gain his notice clearly bent: + And greatly Jane at heart was vexed + By his ploughed look of mind perplexed. + + + +XXVII + + + In jumps that said, Beware the pit! + More eloquent than speaking it— + That said, Avoid the boiled, the roast; + The heated nose on face of ghost, + Which comes of drinking: up and o’er + The flesh with me! did Jane implore. + + + +XXVIII + + + She jumped him high as huntsmen go + Across the gate; she jumped him low, + To coax him to begin and feel + His infant steps returning, peel + His mortal pride, exposing fruit, + And off with hat and apron suit. + + + +XXIX + + + We need much patience, well she knew, + And out and out, and through and through, + When we would gentlefolk address, + However we may seek to bless: + At times they hide them like the beasts + From sacred beams; and mostly priests. + + + +XXX + + + He gave no sign of making bare, + Nor she of faintness or despair. + Inflamed with hope that she might win, + If she but coaxed him to begin, + She used all arts for making fain; + The mother with her babe was Jane. + + + +XXXI + + + Now stamped the Squire, and knowing not + Her business, waved her from the spot. + Encircled by the men of might, + The head of Jane, like flickering light, + As in a charger, they beheld + Ere she was from the park expelled. + + + +XXXII + + + Her grief, in jumps of earthly weight, + Did Jane around communicate: + For that the moment when began + The holy but mistaken man, + In view of light, to take his lift, + They cut him from her charm adrift! + + + +XXXIII + + + And he was lost: a banished face + For ever from the ways of grace, + Unless pinched hard by dreams in fright. + They saw the Bishop’s wavering sprite + Within her look, at come and go, + Long after he had caused her woe. + + + +XXXIV + + + Her greying eyes (until she sank + At Fredsham on the wayside bank, + Like cinder heaps that whitened lie + From coals that shot the flame to sky) + Had glassy vacancies, which yearned + For one in memory discerned. + + + +XXXV + + + May those who ply the tongue that cheats, + And those who rush to beer and meats, + And those whose mean ambition aims + At palaces and titled names, + Depart in such a cheerful strain + As did our Jump-to-glory Jane! + + + +XXXVI + + + Her end was beautiful: one sigh. + She jumped a foot when it was nigh. + A lily in a linen clout + She looked when they had laid her out. + It is a lily-light she bears + For England up the ladder-stairs. + + + + +THE RIDDLE FOR MEN + + +I + + + THIS Riddle rede or die, + Says History since our Flood, + To warn her sons of power:— + It can be truth, it can be lie; + Be parasite to twist awry; + The drouthy vampire for your blood; + The fountain of the silver flower; + A brand, a lure, a web, a crest; + Supple of wax or tempered steel; + The spur to honour, snake in nest: + ’Tis as you will with it to deal; + To wear upon the breast, + Or trample under heel. + + + +II + + + And rede you not aright, + Says Nature, still in red + Shall History’s tale be writ! + For solely thus you lead to light + The trailing chapters she must write, + And pass my fiery test of dead + Or living through the furnace-pit: + Dislinked from who the softer hold + In grip of brute, and brute remain: + Of whom the woeful tale is told, + How for one short Sultanic reign, + Their bodies lapse to mould, + Their souls behowl the plain. + + + + +THE SAGE ENAMOURED AND THE HONEST LADY + + +I + + + ONE fairest of the ripe unwedded left + Her shadow on the Sage’s path; he found, + By common signs, that she had done a theft. + He could have made the sovereign heights resound + With questions of the wherefore of her state: + He on far other but an hour before + Intent. And was it man, or was it mate, + That she disdained? or was there haply more? + + About her mouth a placid humour slipped + The dimple, as you see smooth lakes at eve + Spread melting rings where late a swallow dipped. + The surface was attentive to receive, + The secret underneath enfolded fast. + She had the step of the unconquered, brave, + Not arrogant; and if the vessel’s mast + Waved liberty, no challenge did it wave. + Her eyes were the sweet world desired of souls, + With something of a wavering line unspelt. + They hold the look whose tenderness condoles + For what the sister in the look has dealt + Of fatal beyond healing; and her tones + A woman’s honeyed amorous outvied, + As when in a dropped viol the wood-throb moans + Among the sobbing strings, that plain and chide + Like infants for themselves, less deep to thrill + Than those rich mother-notes for them breathed round. + Those voices are not magic of the will + To strike love’s wound, but of love’s wound give sound, + Conveying it; the yearnings, pains and dreams. + They waft to the moist tropics after storm, + When out of passion spent thick incense steams, + And jewel-belted clouds the wreck transform. + + Was never hand on brush or lyre to paint + Her gracious manners, where the nuptial ring + Of melody clasped motion in restraint: + The reed-blade with the breeze thereof may sing. + With such endowments armed was she and decked + To make her spoken thoughts eclipse her kind; + Surpassing many a giant intellect, + The marvel of that cradled infant mind. + It clenched the tiny fist, it curled the toe; + Cherubic laughed, enticed, dispensed, absorbed; + And promised in fair feminine to grow + A Sage’s match and mate, more heavenly orbed. + + + +II + + + Across his path the spouseless Lady cast + Her shadow, and the man that thing became. + His youth uprising called his age the Past. + This was the strong grey head of laurelled name, + And in his bosom an inverted Sage + Mistook for light of morn the light which sank. + But who while veins run blood shall know the page + Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank? + Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud, + Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in + To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed, + Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin + Quick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphs + Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent; + They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs + For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent! + Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth, + The legends of her mission to beguile? + + Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youth + He bore at times, and tempted the sly smile; + And not on her soft lips was it descried. + She stepped her way benevolently grave: + Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride, + By tossing victim to the courtier knave, + Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign. + Rather ’twas humbleness in being pursued, + As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine. + Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed? + All wisdom’s armoury this man could wield; + And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased + Traverse her woman’s curtain and poor shield, + For new example of a world diseased; + Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare; + A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast; + Yet she most surely to this man stood fair: + He worshipped like the young enthusiast, + Named simpleton or poet. Did he read + Right through, and with the voice she held reserved + Amid her vacant ruins jointly plead? + + Compassion for the man thus noble nerved + The pity for herself she felt in him, + To wreak a deed of sacrifice, and save; + At least, be worthy. That our soul may swim, + We sink our heart down bubbling under wave. + It bubbles till it drops among the wrecks. + But, ah! confession of a woman’s breast: + She eminent, she honoured of her sex! + Truth speaks, and takes the spots of the confessed, + To veil them. None of women, save their vile, + Plays traitor to an army in the field. + The cries most vindicating most defile. + How shall a cause to Nature be appealed, + When, under pressure of their common foe, + Her sisters shun the Mother and disown, + On pain of his intolerable crow + Above the fiction, built for him, o’erthrown? + Irrational he is, irrational + Must they be, though not Reason’s light shall wane + In them with ever Nature at close call, + Behind the fiction torturing to sustain; + Who hear her in the milk, and sometimes make + A tongueless answer, shivered on a sigh: + Whereat men dread their lofty structure’s quake + Once more, and in their hosts for tocsin ply + The crazy roar of peril, leonine + For injured majesty. That sigh of dames + Is rare and soon suppressed. Not they combine + To shake the structure sheltering them, which tames + Their lustier if not wilder: fixed are they, + In elegancy scarce denoting ease; + And do they breathe, it is not to betray + The martyr in the caryatides. + Yet here and there along the graceful row + Is one who fetches breath from deeps, who deems, + Moved by a desperate craving, their old foe + May yield a trustier friend than woman seems, + And aid to bear the sculptured floral weight + Massed upon heads not utterly of stone: + May stamp endurance by expounding fate. + She turned to him, and, This you seek is gone; + Look in, she said, as pants the furnace, brief, + Frost-white. She gave his hearing sight to view + The silent chamber of a brown curled leaf: + Thing that had throbbed ere shot black lightning through. + No further sign of heart could he discern: + The picture of her speech was winter sky; + A headless figure folding a cleft urn, + Where tears once at the overflow were dry. + + + +III + + + So spake she her first utterance on the rack. + It softened torment, in the funeral hues + Round wan Romance at ebb, but drove her back + To listen to herself, herself accuse + Harshly as Love’s imperial cause allowed. + She meant to grovel, and her lover praised + So high o’er the condemnatory crowd, + That she perforce a fellow phoenix blazed. + + The picture was of hand fast joined to hand, + Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged + Under the threatened flash of a bright brand + At arm’s length up, for severing action edged. + Why, then Love’s Court of Honour contemplate; + And two drowned shorecasts, who, for the life esteemed + Above their lost, invoke an advocate + In Passion’s purity, thereby redeemed. + + Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne, + The woman stricken by an arrow falls. + His advocate she can be, not her own, + If, Traitress to thy sex! one sister calls. + Have we such scenes of drapery’s mournfulness + On Beauty’s revelations, witched we plant, + Over the fair shape humbled to confess, + An angel’s buckler, with loud choiric chant. + + + +IV + + + No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard, + The lady’s hand in her physician’s knew. + She had not hoped for them as her award, + When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew + Her charge of counter-motives, none impure: + But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said, + Her free confession was to work his cure, + Show proofs for why she could not love or wed. + Were they not shown? His muteness shook in thrall + Her body on the verge of that black pit + Sheer from the treacherous confessional, + Demanding further, while perusing it. + + Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed. + She sank; she snatched at colours; they were peel + Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed. + For the dark downward then her soul did reel. + A press of hideous impulse urged to speak: + A novel dread of man enchained her dumb. + She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek, + Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum: + Welcome to women, when, between man’s laws + And Nature’s thirsts, they, soul from body torn, + Give suck at breast to a celestial cause, + Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn. + Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content, + To think the cure so manifest, so frail + Her charm remaining. Was the curtain’s rent + Too wide? he but a man of that herd male? + She saw him as that herd of the forked head + Butting the woman harrowed on her knees, + Clothed only in life’s last devouring red. + Confession at her fearful instant sees + Judicial Silence write the devil fact + In letters of the skeleton: at once, + Swayed on the supplication of her act, + The rabble reading, roaring to denounce, + She joins. No longer colouring, with skips + At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears + Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips + To do the scaffold’s office at his ears. + + Into the bitter judgement of that herd + On women, she, deeming it present, fell. + Her frenzy of abasement hugged the word + They stone with, and so pile their citadel + To launch at outcasts the foul levin bolt. + As had he flung it, in her breast it burned. + Face and reflect it did her hot revolt + From hardness, to the writhing rebel turned; + Because the golden buckler was withheld, + She to herself applies the powder-spark, + For joy of one wild demon burst ere quelled, + Perishing to astound the tyrant Dark. + + She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain, + It rang through air to sky, and rocked a world + That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane; + Most women! see! by the man’s view dustward hurled, + Impenitent, submissive, torn in two. + They sink upon their nature, the unnamed, + And sops of nourishment may get some few, + In place of understanding, scourged and shamed. + + Barely have seasoned women understood + The great Irrational, who thunders power, + Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood, + And courts her in the covert’s dewy hour; + Returning to his fortress nigh night’s end, + With execration of her daughters’ lures. + They help him the proud fortress to defend, + Nor see what front it wears, what life immures, + The murder it commits; nor that its base + Is shifty as a huckster’s opening deal + For bargain under smoothest market face, + While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel, + Justice protests that Reason is her seat; + Elect Convenience, as Reason masked, + Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat; + Until a sentient world is overtasked, + And rouses Reason’s fountain-self: she calls + On Nature; Nature answers: Share your guilt + In common when contention cracks the walls + Of the big house which not on me is built. + + The Lady said as much as breath will bear; + To happier sisters inconceivable: + Contemptible to veterans of the fair, + Who show for a convolving pearly shell, + A treasure of the shore, their written book. + As much as woman’s breath will bear and live + Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look, + That held as if for grain the summing sieve. + Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes + Our homely daylight after dread of spells. + Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes + Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells + About a story of the naked flesh, + Intending but to put some garment on, + Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh, + A traitor lurks and will be known anon. + Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt, + Stationed for index down an ancient track: + And ware of it was he while she poured out + A broken moon on forest-waters black. + + Though past the stage where midway men are skilled + To scan their senses wriggling under plough, + When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled, + Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how, + Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech, + Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed + Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech, + The valour of that rawness he could read. + Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran + From senses up to thoughts, how she had read + Maternally the warm remainder man + Beneath his crust, and Nature’s pity shed, + In shedding dearer than heart’s blood to light + His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks. + Therewith he could espy Confession’s fright; + Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks; + They suck from soil, and have their urgencies + Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves. + Veins of divergencies, convergencies, + Our botanist in womankind perceives; + And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize + That splendid consummation and sure proof + Of more than heart in her, who might despise, + Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof + To soar and be like Nature’s pity: she + Instinctive of what virtue in young days + Had served him for his pilot-star on sea, + To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze + Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue + Was gifted to encourage and assure. + He gave her of the deep well she had sprung; + And name it gratitude, the word is poor. + But name it gratitude, is aught as rare + From sex to sex? And let it have survived + Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair, + Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived: + Unknown to Passion, generous for prey: + Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce. + Their tenderest of self did each one slay; + His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce; + Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak, + Things living, slew they, and no artery bled. + A moment of some sacrificial smoke + They passed, and were the dearer for their dead. + + He learnt how much we gain who make no claims. + A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire + Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames, + Confessing; and its conjured image dire, + Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed; + The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force, + Visioned to hold corrected and abashed + Our senile emulous; which rolls its course + Proud to the shattering end; with these few last + Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice, + Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast! + And still, though having skin for man’s abuse, + Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath + Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet, + Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth + Between the vivid lips; a vassal set; + And numb, of formal value. Are we true + In nature, never natural thing repents; + Albeit receiving punishment for due, + Among the group of this world’s penitents; + Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft + Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares. + + Our world believes it stabler if the soft + Are whipped to show the face repentance wears. + Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom, + Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites; + Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom + The chasm between our passions and our wits! + + Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows, + It trembles at betrayal of a sore. + Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose + Impurities for clearness at the core. + + She to her hungered thundering in breast, + _Ye shall not starve_, not feebly designates + The world repressing as a life repressed, + Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates. + How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian, + Repents, she points for sight: and she avers, + The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan + Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters. + + Sin against immaturity, the sin + Of ravenous excess, what deed divides + Man from vitality; these bleed within; + Bleed in the crippled relic that abides. + Perpetually they bleed; a limb is lost, + A piece of life, the very spirit maimed. + But culprit who the law of man has crossed + With Nature’s dubiously within is blamed; + Despite our cry at cutting of the whip, + Our shiver in the night when numbers frown, + We but bewail a broken fellowship, + A sting, an isolation, a fall’n crown. + + Abject of sinners is that sensitive, + The flesh, amenable to stripes, miscalled + Incorrigible: such title do we give + To the poor shrinking stuff wherewith we are walled; + And, taking it for Nature, place in ban + Our Mother, as a Power wanton-willed, + The shame and baffler of the soul of man, + The recreant, reptilious. Do thou build + Thy mind on her foundations in earth’s bed; + Behold man’s mind the child of her keen rod, + For teaching how the wits and passions wed + To rear that temple of the credible God; + Sacred the letters of her laws, and plain, + Will shine, to guide thy feet and hold thee firm: + Then, as a pathway through a field of grain, + Man’s laws appear the blind progressive worm, + That moves by touch, and thrust of linking rings + The which to endow with vision, lift from mud + To level of their nature’s aims and springs, + Must those, the twain beside our vital flood, + Now on opposing banks, the twain at strife + (Whom the so rosy ferryman invites + To junction, and mid-channel over Life, + Unmasked to the ghostly, much asunder smites) + Instruct in deeper than Convenience, + In higher than the harvest of a year. + Only the rooted knowledge to high sense + Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur + For fruitfullest advancement, eye a mark + Beyond the path with grain on either hand, + Help to the steering of our social Ark + Over the barbarous waters unto land. + + For us the double conscience and its war, + The serving of two masters, false to both, + Until those twain, who spring the root and are + The knowledge in division, plight a troth + Of equal hands: nor longer circulate + A pious token for their current coin, + To growl at the exchange; they, mate and mate, + Fair feminine and masculine shall join + Upon an upper plane, still common mould, + Where stamped religion and reflective pace + A statelier measure, and the hoop of gold + Rounds to horizon for their soul’s embrace. + Then shall those noblest of the earth and sun + Inmix unlike to waves on savage sea. + But not till Nature’s laws and man’s are one, + Can marriage of the man and woman be. + + + +V + + + He passed her through the sermon’s dull defile. + Down under billowy vapour-gorges heaved + The city and the vale and mountain-pile. + She felt strange push of shuttle-threads that weaved. + + A new land in an old beneath her lay; + And forth to meet it did her spirit rush, + As bride who without shame has come to say, + Husband, in his dear face that caused her blush. + + A natural woman’s heart, not more than clad + By station and bright raiment, gathers heat + From nakedness in trusted hands: she had + The joy of those who feel the world’s heart beat, + After long doubt of it as fire or ice; + Because one man had helped her to breathe free; + Surprised to faith in something of a price + Past the old charity in chivalry:— + Our first wild step to right the loaded scales + Displaying women shamefully outweighed. + The wisdom of humaneness best avails + For serving justice till that fraud is brayed. + Her buried body fed the life she drank. + And not another stripping of her wound! + The startled thought on black delirium sank, + While with her gentle surgeon she communed, + And woman’s prospect of the yoke repelled. + Her buried body gave her flowers and food; + The peace, the homely skies, the springs that welled; + Love, the large love that folds the multitude. + Soul’s chastity in honesty, and this + With beauty, made the dower to men refused. + And little do they know the prize they miss; + Which is their happy fortune! Thus he mused + + For him, the cynic in the Sage had play + A hazy moment, by a breath dispersed; + To think, of all alive most wedded they, + Whom time disjoined! He needed her quick thirst + For renovated earth: on earth she gazed, + With humble aim to foot beside the wise. + Lo, where the eyelashes of night are raised + Yet lowly over morning’s pure grey eyes. + + + + +‘LOVE IS WINGED FOR TWO’ + + + LOVE is winged for two, + In the worst he weathers, + When their hearts are tied; + But if they divide, + O too true! + Cracks a globe, and feathers, feathers, + Feathers all the ground bestrew. + + I was breast of morning sea, + Rosy plume on forest dun, + I the laugh in rainy fleeces, + While with me + She made one. + Now must we pick up our pieces, + For that then so winged were we. + + + + +‘ASK, IS LOVE DIVINE’ + + + ASK, is Love divine, + Voices all are, ay. + Question for the sign, + There’s a common sigh. + Would we, through our years, + Love forego, + Quit of scars and tears? + Ah, but no, no, no! + + + + +‘JOY IS FLEET’ + + + JOY is fleet, + Sorrow slow. + Love, so sweet, + Sorrow will sow. + Love, that has flown + Ere day’s decline, + Love to have known, + Sorrow, be mine! + + + + +THE LESSON OF GRIEF + + + Not ere the bitter herb we taste, + Which ages thought of happy times, + To plant us in a weeping waste, + Rings with our fellows this one heart + Accordant chimes. + + When I had shed my glad year’s leaf, + I did believe I stood alone, + Till that great company of Grief + Taught me to know this craving heart + For not my own. + + + + +WIND ON THE LYRE + + + THAT was the chirp of Ariel + You heard, as overhead it flew, + The farther going more to dwell, + And wing our green to wed our blue; + But whether note of joy or knell, + Not his own Father-singer knew; + Nor yet can any mortal tell, + Save only how it shivers through; + The breast of us a sounded shell, + The blood of us a lighted dew. + + + + +THE YOUTHFUL QUEST + + + HIS Lady queen of woods to meet, + He wanders day and night: + The leaves have whisperings discreet, + The mossy ways invite. + + Across a lustrous ring of space, + By covert hoods and caves, + Is promise of her secret face + In film that onward waves. + + For darkness is the light astrain, + Astrain for light the dark. + A grey moth down a larches’ lane + Unwinds a ghostly spark. + + Her lamp he sees, and young desire + Is fed while cloaked she flies. + She quivers shot of violet fire + To ash at look of eyes. + + + + +THE EMPTY PURSE +A SERMON TO OUR LATER PRODIGAL SON + + + THOU, run to the dry on this wayside bank, + Too plainly of all the propellers bereft! + Quenched youth, and is that thy purse? + Even such limp slough as the snake has left + Slack to the gale upon spikes of whin, + For cast-off coat of a life gone blank, + In its frame of a grin at the seeker, is thine; + And thine to crave and to curse + The sweet thing once within. + Accuse him: some devil committed the theft, + Which leaves of the portly a skin, + No more; of the weighty a whine. + + Pursue him: and first, to be sure of his track, + Over devious ways that have led to this, + In the stream’s consecutive line, + Let memory lead thee back + To where waves Morning her fleur-de-lys, + Unflushed at the front of the roseate door + Unopened yet: never shadow there + Of a Tartarus lighted by Dis + For souls whose cry is, alack! + An ivory cradle rocks, apeep + Through his eyelashes’ laugh, a breathing pearl. + There the young chief of the animals wore + A likeness to heavenly hosts, unaware + Of his love of himself; with the hours at leap. + In a dingle away from a rutted highroad, + Around him the earliest throstle and merle, + Our human smile between milk and sleep, + Effervescent of Nature he crowed. + Fair was that season; furl over furl + The banners of blossom; a dancing floor + This earth; very angels the clouds; and fair + Thou on the tablets of forehead and breast: + Careless, a centre of vigilant care. + Thy mother kisses an infant curl. + The room of the toys was a boundless nest, + A kingdom the field of the games, + Till entered the craving for more, + And the worshipped small body had aims. + A good little idol, as records attest, + When they tell of him lightly appeased in a scream + By sweets and caresses: he gave but sign + That the heir of a purse-plumped dominant race, + Accustomed to plenty, not dumb would pine. + Almost magician, his earliest dream + Was lord of the unpossessed + For a look; himself and his chase, + As on puffs of a wind at whirl, + Made one in the wink of a gleam. + She kisses a locket curl, + She conjures to vision a cherub face, + When her butterfly counted his day + All meadow and flowers, mishap + Derided, and taken for play + The fling of an urchin’s cap. + When her butterfly showed him an eaglet born, + For preying too heedlessly bred, + What a heart clapped in thee then! + With what fuller colours of morn! + And high to the uttermost heavens it flew, + Swift as on poet’s pen. + It flew to be wedded, to wed + The mystery scented around: + Issue of flower and dew, + Issue of light and sound: + Thinner than either; a thread + Spun of the dream they threw + To kindle, allure, evade. + It ran the sea-wave, the garden’s dance, + To the forest’s dark heart down a dappled glade; + Led on by a perishing glance, + By a twinkle’s eternal waylaid. + Woman, the name was, when she took form; + Sheaf of the wonders of life. She fled, + Close imaged; she neared, far seen. How she made + Palpitate earth of the living and dead! + Did she not show thee the world designed + Solely for loveliness? Nested warm, + The day was the morrow in flight. And for thee, + She muted the discords, tuned, refined; + Drowned sharp edges beneath her cloak. + Eye of the waters, and throb of the tree, + Sliding on radiance, winging from shade, + With her witch-whisper o’er ruins, in reeds, + She sang low the song of her promise delayed; + Beckoned and died, as a finger of smoke + Astream over woodland. And was not she + History’s heroines white on storm? + Remember her summons to valorous deeds. + Shone she a lure of the honey-bag swarm, + Most was her beam on the knightly: she led + For the honours of manhood more than the prize; + Waved her magnetical yoke + Whither the warrior bled, + Ere to the bower of sighs. + And shy of her secrets she was; under deeps + Plunged at the breath of a thirst that woke + The dream in the cave where the Dreaded sleeps. + + Away over heaven the young heart flew, + And caught many lustres, till some one said + (Or was it the thought into hearing grew?), + _Not thou as commoner men_! + Thy stature puffed and it swayed, + It stiffened to royal-erect; + A brassy trumpet brayed; + A whirling seized thy head; + The vision of beauty was flecked. + Note well the how and the when, + The thing that prompted and sped. + Thereanon the keen passions clapped wing, + Fixed eye, and the world was prey. + No simple world of thy greenblade Spring, + Nor world of thy flowerful prime + On the topmost Orient peak + Above a yet vaporous day. + Flesh was it, breast to beak: + A four-walled windowless world without ray, + Only darkening jets on a river of slime, + Where harsh over music as woodland jay, + A voice chants, Woe to the weak! + And along an insatiate feast, + Women and men are one + In the cup transforming to beast. + Magian worship they paid to their sun, + Lord of the Purse! Behold him climb. + Stalked ever such figure of fun + For monarch in great-grin pantomime? + See now the heart dwindle, the frame distend; + The soul to its anchorite cavern retreat, + From a life that reeks of the rotted end; + While he—is he pictureable? replete, + Gourd-like swells of the rank of the soil, + Hollow, more hollow at core. + And for him did the hundreds toil + Despised; in the cold and heat, + This image ridiculous bore + On their shoulders for morsels of meat! + + Gross, with the fumes of incense full, + With parasites tickled, with slaves begirt, + He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull, + He rolled him, a dog, in dirt. + And dog, bull, cook, was he, fanged, horned, plumed; + Original man, as philosophers vouch; + Carnivorous, cannibal; length-long exhumed, + Frightfully living and armed to devour; + The primitive weapons of prey in his pouch; + The bait, the line and the hook: + To feed on his fellows intent. + God of the Danaé shower, + He had but to follow his bent. + He battened on fowl not safely hutched, + On sheep astray from the crook; + A lure for the foolish in fold: + To carrion turning what flesh he touched. + And O the grace of his air, + As he at the goblet sips, + A centre of girdles loosed, + With their grisly label, Sold! + Credulous hears the fidelity swear, + Which has roving eyes over yielded lips: + To-morrow will fancy himself the seduced, + The stuck in a treacherous slough, + Because of his faith in a purchased pair, + False to a vinous vow. + + In his glory of banquet strip him bare, + And what is the creature we view? + Our pursy Apollo Apollyon’s tool; + A small one, still of the crew + By serpent Apollyon blest: + His plea in apology, blindfold Fool. + A fool surcharged, propelled, unwarned; + Not viler, you hear him protest: + Of a popular countenance not incorrect. + But deeds are the picture in essence, deeds + Paint him the hooved and homed, + Despite the poor pother he pleads, + And his look of a nation’s elect. + We have him, our quarry confessed! + And scan him: the features inspect + Of that bestial multiform: cry, + Corroborate I, O Samian Sage! + The book of thy wisdom, proved + On me, its last hieroglyph page, + Alive in the horned and hooved? + Thou! will he make reply. + + Thus has the plenary purse + Done often: to do will engage + Anew upon all of thy like, or worse. + And now is thy deepest regret + To be man, clean rescued from beast: + From the grip of the Sorcerer, Gold, + Celestially released. + + But now from his cavernous hold, + Free may thy soul be set, + As a child of the Death and the Life, to learn, + Refreshed by some bodily sweat, + The meaning of either in turn, + What issue may come of the two:— + A morn beyond mornings, beyond all reach + Of emotional arms at the stretch to enfold: + A firmament passing our visible blue. + To those having nought to reflect it, ’tis nought; + To those who are misty, ’tis mist on the beach + From the billow withdrawing; to those who see + Earth, our mother, in thought, + Her spirit it is, our key. + + Ay, the Life and the Death are her words to us here, + Of one significance, pricking the blind. + This is thy gain now the surface is clear: + To read with a soul in the mirror of mind + Is man’s chief lesson.—Thou smilest! I preach! + Acid smiling, my friend, reveals + Abysses within; frigid preaching a street + Paved unconcernedly smooth + For the lecturer straight on his heels, + Up and down a policeman’s beat; + Bearing tonics not labelled to soothe. + Thou hast a disgust of the sermon in rhyme. + It is not attractive in being too chaste. + The popular tale of adventure and crime + Would equally sicken an overdone taste. + So, then, onward. Philosophy, thoughtless to soothe, + Lifts, if thou wilt, or there leaves thee supine. + + Thy condition, good sooth, has no seeming of sweet; + It walks our first crags, it is flint for the tooth, + For the thirsts of our nature brine. + But manful has met it, manful will meet. + And think of thy privilege: supple with youth, + To have sight of the headlong swine, + Once fouling thee, jumping the dips! + As the coin of thy purse poured out: + An animal’s holiday past: + And free of them thou, to begin a new bout; + To start a fresh hunt on a resolute blast: + No more an imp-ridden to bournes of eclipse: + Having knowledge to spur thee, a gift to compare; + Rubbing shoulder to shoulder, as only the book + Of the world can be read, by necessity urged. + For witness, what blinkers are they who look + From the state of the prince or the millionnaire! + They see but the fish they attract, + The hungers on them converged; + And never the thought in the shell of the act, + Nor ever life’s fangless mirth. + But first, that the poisonous of thee be purged, + Go into thyself, strike Earth. + She is there, she is felt in a blow struck hard. + Thou findest a pugilist countering quick, + Cunning at drives where thy shutters are barred; + Not, after the studied professional trick, + Blue-sealing; she brightens the sight. Strike Earth, + Antaeus, young giant, whom fortune trips! + And thou com’st on a saving fact, + To nourish thy planted worth. + + Be it clay, flint, mud, or the rubble of chips, + Thy roots have grasp in the stern-exact: + The redemption of sinners deluded! the last + Dry handful, that bruises and saves. + To the common big heart are we bound right fast, + When our Mother admonishing nips + At the nakedness bare of a clout, + And we crave what the commonest craves. + + This wealth was a fortress-wall, + Under which grew our grim little beast-god stout; + Self-worshipped, the foe, in division from all; + With crowds of illogical Christians, no doubt; + Till the rescuing earthquake cracked. + Thus are we man made firm; + Made warm by the numbers compact. + We follow no longer a trumpet-snout, + At a trot where the hog is tracked, + Nor wriggle the way of the worm. + + Thou wilt spare us the cynical pout + At humanity: sign of a nature bechurled. + No stenchy anathemas cast + Upon Providence, women, the world. + Distinguish thy tempers and trim thy wits. + The purchased are things of the mart, not classed + Among resonant types that have freely grown. + + Thy knowledge of women might be surpassed: + As any sad dog’s of sweet flesh when he quits + The wayside wandering bone! + No revilings of comrades as ingrates: thee + The tempter, misleader, and criminal (screened + By laws yet barbarous) own. + + If some one performed Fiend’s deputy, + He was for awhile the Fiend. + Still, nursing a passion to speak, + As the punch-bowl does, in the moral vein, + When the ladle has finished its leak, + And the vessel is loquent of nature’s inane, + Hie where the demagogues roar + Like a Phalaris bull, with the victim’s force: + Hurrah to their jolly attack + On a City that smokes of the Plain; + A city of sin’s death-dyes, + Holding revel of worms in a corse; + A city of malady sore, + Over-ripe for the big doom’s crack: + A city of hymnical snore; + Connubial truths and lies + Demanding an instant divorce, + Clean as the bright from the black. + It were well for thy system to sermonize. + There are giants to slay, and they call for their Jack. + + Then up stand thou in the midst: + Thy good grain out of thee thresh, + Hand upon heart: relate + What things thou legally didst + For the Archseducer of flesh. + Omitting the murmurs of women and fate, + Confess thee an instrument armed + To be snare of our wanton, our weak, + Of all by the sensual charmed. + For once shall repentance be done by the tongue: + Speak, though execrate, speak + A word on grandmotherly Laws + Giving rivers of gold to our young, + In the days of their hungers impure; + To furnish them beak and claws, + And make them a banquet’s lure. + + Thou the example, saved + Miraculously by this poor skin! + Thereat let the Purse be waved: + The snake-slough sick of the snaky sin: + A devil, if devil as devil behaved + Ever, thou knowest, look thou but in, + Where he shivers, a culprit fettered and shaved; + O a bird stripped of feather, a fish clipped of fin! + + And commend for a washing the torrents of wrath, + Which hurl at the foe of the dearest men prize + Rough-rolling boulders and froth. + Gigantical enginery they can command, + For the crushing of enemies not of great size: + But hold to thy desperate stand. + Men’s right of bequeathing their all to their own + (With little regard for the creatures they squeezed); + Their mill and mill-water and nether mill-stone + Tied fast to their infant; lo, this is the last + Of their hungers, by prudent devices appeased. + The law they decree is their ultimate slave; + Wherein we perceive old Voracity glassed. + It works from their dust, and it reeks of their grave. + Point them to greener, though Journals be guns; + To brotherly fields under fatherly skies; + Where the savage still primitive learns of a debt + He has owed since he drummed on his belly for war; + And how for his giving, the more will he get; + For trusting his fellows, leave friends round his sons: + Till they see, with the gape of a startled surprise, + Their adored tyrant-monster a brute to abhor, + The sun of their system a father of flies! + + So, for such good hope, take their scourge unashamed; + ’Tis the portion of them who civilize, + Who speak the word novel and true: + How the brutish antique of our springs may be tamed, + Without loss of the strength that should push us to flower; + How the God of old time will act Satan of new, + If we keep him not straight at the higher God aimed; + For whose habitation within us we scour + This house of our life; where our bitterest pains + Are those to eject the Infernal, who heaps + Mire on the soul. Take stripes or chains; + Grip at thy standard reviled. + And what if our body be dashed from the steeps? + Our spoken in protest remains. + A young generation reaps. + + The young generation! ah, there is the child + Of our souls down the Ages! to bleed for it, proof + That souls we have, with our senses filed, + Our shuttles at thread of the woof. + May it be braver than ours, + To encounter the rattle of hostile bolts, + To look on the rising of Stranger Powers. + May it know how the mind in expansion revolts + From a nursery Past with dead letters aloof, + And the piping to stupor of Precedents shun, + In a field where the forefather print of the hoof + Is not yet overgrassed by the watering hours, + And should prompt us to Change, as to promise of sun, + Till brain-rule splendidly towers. + For that large light we have laboured and tramped + Thorough forests and bogland, still to perceive + Our animate morning stamped + With the lines of a sombre eve. + + A timorous thing ran the innocent hind, + When the wolf was the hypocrite fang under hood, + The snake a lithe lurker up sleeve, + And the lion effulgently ramped. + Then our forefather hoof did its work in the wood, + By right of the better in kind. + But now will it breed yon bestial brood + Three-fold thrice over, if bent to bind, + As the healthy in chains with the sick, + Unto despot usage our issuing mind. + It signifies battle or death’s dull knell. + Precedents icily written on high + Challenge the Tentatives hot to rebel. + Our Mother, who speeds her bloomful quick + For the march, reads which the impediment well. + She smiles when of sapience is their boast. + O loose of the tug between blood run dry + And blood running flame may our offspring run! + May brain democratic be king of the host! + Less then shall the volumes of History tell + Of the stop in progression, the slip in relapse, + That counts us a sand-slack inch hard won + Beneath an oppressive incumbent perhaps. + + Let the senile lords in a parchment sky, + And the generous turbulents drunken of morn, + Their battle of instincts put by, + A moment examine this field: + On a Roman street cast thoughtful eye, + Along to the mounts from the bog-forest weald. + It merits a glance at our history’s maps, + To see across Britain’s old shaggy unshorn, + Through the Parties in strife internecine, foot + The ruler’s close-reckoned direct to the mark. + From the head ran the vanquisher’s orderly route, + In the stride of his forts through the tangle and dark. + From the head runs the paved firm way for advance, + And we shoulder, we wrangle! The light on us shed + Shows dense beetle blackness in swarm, lurid Chance, + The Goddess of gamblers, above. From the head, + Then when it worked for the birth of a star + Fraternal with heaven’s in beauty and ray, + Sprang the Acropolis. Ask what crown + Comes of our tides of the blood at war, + For men to bequeath generations down! + And ask what thou wast when the Purse was brimmed: + What high-bounding ball for the Gods at play: + A Conservative youth! who the cream-bowl skimmed, + Desiring affairs to be left as they are. + + So, thou takest Youth’s natural place in the fray, + As a Tentative, combating Peace, + Our lullaby word for decay.— + There will come an immediate decree + In thy mind for the opposite party’s decease, + If he bends not an instant knee. + Expunge it: extinguishing counts poor gain. + And accept a mild word of police:— + Be mannerly, measured; refrain + From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks. + Our political, even as the merchant main, + A temperate gale requires + For the ship that haven seeks; + Neither God of the winds nor his bellowsy squires. + + Then observe the antagonist, con + His reasons for rocking the lullaby word. + You stand on a different stage of the stairs. + He fought certain battles, yon senile lord. + In the strength of thee, feel his bequest to his heirs. + We are now on his inches of ground hard won, + For a perch to a flight o’er his resting fence. + + Does it knock too hard at thy head if I say, + That Time is both father and son? + Tough lesson, when senses are floods over sense!— + Discern the paternal of Now + As the Then of thy present tense. + You may pull as you will either way, + You can never be other than one. + So, be filial. Giants to slay + Demand knowing eyes in their Jack. + + There are those whom we push from the path with respect. + Bow to that elder, though seeing him bow + To the backward as well, for a thunderous back + Upon thee. In his day he was not all wrong. + Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked. + He scrambled to shore with a worship of shore. + The Future he sees as the slippery murk; + The Past as his doctrinal library lore. + He stands now the rock to the wave’s wild wash. + Yet thy lumpish antagonist once did work + Heroical, one of our strong. + His gold to retain and his dross reject, + Engage him, but humour, not aiming to quash. + Detest the dead squat of the Turk, + And suffice it to move him along. + Drink of faith in the brains a full draught + Before the oration: beware + Lest rhetoric moonily waft + Whither horrid activities snare. + Rhetoric, juice for the mob + Despising more luminous grape, + Oft at its fount has it laughed + In the cataracts rolling for rape + Of a Reason left single to sob! + + ’Tis known how the permanent never is writ + In blood of the passions: mercurial they, + Shifty their issue: stir not that pit + To the game our brutes best play. + + But with rhetoric loose, can we check man’s brute? + Assemblies of men on their legs invoke + Excitement for wholesome diversion: there shoot + Electrical sparks between their dry thatch + And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light. + ’Tis instant between you: the trick of a catch + (To match a Batrachian croak) + Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins. + Then may it be rather the well-worn joke + Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write + Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem, + When thou readest that form of thy homage to brains! + + For the secret why demagogues fail, + Though they carry hot mobs to the red extreme, + And knock out or knock in the nail + (We will rank them as flatly sincere, + Devoutly detesting a wrong, + Engines o’ercharged with our human steam), + Question thee, seething amid the throng. + And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-heat; + Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here;— + Aught more than the banquet and roundelay, + That is closed with a terrible terminal wail, + A retributive black ding-dong? + And ask of thyself: This furious Yea + Of a speech I thump to repeat, + In the cause I would have prevail, + For seed of a nourishing wheat, + _Is it accepted of Song_? + Does it sound to the mind through the ear, + Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet? + Thou wilt find it a test severe; + Unerring whatever the theme. + Rings it for Reason a melody clear, + We have bidden old Chaos retreat; + We have called on Creation to hear; + All forces that make us are one full stream. + Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse, + Showing its practical value and weight, + Pipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse, + Lead thee aloft to that high estate.— + The test is conclusive, I deem: + It embraces or mortally bites. + We have then the key-note for debate: + A Senate that sits on the heights + Over discords, to shape and amend. + + And no singer is needed to serve + The musical God, my friend. + Needs only his law on a sensible nerve: + A law that to Measure invites, + Forbidding the passions contend. + Is it accepted of Song? + And if then the blunt answer be Nay, + Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde, + Slaves of the Goddess of hoar-old sway, + The Queen of delirious rites, + Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend + For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord, + Pursuing insensate, seething in throng, + Their wild idea to its ashen end. + Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong, + Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend! + + But thou, should the answer ring Ay, + Hast warrant of seed for thy word: + The musical God is nigh + To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer + Through the shoals: is it worthy of Song, + There are souls all woman to hear, + Woman to bear and renew. + For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs, + Broad as the arms of his blue, + Fine as the web of his rays, + Justice, whose voice is a melody clear, + The one sure life for the numbered long, + From him are the brutal and vain, + The vile, the excessive, out-thrust: + He points to the God on the upmost throne: + He is the saver of grain, + The sifter of spirit from dust. + He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain + The virilities: Measure alone + Has votaries rich in the male: + Fathers embracing no cloud, + Sowing no harvestless main: + Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed + To create, to perpetuate; woo, win, wed; + Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own, + Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff + Simulacra, though solid they sail, + And seem such imperial stuff: + Yes, the living divide off the dead. + + Then thou with thy furies outgrown, + Not as Cybele’s beast will thy head lash tail + So præter-determinedly thermonous, + Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled. + Thou under stress of the strife + Shalt hear for sustainment supreme + The cry of the conscience of Life: + _Keep the young generations in hail_, + _And bequeath them no tumbled house_! + + There hast thou the sacred theme, + Therein the inveterate spur, + Of the Innermost. See her one blink + In vision past eyeballs. Not thee + She cares for, but us. Follow her. + Follow her, and thou wilt not sink. + With thy soul the Life espouse: + This Life of the visible, audible, ring + With thy love tight about; and no death will be; + The name be an empty thing, + And woe a forgotten old trick: + And battle will come as a challenge to drink; + As a warrior’s wound each transient sting. + She leads to the Uppermost link by link; + Exacts but vision, desires not vows. + Above us the singular number to see; + The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick, + A dot or a stop: that is our task; + Her lesson in figured arithmetic, + For the letters of Life behind its mask; + Her flower-like look under fearful brows. + + As for thy special case, O my friend, one must think + Massilia’s victim, who held the carouse + For the length of a carnival year, + Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice. + For thee, by our law, no alternatives were: + Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice. + He cancelled the ravaging Plague, + With the roll of his fat off the cliff. + Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink, + Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague + And catches the not too pink, + Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause + Is the cause of community. Iterate, + Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite: + Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: + Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: + The manner of one that would expiate + His share in grandmotherly Laws, + Which do the dark thing to destroy, + Under aspect of water so guilelessly white + For the general use, by the devils befouled. + + Enough, poor prodigal boy! + Thou hast listened with patience; another had howled. + Repentance is proved, forgiveness is earned. + And ’tis bony: denied thee thy succulent half + Of the parable’s blessing, to swineherd returned: + A Sermon thy slice of the Scriptural calf! + By my faith, there is feasting to come, + Not the less, when our Earth we have seen + Beneath and on surface, her deeds and designs: + Who gives us the man-loving Nazarene, + The martyrs, the poets, the corn and the vines. + By my faith in the head, she has wonders in loom; + Revelations, delights. I can hear a faint crow + Of the cock of fresh mornings, far, far, yet distinct; + As down the new shafting of mines, + A cry of the metally gnome. + When our Earth we have seen, and have linked + With the home of the Spirit to whom we unfold, + Imprisoned humanity open will throw + Its fortress gates, and the rivers of gold + For the congregate friendliness flow. + Then the meaning of Earth in her children behold: + Glad eyes, frank hands, and a fellowship real: + And laughter on lips, as the birds’ outburst + At the flooding of light. No robbery then + The feast, nor a robber’s abode the home, + For a furnished model of our first den! + Nor Life as a stationed wheel; + Nor History written in blood or in foam, + For vendetta of Parties in cursing accursed. + The God in the conscience of multitudes feel, + And we feel deep to Earth at her heart, + We have her communion with men, + New ground, new skies for appeal. + Yield into harness thy best and thy worst; + Away on the trot of thy servitude start, + Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air. + If courage should falter, ’tis wholesome to kneel. + Remember that well, for the secret with some, + Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer, + And free from impurities tower-like stand. + I promise not more, save that feasting will come + To a mind and a body no longer inversed: + The sense of large charity over the land, + Earth’s wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, + And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal + Through the active machine: lean fare, + But it carries a sparkle! And now enough, + And part we as comrades part, + To meet again never or some day or soon. + + Our season of drought is reminder rude:— + No later than yesternoon, + I looked on the horse of a cart, + By the wayside water-trough. + How at every draught of his bride of thirst + His nostrils widened! The sight was good: + Food for us, food, such as first + Drew our thoughts to earth’s lowly for food. + + + + +TO THE COMIC SPIRIT + + + SWORD of Common Sense!— + Our surest gift: the sacred chain + Of man to man: firm earth for trust + In structures vowed to permanence:— + Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain! + Implacable perforce of just; + With that good treasure in defence, + Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain + Since first men planted foot and hand was king: + Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve + To wield thy double edge, retort + Or hold the deadlier reserve, + And through thy victim’s weapon sting: + Thine is the service, thine the sport + This shifty heart of ours to hunt + Across its webs and round the many a ring + Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds + Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke + Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster’s grunt;— + Once lion of our desert’s trodden weeds; + And but for thy straight finger at the yoke, + Again to be the lordly paw, + Naming his appetites his needs, + Behind a decorative cloak: + Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law + We read upon that building’s architrave + In the mind’s firmament, by men upraised + With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave + For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed, + Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw, + Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn, + Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang, + Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot, + Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn; + Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise, + Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen + His rebel agitation at our root: + Thou hast him out of hawking eyes; + Nor ever morning of the clang + Young Echo sped on hill from horn + In forest blown when scent was keen + Off earthy dews besprinkling blades + Of covert grass more merrily rang + The yelp of chase down alleys green, + Forth of the headlong-pouring glades, + Over the dappled fallows wild away, + Than thy fine unaccented scorn + At sight of man’s old secret brute, + Devout for pasture on his prey, + Advancing, yawning to devour; + With step of deer, with voice of flute, + Haply with visage of the lily flower. + + Let the cock crow and ruddy morn + His handmaiden appear! Youth claims his hour. + The generously ludicrous + Espouses it. But see we sons of day, + Off whom Life leans for guidance in our fight, + Accept the throb for lord of us; + For lord, for the main central light + That gives direction, not the eclipse; + Or dost thou look where niggard Age, + Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips + A tumbled top to grind a wolf’s worn tooth;— + Hoar despot on our final stage, + In dotage of a stunted Youth;— + Or it may be some venerable sage, + Not having thee awake in him, compact + Of wisdom else, the breast’s old tempter trips; + Or see we ceremonial state, + Robing the gilded beast, exact + Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate + Is used to stamp and hallow printed fact; + A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips; + These are thy game wherever men engage: + These and, majestic in a borrowed shape, + The major and the minor potentate, + Creative of their various ape;— + The tiptoe mortals triumphing to write + Upon a perishable page + An inch above their fellows’ height;— + The criers of foregone wisdom, who impose + Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed + Of our first hungry figure wide agape;— + Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run. + These, that would have men still of men be foes, + Eternal fox to prowl and pike to feed; + Would keep our life the whirly pool + Of turbid stuff dishonouring History; + The herd the drover’s herd, the fool the fool, + Ourself our slavish self’s infernal sun: + These are the children of the heart untaught + By thy quick founts to beat abroad, by thee + Untamed to tone its passions under thought, + The rich humaneness reading in thy fun. + Of them a world of coltish heels for school + We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn. + + ’Tis written of the Gods of human mould, + Those Nectar Gods, of glorious stature hewn + To quicken hymns, that they did hear, incensed, + Satiric comments overbold, + From one whose part was by decree + The jester’s; but they boiled to feel him bite. + Better for them had they with Reason fenced + Or smiled corrected! They in the great Gods’ might + Their prober crushed, as fingers flea. + Crumbled Olympus when the sovereign sire + His fatal kick to Momus gave, albeit + Men could behold the sacred Mount aspire, + The Satirist pass by on limping feet. + Those Gods who saw the ejected laugh alight + Below had then their last of airy glee; + They in the cup sought Laughter’s drownèd sprite, + Fed to dire fatness off uncurbed conceit. + Eyes under saw them waddle on their Mount, + And drew them down; to flattest earth they rolled. + This know we veritable. O Sage of Mirth! + Can it be true, the story men recount + Of the fall’n plight of the great Gods on earth? + How they being deathless, though of human mould, + With human cravings, undecaying frames, + Must labour for subsistence; are a band + Whom a loose-cheeked, wide-lipped gay cripple leads + At haunts of holiday on summer sand: + And lightly he will hint to one that heeds + Names in pained designation of them, names + Ensphered on blue skies and on black, which twirl + Our hearing madly from our seeing dazed, + Add Bacchus unto both; and he entreats + (His baby dimples in maternal chaps + Running wild labyrinths of line and curl) + Compassion for his masterful Trombone, + Whose thunder is the brass of how he blazed + Of old: for him of the mountain-muscle feats, + Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan: + For his fierce bugler horning onset, whom + A truncheon-battered helmet caps . . . + The creature is of earnest mien + To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb. + His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued, + He names; they are a rayless red and white; + The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude. + And, if we recognize his Tambourine, + He asks; exhausted names her: she has become + A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen + Of overflowing dome on dome; + Redundancy contending with the tight, + Leaping the dam! He fondly calls, his girl, + The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile, + Refreshful. O but now his brows are dun, + Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile, + To drop his venomous: the Dame of dames, + Flower of the world, that honey one, + She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl, + To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss; + He names her, as a worshipper he names, + And indicates with a contemptuous thumb. + The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike + Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum. + Curtain her close! her open arms + Have suckers for beholders: she to this? + For that she could not, save in fury, hear + A sharp corrective utterance flick + Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike + Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer + Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps + This mouldy garner of the fatal kick? + Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms, + Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign, + From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul, + The trader in attractions sinks, all brine + To thoughts of taste; is ’t love?—bark, dog! hoot, owl! + And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps. + Suicide Graces dangle down the charms + Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps. + She stands in her unholy oily leer + A statue losing feature, weather-sick + Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere. + The curtain cried for magnifies to see!— + We cannot quench our one corrupting glance: + The vision of the rumour will not flee. + Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart + To bring her, countless as the crested deeps, + Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? + False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; + Incredible, we echo; and anew + Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. + Low humourist this leader seems; perchance + Pitched from his University career, + Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould + Human those Gods were: deathless too: + On high they not as meditatives paced: + Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh: + Descending, they would touch the lowest here: + And she, that lighted form of blue and gold, + Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced; + Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh; + Desired and hated, desperately dear; + Most human of them was. No more pursue! + Enough that the black story can be told. + It preaches to the eminently placed: + For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due, + Paints omen. Truly they our throbber had; + The passions plumping, passions playing leech, + Cunning to trick us for the day’s good cheer. + Our uncorrected human heart will swell + To notions monstrous, doings mad + As billows on a foam-lashed beach; + Borne on the tides of alternating heats, + Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well; + Call the closed mouth of that harsh final Power + To speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell: + Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour; + The last surviving on the upper seats; + As with men Reason when their hearts rebel. + + Ah, what a fruitless breeder is this heart, + Full of the mingled seeds, each eating each. + Not wiser of our mark than at the start, + It surges like the wrath-faced father Sea + To countering winds; a force blind-eyed, + On endless rounds of aimless reach; + Emotion for the source of pride, + The grounds of faith in fixity + Above our flesh; its cravings urging speech, + Inspiring prayer; by turns a lump + Swung on a time-piece, and by turns + A quivering energy to jump + For seats angelical: it shrinks, it yearns, + Loves, loathes; is flame or cinders; lastly cloud + Capping a sullen crater: and mankind + We see cloud-capped, an army of the dark, + Because of thy straight leadership declined; + At heels of this or that delusive spark: + Now when the multitudinous races press + Elbow to elbow hourly more, + A thickened host; when now we hear aloud + Life for the very life implore + A signal of a visioned mark; + Light of the mind, the mind’s discourse, + The rational in graciousness, + Thee by acknowledgement enthroned, + To tame and lead that blind-eyed force + In harmony of harness with the crowd, + For payment of their dues; as yet disowned, + Save where some dutiful lone creature, vowed + To holy work, deems it the heart’s intent; + Or where a silken circle views it cowled, + The seeming figure of concordance, bent + On satiating tyrant lust + Or barren fits of sentiment. + + Thou wilt not have our paths befouled + By simulation; are we vile to view, + The heavens shall see us clean of our own dust, + Beneath thy breezy flitting wing: + They make their mirror upon faces true; + And where they win reflection, lucid heave + The under tides of this hot heart seen through. + Beneficently wilt thou clip + All oversteppings of the plumed, + The puffed, and bid the masker strip, + And into the crowned windbag thrust, + Tearing the mortal from the vital thing, + A lightning o’er the half-illumed, + Who to base brute-dominion cleave, + Yet mark effects, and shun the flash, + Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive, + To spy a wound without a gash, + The magic in a turn of wrist, + And how are wedded heart and head regaled + When Wit o’er Folly blows the mort, + And their high note of union spreads + Wide from the timely word with conquest charged; + Victorious laughter, of no loud report, + If heard; derision as divinely veiled + As terrible Immortals in rose-mist, + Given to the vision of arrested men: + Whereat they feel within them weave + Community its closer threads, + And are to our fraternal state enlarged; + Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken: + They learn that thou art not of alien sort, + Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed, + Or of the frosty heights unsealed, + Or of the vain who simple speech distort, + Or of the vapours pointing on to nought + Along cold skies; though sharp and high thy pitch; + As when sole homeward the belated treads, + And hears aloft a clamour wailed, + That once had seemed the broomstick witch + Horridly violating cloud for drought: + He, from the rub of minds dispersing fears, + Hears migrants marshalling their midnight train; + Homeliest order in black sky appears, + Not less than in the lighted village steads. + So do those half-illumed wax clear to share + A cry that is our common voice; the note + Of fellowship upon a loftier plane, + Above embattled castle-wall and moat; + And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds. + So thou for washing a phantasmal air, + For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise, + Laughter—the joy of Reason seeing fade + Obstruction into Earth’s renewing beds, + Beneath the stroke of her good servant’s blade— + Thenceforth art as their earth-star hailed; + Gain of the years, conjunction’s prize. + The greater heart in thy appeal to heads + They see, thou Captain of our civil Fort! + By more elusive savages assailed + On each ascending stage; untired + Both inner foe and outer to cut short, + And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist: + Showing old tiger’s claws, old crocodile’s + Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight, + Like forms in running water, oft when smiles, + When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight: + But never with the slayer’s malice fired: + As little as informs an infant’s fist + Clenched at the sneeze! Thou wouldst but have us be + Good sons of mother soil, whereby to grow + Branching on fairer skies, one stately tree; + Broad of the tilth for flowering at the Court: + Which is the tree bound fast to wave its tress; + Of strength controlled sheer beauty to bestow. + Ambrosial heights of possible acquist, + Where souls of men with soul of man consort, + And all look higher to new loveliness + Begotten of the look: thy mark is there; + While on our temporal ground alive, + Rightly though fearfully thou wieldest sword + Of finer temper now a numbered learn + That they resisting thee themselves resist; + And not thy bigger joy to smite and drive, + Prompt the dense herd to butt, and set the snare + Witching them into pitfalls for hoarse shouts. + More now, and hourly more, and of the Lord + Thou lead’st to, doth this rebel heart discern, + When pinched ascetic and red sensualist + Alternately recurrent freeze or burn, + And of its old religions it has doubts. + It fears thee less when thou hast shown it bare; + Less hates, part understands, nor much resents, + When the prized objects it has raised for prayer, + For fitful prayer;—repentance dreading fire, + Impelled by aches; the blindness which repents + Like the poor trampled worm that writhes in mire;— + Are sounded by thee, and thou darest probe + Old institutions and establishments, + Once fortresses against the floods of sin, + For what their worth; and questioningly prod + For why they stand upon a racing globe, + Impeding blocks, less useful than the clod; + Their angel out of them, a demon in. + + This half-enlightened heart, still doomed to fret, + To hurl at vanities, to drift in shame + Of gain or loss, bewailing the sure rod, + Shall of predestination wed thee yet. + Something it gathers of what things should drop + At entrance on new times; of how thrice broad + The world of minds communicative; how + A straggling Nature classed in school, and scored + With stripes admonishing, may yield to plough + Fruitfullest furrows, nor for waxing tame + Be feeble on an Earth whose gentler crop + Is its most living, in the mind that steers, + By Reason led, her way of tree and flame, + Beyond the genuflexions and the tears; + Upon an Earth that cannot stop, + Where upward is the visible aim, + And ever we espy the greater God, + For simple pointing at a good adored: + Proof of the closer neighbourhood. Head on, + Sword of the many, light of the few! untwist + Or cut our tangles till fair space is won + Beyond a briared wood of austere brow, + Believed of discord by thy timely word + At intervals refreshing life: for thou + Art verify Keeper of the Muse’s Key; + Thyself no vacant melodist; + On lower land elective even as she; + Holding, as she, all dissonance abhorred; + Advising to her measured steps in flow; + And teaching how for being subjected free + Past thought of freedom we may come to know + The music of the meaning of Accord. + + + + +YOUTH IN MEMORY + + + DAYS, when the ball of our vision + Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun; + When the grasp on the bow was decision, + And arrow and hand and eye were one; + When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer, + Came heaving for rapture ahead!— + Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer + As lights over mounds of the dead. + + Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead, + With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed, + Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear, + To bear the golden nectar-cup. + So flies desire at view of its delight, + When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight. + We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year + The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost, + Mount but the fatal half way up— + Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed, + For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend, + By passion for the arms’ possession tossed, + It falls the way of sighs and hath their end; + A spark gone out to more sepulchral night. + Good if the arrowy eagle of the height + Be then the little bird that hops to feed. + + Lame falls the cry to kindle days + Of radiant orb and daring gaze. + It does but clank our mortal chain. + For Earth reads through her felon old + The many-numbered of her fold, + Who forward tottering backward strain, + And would be thieves of treasure spent, + With their grey season soured. + She could write out their history in their thirst + To have again the much devoured, + And be the bud at burst; + In honey fancy join the flow, + Where Youth swims on as once they went, + All choiric for spontaneous glee + Of active eager lungs and thews; + They now bared roots beside the river bent; + Whose privilege themselves to see; + Their place in yonder tideway know; + The current glass peruse; + The depths intently sound; + And sapped by each returning flood + Accept for monitory nourishment + Those worn roped features under crust of mud, + Reflected in the silvery smooth around: + Not less the branching and high singing tree, + A home of nests, a landmark and a tent, + Until their hour for losing hold on ground. + Even such good harvest of the things that flee + Earth offers her subjected, and they choose + Rather of Bacchic Youth one beam to drink, + And warm slow marrow with the sensual wink. + So block they at her source the Mother of the Muse. + + Who cheerfully the little bird becomes, + Without a fall, and pipes for peck at crumbs, + May have her dolings to the lightest touch; + As where some cripple muses by his crutch, + Unwitting that the spirit in him sings: + ‘When I had legs, then had I wings, + As good as any born of eggs, + To feed on all aërial things, + When I had legs!’ + And if not to embrace he sighs, + She gives him breath of Youth awhile, + Perspective of a breezy mile, + Companionable hedgeways, lifting skies; + Scenes where his nested dreams upon their hoard + Brooded, or up to empyrean soared: + Enough to link him with a dotted line. + But cravings for an eagle’s flight, + To top white peaks and serve wild wine + Among the rosy undecayed, + Bring only flash of shade + From her full throbbing breast of day in night. + By what they crave are they betrayed: + And cavernous is that young dragon’s jaw, + Crimson for all the fiery reptile saw + In time now coveted, for teeth to flay, + Once more consume, were Life recurrent May. + They to their moment of drawn breath, + Which is the life that makes the death, + The death that makes ethereal life would bind: + The death that breeds the spectre do they find. + Darkness is wedded and the waste regrets + Beating as dead leaves on a fitful gust, + By souls no longer dowered to climb + Beneath their pack of dust, + Whom envy of a lustrous prime, + Eclipsed while yet invoked, besets, + And dooms to sink and water sable flowers, + That never gladdened eye or loaded bee. + Strain we the arms for Memory’s hours, + We are the seized Persephone. + Responsive never to the soft desire + For one prized tune is this our chord of life. + ’Tis clipped to deadness with a wanton knife, + In wishes that for ecstasies aspire. + Yet have we glad companionship of Youth, + Elysian meadows for the mind, + Dare we to face deeds done, and in our tomb + Filled with the parti-coloured bloom + Of loved and hated, grasp all human truth + Sowed by us down the mazy paths behind. + To feel that heaven must we that hell sound through: + Whence comes a line of continuity, + That brings our middle station into view, + Between those poles; a novel Earth we see, + In likeness of us, made of banned and blest; + The sower’s bed, but not the reaper’s rest: + An Earth alive with meanings, wherein meet + Buried, and breathing, and to be. + Then of the junction of the three, + Even as a heart in brain, full sweet + May sense of soul, the sum of music, beat. + + Only the soul can walk the dusty track + Where hangs our flowering under vapours black, + And bear to see how these pervade, obscure, + Quench recollection of a spacious pure. + They take phantasmal forms, divide, convolve, + Hard at each other point and gape, + Horrible ghosts! in agony dissolve, + To reappear with one they drape + For criminal, and, Father! shrieking name, + Who such distorted issue did beget. + Accept them, them and him, though hiss thy sweat + Off brow on breast, whose furnace flame + Has eaten, and old Self consumes. + Out of the purification will they leap, + Thee renovating while new light illumes + The dusky web of evil, known as pain, + That heavily up healthward mounts the steep; + Our fleshly road to beacon-fire of brain: + Midway the tameless oceanic brute + Below, whose heave is topped with foam for fruit, + And the fair heaven reflecting inner peace + On righteous warfare, that asks not to cease. + + Forth of such passage through black fire we win + Clear hearing of the simple lute, + Whereon, and not on other, Memory plays + For them who can in quietness receive + Her restorative airs: a ditty thin + As note of hedgerow bird in ear of eve, + Or wave at ebb, the shallow catching rays + On a transparent sheet, where curves a glass + To truer heavens than when the breaker neighs + Loud at the plunge for bubbly wreck in roar. + Solidity and bulk and martial brass, + Once tyrants of the senses, faintly score + A mark on pebbled sand or fluid slime, + While present in the spirit, vital there, + Are things that seemed the phantoms of their time; + Eternal as the recurrent cloud, as air + Imperative, refreshful as dawn-dew. + Some evanescent hand on vapour scrawled + Historic of the soul, and heats anew + Its coloured lines where deeds of flesh stand bald. + True of the man, and of mankind ’tis true, + Did we stout battle with the Shade, Despair, + Our cowardice, it blooms; or haply warred + Against the primal beast in us, and flung; + Or cleaving mists of Sorrow, left it starred + Above self-pity slain: or it was Prayer + First taken for Life’s cleanser; or the tongue + Spake for the world against this heart; or rings + Old laughter, from the founts of wisdom sprung; + Or clap of wing of joy, that was a throb + From breast of Earth, and did no creature rob: + These quickening live. But deepest at her springs, + Most filial, is an eye to love her young. + And had we it, to see with it, alive + Is our lost garden, flower, bird and hive. + Blood of her blood, aim of her aim, are then + The green-robed and grey-crested sons of men: + She tributary to her aged restores + The living in the dead; she will inspire + Faith homelier than on the Yonder shores, + Abhorring these as mire, + Uncertain steps, in dimness gropes, + With mortal tremours pricking hopes, + And, by the final Bacchic of the lusts + Propelled, the Bacchic of the spirit trusts: + A fervour drunk from mystic hierophants; + Not utterly misled, though blindly led, + Led round fermenting eddies. Faith she plants + In her own firmness as our midway road: + Which rightly Youth has read, though blindly read; + Her essence reading in her toothsome goad; + Spur of bright dreams experience disenchants. + But love we well the young, her road midway + The darknesses runs consecrated clay. + Despite our feeble hold on this green home, + And the vast outer strangeness void of dome, + Shall we be with them, of them, taught to feel, + Up to the moment of our prostrate fall, + The life they deem voluptuously real + Is more than empty echo of a call, + Or shadow of a shade, or swing of tides; + As brooding upon age, when veins congeal, + Grey palsy nods to think. With us for guides, + Another step above the animal, + To views in Alpine thought are they helped on. + Good if so far we live in them when gone! + + And there the arrowy eagle of the height + Becomes the little bird that hops to feed, + Glad of a crumb, for tempered appetite + To make it wholesome blood and fruitful seed. + Then Memory strikes on no slack string, + Nor sectional will varied Life appear: + Perforce of soul discerned in mind, we hear + Earth with her Onward chime, with Winter Spring. + And ours the mellow note, while sharing joys + No more subjecting mortals who have learnt + To build for happiness on equipoise, + The Pleasures read in sparks of substance burnt; + Know in our seasons an integral wheel, + That rolls us to a mark may yet be willed. + This, the truistic rubbish under heel + Of all the world, we peck at and are filled. + + + + +PENETRATION AND TRUST + + +I + + + SLEEK as a lizard at round of a stone, + The look of her heart slipped out and in. + Sweet on her lord her soft eyes shone, + As innocents clear of a shade of sin. + + + +II + + + He laid a finger under her chin, + His arm for her girdle at waist was thrown: + Now, what will happen and who will win, + With me in the fight and my lady lone? + + + +III + + + He clasped her, clasping a shape of stone; + Was fire on her eyes till they let him in. + Her breast to a God of the daybeams shone, + And never a corner for serpent sin. + + + +IV + + + Tranced she stood, with a chattering chin; + Her shrunken form at his feet was thrown: + At home to the death my lord shall win, + When it is no tyrant who leaves me lone! + + + + +NIGHT OF FROST IN MAY + + + WITH splendour of a silver day, + A frosted night had opened May: + And on that plumed and armoured night, + As one close temple hove our wood, + Its border leafage virgin white. + Remote down air an owl hallooed. + The black twig dropped without a twirl; + The bud in jewelled grasp was nipped; + The brown leaf cracked a scorching curl; + A crystal off the green leaf slipped. + Across the tracks of rimy tan, + Some busy thread at whiles would shoot; + A limping minnow-rillet ran, + To hang upon an icy foot. + + In this shrill hush of quietude, + The ear conceived a severing cry. + Almost it let the sound elude, + When chuckles three, a warble shy, + From hazels of the garden came, + Near by the crimson-windowed farm. + They laid the trance on breath and frame, + A prelude of the passion-charm. + + Then soon was heard, not sooner heard + Than answered, doubled, trebled, more, + Voice of an Eden in the bird + Renewing with his pipe of four + The sob: a troubled Eden, rich + In throb of heart: unnumbered throats + Flung upward at a fountain’s pitch, + The fervour of the four long notes, + That on the fountain’s pool subside, + Exult and ruffle and upspring: + Endless the crossing multiplied + Of silver and of golden string. + There chimed a bubbled underbrew + With witch-wild spray of vocal dew. + + It seemed a single harper swept + Our wild wood’s inner chords and waked + A spirit that for yearning ached + Ere men desired and joyed or wept. + Or now a legion ravishing + Musician rivals did unite + In love of sweetness high to sing + The subtle song that rivals light; + From breast of earth to breast of sky: + And they were secret, they were nigh: + A hand the magic might disperse; + The magic swung my universe. + + Yet sharpened breath forbade to dream, + Where all was visionary gleam; + Where Seasons, as with cymbals, clashed; + And feelings, passing joy and woe, + Churned, gurgled, spouted, interflashed, + Nor either was the one we know: + Nor pregnant of the heart contained + In us were they, that griefless plained, + That plaining soared; and through the heart + Struck to one note the wide apart:— + A passion surgent from despair; + A paining bliss in fervid cold; + Off the last vital edge of air, + Leap heavenward of the lofty-souled, + For rapture of a wine of tears; + As had a star among the spheres + Caught up our earth to some mid-height + Of double life to ear and sight, + She giving voice to thought that shines + Keen-brilliant of her deepest mines; + While steely drips the rillet clinked, + And hoar with crust the cowslip swelled. + + Then was the lyre of earth beheld, + Then heard by me: it holds me linked; + Across the years to dead-ebb shores + I stand on, my blood-thrill restores. + But would I conjure into me + Those issue notes, I must review + What serious breath the woodland drew; + The low throb of expectancy; + How the white mother-muteness pressed + On leaf and meadow-herb; how shook, + Nigh speech of mouth, the sparkle-crest + Seen spinning on the bracken-crook. + + + + +THE TEACHING OF THE NUDE + + +I + + + A SATYR spied a Goddess in her bath, + Unseen of her attendant nymphs; none knew. + Forthwith the creature to his fellows drew, + And looking backward on the curtained path, + He strove to tell; he could but heave a breast + Too full, and point to mouth, with failing leers: + Vainly he danced for speech, he giggled tears, + Made as if torn in two, as if tight pressed, + As if cast prone; then fetching whimpered tunes + For words, flung heel and set his hairy flight + Through forest-hollows, over rocky height. + The green leaves buried him three rounds of moons. + A senatorial Satyr named what herb + Had hurried him outrunning reason’s curb. + + + +II + + + ’Tis told how when that hieaway unchecked + To dell returned, he seemed of tempered mood: + Even as the valley of the torrent rude, + The torrent now a brook, the valley wrecked. + In him, to hale him high or hurl aheap, + Goddess and Goatfoot hourly wrestled sore; + Hourly the immortal prevailing more: + Till one hot noon saw Meliboeus peep + From thicket-sprays to where his full-blown dame, + In circle by the lusty friskers gripped, + Laughed the showered rose-leaves while her limbs were stripped. + She beckoned to our Satyr, and he came. + Then twirled she mounds of ripeness, wreath of arms. + His hoof kicked up the clothing for such charms. + + + + +BREATH OF THE BRIAR + + +I + + + O BRIAR-SCENTS, on yon wet wing + Of warm South-west wind brushing by, + You mind me of the sweetest thing + That ever mingled frank and shy: + When she and I, by love enticed, + Beneath the orchard-apples met, + In equal halves a ripe one sliced, + And smelt the juices ere we ate. + + + +II + + + That apple of the briar-scent, + Among our lost in Britain now, + Was green of rind, and redolent + Of sweetness as a milking cow. + The briar gives it back, well nigh + The damsel with her teeth on it; + Her twinkle between frank and shy, + My thirst to bite where she had bit. + + + + +EMPEDOCLES + + +I + + + HE leaped. With none to hinder, + Of Aetna’s fiery scoriae + In the next vomit-shower, made he + A more peculiar cinder. + And this great Doctor, can it be, + He left no saner recipe + For men at issue with despair? + Admiring, even his poet owns, + While noting his fine lyric tones, + The last of him was heels in air! + + + +II + + + Comes Reverence, her features + Amazed to see high Wisdom hear, + With glimmer of a faunish leer, + One mock her pride of creatures. + Shall such sad incident degrade + A stature casting sunniest shade? + O Reverence! let Reason swim; + Each life its critic deed reveals; + And him reads Reason at his heels, + If heels in air the last of him! + + + + +ENGLAND BEFORE THE STORM + + +I + + + THE day that is the night of days, + With cannon-fire for sun ablaze + We spy from any billow’s lift; + And England still this tidal drift! + Would she to sainted forethought vow + A space before the thunders flood, + That martyr of its hour might now + Spare her the tears of blood. + + + +II + + + Asleep upon her ancient deeds, + She hugs the vision plethora breeds, + And counts her manifold increase + Of treasure in the fruits of peace. + What curse on earth’s improvident, + When the dread trumpet shatters rest, + Is wreaked, she knows, yet smiles content + As cradle rocked from breast. + + + +III + + + She, impious to the Lord of Hosts, + The valour of her offspring boasts, + Mindless that now on land and main + His heeded prayer is active brain. + No more great heart may guard the home, + Save eyed and armed and skilled to cleave + Yon swallower wave with shroud of foam, + We see not distant heave. + + + +IV + + + They stand to be her sacrifice, + The sons this mother flings like dice, + To face the odds and brave the Fates; + As in those days of starry dates, + When cannon cannon’s counterblast + Awakened, muzzle muzzle bowled, + And high in swathe of smoke the mast + Its fighting rag outrolled. + +1891. + + + + +TARDY SPRING + + + NOW the North wind ceases, + The warm South-west awakes; + Swift fly the fleeces, + Thick the blossom-flakes. + + Now hill to hill has made the stride, + And distance waves the without end: + Now in the breast a door flings wide; + Our farthest smiles, our next is friend. + And song of England’s rush of flowers + Is this full breeze with mellow stops, + That spins the lark for shine, for showers; + He drinks his hurried flight, and drops. + The stir in memory seem these things, + Which out of moistened turf and clay + Astrain for light push patient rings, + Or leap to find the waterway. + ’Tis equal to a wonder done, + Whatever simple lives renew + Their tricks beneath the father sun, + As though they caught a broken clue; + So hard was earth an eyewink back: + But now the common life has come, + The blotting cloud a dappled pack, + The grasses one vast underhum. + A City clothed in snow and soot, + With lamps for day in ghostly rows, + Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot, + The river that reflective flows: + And there did fog down crypts of street + Play spectre upon eye and mouth:— + Their faces are a glass to greet + This magic of the whirl for South. + A burly joy each creature swells + With sound of its own hungry quest; + Earth has to fill her empty wells, + And speed the service of the nest; + The phantom of the snow-wreath melt, + That haunts the farmer’s look abroad, + Who sees what tomb a white night built, + Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod. + For iron Winter held her firm; + Across her sky he laid his hand; + And bird he starved, he stiffened worm; + A sightless heaven, a shaven land. + Her shivering Spring feigned fast asleep, + The bitten buds dared not unfold: + We raced on roads and ice to keep + Thought of the girl we love from cold. + + But now the North wind ceases, + The warm South-west awakes, + The heavens are out in fleeces, + And earth’s green banner shakes. + + + + +THE LABOURER + + + FOR a Heracles in his fighting ire there is never the glory that + follows + When ashen he lies and the poets arise to sing of the work he has + done. + But to vision alive under shallows of sight, lo, the Labourer’s crown + is Apollo’s, + While stands he yet in his grime and sweat—to wrestle for fruits of + the Sun. + + Can an enemy wither his cheer? Not you, ye fair yellow-flowering + ladies, + Who join with your lords to jar the chords of a bosom heroic, and + clog. + ’Tis the faltering friend, an inanimate land, may drag a great soul to + their Hades, + And plunge him far from a beam of star till he hears the deep bay + of the Dog. + + Apparition is then of a monster-task, in a policy carving new + fashions: + The winninger course than the rule of force, and the springs lured + to run in a stream: + He would bend tough oak, he would stiffen the reed, point Reason to + swallow the passions, + Bid Britons awake two steps to take where one is a trouble extreme! + + Not the less is he nerved with the Labourer’s resolute hope: that by + him shall be written, + To honour his race, this deed of grace, for the weak from the + strong made just: + That her sons over seas in a rally of praise may behold a thrice + vitalised Britain, + Ashine with the light of the doing of right: at the gates of the + Future in trust. + + + + +FORESIGHT AND PATIENCE + + + SPRUNG of the father blood, the mother brain, + Are they who point our pathway and sustain. + They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired. + When they do meet, it is our earth inspired. + + To see Life’s formless offspring and subdue + Desire of times unripe, we have these two, + Whose union is right reason: join they hands, + The world shall know itself and where it stands; + What cowering angel and what upright beast + Make man, behold, nor count the low the least, + Nor less the stars have round it than its flowers. + When these two meet, a point of time is ours. + + As in a land of waterfalls, that flow + Smooth for the leap on their great voice below, + Some eddies near the brink borne swift along + Will capture hearing with the liquid song, + So, while the headlong world’s imperious force + Resounded under, heard I these discourse. + + First words, where down my woodland walk she led, + To her blind sister Patience, Foresight said: + + —Your faith in me appals, to shake my own, + When still I find you in this mire alone. + + —The few steps taken at a funeral pace + By men had slain me but for those you trace. + + —Look I once back, a broken pinion I: + Black as the rebel angels rained from sky! + + —Needs must you drink of me while here you live, + And make me rich in feeling I can give. + + —A brave To-be is dawn upon my brow: + Yet must I read my sister for the How. + My daisy better knows her God of beams + Than doth an eagle that to mount him seems. + She hath the secret never fieriest reach + Of wing shall master till men hear her teach. + + —Liker the clod flaked by the driving plough, + My semblance when I have you not as now. + The quiet creatures who escape mishap + Bear likeness to pure growths of the green sap: + A picture of the settled peace desired + By cowards shunning strife or strivers tired. + I listen at their breasts: is there no jar + Of wrestlings and of stranglings, dead they are, + And such a picture as the piercing mind + Ranks beneath vegetation. Not resigned + Are my true pupils while the world is brute. + What edict of the stronger keeps me mute, + Stronger impels the motion of my heart. + I am not Resignation’s counterpart. + If that I teach, ’tis little the dry word, + Content, but how to savour hope deferred. + We come of earth, and rich of earth may be; + Soon carrion if very earth are we! + + The coursing veins, the constant breath, the use + Of sleep, declare that strife allows short truce; + Unless we clasp decay, accept defeat, + And pass despised; ‘a-cold for lack of heat,’ + Like other corpses, but without death’s plea. + + —My sister calls for battle; is it she? + + —Rather a world of pressing men in arms, + Than stagnant, where the sensual piper charms + Each drowsy malady and coiling vice + With dreams of ease whereof the soul pays price! + No home is here for peace while evil breeds, + While error governs, none; and must the seeds + You sow, you that for long have reaped disdain, + Lie barren at the doorway of the brain, + Let stout contention drive deep furrows, blood + Moisten, and make new channels of its flood! + + —My sober little maid, when we meet first, + Drinks of me ever with an eager thirst. + So can I not of her till circumstance + Drugs cravings. Here we see how men advance + A doubtful foot, but circle if much stirred, + Like dead weeds on whipped waters. Shout the word + Prompting their hungers, and they grandly march, + As to band-music under Victory’s arch. + Thus was it, and thus is it; save that then + The beauty of frank animals had men. + + —Observe them, and down rearward for a term, + Gaze to the primal twistings of the worm. + Thence look this way, across the fields that show + Men’s early form of speech for Yes and No. + + My sister a bruised infant’s utterance had; + And issuing stronger, to mankind ’twas mad. + I knew my home where I had choice to feel + The toad beneath a harrow or a heel. + + —Speak of this Age. + + —When you it shall discern + Bright as you are, to me the Age will turn. + + —For neither of us has it any care; + Its learning is through Science to despair. + + —Despair lies down and grovels, grapples not + With evil, casts the burden of its lot. + This Age climbs earth. + + —To challenge heaven. + + —Not less + The lower deeps. It laughs at Happiness! + That know I, though the echoes of it wail, + For one step upward on the crags you scale. + Brave is the Age wherein the word will rust, + Which means our soul asleep or body’s lust, + Until from warmth of many breasts, that beat + A temperate common music, sunlike heat + The happiness not predatory sheds! + + —But your fierce Yes and No of butting heads + Now rages to outdo a horny Past. + Shades of a wild Destroyer on the vast + Are thrown by every novel light upraised. + The world’s whole round smokes ominously, amazed + And trembling as its pregnant Aetna swells. + Combustibles on hot combustibles + Run piling, for one spark to roll in fire + The mountain-torrent of infernal ire + And leave the track of devils where men built. + Perceptive of a doom, the sinner’s guilt + Confesses in a cry for help shrill loud, + If drops the chillness of a passing cloud, + To conscience, reason, human love; in vain: + None save they but the souls which them contain. + No extramural God, the God within + Alone gives aid to city charged with sin. + A world that for the spur of fool and knave + Sweats in its laboratory what shall save? + But men who ply their wits in such a school + Must pray the mercy of the knave and fool. + + —Much have I studied hard Necessity! + To know her Wisdom’s mother, and that we + May deem the harshness of her later cries + In labour a sure goad to prick the wise, + If men among the warnings which convulse + Can gravely dread without the craven’s pulse. + Long ere the rising of this age of ours, + The knave and fool were stamped as monstrous Powers. + Of human lusts and lassitudes they spring, + And are as lasting as the parent thing. + Yet numbering locust hosts, bent they to drill, + They might o’ermatch and have mankind at will. + Behold such army gathering; ours the spur, + No scattered foe to face, but Lucifer. + Not fool or knave is now the enemy + O’ershadowing men, ’tis Folly, Knavery! + A sea; nor stays that sea the bastioned beach. + Now must the brother soul alive in each + His traitorous individual devildom + Hold subject lest the grand destruction come. + Dimly men see it menacing apace + To overthrow, perchance uproot, the race. + Within, without, they are a field of tares: + Fruitfuller for them when the contest squares, + And wherefore warrior service they must yield, + Shines visible as life on either field. + That is my comfort, following shock on shock, + Which sets faith quaking on their firmest rock. + Since with his weapons, all the arms of Night, + Frail men have challenged Lucifer to fight, + Have matched in hostile ranks, enrolled, erect, + The human and Satanic intellect, + Determined for their uses to control + What forces on the earth and under roll, + Their granite rock runs igneous; now they stand + Pledged to the heavens for safety of their land. + They cannot learn save grossly, gross that are: + Through fear they learn whose aid is good in war. + + —My sister, as I read them in my glass, + Their field of tares they take for pasture grass. + How waken them that have not any bent + Save browsing—the concrete indifferent! + Friend Lucifer supplies them solid stuff: + They fear not for the race when full the trough. + They have much fear of giving up the ghost; + And these are of mankind the unnumbered host. + + —If I could see with you, and did not faint + In beating wing, the future I would paint. + Those massed indifferents will learn to quake: + Now meanwhile is another mass awake, + Once denser than the grunters of the sty. + If I could see with you! Could I but fly! + + —The length of days that you with them have housed, + An outcast else, approves their cause espoused. + + —O true, they have a cause, and woe for us, + While still they have a cause too piteous! + Yet, happy for us when, their cause defined, + They walk no longer with a stumbler blind, + And quicken in the virtue of their cause, + To think me a poor mouther of old saws! + I wait the issue of a battling Age; + The toilers with your ‘troughsters’ now engage; + Instructing them, through their acutest sense, + How close the dangers of indifference! + Already have my people shown their worth, + More love they light, which folds the love of Earth. + That love to love of labour leads: thence love + Of humankind—earth’s incense flung above. + + —Admit some other features: Faithless, mean; + Encased in matter; vowed to Gods obscene; + Contemptuous of the impalpable, it swells + On Doubt; for pastime swallows miracles; + And if I bid it face what _I_ observe, + Declares me hoodwinked by my optic nerve! + + —Oft has your prophet, for reward of toil, + Seen nests of seeming cockatrices coil: + Disowned them as the unholiest of Time, + Which were his offspring, born of flame on slime. + Nor him, their sire, have known the filial fry: + As little as Time’s earliest knew the sky. + Perchance among them shoots a lustrous flame + At intervals, in proof of whom they came. + To strengthen our foundations is the task + Of this tough Age; not in your beams to bask, + Though, lighted by your beams, down mining caves + The rock it blasts, the hoarded foulness braves. + My sister sees no round beyond her mood; + To hawk this Age has dressed her head in hood. + Out of the course of ancient ruts and grooves, + It moves: O much for me to say it moves! + About his Æthiop Highlands Nile is Nile, + Though not the stream of the paternal smile: + And where his tide of nourishment he drives, + An Abyssinian wantonness revives. + Calm as his lotus-leaf to-day he swims; + He is the yellow crops, the rounded limbs, + The Past yet flowing, the fair time that fills; + Breath of all mouths and grist of many mills. + To-morrow, warning none with tempest-showers, + He is the vast Insensate who devours + His golden promise over leagues of seed, + Then sits in a smooth lake upon the deed. + The races which on barbarous force begin + Inherit onward of their origin, + And cancelled blessings will the current length + Reveal till they know need of shaping strength. + ’Tis not in men to recognize the need + Before they clash in hosts, in hosts they bleed. + Then may sharp suffering their nature grind; + Of rabble passions grow the chieftain Mind. + Yet mark where still broad Nile boasts thousands fed, + For tens up the safe mountains at his head. + Few would be fed, not far his course prolong, + Save for the troublous blood which makes him strong. + —That rings of truth! More do your people thrive; + Your Many are more merrily alive + Than erewhile when I gloried in the page + Of radiant singer and anointed sage. + Greece was my lamp: burnt out for lack of oil; + Rome, Python Rome, prey of its robber spoil! + All structures built upon a narrow space + Must fall, from having not your hosts for base. + O thrice must one be you, to see them shift + Along their desert flats, here dash, there drift; + With faith, that of privations and spilt blood, + Comes Reason armed to clear or bank the flood! + And thrice must one be you, to wait release + From duress in the swamp of their increase. + At which oppressive scene, beyond arrest, + A darkness not with stars of heaven dressed + Philosophers behold; desponding view + Your Many nourished, starved my brilliant few; + Then flinging heels, as charioteers the reins, + Dive down the fumy Ætna of their brains. + Belated vessels on a rising sea, + They seem: they pass! + + —But not Philosophy! + + —Ay, be we faithful to ourselves: despise + Nought but the coward in us! That way lies + The wisdom making passage through our slough. + Am I not heard, my head to Earth shall bow; + Like her, shall wait to see, and seeing wait. + Philosophy is Life’s one match for Fate. + That photosphere of our high fountain One, + Our spirit’s Lord and Reason’s fostering sun, + Philosophy, shall light us in the shade, + Warm in the frost, make Good our aim and aid. + Companioned by the sweetest, ay renewed, + Unconquerable, whose aim for aid is Good! + Advantage to the Many: that we name + God’s voice; have there the surety in our aim. + This thought unto my sister do I owe, + And irony and satire off me throw. + They crack a childish whip, drive puny herds, + Where numbers crave their sustenance in words. + Now let the perils thicken: clearer seen, + Your Chieftain Mind mounts over them serene. + Who never yet of scattered lamps was born + To speed a world, a marching world to warn, + But sunward from the vivid Many springs, + Counts conquest but a step, and through disaster sings. + + + + +THE WARNING + + + WE have seen mighty men ballooning high, + And in another moment bump the ground. + He falls; and in his measurement is found + To count some inches o’er the common fry. + ’Twas not enough to send him climbing sky, + Yet ’twas enough above his fellows crowned, + Had he less panted. Let his faithful hound + Bark at detractors. He may walk or lie. + Concerns it most ourselves, who with our gas— + This little Isle’s insatiable greed + For Continents—filled to inflation burst. + So do ripe nations into squalor pass, + When, driven as herds by their old private thirst, + They scorn the brain’s wild search for virtuous light. + + + + +OUTSIDE THE CROWD + + + TO sit on History in an easy chair, + Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom ’twas writ! + Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit, + Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air. + If more than hands’ and armsful be our share, + Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit. + Have we not heard derision infinite + When old men play the youth to chase the snare? + Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes, + Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent, + The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex, + Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent; + Armed to support her sword;—lest we compose + That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks. + + + + +TRAFALGAR DAY + + + HE leads: we hear our Seaman’s call + In the roll of battles won; + For he is Britain’s Admiral + Till setting of her sun. + + When Britain’s life was in her ships, + He kept the sea as his own right; + And saved us from more fell eclipse + Than drops on day from blackest night. + Again his battle spat the flame! + Again his victory flag men saw! + At sound of Nelson’s chieftain name, + A deeper breath did Freedom draw. + + Each trusty captain knew his part: + They served as men, not marshalled kine: + The pulses they of his great heart, + With heads to work his main design. + Their Nelson’s word, to beat the foe, + And spare the fall’n, before them shone. + Good was the hour of blow for blow, + And clear their course while they fought on. + + Behold the Envied vanward sweep!— + A day in mourning weeds adored! + Then Victory was wrought to weep; + Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared. + + A breezeless flag above a shroud + All Britain was when wind and wave, + To make her, passing human, proud, + Brought his last gift from o’er the grave! + + Uprose the soul of him a star + On that brave day of Ocean days: + It rolled the smoke from Trafalgár + To darken Austerlitz ablaze. + Are we the men of old, its light + Will point us under every sky + The path he took; and must we fight, + Our Nelson be our battle-cry! + + He leads: we hear our Seaman’s call + In the roll of battles won; + For he is Britain’s Admiral + Till setting of her sun. + + + + +ODES IN CONTRIBUTION TO THE SONG OF FRENCH HISTORY + + +THE REVOLUTION + + +I + + + NOT yet had History’s Aetna smoked the skies, + And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained, + While overhead in ordered set and rise + Her kingly crowns immutably defiled; + Effulgent on funereal piled + Across the vacant heavens, and distrained + Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear; + Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air. + + +II + + + Through marching scores of winters racked she lay, + Beneath a hoar-frost’s brilliant crust, + Whereon the jewelled flies that drained + Her breasts disported in a glistering spray; + She, the land’s fount of fruits, enclosed with dust; + By good and evil angels fed, sustained + In part to curse, in part to pray, + Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw + The throbs of her charged heart before the Just, + So worn the harrowed surface had become: + And still they deemed the dance above was Law, + Amort all passion in a rebel dumb. + + +III + + + Then, on the unanticipated day, + Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound + To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang, + Ravishing as red wine in woman’s form, + A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh, + Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned; + She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray, + Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang + Intoxication to her swarm, + Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole, + As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff, + Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay + (O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure, + If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!) + And, like a glad releasing of her soul, + Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue, + Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined, + In the face of men they joined: attest it true, + The million witnesses, that she, + For ages lying beside the mole, + Was on the unanticipated miracle day + Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal, + Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew + What Lucifer of the Mint had coined + His bride’s adulterate currency + Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate; + She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate: + His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed. + Read backward on the hoar-frost’s brilliant crust; + Beneath it read. + Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood, + A radiance fringed with grim affright; + For them that hungered, she was nourishing food, + For those who sparkled, Night. + Read in her heart, and how before the Just + Her doings, her misdoings, plead. + + +IV + + + Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke + To husband a resurgent France: + From whom, with her dethroning stroke, + Dishonour passed; the dalliance, + That is occasion’s yea or nay, + In issues for the soul to pay, + Discarded; and the cleft ’twixt deed and word, + The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird, + Wherein we see old Darkness peer, + Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence; + And hence the talons and the beak of prey; + Hence all the lures to silken swine + Thronging the troughs of indolence; + With every sleek convolvement serpentine; + The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer, + And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay. + He clasped in this revived, uprisen France, + A valorous dame, of countenance + The lightning’s upon cloud: unlit as yet + On brows and lips the lurid shine + Of seas in the night-wind’s whirl; unstirred + Her pouch of the centuries’ injuries compressed; + The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard: + Earth’s animate full flower she looked, intense + For worship, wholly given him, fair + Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet, + Earth’s crystal spring to sky: Earth’s warrior Best + To win Heaven’s Pure up that midway + We vision for new ground, where sense + And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare, + Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray + In scorn of the seductive insincere, + But martially nude for hot Bellona’s play, + And amorous of the loftiest in her view. + + +V + + + She sprang from dust to drink of earth’s cool dew, + The breath of swaying grasses share, + Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear, + At wrestle with the tyrannic strong; + Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew, + As immortals may be in the mortal sphere. + Read through her launching heart, who had lain long + With Earth and heard till it became her own + Our good Great Mother’s eve and matin song: + The humming burden of Earth’s toil to feed + Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth, + Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown + Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both, + Of either aided on their hard ascent. + Now when she looked, with love’s benign delight + After great ecstasy, along the plains, + What foulest impregnation of her sight + Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops + Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent, + As were they winter sedges, broken hoops, + Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts, + With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains? + Recked she that some perverting devil had limned + Earth’s proudest to spout scorn of the Maker’s hand, + Who could a day behold these deathly hosts, + And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed, + A ribanded and gemmed elected few, + Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:— + Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game + Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame: + Beautiful statures; hideous, + By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains, + And flexile where is manhood straight; + Mortuaries where warm should beat + The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet: + Who dared in cantique impious + Proclaim the Just, to whom was due + Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state, + For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains, + On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew. + Surely a devil’s land when that meant death for each! + Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus, + With all the body’s life to plump the leech, + Is Nature’s way, she knew. The abominable scene + Spat at the skies; and through her veins, + To cloud celestially sown, + Ran venom of what nourishment + Her dark sustainer subterrene + Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack, + Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains, + Under derisive revels, prone + As one clamped fast, with the interminable senseless blent. + + +VI + + + Now was her face white waves in the tempest’s sharp flame-blink; + Her skies shot black. + Now was it visioned infamy to drink + Of earth’s cool dew, and through the vines + Frolic in pearly laughter with her young, + Watching the healthful, natural, happy signs + Where hands of lads and maids like tendrils clung, + After their sly shy ventures from the leaf, + And promised bunches. Now it seemed + The world was one malarious mire, + Crying for purification: chief + This land of France. It seemed + A duteous desire + To drink of life’s hot flood, and the crimson streamed. + + +VII + + + She drank what makes man demon at the draught. + Her skies lowered black, + Her lover flew, + There swept a shudder over men. + Her heavenly lover fled her, and she laughed, + For laughter was her spirit’s weapon then. + The Infernal rose uncalled, he with his crew. + + +VIII + + + As mighty thews burst manacles, she went mad: + Her heart a flaring torch usurped her wits. + Such enemies of her next-drawn breath she had! + To tread her down in her live grave beneath + Their dancing floor sunned blind by the Royal wreath, + They ringed her steps with crafty prison pits. + Without they girdled her, made nest within. + There ramped the lion, here entrailed the snake. + They forced the cup to her lips when she drank blood; + Believing it, in the mother’s mind at strain, + In the mother’s fears, and in young Liberty’s wail + Alarmed, for her encompassed children’s sake, + The sole sure way to save her priceless bud. + Wherewith, when power had gifted her to prevail, + Vengeance appeared as logically akin. + Insanely rational they; she rationally insane; + And in compute of sin, was hers the appealing sin. + + +IX + + + Amid the plash of scarlet mud + Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air, + Not lack of love was her defect; + The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France + Breathing from exultation to despair + At every wild-winged hope struck by mischance + Soaring at each faint gleam o’er her abyss. + Heard still, to be heard while France shall stand erect, + The frontier march she piped her sons, for where + Her crouching outer enemy camped, + Attendant on the deadlier inner’s hiss. + She piped her sons the frontier march, the wine + Of martial music, History’s cherished tune; + And they, the saintliest labourers that aye + Dropped sweat on soil for bread, took arms and tramped; + High-breasted to match men or elements, + Or Fortune, harsh schoolmistress with the undrilled: + War’s ragged pupils; many a wavering line, + Torn from the dear fat soil of champaigns hopefully tilled, + Torn from the motherly bowl, the homely spoon, + To jest at famine, ply + The novel scythe, and stand to it on the field; + Lie in the furrows, rain-clouds for their tents; + Fronting the red artillery straighten spine; + Buckle the shiver at sight of comrades strewn; + Over an empty platter affect the merrily filled; + Die, if the multiple hazards around said die; + Downward measure a foeman mightily sized; + Laugh at the legs that would run for a life despised; + Lyrical on into death’s red roaring jaw-gape, steeled + Gaily to take of the foe his lesson, and give reply. + Cheerful apprentices, they shall be masters soon! + + +X + + + Lo, where hurricane flocks of the North-wind rattle their thunder + Loud through a night, and at dawn comes change to the great + South-west, + Hounds are the hounded in clouds, waves, forests, inverted the race: + Lo, in the day’s young beams the colossal invading pursuers + Burst upon rocks and were foam; + Ridged up a torrent crest; + Crumbled to ruin, still gazing a glacial wonder; + Turned shamed feet toe to heel on their track at a panic pace. + Yesterday’s clarion cock scudded hen of the invalid comb; + They, the triumphant tonant towering upper, were under; + They, violators of home, dared hope an inviolate home; + They that had stood for the stroke were the vigorous hewers; + Quick as the trick of the wrist with the rapier, they the pursuers. + Heavens and men amazed heard the arrogant crying for grace; + Saw the once hearth-reek rabble the scourge of an army dispieced; + Saw such a shift of the hunt as when Titan Olympus clomb. + Fly! was the sportsman’s word; and the note of the quarry rang, Chase! + + +XI + + + Banners from South, from East, + Sheaves of pale banners drooping hole and shred; + The captive brides of valour, Sabine Wives + Plucked from the foeman’s blushful bed, + For glorious muted battle-tongues + Of deeds along the horizon’s red, + At cost of unreluctant lives; + Her toilful heroes homeward poured, + To give their fevered mother air of the lungs. + She breathed, and in the breathing craved. + Environed as she was, at bay, + Safety she kissed on her drawn sword, + And waved for victory, for fresh victory waved: + She craved for victory as her daily bread; + For victory as her daily banquet raved. + + +XII + + + Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey + Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore + To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more + Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray; + Desired if but to paint her pallid hue. + The passion for that young horizon red, + Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame, + Like dotage of the past-meridian dame + For some bright Sungod adolescent, swelled + Insatiate, to the voracious grew, + The glutton’s inward raveners bred; + Till she, mankind’s most dreaded, most abhorred, + Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked, + As by the weaving Fates impelled, + To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord, + Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked. + + +XIII + + + Banners from East, from South, + She hugged him in them, feared the scourge they meant, + Yet blindly hugged, and hungering built his throne. + So may you see the village innocent, + With curtsey of shut lids and open mouth, + In act to beg for sweets expect a loathly stone: + See furthermore the Just in his measures weigh + Her sufferings and her sins, dispense her meed. + False to her bridegroom lord of the miracle day, + She fell: from his ethereal home observed + Through love, grown alien love, not moved to plead + Against the season’s fruit for deadly Seed, + But marking how she had aimed, and where she swerved, + Why suffered, with a sad consenting thought. + Nor would he shun her sullen look, nor monstrous hold + The doer of the monstrous; she aroused, + She, the long tortured, suddenly freed, distraught, + More strongly the divine in him than when + Joy of her as she sprang from mould + Drew him the midway heavens adown + To clasp her in his arms espoused + Before the sight of wondering men, + And put upon the day a deathless crown. + The veins and arteries of her, fold in fold, + His alien love laid open, to divide + The martyred creature from her crimes; he knew + What cowardice in her valour could reside; + What strength her weakness covered; what abased + Sublimity so illumining, and what raised + This wallower in old slime to noblest heights, + Up to the union on the midway blue:— + Day that the celestial grave Recorder hangs + Among dark History’s nocturnal lights, + With vivid beams indicative to the quick + Of all who have felt the vaulted body’s pangs + Beneath a mind in hopeless soaring sick. + She had forgot how, long enslaved, she yearned + To the one helping hand above; + Forgot her faith in the Great Undiscerned, + Whereof she sprang aloft to her Angelical love + That day: and he, the bright day’s husband, still with love, + Though alien, though to an upper seat retired, + Behold a wrangling heart, as ’twere her soul + On eddies of wild waters cast; + In wilderness division; fired + For domination, freedom, lust, + The Pleasures; lo, a witch’s snaky bowl + Set at her lips; the blood-drinker’s madness fast + Upon her; and therewith mistrust, + Most of herself: a mouth of guile. + Compassionately could he smile, + To hear the mouth disclaiming God, + And clamouring for the Just! + Her thousand impulses, like torches, coursed + City and field; and pushed abroad + O’er hungry waves to thirsty sands, + Flaring at further; she had grown to be + The headless with the fearful hands; + To slaughter, else to suicide, enforced. + But he, remembering how his love began, + And of what creature, pitied when was plain + Another measure of captivity: + The need for strap and rod; + The penitential prayers again; + Again the bitter bowing down to dust; + The burden on the flesh for who disclaims the God, + The answer when is call upon the Just. + Whence her lost virtue had found refuge strode + Her master, saying, ‘I only; I who can!’ + And echoed round her army, now her chain. + So learns the nation, closing Anarch’s reign, + That she had been in travail of a Man. + + + +NAPOLÉON + + +I + + + CANNON his name, + Cannon his voice, he came. + Who heard of him heard shaken hills, + An earth at quake, to quiet stamped; + Who looked on him beheld the will of wills, + The driver of wild flocks where lions ramped: + Beheld War’s liveries flee him, like lumped grass + Nid-nod to ground beneath the cuffing storm; + While laurelled over his Imperial form, + Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass, + Reverberant notes and long blew volant Fame. + Incarnate Victory, Power manifest, + Infernal or God-given to mankind, + On the quenched volcano’s cusp did he take stand, + A conquering army’s height above the land, + Which calls that army offspring of its breast, + And sees it mid the starry camps enshrined; + His eye the cannon’s flame, + The cannon’s cave his mind. + + +II + + + To weld the nation in a name of dread, + And scatter carrion flies off wounds unhealed, + The Necessitated came, as comes from out + Electric ebon lightning’s javelin-head, + Threatening agitation in the revealed + Founts of our being; terrible with doubt, + With radiance restorative. At one stride + Athwart the Law he stood for sovereign sway. + That Soliform made featureless beside + His brilliancy who neighboured: vapour they; + Vapour what postured statues barred his tread. + On high in amphitheatre field on field, + Italian, Egyptian, Austrian, + Far heard and of the carnage discord clear, + Bells of his escalading triumphs pealed + In crashes on a choral chant severe, + Heraldic of the authentic Charlemagne, + Globe, sceptre, sword, to enfold, to rule, to smite, + Make unity of the mass, + Coherent or refractory, by his might. + + Forth from her bearded tube of lacquey brass, + Fame blew, and tuned the jangles, bent the knees + Rebellious or submissive; his decrees + Were thunder in those heavens and compelled: + Such as disordered earth, eclipsed of stars, + Endures for sign of Order’s calm return, + Whereunto she is vowed; and his wreckage-spars, + His harried ships, old riotous Ocean lifts alight, + Subdued to splendour in his delirant churn. + Glory suffused the accordant, quelled, + By magic of high sovereignty, revolt: + And he, the reader of men, himself unread; + The name of hope, the name of dread; + Bloom of the coming years or blight; + An arm to hurl the bolt + With aim Olympian; bore + Likeness to Godhead. Whither his flashes hied + Hosts fell; what he constructed held rock-fast. + So did earth’s abjects deem of him that built and clove. + Torch on imagination, beams he cast, + Whereat they hailed him deified: + If less than an eagle-speeding Jove, than Vulcan more. + Or it might be a Vulcan-Jove, + Europe for smithy, Europe’s floor + Lurid with sparks in evanescent showers, + Loud echo-clap of hammers at all hours, + Our skies the reflex of its furnace blast. + + +III + + + On him the long enchained, released + For bride of the miracle day up the midway blue; + She from her heavenly lover fallen to serve for feast + Of rancours and raw hungers; she, the untrue, + Yet pitiable, not despicable, gazed. + Fawning, her body bent, she gazed + With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart: + Eyes magnifying through hysteric tears + This apparition, ghostly for belief; + Demoniac or divine, but sole + Over earth’s mightiest written Chief; + Earth’s chosen, crowned, unchallengeable upstart: + The trumpet word to awake, transform, renew; + The arbiter of circumstance; + High above limitations, as the spheres. + Nor ever had heroical Romance, + Never ensanguined History’s lengthened scroll, + Shown fulminant to shoot the levin dart + Terrific as this man, by whom upraised, + Aggrandized and begemmed, she outstripped her peers; + Like midnight’s levying brazier-beacon blazed + Defiant to the world, a rally for her sons, + Day of the darkness; this man’s mate; by him, + Cannon his name, + Rescued from vivisectionist and knave, + Her body’s dominators and her shame; + By him with the rivers of ranked battalions, brave + Past mortal, girt: a march of swords and guns + Incessant; his proved warriors; loaded dice + He flung on the crested board, where chilly Fears + Behold the Reaper’s ground, Death sitting grim, + Awatch for his predestined ones, + Mid shrieks and torrent-hooves; but these, + Inebriate of his inevitable device, + Hail it their hero’s wood of lustrous laurel-trees, + Blossom and fruit of fresh Hesperides, + The boiling life-blood in their cheers. + Unequalled since the world was man they pour + A spiky girdle round her; these, her sons, + His cataracts at smooth holiday, soon to roar + Obstruction shattered at his will or whim: + Kind to her ear as quiring Cherubim, + And trampling earth like scornful mastodons. + + +IV + + + The flood that swept her to be slave + Adoring, under thought of being his mate, + These were, and unto the visibly unexcelled, + As much of heart as abjects can she gave, + Or what of heart the body bears for freight + When Majesty apparent overawes; + By the flash of his ascending deeds upheld, + Which let not feminine pride in him have pause + To question where the nobler pride rebelled. + She read the hieroglyphic on his brow, + Felt his firm hand to wield the giant’s mace; + Herself whirled upward in an eagle’s claws, + Past recollection of her earthly place; + And if cold Reason pressed her, called him Fate; + Offering abashed the servile woman’s vow. + Delirium was her virtue when the look + At fettered wrists and violated laws + Faith in a rectitude Supernal shook, + Till worship of him shone as her last rational state, + The slave’s apology for gemmed disgrace. + Far in her mind that leap from earth to the ghost + Midway on high; or felt as a troubled pool; + Or as a broken sleep that hunts a dream half lost, + Arrested and rebuked by the common school + Of daily things for truancy. She could rejoice + To know with wakeful eyeballs Violence + Her crowned possessor, and, on every sense + Incumbent, Fact, Imperial Fact, her choice, + In scorn of barren visions, aims at a glassy void. + Who sprang for Liberty once, found slavery sweet; + And Tyranny, on alert subservience buoyed, + Spurred a blood-mare immeasureably fleet + To shoot the transient leagues in a passing wink, + Prompt for the glorious bound at the fanged abyss’s brink. + Scarce felt she that she bled when battle scored + On riddled flags the further conjured line; + From off the meteor gleam of his waved sword + Reflected bright in permanence: she bled + As the Bacchante spills her challengeing wine + With whirl o’ the cup before the kiss to lip; + And bade drudge History in his footprints tread, + For pride of sword-strokes o’er slow penmanship: + Each step of his a volume: his sharp word + The shower of steel and lead + Or pastoral sunshine. + + +V + + + Persistent through the brazen chorus round + His thunderous footsteps on the foeman’s ground, + A broken carol of wild notes was heard, + As when an ailing infant wails a dream. + Strange in familiarity it rang: + And now along the dark blue vault might seem + Winged migratories having but heaven for home, + Now the lone sea-bird’s cry down shocks of foam, + Beneath a ruthless paw the captive’s pang. + + It sang the gift that comes from God + To mind of man as air to lung. + So through her days of under sod + Her faith unto her heart had sung, + Like bedded seed by frozen clod, + With view of wide-armed heaven and buds at burst, + And midway up, Earth’s fluttering little lyre. + Even for a glimpse, for even a hope in chained desire + The vision of it watered thirst. + + +VI + + + But whom those errant moans accused + As Liberty’s murderous mother, cried accursed, + France blew to deafness: for a space she mused; + She smoothed a startled look, and sought, + From treasuries of the adoring slave, + Her surest way to strangle thought; + Picturing her dread lord decree advance + Into the enemy’s land; artillery, bayonet, lance; + His ordering fingers point the dial’s to time their ranks: + Himself the black storm-cloud, the tempest’s bayonet-glaive. + Like foam-heads of a loosened freshet bursting banks, + By mount and fort they thread to swamp the sluggard plains. + Shines his gold-laurel sun, or cloak connivent rains. + They press to where the hosts in line and square throng mute; + He watchful of their form, the Audacious, the Astute; + Eagle to grip the field; to work his craftiest, fox. + From his brief signal, straight the stroke of the leveller falls; + From him those opal puffs, those arcs with the clouded balls: + He waves and the voluble scene is a quagmire shifting blocks; + They clash, they are knotted, and now ’tis the deed of the axe on the + log; + Here away moves a spiky woodland, and yon away sweep + Rivers of horse torrent-mad to the shock, and the heap over heap + Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or shreds, or + a fog + Rolling off sunlight’s arrows. Not mightier Phoebus in ire, + Nor deadlier Jove’s avengeing right hand, than he of the brain + Keen at an enemy’s mind to encircle and pierce and constrain, + Muffling his own for a fate-charged blow very Gods may admire. + Sure to behold are his eagles on high where the conflict raged. + Rightly, then, should France worship, and deafen the disaccord + Of those who dare withstand an irresistible sword + To thwart his predestined subjection of Europe. Let them submit! + She said it aloud, and heard in her breast, as a singer caged, + With the beat of wings at bars, Earth’s fluttering little lyre. + No more at midway heaven, but liker midway to the pit: + Not singing the spirally upward of rapture, the downward of pain + Rather, the drop sheer downward from pressure of merciless weight. + + Her strangled thought got breath, with her worship held debate; + To yield and sink, yet eye askant the mark she had missed. + Over the black-blue rollers of that broad Westerly main, + Steady to sky, the light of Liberty glowed + In a flaming pillar, that cast on the troubled waters a road + For Europe to cross, and see the thing lost subsist. + For there ’twas a shepherd led his people, no butcher of sheep; + Firmly there the banner he first upreared + Stands to rally; and nourishing grain do his children reap + From a father beloved in life, in his death revered. + Contemplating him and his work, shall a skyward glance + Clearer sight of our dreamed and abandoned obtain; + Nay, but as if seen in station above the Republic, France + Had view of her one-day’s heavenly lover again; + Saw him amid the bright host looking down on her; knew she had erred, + Knew him her judge, knew yonder the spirit preferred; + Yonder the base of the summit she strove that day to ascend, + Ere cannon mastered her soul, and all dreams had end. + + +VII + + + Soon felt she in her shivered frame + A bodeful drain of blood illume + Her wits with frosty fire to read + The dazzling wizard who would have her bleed + On fruitless marsh and snows of spectral gloom + For victory that was victory scarce in name. + Husky his clarions laboured, and her sighs + O’er slaughtered sons were heavier than the prize; + Recalling how he stood by Frederic’s tomb, + With Frederic’s country underfoot and spurned: + There meditated; till her hope might guess, + Albeit his constant star prescribe success, + The savage strife would sink, the civil aim + To head a mannered world breathe zephyrous + Of morning after storm; whereunto she yearned; + And Labour’s lovely peace, and Beauty’s courtly bloom, + The mind in strenuous tasks hilarious. + At such great height, where hero hero topped, + Right sanely should the Grand Ascendant think + No further leaps at the fanged abyss’s brink + True Genius takes: be battle’s dice-box dropped! + + She watched his desert features, hung to hear + The honey words desired, and veiled her face; + Hearing the Seaman’s name recur + Wrathfully, thick with a meaning worse + Than call to the march: for that inveterate Purse + Could kindle the extinct, inform a vacant place, + Conjure a heart into the trebly felled. + It squeezed the globe, insufferably swelled + To feed insurgent Europe: rear and van + Were haunted by the amphibious curse; + Here flesh, there phantom, livelier after rout: + The Seaman piping aye to the rightabout, + Distracted Europe’s Master, puffed remote + Those Indies of the swift Macedonian, + Whereon would Europe’s Master somewhiles doat, + In dreamings on a docile universe + Beneath an immarcessible Charlemagne. + + Nor marvel France should veil a seer’s face, + And call on darkness as a blest retreat. + Magnanimously could her iron Emperor + Confront submission: hostile stirred to heat + All his vast enginery, allowed no halt + Up withered avenues of waste-blood war, + To the pitiless red mounts of fire afume, + As ’twere the world’s arteries opened! Woe the race! + Ask wherefore Fortune’s vile caprice should balk + His panther spring across the foaming salt, + From martial sands to the cliffs of pallid chalk! + There is no answer: seed of black defeat + She then did sow, and France nigh unto death foredoom. + See since that Seaman’s epicycle sprite + Engirdle, lure and goad him to the chase + Along drear leagues of crimson spotting white + With mother’s tears of France, that he may meet + Behind suborned battalions, ranked as wheat + Where peeps the weedy poppy, him of the sea; + Earth’s power to baffle Ocean’s power resume; + Victorious army crown o’er Victory’s fleet; + And bearing low that Seaman upon knee, + Stay the vexed question of supremacy, + Obnoxious in the vault by Frederic’s tomb. + + +VIII + + + Poured streams of Europe’s veins the flood + Full Rhine or Danube rolls off morning-tide + Through shadowed reaches into crimson-dyed: + And Rhine and Danube knew her gush of blood + Down the plucked roots the deepest in her breast. + He tossed her cordials, from his laurels pressed. + She drank for dryness thirstily, praised his gifts. + The blooded frame a powerful draught uplifts + Writhed the devotedness her voice rang wide + In cries ecstatic, as of the martyr-Blest, + Their spirits issuing forth of bodies racked, + And crazy chuckles, with life’s tears at feud; + While near her heart the sunken sentinel + Called Critic marked, and dumb in awe reviewed + This torture, this anointed, this untracked + To mortal source, this alien of his kind; + Creator, slayer, conjuror, Solon-Mars, + The cataract of the abyss, the star of stars; + Whose arts to lay the senses under spell + Aroused an insurrectionary mind. + + +IX + + + He, did he love her? France was his weapon, shrewd + At edge, a wind in onset: he loved well + His tempered weapon, with the which he hewed + Clean to the ground impediments, or hacked, + Sure of the blade that served the great man-miracle. + He raised her, robed her, gemmed her for his bride, + Did but her blood in blindness given exact. + Her blood she gave, was blind to him as guide: + She quivered at his word, and at his touch + Was hound or steed for any mark he espied. + He loved her more than little, less than much. + The fair subservient of Imperial Fact + Next to his consanguineous was placed + In ranked esteem; above the diurnal meal, + Vexatious carnal appetites above, + Above his hoards, while she Imperial Fact embraced, + And rose but at command from under heel. + The love devolvent, the ascension love, + Receptive or profuse, were fires he lacked, + Whose marrow had expelled their wasteful sparks; + Whose mind, the vast machine of endless haste, + Took up but solids for its glowing seal. + The hungry love, that fish-like creatures feel, + Impelled for prize of hooks, for prey of sharks, + His night’s first quarter sicklied to distaste, + In warm enjoyment barely might distract. + A head that held an Europe half devoured + Taste in the blood’s conceit of pleasure soured. + Nought save his rounding aim, the means he plied, + Death for his cause, to him could point appeal. + His mistress was the thing of uses tried. + Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed, + But on his Policy his eye was lewd. + That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked + No foot across; a shade his ire provoked. + The blunder or the cruelty of a deed + His Policy imperative could plead. + He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he + Legitimate outside his Policy. + Men’s lives and works were due, from their birth’s date, + To the State’s shield and sword, himself the State. + He thought for them in mass, as Titan may; + For their pronounced well-being bade obey; + O’er each obstructive thicket thunderclapped, + And straight their easy road to market mapped. + Watched Argus to survey the huge preserves + He held or coveted; Mars was armed alert + At sign of motion; yet his brows were murk, + His gorge would surge, to see the butcher’s work, + The Reaper’s field; a sensitive in nerves. + He rode not over men to do them hurt. + As one who claimed to have for paramour + Earth’s fairest form, he dealt the cancelling blow; + Impassioned, still impersonal; to ensure + Possession; free of rivals, not their foe. + + The common Tyrant’s frenzies, rancour, spites, + He knew as little as men’s claim on rights. + A kindness for old servants, early friends, + Was constant in him while they served his ends; + And if irascible, ’twas the moment’s reek + From fires diverted by some gusty freak. + His Policy the act which breeds the act + Prevised, in issues accurately summed + From reckonings of men’s tempers, terrors, needs:— + That universal army, which he leads + Who builds Imperial on Imperious Fact. + Within his hot brain’s hammering workshop hummed + A thousand furious wheels at whirr, untired + As Nature in her reproductive throes; + And did they grate, he spake, and cannon fired: + The cause being aye the incendiary foes + Proved by prostration culpable. His dispense + Of Justice made his active conscience; + His passive was of ceaseless labour formed. + So found this Tyrant sanction and repose; + Humanly just, inhumanly unwarmed. + Preventive fencings with the foul intent + Occult, by him observed and foiled betimes, + Let fool historians chronicle as crimes. + His blows were dealt to clear the way he went: + Too busy sword and mind for needless blows. + The mighty bird of sky minutest grains + On ground perceived; in heaven but rays or rains; + In humankind diversities of masks, + For rule of men the choice of bait or goads. + The statesman steered the despot to large tasks; + The despot drove the statesman on short roads. + For Order’s cause he laboured, as inclined + A soldier’s training and his Euclid mind. + His army unto men he could present + As model of the perfect instrument. + That creature, woman, was the sofa soft, + When warriors their dusty armour doffed, + And read their manuals for the making truce + With rosy frailties framed to reproduce. + He farmed his land, distillingly alive + For the utmost extract he might have and hive, + Wherewith to marshal force; and in like scheme, + Benign shone Hymen’s torch on young love’s dream. + Thus to be strong was he beneficent; + A fount of earth, likewise a firmament. + + The disputant in words his eye dismayed: + Opinions blocked his passage. Rent + Were Councils with a gesture; brayed + By hoarse camp-phrase what argument + Dared interpose to waken spleen + In him whose vision grasped the unseen, + Whose counsellor was the ready blade, + Whose argument the cannonade. + He loathed his land’s divergent parties, loth + To grant them speech, they were such idle troops; + The friable and the grumous, dizzards both. + Men were good sticks his mastery wrought from hoops; + Some serviceable, none credible on oath. + The silly preference they nursed to die + In beds he scorned, and led where they should lie. + If magic made them pliable for his use, + Magician he could be by planned surprise. + For do they see the deuce in human guise, + As men’s acknowledged head appears the deuce, + And they will toil with devilish craft and zeal. + Among them certain vagrant wits that had + Ideas buzzed; they were the feebly mad; + Pursuers of a film they hailed ideal; + But could be dangerous fire-flies for a brain + Subdued by fact, still amorous of the inane. + With a breath he blew them out, to beat their wings + The way of such transfeminated things, + And France had sense of vacancy in Light. + + That is the soul’s dead darkness, making clutch + Wild hands for aid at muscles within touch; + Adding to slavery’s chain the stringent twist; + Even when it brings close surety that aright + She reads her Tyrant through his golden mist; + Perceives him fast to a harsher Tyrant bound; + Self-ridden, self-hunted, captive of his aim; + Material grandeur’s ape, the Infernal’s hound; + Enormous, with no infinite around; + No starred deep sky, no Muse, or lame + The dusty pattering pinions, + The voice as through the brazen tube of Fame. + + +X + + + Hugest of engines, a much limited man, + She saw the Lustrous, her great lord, appear + Through that smoked glass her last privation brought + To point her critic eye and spur her thought: + A heart but to propel Leviathan; + A spirit that breathed but in earth’s atmosphere. + Amid the plumed and sceptred ones + Irradiatingly Jovian, + The mountain tower capped by the floating cloud; + A nursery screamer where dialectics ruled: + Mannerless, graceless, laughterless, unlike + Herself in all, yet with such power to strike, + That she the various features she could scan + Dared not to sum, though seeing: and befooled + By power which beamed omnipotent, she bowed, + Subservient as roused echo round his guns. + Invulnerable Prince of Myrmidons, + He sparkled, by no sage Athene schooled. + Partly she read her riddle, stricken and pained; + But irony, her spirit’s tongue, restrained. + The Critic, last of vital in the proud + Enslaved, when most detectively endowed, + Admired how irony’s venom off him ran, + Like rain-drops down a statue cast in bronze: + Whereby of her keen rapier disarmed, + Again her chant of eulogy began, + Protesting, but with slavish senses charmed. + + Her warrior, chief among the valorous great + In arms he was, dispelling shades of blame, + With radiance palpable in fruit and weight. + Heard she reproach, his victories blared response; + His victories bent the Critic to acclaim, + As with fresh blows upon a ringing sconce. + Or heard she from scarred ranks of jolly growls + His veterans dwarf their reverence and, like owls, + Laugh in the pitch of discord, to exalt + Their idol for some genial trick or fault, + She, too, became his marching veteran. + Again she took her breath from them who bore + His eagles through the tawny roar, + And murmured at a peaceful state, + That bred the title charlatan, + As missile from the mouth of hate, + For one the daemon fierily filled and hurled, + Cannon his name, + Shattering against a barrier world; + Her supreme player of man’s primaeval game. + + The daemon filled him, and he filled her sons; + Strung them to stature over human height, + As march the standards down the smoky fight; + Her cherubim, her towering mastodons! + Directed vault or breach, break through + Earth’s toughest, seasons, elements, tame; + Dash at the bulk the sharpened few; + Count death the smallest of their debts: + Show that the will to do + Is masculine and begets! + + These princes unto him the mother owed; + These jewels of manhood that rich hand bestowed. + What wonder, though with wits awake + To read her riddle, for these her offspring’s sake;— + And she, before high heaven adulteress, + The lost to honour, in his glory clothed, + Else naked, shamed in sight of men, self-loathed;— + That she should quench her thought, nor worship less + Than ere she bled on sands or snows and knew + The slave’s alternative, to worship or to rue! + + +XI + + + Bright from the shell of that much limited man, + Her hero, like the falchion out of sheath, + Like soul that quits the tumbled body, soared: + And France, impulsive, nuptial with his plan, + Albeit the Critic fretting her, adored + Once more. Exultingly her heart went forth, + Submissive to his mind and mood, + The way of those pent-eyebrows North; + For now was he to win the wreath + Surpassing sunniest in camp or Court; + Next, as the blessed harvest after years of blight, + Sit, the Great Emperor, to be known the Good! + + Now had the Seaman’s volvent sprite, + Lean from the chase that barked his contraband, + A beggared applicant at every port, + To strew the profitless deeps and rot beneath, + Slung northward, for a hunted beast’s retort + On sovereign power; there his final stand, + Among the perjured Scythian’s shaggy horde, + The hydrocephalic aërolite + Had taken; flashing thence repellent teeth, + Though Europe’s Master Europe’s Rebel banned + To be earth’s outcast, ocean’s lord and sport. + + Unmoved might seem the Master’s taunted sword. + Northward his dusky legions nightly slipped, + As on the map of that all-provident head; + He luting Peace the while, like morning’s cock + The quiet day to round the hours for bed; + No pastoral shepherd sweeter to his flock. + Then Europe first beheld her Titan stripped. + To what vast length of limb and mounds of thews, + How trained to scale the eminences, pluck + The hazards for new footing, how compel + Those timely incidents by men named luck, + Through forethought that defied the Fates to choose, + Her grovelling admiration had not yet + Imagined of the great man-miracle; + And France recounted with her comic smile + Duplicities of Court and Cabinet, + The silky female of his male in guile, + Wherewith her two-faced Master could amuse + A dupe he charmed in sunny beams to bask, + Before his feint for camisado struck + The lightning moment of the cast-off mask. + + Splendours of earth repeating heaven’s at set + Of sun down mountain cloud in masses arched; + Since Asia upon Europe marched, + Unmatched the copious multitudes; unknown + To Gallia’s over-runner, Rome’s inveterate foe, + Such hosts; all one machine for overthrow, + Coruscant from the Master’s hand, compact + As reasoned thoughts in the Master’s head; were shown + Yon lightning moment when his acme might + Blazed o’er the stream that cuts the sandy tract + Borussian from Sarmatia’s famished flat; + The century’s flower; and off its pinnacled throne, + Rayed servitude on Europe’s ball of sight. + + +XII + + + Behind the Northern curtain-folds he passed. + There heard hushed France her muffled heart beat fast + Against the hollow ear-drum, where she sat + In expectation’s darkness, until cracked + The straining curtain-seams: a scaly light + Was ghost above an army under shroud. + Imperious on Imperial Fact + Incestuously the incredible begat. + His veterans and auxiliaries, + The trained, the trustful, sanguine, proud, + Princely, scarce numerable to recite,— + Titanic of all Titan tragedies!— + That Northern curtain took them, as the seas + Gulp the great ships to give back shipmen white. + + Alive in marble, she conceived in soul, + With barren eyes and mouth, the mother’s loss; + The bolt from her abandoned heaven sped; + The snowy army rolling knoll on knoll + Beyond horizon, under no blest Cross: + By the vulture dotted and engarlanded. + + Was it a necromancer lured + To weave his tense betraying spell? + A Titan whom our God endured + Till he of his foul hungers fell, + By all his craft and labour scourged? + A deluge Europe’s liberated wave, + Pæan to sky, leapt over that vast grave. + Its shadow-points against her sacred land converged. + And him, her yoke-fellow, her black lord, her fate, + In doubt, in fevered hope, in chills of hate, + That tore her old credulity to strips, + Then pressed the auspicious relics on her lips, + His withered slave for foregone miracles urged. + And he, whom now his ominous halo’s round, + A three parts blank decrescent sickle, crowned, + Prodigious in catastrophe, could wear + The realm of Darkness with its Prince’s air; + Assume in mien the resolute pretence + To satiate an hungered confidence, + Proved criminal by the sceptic seen to cower + Beside the generous face of that frail flower. + + +XIII + + + Desire and terror then had each of each: + His crown and sword were staked on the magic stroke; + Her blood she gave as one who loved her leech; + And both did barter under union’s cloak. + An union in hot fever and fierce need + Of either’s aid, distrust in trust did breed. + Their traffic instincts hooded their live wits + To issues. Never human fortune throve + On such alliance. Viewed by fits, + From Vulcan’s forge a hovering Jove + Evolved. The slave he dragged the Tyrant drove. + Her awe of him his dread of her invoked: + His nature with her shivering faith ran yoked. + What wisdom counselled, Policy declined; + All perils dared he save the step behind. + Ahead his grand initiative becked: + One spark of radiance blurred, his orb was wrecked. + Stripped to the despot upstart, for success + He raged to clothe a perilous nakedness. + He would not fall, while falling; would not be taught, + While learning; would not relax his grasp on aught + He held in hand, while losing it; pressed advance, + Pricked for her lees the veins of wasted France; + Who, had he stayed to husband her, had spun + The strength he taxed unripened for his throw, + In vengeful casts calamitous, + On fields where palsying Pyrrhic laurels grow, + The luminous the ruinous. + An incalescent scorpion, + And fierier for the mounded cirque + That narrowed at him thick and murk, + This gambler with his genius + Flung lives in angry volleys, bloody lightnings, flung + His fortunes to the hosts he stung, + With victories clipped his eagle’s wings. + By the hands that built him up was he undone: + By the star aloft, which was his ram’s-head will + Within; by the toppling throne the soldier won; + By the yeasty ferment of what once had been, + To cloud a rational mind for present things; + By his own force, the suicide in his mill. + Needs never God of Vengeance intervene + When giants their last lesson have to learn. + Fighting against an end he could discern, + The chivalry whereof he had none + He called from his worn slave’s abundant springs: + Not deigning spousally entreat + That ever blinded by his martial skill, + But harsh to have her worship counted out + In human coin, her vital rivers drained, + Her infant forests felled, commanded die + The decade thousand deaths for his Imperial seat, + Where throning he her faith in him maintained; + Bound Reason to believe delayed defeat + Was triumph; and what strength in her remained + To head against the ultimate foreseen rout, + Insensate taxed; of his impenitent will, + Servant and sycophant: without ally, + In Python’s coils, the Master Craftsman still; + The smiter, panther springer, trapper sly, + The deadly wrestler at the crucial bout, + The penetrant, the tonant, tower of towers, + Striking from black disaster starry showers. + Her supreme player of man’s primaeval game, + He won his harnessed victim’s rapturous shout, + When every move was mortal to her frame, + Her prayer to life that stricken he might lie, + She to exchange his laurels for earth’s flowers. + + The innumerable whelmed him, and he fell: + A vessel in mid-ocean under storm. + Ere ceased the lullaby of his passing bell, + He sprang to sight, in human form + Revealed, from no celestial aids: + The shades enclosed him, and he fired the shades. + + Cannon his name, + Cannon his voice, he came. + The fount of miracles from drought-dust arose, + Amazing even on his Imperial stage, + Where marvels lightened through the alternate hours + And winged o’er human earth’s heroical shone. + Into the press of cumulative foes, + Across the friendly fields of smoke and rage, + A broken structure bore his furious powers; + The man no more, the Warrior Chief the same; + Match for all rivals; in himself but flame + Of an outworn lamp, to illumine nought anon. + Yet loud as when he first showed War’s effete + Their Schoolman off his eagre mounted high, + And summoned to subject who dared compete, + The cannon in the name Napoleon + Discoursed of sulphur earth to curtained sky. + So through a tropic day a regnant sun, + Where armies of assailant vapours thronged, + His glory’s trappings laid on them: comes night, + Enwraps him in a bosom quick of heat + From his anterior splendours, and shall seem + Day instant, Day’s own lord in the furnace gleam, + The virulent quiver on ravished eyes prolonged, + When severed darkness, all flaminical bright, + Slips vivid eagles linked in rapid flight; + Which bring at whiles the lionly far roar, + As wrestled he with manacles and gags, + To speed across a cowering world once more, + Superb in ordered floods, his lordly flags. + His name on silence thundered, on the obscure + Lightened; it haunted morn and even-song: + Earth of her prodigy’s extinction long, + With shudderings and with thrillings, hung unsure. + + Snapped was the chord that made the resonant bow, + In France, abased and like a shrunken corse; + Amid the weakest weak, the lowest low, + From the highest fallen, stagnant off her source; + Condemned to hear the nations’ hostile mirth; + See curtained heavens, and smell a sulphurous earth; + Which told how evermore shall tyrant Force + Beget the greater for its overthrow. + The song of Liberty in her hearing spoke + A foreign tongue; Earth’s fluttering little lyre + Unlike, but like the raven’s ravening croak. + Not till her breath of being could aspire + Anew, this loved and scourged of Angels found + Our common brotherhood in sight and sound: + When mellow rang the name Napoleon, + And dim aloft her young Angelical waved. + Between ethereal and gross to choose, + She swung; her soul desired, her senses craved. + They pricked her dreams, while oft her skies were dun + Behind o’ershadowing foemen: on a tide + They drew the nature having need of pride + Among her fellows for its vital dues: + He seen like some rare treasure-galleon, + Hull down, with masts against the Western hues. + + + +FRANCE +DECEMBER 1870 {140} + + +I + + + WE look for her that sunlike stood + Upon the forehead of our day, + An orb of nations, radiating food + For body and for mind alway. + Where is the Shape of glad array; + The nervous hands, the front of steel, + The clarion tongue? Where is the bold proud face? + We see a vacant place; + We hear an iron heel. + + +II + + + O she that made the brave appeal + For manhood when our time was dark, + And from our fetters drove the spark + Which was as lightning to reveal + New seasons, with the swifter play + Of pulses, and benigner day; + She that divinely shook the dead + From living man; that stretched ahead + Her resolute forefinger straight, + And marched toward the gloomy gate + Of earth’s Untried, gave note, and in + The good name of Humanity + Called forth the daring vision! she, + She likewise half corrupt of sin, + Angel and Wanton! can it be? + Her star has foundered in eclipse, + The shriek of madness on her lips; + Shreds of her, and no more, we see. + There is horrible convulsion, smothered din, + As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to be free. + + +III + + + Look not for spreading boughs + On the riven forest tree. + Look down where deep in blood and mire + Black thunder plants his feet and ploughs + The soil for ruin: that is France: + Still thrilling like a lyre, + Amazed to shivering discord from a fall + Sudden as that the lurid hosts recall + Who met in heaven the irreparable mischance. + O that is France! + The brilliant eyes to kindle bliss, + The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss, + Breasts that a sighing world inspire, + And laughter-dimpled countenance + Where soul and senses caught desire! + + +IV + + + Ever invoking fire from heaven, the fire + Has grasped her, unconsumable, but framed + For all the ecstasies of suffering dire. + Mother of Pride, her sanctuary shamed: + Mother of Delicacy, and made a mark + For outrage: Mother of Luxury, stripped stark: + Mother of Heroes, bondsmen: thro’ the rains, + Across her boundaries, lo the league-long chains! + Fond Mother of her martial youth; they pass, + Are spectres in her sight, are mown as grass! + Mother of Honour, and dishonoured: Mother + Of Glory, she condemned to crown with bays + Her victor, and be fountain of his praise. + Is there another curse? There is another: + Compassionate her madness: is she not + Mother of Reason? she that sees them mown + Like grass, her young ones! Yea, in the low groan + And under the fixed thunder of this hour + Which holds the animate world in one foul blot + Tranced circumambient while relentless Power + Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs down-thrown, + She, with the plungeing lightnings overshot, + With madness for an armour against pain, + With milkless breasts for little ones athirst, + And round her all her noblest dying in vain, + Mother of Reason is she, trebly cursed, + To feel, to see, to justify the blow; + Chamber to chamber of her sequent brain + Gives answer of the cause of her great woe, + Inexorably echoing thro’ the vaults, + ‘’Tis thus they reap in blood, in blood who sow: + ‘This is the sum of self-absolvëd faults.’ + Doubt not that thro’ her grief, with sight supreme, + Thro’ her delirium and despair’s last dream, + Thro’ pride, thro’ bright illusion and the brood + Bewildering of her various Motherhood, + The high strong light within her, tho’ she bleeds, + Traces the letters of returned misdeeds. + She sees what seed long sown, ripened of late, + Bears this fierce crop; and she discerns her fate + From origin to agony, and on + As far as the wave washes long and wan + Off one disastrous impulse: for of waves + Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant graves + Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn. + + +V + + + Ah, what a dawn of splendour, when her sowers + Went forth and bent the necks of populations + And of their terrors and humiliations + Wove her the starry wreath that earthward lowers + Now in the figure of a burning yoke! + Her legions traversed North and South and East, + Of triumph they enjoyed the glutton’s feast: + They grafted the green sprig, they lopped the oak. + They caught by the beard the tempests, by the scalp + The icy precipices, and clove sheer through + The heart of horror of the pinnacled Alp, + Emerging not as men whom mortals knew. + They were the earthquake and the hurricane, + The lightnings and the locusts, plagues of blight, + Plagues of the revel: they were Deluge rain, + And dreaded Conflagration; lawless Might. + Death writes a reeling line along the snows, + Where under frozen mists they may be tracked, + Who men and elements provoked to foes, + And Gods: they were of god and beast compact: + Abhorred of all. Yet, how they sucked the teats + Of Carnage, thirsty issue of their dam, + Whose eagles, angrier than their oriflamme, + Flushed the vext earth with blood, green earth forgets. + The gay young generations mask her grief; + Where bled her children hangs the loaded sheaf. + Forgetful is green earth; the Gods alone + Remember everlastingly: they strike + Remorselessly, and ever like for like. + By their great memories the Gods are known. + + +VI + + + They are with her now, and in her ears, and known. + ’Tis they that cast her to the dust for Strength, + Their slave, to feed on her fair body’s length, + That once the sweetest and the proudest shone; + Scoring for hideous dismemberment + Her limbs, as were the anguish-taking breath + Gone out of her in the insufferable descent + From her high chieftainship; as were she death, + Who hears a voice of justice, feels the knife + Of torture, drinks all ignominy of life. + They are with her, and the painful Gods might weep, + If ever rain of tears came out of heaven + To flatter Weakness and bid conscience sleep, + Viewing the woe of this Immortal, driven + For the soul’s life to drain the maddening cup + Of her own children’s blood implacably: + Unsparing even as they to furrow up + The yellow land to likeness of a sea: + The bountiful fair land of vine and grain, + Of wit and grace and ardour, and strong roots, + Fruits perishable, imperishable fruits; + Furrowed to likeness of the dim grey main + Behind the black obliterating cyclone. + + +VII + + + Behold, the Gods are with her, and are known. + Whom they abandon misery persecutes + No more: them half-eyed apathy may loan + The happiness of pitiable brutes. + Whom the just Gods abandon have no light, + No ruthless light of introspective eyes + That in the midst of misery scrutinize + The heart and its iniquities outright. + They rest, they smile and rest; have earned perchance + Of ancient service quiet for a term; + Quiet of old men dropping to the worm; + And so goes out the soul. But not of France. + She cries for grief, and to the Gods she cries, + For fearfully their loosened hands chastize, + And icily they watch the rod’s caress + Ravage her flesh from scourges merciless, + But she, inveterate of brain, discerns + That Pity has as little place as Joy + Among their roll of gifts; for Strength she yearns. + For Strength, her idol once, too long her toy. + Lo, Strength is of the plain root-Virtues born: + Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn, + Train by endurance, by devotion shape. + Strength is not won by miracle or rape. + It is the offspring of the modest years, + The gift of sire to son, thro’ those firm laws + Which we name Gods; which are the righteous cause, + The cause of man, and manhood’s ministers. + Could France accept the fables of her priests, + Who blest her banners in this game of beasts, + And now bid hope that heaven will intercede + To violate its laws in her sore need, + She would find comfort in their opiates: + Mother of Reason! can she cheat the Fates? + Would she, the champion of the open mind, + The Omnipotent’s prime gift—the gift of growth— + Consent even for a night-time to be blind, + And sink her soul on the delusive sloth, + For fruits ethereal and material, both, + In peril of her place among mankind? + The Mother of the many Laughters might + Call one poor shade of laughter in the light + Of her unwavering lamp to mark what things + The world puts faith in, careless of the truth: + What silly puppet-bodies danced on strings, + Attached by credence, we appear in sooth, + Demanding intercession, direct aid, + When the whole tragic tale hangs on a broken blade! + + She swung the sword for centuries; in a day + It slipped her, like a stream cut off from source. + She struck a feeble hand, and tried to pray, + Clamoured of treachery, and had recourse + To drunken outcries in her dream that Force + Needed but hear her shouting to obey. + Was she not formed to conquer? The bright plumes + Of crested vanity shed graceful nods: + Transcendent in her foundries, Arts and looms, + Had France to fear the vengeance of the Gods? + Her faith was on her battle-roll of names + Sheathed in the records of old war; with dance + And song she thrilled her warriors and her dames, + Embracing her Dishonour: gave him France + From head to foot, France present and to come, + So she might hear the trumpet and the drum— + Bellona and Bacchante! rushing forth + On yon stout marching Schoolmen of the North. + + Inveterate of brain, well knows she why + Strength failed her, faithful to himself the first: + Her dream is done, and she can read the sky, + And she can take into her heart the worst + Calamity to drug the shameful thought + Of days that made her as the man she served + A name of terror, but a thing unnerved: + Buying the trickster, by the trickster bought, + She for dominion, he to patch a throne. + + +VIII + + + Henceforth of her the Gods are known, + Open to them her breast is laid. + Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant, + Never did fairer creature pant + Before the altar and the blade! + + +IX + + + Swift fall the blows, and men upbraid, + And friends give echo blunt and cold, + The echo of the forest to the axe. + Within her are the fires that wax + For resurrection from the mould. + + +X + + + She snatched at heaven’s flame of old, + And kindled nations: she was weak: + Frail sister of her heroic prototype, + The Man; for sacrifice unripe, + She too must fill a Vulture’s beak. + Deride the vanquished, and acclaim + The conqueror, who stains her fame, + Still the Gods love her, for that of high aim + Is this good France, the bleeding thing they stripe. + + +XI + + + She shall rise worthier of her prototype + Thro’ her abasement deep; the pain that runs + From nerve to nerve some victory achieves. + They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn-leaves + Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons! + And of their death her life is: of their blood + From many streams now urging to a flood, + No more divided, France shall rise afresh. + Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh:— + The lesson writ in red since first Time ran, + A hunter hunting down the beast in man: + That till the chasing out of its last vice, + The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice. + + Immortal Mother of a mortal host! + Thou suffering of the wounds that will not slay, + Wounds that bring death but take not life away!— + Stand fast and hearken while thy victors boast: + Hearken, and loathe that music evermore. + Slip loose thy garments woven of pride and shame: + The torture lurks in them, with them the blame + Shall pass to leave thee purer than before. + Undo thy jewels, thinking whence they came, + For what, and of the abominable name + Of her who in imperial beauty wore. + + O Mother of a fated fleeting host + Conceived in the past days of sin, and born + Heirs of disease and arrogance and scorn, + Surrender, yield the weight of thy great ghost, + Like wings on air, to what the heavens proclaim + With trumpets from the multitudinous mounds + Where peace has filled the hearing of thy sons: + Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds + Each new discernment of the undying ones, + Do thou stoop to these graves here scattered wide + Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll; + These ashes have the lesson for the soul. + ‘Die to thy Vanity, and strain thy Pride, + Strip off thy Luxury: that thou may’st live, + Die to thyself,’ they say, ‘as we have died + From dear existence and the foe forgive, + Nor pray for aught save in our little space + To warn good seed to greet the fair earth’s face.’ + O Mother! take their counsel, and so shall + The broader world breathe in on this thy home, + Light clear for thee the counter-changing dome, + Strength give thee, like an ocean’s vast expanse + Off mountain cliffs, the generations all, + Not whirling in their narrow rings of foam, + But as a river forward. Soaring France! + Now is Humanity on trial in thee: + Now may’st thou gather humankind in fee: + Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll; + Make of calamity thine aureole, + And bleeding head us thro’ the troubles of the sea. + + + +ALSACE-LORRAINE + + +I + + + THE sister Hours in circles linked, + Daughters of men, of men the mates, + Are gone on flow with the day that winked, + With the night that spanned at golden gates. + Mothers, they leave us, quickening seed; + They bear us grain or flower or weed, + As we have sown; is nought extinct + For them we fill to be our Fates. + Life of the breath is but the loan; + Passing death what we have sown. + + Pearly are they till the pale inherited stain + Deepens in us, and the mirrors they form on their flow + Darken to feature and nature: a volumed chain, + Sequent of issue, in various eddies they show. + Theirs is the Book of the River of Life, to read + Leaf by leaf by reapers of long-sown seed: + There doth our shoot up to light from a spiriting sane + Stand as a tree whereon numberless clusters grow: + Legible there how the heart, with its one false move + Cast Eurydice pallor on all we love. + + Our fervid heart has filled that Book in chief; + Our fitful heart a wild reflection views; + Our craving heart of passion suckling grief + Disowns the author’s work it must peruse; + Inconscient in its leap to wreak the deed, + A round of harvests red from crimson seed, + It marks the current Hours show leaf by leaf, + And rails at Destiny; nor traces clues; + Though sometimes it may think what novel light + Will strike their faces when the mind shall write. + + +II + + + Succourful daughters of men are the rosed and starred + Revolving Twelves in their fluent germinal rings, + Despite the burden to chasten, abase, depose. + Fallen on France, as the sweep of scythe over sward, + They breathed in her ear their voice of the crystal springs, + That run from a twilight rise, from a twilight close, + Through alternate beams and glooms, rejoicingly young. + Only to Earth’s best loved, at the breathless turns + Where Life in fold of the Shadow reclines unstrung, + And a ghostly lamp of their moment’s union burns, + Will such pure notes from the fountain-head be sung. + + Voice of Earth’s very soul to the soul she would see renewed: + A song that sought no tears, that laid not a touch on the breast + Sobbing aswoon and, like last foxgloves’ bells upon ferns + In sandy alleys of woodland silence, shedding to bare. + Daughters of Earth and men, they piped of her natural brood; + Her patient helpful four-feet; wings on the flit or in nest; + Paws at our old-world task to scoop a defensive lair; + Snouts at hunt through the scented grasses; enhavened scuts + Flashing escape under show of a laugh nigh the mossed burrow-mouth. + Sack-like droop bronze pears on the nailed branch-frontage of huts, + To greet those wedded toilers from acres where sweat is a shower. + Snake, cicada, lizard, on lavender slopes up South, + Pant for joy of a sunlight driving the fielders to bower. + Sharpened in silver by one chance breeze is the olive’s grey; + A royal-mantle floats, a red fritillary hies; + The bee, for whom no flower of garden or wild has nay, + Noises, heard if but named, so hot is the trade he plies. + Processions beneath green arches of herbage, the long colonnades; + Laboured mounds that a foot or a wanton stick may subvert; + Homely are they for a lowly look on bedewed grass-blades, + On citied fir-droppings, on twisted wreaths of the worm in dirt. + Does nought so loosen our sight from the despot heart, to receive + Balm of a sound Earth’s primary heart at its active beat: + The motive, yet servant, of energy; simple as morn and eve; + Treasureless, fetterless; free of the bonds of a great conceit: + Unwounded even by cruel blows on a body that writhes; + Nor whimpering under misfortune; elusive of obstacles; prompt + To quit any threatened familiar domain seen doomed by the scythes; + Its day’s hard business done, the score to the good accompt. + Creatures of forest and mead, Earth’s essays in being, all kinds + Bound by the navel-knot to the Mother, never astray, + They in the ear upon ground will pour their intuitive minds, + Cut man’s tangles for Earth’s first broad rectilinear way: + Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, + Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air; + Not always the sprouts of Earth’s root-Laws preserving her brutes; + Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in fine and fair. + + Yet the like aërial growths may chance be the delicate sprays, + Infant of Earth’s most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal + For entry on Life’s upper fields: and soul thus flourishing pays + The martyr’s penance, mark for brutish in man to heel. + + Her, from a nerveless well among stagnant pools of the dry, + Through her good aim at divine, shall commune with Earth remake; + Fraternal unto sororial, her, where abashed she may lie, + Divinest of man shall clasp; a world out of darkness awake, + As it were with the Resurrection’s eyelids uplifted, to see + Honour in shame, in substance the spirit, in that dry fount + Jets of the songful ascending silvery-bright water-tree + Spout, with our Earth’s unbaffled resurgent desire for the mount, + Though broken at intervals, clipped, and barren in seeming it be. + For this at our nature arises rejuvenescent from Earth, + However respersive the blow and nigh on infernal the fall, + The chastisement drawn down on us merited: are we of worth + Amid our satanic excrescences, this, for the less than a call, + Will Earth reprime, man cherish; the God who is in us and round, + Consenting, the God there seen. Impiety speaks despair; + Religion the virtue of serving as things of the furrowy ground, + Debtors for breath while breath with our fellows in service we share. + Not such of the crowned discrowned + Can Earth or humanity spare; + Such not the God let die. + + +III + + + Eastward of Paris morn is high; + And darkness on that Eastward side + The heart of France beholds: a thorn + Is in her frame where shines the morn: + A rigid wave usurps her sky, + With eagle crest and eagle-eyed + To scan what wormy wrinkles hint + Her forces gathering: she the thrown + From station, lopped of an arm, astounded, lone, + Reading late History as a foul misprint: + Imperial, Angelical, + At strife commingled in her frame convulsed; + Shame of her broken sword, a ravening gall; + Pain of the limb where once her warm blood pulsed; + These tortures to distract her underneath + Her whelmed Aurora’s shade. But in that space + When lay she dumb beside her trampled wreath, + Like an unburied body mid the tombs, + Feeling against her heart life’s bitter probe + For life, she saw how children of her race, + The many sober sons and daughters, plied, + By cottage lamplight through the water-globe, + By simmering stew-pots, by the serious looms, + Afield, in factories, with the birds astir, + Their nimble feet and fingers; not denied + Refreshful chatter, laughter, galliard songs. + So like Earth’s indestructible they were, + That wrestling with its anguish rose her pride, + To feel where in each breast the thought of her, + On whom the circle Hours laid leaded thongs, + Was constant; spoken sometimes in low tone + At lip or in a fluttered look, + A shortened breath: and they were her loved own; + Nor ever did they waste their strength with tears, + For pity of the weeper, nor rebuke, + Though mainly they were charged to pay her debt, + The Mother having conscience in arrears; + Ready to gush the flood of vain regret, + Else hearken to her weaponed children’s moan + Of stifled rage invoking vengeance: hell’s, + If heaven should fail the counter-wave that swells + In blood and brain for retribution swift. + Those helped not: wings to her soul were these who yet + Could welcome day for labour, night for rest, + Enrich her treasury, built of cheerful thrift, + Of honest heart, beyond all miracles; + And likened to Earth’s humblest were Earth’s best. + + +IV + + + Brooding on her deep fall, the many strings + Which formed her nature set a thought on Kings, + As aids that might the low-laid cripple lift; + And one among them hummed devoutly leal, + While passed the sighing breeze along her breast. + Of Kings by the festive vanquishers rammed down + Her gorge since fell the Chief, she knew their crown; + Upon her through long seasons was its grasp, + For neither soul’s nor body’s weal; + As much bestows the robber wasp, + That in the hanging apple makes a meal, + And carves a face of abscess where was fruit + Ripe ruddy. They would blot + Her radiant leap above the slopes acute, + Of summit to celestial; impute + The wanton’s aim to her divinest shot; + Bid her walk History backward over gaps; + Abhor the day of Phrygian caps; + Abjure her guerdon, execrate herself; + The Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Guelph, + Admire repentant; reverently prostrate + Her person unto the belly-god; of whom + Is inward plenty and external bloom; + Enough of pomp and state + And carnival to quench + The breast’s desires of an intemperate wench, + The head’s ideas beyond legitimate. + + She flung them: she was France: nor with far frown + Her lover from the embrace of her refrained: + But in her voice an interwoven wire, + The exultation of her gross renown, + Struck deafness at her heavens, and they waned + Over a look ill-gifted to aspire. + Wherefore, as an abandonment, irate, + The intemperate summoned up her trumpet days, + Her treasure-galleon’s wondrous freight. + The cannon-name she sang and shrieked; transferred + Her soul’s allegiance; o’er the Tyrant slurred, + Tranced with the zeal of her first fawning gaze, + To clasp his trophy flags and hail him Saint. + + +V + + + She hailed him Saint: + And her Jeanne unsainted, foully sung! + The virgin who conceived a France when funeral glooms + Across a land aquake with sharp disseverance hung: + Conceived, and under stress of battle brought her forth; + Crowned her in purification of feud and foeman’s taint; + Taught her to feel her blood her being, know her worth, + Have joy of unity: the Jeanne bescreeched, bescoffed, + Who flamed to ashes, flew up wreaths of faggot fumes; + Through centuries a star in vapour-folds aloft. + + For her people to hail her Saint, + Were no lifting of her, Earth’s gem, + Earth’s chosen, Earth’s throb on divine: + In the ranks of the starred she is one, + While man has thought on our line: + No lifting of her, but for them, + Breath of the mountain, beam of the sun + Through mist, out of swamp-fires’ lures release, + Youth on the forehead, the rough right way + Seen to be footed: for them the heart’s peace, + By the mind’s war won for a permanent miracle day. + + Her arms below her sword-hilt crossed, + The heart of that high-hallowed Jeanne + Into the furnace-pit she tossed + Before her body knew the flame, + And sucked its essence: warmth for righteous work, + An undivided power to speed her aim. + She had no self but France: the sainted man + No France but self. Him warrior and clerk, + Free of his iron clutch; and him her young, + In whirled imagination mastodonized; + And him her penmen, him her poets; all + For the visioned treasure-galleon astrain; + Sent zenithward on bass and treble tongue, + Till solely through his glory France was prized. + She who had her Jeanne; + The child of her industrious; + Earth’s truest, earth’s pure fount from the main; + And she who had her one day’s mate, + In the soul’s view illustrious + Past blazonry, her Immaculate, + Those hours of slavish Empire would recall; + Thrill to the rattling anchor-chain + She heard upon a day in ‘I who can’; + Start to the softened, tremulous bugle-blare + Of that Caesarean Italian + Across the storied fields of trampled grain, + As to a Vercingetorix of old Gaul + Blowing the rally against a Caesar’s reign. + Her soul’s protesting sobs she drowned to swear + Fidelity unto the sainted man, + Whose nimbus was her crown; and be again + The foreigner in Europe, known of none, + None knowing; sight to dazzle, voice to stun. + Rearward she stepped, with thirst for Europe’s van; + The dream she nursed a snare, + The flag she bore a pall. + + +VI + + + In Nature is no rearward step allowed. + Hard on the rock Reality do we dash + To be shattered, if the material dream propels. + The worship to departed splendour vowed + Conjured a simulacrum, wove her lash, + For the slow measure timed her peal of bells. + + Thereof was the cannon-name a mockery round her hills; + For the will of wills, + Its flaccid ape, + Weak as the final echo off a giant’s bawl: + Napoleon for disdain, + His banner steeped in crape. + Thereof the barrier of Alsace-Lorraine; + The frozen billow crested to its fall; + Dismemberment; disfigurement; + Her history blotted; her proud mantle rent; + And ever that one word to reperuse, + With eyes behind a veil of fiery dews; + Knelling the spot where Gallic soil defiled + Showed her sons’ valour as a frenzied child + In arms of the mailed man. + Word that her mind must bear, her heart put under ban, + Lest burst it: unto her eyes a ghost, + Incredible though manifest: a scene + Stamped with her new Saint’s name: and all his host + A wattled flock the foeman’s dogs between! + + +VII + + + Mark where a credible ghost pulls bridle to view that bare + Corpse of a field still reddening cloud, and alive in its throes + Beneath her Purgatorial Saint’s evocative stare: + Brand on his name, the gulf of his glory, his Legend’s close. + A lustreless Phosphor heading for daybeam Night’s dead-born, + His underworld eyeballs grip the cast of the land for a fray + Expugnant; swift up the heights, with the Victor’s instinctive scorn + Of the trapped below, he rides; he beholds, and a two-fold grey, + Even as the misty sun growing moon that a frost enrings, + Is shroud on the shrouded; he knows him there in the helmeted ranks. + The golden eagles flap lame wings, + The black double-headed are round their flanks. + He is there in midst of the pupils he harried to brains awake, trod + into union; lo, + These are his Epic’s tutored Dardans, yon that Rhapsode’s Achaeans to + know. + Nor is aught of an equipollent conflict seen, nor the weaker’s flashed + device; + Headless is offered a breast to beaks deliberate, formal, assured, + precise. + Ruled by the mathematician’s hand, they solve their problem, as on a + slate. + This is the ground foremarked, and the day; their leader modestly + hazarded date. + His helmeted ranks might be draggers of pools or reapers of plains for + the warrior’s guile + Displayed; they haul, they rend, as in some orderly office mercantile. + And a timed artillery speaks full-mouthed on a stuttering feeble + reduced to nought. + Can it be France, an army of France, tricked, netted, convulsive, all + writhen caught? + Arterial blood of an army’s heart outpoured the Grey Observer sees: + A forest of France in thunder comes, like a landslide hurled off her + Pyrenees. + Torrent and forest ramp, roll, sling on for a charge against iron, + reason, Fate; + It is gapped through the mass midway, bare ribs and dust ere the + helmeted feel its weight. + So the blue billow white-plumed is plunged upon shingle to screaming + withdrawal, but snatched, + Waved is the laurel eternal yielded by Death o’er the waste of brave + men outmatched. + The France of the fury was there, the thing he had wielded, whose + honour was dearer than life; + The Prussia despised, the harried, the trodden, was here; his pupil, + the scholar in strife. + + He hated to heel, in a spasm of will, + From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire + With head of a merlin hawk and quill + Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire + From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech, + To say what a deadly poison stuffed + The France here laid in her bloody ditch, + Through the Legend passing human puffed. + + Credible ghost of the field which from him descends, + Each dark anniversary day will its father return, + Haling his shadow to spy where the Legend ends, + That penman trumpeter’s part in the wreck discern. + + There, with the cup it presents at her lips, she stands, + France, with her future staked on the word it may pledge. + The vengeance urged of desire a reserve countermands; + The patience clasped totters hard on the precipice edge. + Lopped of an arm, mother love for her own springs quick, + To curdle the milk in her breasts for the young they feed, + At thought of her single hand, and the lost so nigh. + Mother love for her own, who raised her when she lay sick + Nigh death, and would in like fountains fruitlessly bleed, + Withholds the fling of her heart on the further die. + + Of love is wisdom. Is it great love, then wise + Will our wild heart be, though whipped unto madness more + By its mentor’s counselling voice than thoughtfully reined. + Desire of the wave for the shore, + Passion for one last agony under skies, + To make her heavens remorseful, she restrained + + +VIII + + + On her lost arm love bade her look; + On her one hand to meditate; + The tumult of her blood abate; + Disaster face, derision brook: + Forbade the page of her Historic Muse, + Until her demon his last hold forsook, + And smoothly, with no countenance of hate, + Her conqueror she could scan to measure. Thence + The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense, + Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse, + Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid; + From the top billow of victorious War, + Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow; + A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade. + She read the things that are; + Reality unaccepted read + For sign of the distraught, and took her blow + To brain; herself read through; + Wherefore her predatory Glory paid + Napoleon ransom knew. + Her nature’s many strings hot gusts did jar + Against the note of reason uttered low, + Ere passionate with duty she might wed, + Compel the bride’s embrace of her stern groom, + Joined at an altar liker to the tomb, + Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed, + They not the less were mated and proclaimed + The rational their issue. Then she rose. + + See how the rush of southern Springtide glows + Oceanic in the chariot-wheel’s ascent, + Illuminated with one breath. The maimed, + Tom, tortured, winter-visaged, suddenly + Had stature; to the world’s wonderment, + Fair features, grace of mien, nor least + The comic dimples round her April mouth, + Sprung of her intimate humanity. + She stood before mankind the very South + Rapt out of frost to flowery drapery; + Unshadowed save when somewhiles she looked East. + + +IX + + + Let but the rational prevail, + Our footing is on ground though all else fail: + Our kiss of Earth is then a plight + To walk within her Laws and have her light. + Choice of the life or death lies in ourselves; + There is no fate but when unreason lours. + This Land the cheerful toiler delves, + The thinker brightens with fine wit, + The lovelier grace as lyric flowers, + Those rosed and starred revolving Twelves + Shall nurse for effort infinite + While leashed to brain the heart of France the Fair + Beats tempered music and its lead subserves. + Washed from her eyes the Napoleonic glare, + Divinely raised by that in her divine, + Not the clear sight of Earth’s blunt actual swerves + When her lost look, as on a wave of wine, + Rolls Eastward, and the mother-flag descries + Caress with folds and curves + The fortress over Rhine, + Beneath the one tall spire. + Despite her brooding thought, her nightlong sighs, + Her anguish in desire, + She sees, above the brutish paw + Alert on her still quivering limb— + As little in past time she saw, + Nor when dispieced as prey, + As victrix when abhorred— + A Grand Germania, stout on soil; + Audacious up the ethereal dim; + The forest’s Infant; the strong hand for toil; + The patient brain in twilights when astray; + Shrewdest of heads to foil and counterfoil; + The sceptic and devout; the potent sword; + With will and armed to help in hewing way + For Europe’s march; and of the most golden chord + Of the Heliconian lyre + Excellent mistress. Yea, she sees, and can admire; + Still seeing in what walks the Gallia leads; + And with what shield upon Alsace-Lorraine + Her wary sister’s doubtful look misreads + A mother’s throbs for her lost: so loved: so near: + Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer, + The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain. + For the belted Overshadower hard the course, + On whom devolves the spirit’s touchstone, Force: + Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined, + That too much adamantine makes the mind; + Forgets it coin of Nature’s rich Exchange; + Contracts horizons within present sight: + Amalekite to-day, across its range + Indisputable; to-morrow Simeonite. + + +X + + + The mother who gave birth to Jeanne; + Who to her young Angelical sprang; + Who lay with Earth and heard the notes she sang, + And heard her truest sing them; she may reach + Heights yet unknown of nations; haply teach + A thirsting world to learn ’tis ‘she who can.’ + + She that in History’s Heliaea pleads + The nation flowering conscience o’er the beast; + With heart expurged of rancour, tame of greeds; + With the winged mind from fang and claw released;— + Will such a land be seen? It will be seen;— + Shall stand adjudged our foremost and Earth’s Queen. + Acknowledgement that she of God proceeds + The invisible makes visible, as his priest, + To her is yielded by a world reclaimed. + And stands she mutilated, fancy-shamed, + Yet strong in arms, yet strong in self-control, + Known valiant, her maternal throbs repressed, + Discarding vengeance, Giant with a soul;— + My faith in her when she lay low + Was fountain; now as wave at flow + Beneath the lights, my faith in God is best;— + On France has come the test + Of what she holds within + Responsive to Life’s deeper springs. + She above the nations blest + In fruitful and in liveliest, + In all that servant earth to heavenly bidding brings, + The devotee of Glory, she may win + Glory despoiling none, enrich her kind, + Illume her land, and take the royal seat + Unto the strong self-conqueror assigned. + But ah, when speaks a loaded breath the double name, + Humanity’s old Foeman winks agrin. + Her constant Angel eyes her heart’s quick beat, + The thrill of shadow coursing through her frame. + Like wind among the ranks of amber wheat. + Our Europe, vowed to unity or torn, + Observes her face, as shepherds note the morn, + And in a ruddy beacon mark an end + That for the flock in their grave hearing rings. + Specked overhead the imminent vulture wings + At poise, one fatal movement indiscreet, + Sprung from the Aetna passions’ mad revolts, + Draws down; the midnight hovers to descend; + And dire as Indian noons of ulcer heat + Anticipating tempest and the bolts, + Hangs curtained terrors round her next day’s door, + Death’s emblems for the breast of Europe flings; + The breast that waits a spark to fire her store. + Shall, then, the great vitality, France, + Signal the backward step once more; + Again a Goddess Fortune trace + Amid the Deities, and pledge to chance + One whom we never could replace? + Now may she tune her nature’s many strings + To noble harmony, be seen, be known. + + It was the foreign France, the unruly, feared; + Little for all her witcheries endeared; + Theatrical of arrogance, a sprite + With gaseous vapours overblown, + In her conceit of power ensphered, + Foredoomed to violate and atone; + Her the grim conqueror’s iron might + Avengeing clutched, distrusting rent; + Not that sharp intellect with fire endowed + To cleave our webs, run lightnings through our cloud; + Not virtual France, the France benevolent, + The chivalrous, the many-stringed, sublime + At intervals, and oft in sweetest chime; + Though perilously instrument, + A breast for any having godlike gleam. + This France could no antagonist disesteem, + To spurn at heel and confiscate her brood. + Albeit a waverer between heart and mind, + And laurels won from sky or plucked from blood, + Which wither all the wreath when intertwined, + This cherishable France she may redeem. + Beloved of Earth, her heart should feel at length + How much unto Earth’s offspring it doth owe. + Obstructions are for levelling, have we strength; + ’Tis poverty of soul conceived a foe. + Rejected be the wrath that keeps unhealed + Her panting wound; to higher Courts appealed + The wrongs discerned of higher: Europe waits: + She chooses God or gambles with the Fates. + Shines the new Helen in Alsace-Lorraine, + A darker river severs Rhine and Rhone, + Is heard a deadlier Epic of the twain; + We see a Paris burn + Or France Napoleon. + + For yet he breathes whom less her heart forswears + While trembles its desire to thwart her mind: + The Tyrant lives in Victory’s return. + What figure with recurrent footstep fares + Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud, + To sow her future from an ashen urn + By lantern-light, as dragons’ teeth are sown? + Of bleeding pride the piercing seër is blind. + But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud + Distorting her true features, to be shown + Benignly luminous, one who bears + Humanity at breast, and she might learn + How surely the excelling generous find + Renouncement is possession. Sure + As light enkindles light when heavenly earthly mates, + The flame of pure immits the flame of pure, + Magnanimous magnanimous creates. + So to majestic beauty stricken rears + Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow; + And men are in the secret with the spheres, + Whose glory is celestially to bestow. + + Now nation looks to nation, that may live + Their common nurseling, like the torrent’s flower, + Shaken by foul Destruction’s fast-piled heap. + On France is laid the proud initiative + Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour, + Whereby more than her lost one will she reap; + Perchance the very lost regain, + To count it less than her superb reward. + Our Europe, where is debtor each to each, + Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain, + Fraternal from the Seaman’s beach, + From answering Rhine in grand accord, + From Neva beneath Northern cloud, + And from our Transatlantic Europe loud, + Will hail the rare example for their theme; + Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze; + In their entrusted nurseling know them one: + Like a brave vessel under press of steam, + Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas, + Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun, + Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme, + Have sight of haven and the crowded quays. + + + + +THE CAGEING OF ARES +ILIAD, v. 385 + + + [DEDICATED TO THE COUNCIL AT THE HAGUE, 1899] + + HOW big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed + At sight of her boy Giants on the leap + Each over other as they neighboured home, + Fronting the day’s descent across green slopes, + And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced. + Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, + Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, + It signalled some adventurous master-trick + To set Olympians buzzing in debate, + Lest it might be their godhead undermined, + The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high + On shoulders of his brother Otos waved + For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, + Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar + While Otos aped the prisoner’s wrists and knees, + With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; + Till Gaea’s lap receiving them, they stretched, + And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, + Burst the hot story out of throats of both, + Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut + The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm + Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon + A peak, a forest mound, a valley’s gleam + Of grass and the river’s crooks and snaky coils, + Signification marvellous she caught, + Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, + Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last + Subsided, and the serious naked deed, + With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, + Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe + That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, + These two made up of lion, bear and fox, + Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, + Still by the reckoning infants among men, + Had done the deed to strike the Titan host + In envy dumb, in envious heart elate: + These two combining strength and craft had snared, + Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged + The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War; + Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes; + The barren furrower of anointed fields; + The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, + Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: + Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth + When they had seized on his implacable spear, + Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite + His godlike fury startled from amaze. + For he had eyed them nearing him in play, + The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, + Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount + Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there + On Earth’s original fisticuffs they called + For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God, + Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, + Good servitors of Ares they would be, + And ply the pointed spear to dominate + Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood + Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced + Amusedly he watched them, and as one + The lusty twain were on him and they had him. + Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud! + Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes! + Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes! + Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, + Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; + A desolating fire to blind the sight + With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; + The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; + Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, + Heard from the babe as from the broken crone. + Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, + And tumbled down the cave. But rather look— + Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, + Of all the Gods to let her secret fly, + Hermes, after the thirteen songful months! + Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, + And shatter earth’s delirious holiday, + Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, + Resolving to composure on its throbs. + But see her in the Seasons through that year; + That one glad year and the fair opening month. + Had never our Great Mother such sweet face! + War with her, gentle war with her, each day + Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, + On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength + Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won, + From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, + Her ready secret: the abounding life + Returned for valiant labour: she and they + Defeated and victorious turn by turn; + By loss enriched, by overthrow restored. + Exchange of powers of this conflict came; + Defacement none, nor ever squandered force. + Is battle nature’s mandate, here it reigned, + As music unto the hand that smote the strings; + And she the rosier from their showery brows, + They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast. + Back to the primal rational of those + Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp + Stability in hatred of the insane, + Man stepped; with wits less fearful to pronounce + The mortal mind’s concept of earth’s divorced + Above; those beautiful, those masterful, + Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, + Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just? + Earth in her happy children asked that word, + Whereto within their breast was her reply. + Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, + Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years; + Yet they (’twas the Great Mother’s voice inspired + The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, + Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, + To meet the certain fate of earth’s divorced, + And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, + Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, + Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled + The Tyranny. This her voice within them told, + When softly the Great Mother chid her sons + Not of the giant brood, who did create + Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain + Set moving by an abject blood, that waked + To wanton under elements more benign, + And planted aliens on Olympian heights;— + Imagination’s cradle poesy + Become a monstrous pressure upon men;— + Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed + By light from her, born of the love of her, + Their lordship the illumined brain rejects + For earth’s beneficent, the sons of Law, + Her other name. So spake she in their heart, + Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath + Young vine-leaves pushing timid fingers forth, + Confidently to cling. And when brown corn + Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, + With gold necks bent for any zephyr’s kiss; + When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil + Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; + When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, + Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth; + The very eye of passion drowsed by excess, + And yet a burning lion for the spring; + Then in that time of general cherishment, + Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, + He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, + Then did good Gaea’s children gratefully + Lift hymns to Gods they judged, but praised for peace, + Delightful Peace, that answers Reason’s call + Harmoniously and images her Law; + Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, + In memories made present on the brain + By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes; + The picture of an earth allied to heaven; + Between them the known smile behind black masks; + Rightly their various moods interpreted; + And frolic because toilful children borne + With larger comprehension of Earth’s aim + At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid. + + + + +THE NIGHT-WALK + + + AWAKES for me and leaps from shroud + All radiantly the moon’s own night + Of folded showers in streamer cloud; + Our shadows down the highway white + Or deep in woodland woven-boughed, + With yon and yon a stem alight. + + I see marauder runagates + Across us shoot their dusky wink; + I hear the parliament of chats + In haws beside the river’s brink; + And drops the vole off alder-banks, + To push his arrow through the stream. + These busy people had our thanks + For tickling sight and sound, but theme + They were not more than breath we drew + Delighted with our world’s embrace: + The moss-root smell where beeches grew, + And watered grass in breezy space; + The silken heights, of ghostly bloom + Among their folds, by distance draped. + ’Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, + That cried to have its chaos shaped: + Absorbing, little noting, still + Enriched, and thinking it bestowed; + With wistful looks on each far hill + For something hidden, something owed. + Unto his mantled sister, Day + Had given the secret things we sought + And she was grave and saintly gay; + At times she fluttered, spoke her thought; + She flew on it, then folded wings, + In meditation passing lone, + To breathe around the secret things, + Which have no word, and yet are known; + Of thirst for them are known, as air + Is health in blood: we gained enough + By this to feel it honest fare; + Impalpable, not barren, stuff. + + A pride of legs in motion kept + Our spirits to their task meanwhile, + And what was deepest dreaming slept: + The posts that named the swallowed mile; + Beside the straight canal the hut + Abandoned; near the river’s source + Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; + The roadway missed; were our discourse; + At times dear poets, whom some view + Transcendent or subdued evoked + To speak the memorable, the true, + The luminous as a moon uncloaked; + For proof that there, among earth’s dumb, + A soul had passed and said our best. + Or it might be we chimed on some + Historic favourite’s astral crest, + With part to reverence in its gleam, + And part to rivalry the shout: + So royal, unuttered, is youth’s dream + Of power within to strike without. + But most the silences were sweet, + Like mothers’ breasts, to bid it feel + It lived in such divine conceit + As envies aught we stamp for real. + + To either then an untold tale + Was Life, and author, hero, we. + The chapters holding peaks to scale, + Or depths to fathom, made our glee; + For we were armed of inner fires, + Unbled in us the ripe desires; + And passion rolled a quiet sea, + Whereon was Love the phantom sail. + + + + +AT THE CLOSE + + + TO Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal, + Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know’st; + And that black spot in each embattled host, + Spring of the blood-stream, later wilt reveal. + Now is it red artillery and white steel; + Till on a day will ring the victor’s boast, + That ’tis Thy chosen towers uppermost, + Where Thy rejected grovels under heel. + So in all times of man’s descent insane + To brute, did strength and craft combining strike, + Even as a God of Armies, his fell blow. + But at the close he entered Thy domain, + Dear God of Mercy, and if lion-like + He tore the fall’n, the Eternal was his Foe. + + + + +A GARDEN IDYL + + + WITH sagest craft Arachne worked + Her web, and at a corner lurked, + Awaiting what should plump her soon, + To case it in the death-cocoon. + Sagaciously her home she chose + For visits that would never close; + Inside my chalet-porch her feast + Plucked all the winds but chill North-east. + + The finished structure, bar on bar, + Had snatched from light to form a star, + And struck on sight, when quick with dews, + Like music of the very Muse. + Great artists pass our single sense; + We hear in seeing, strung to tense; + Then haply marvel, groan mayhap, + To think such beauty means a trap. + But Nature’s genius, even man’s + At best, is practical in plans; + Subservient to the needy thought, + However rare the weapon wrought. + As long as Nature holds it good + To urge her creatures’ quest for food + Will beauty stamp the just intent + Of weapons upon service bent. + For beauty is a flower of roots + Embedded lower than our boots; + Out of the primal strata springs, + And shows for crown of useful things. + + Arachne’s dream of prey to size + Aspired; so she could nigh despise + The puny specks the breezes round + Supplied, and let them shake unwound; + Assured of her fat fly to come; + Perhaps a blue, the spider’s plum; + Who takes the fatal odds in fight, + And gives repast an appetite, + By plunging, whizzing, till his wings + Are webbed, and in the lists he swings, + A shrouded lump, for her to see + Her banquet in her victory. + + This matron of the unnumbered threads, + One day of dandelions’ heads + Distributing their gray perruques + Up every gust, I watched with looks + Discreet beside the chalet-door; + And gracefully a light wind bore, + Direct upon my webster’s wall, + A monster in the form of ball; + The mildest captive ever snared, + That neither struggled nor despaired, + On half the net invading hung, + And plain as in her mother tongue, + While low the weaver cursed her lures, + Remarked, “You have me; I am yours.” + + Thrice magnified, in phantom shape, + Her dream of size she saw, agape. + Midway the vast round-raying beard + A desiccated midge appeared; + Whose body pricked the name of meal, + Whose hair had growth in earth’s unreal; + Provocative of dread and wrath, + Contempt and horror, in one froth, + Inextricable, insensible, + His poison presence there would dwell, + Declaring him her dream fulfilled, + A catch to compliment the skilled; + And she reduced to beaky skin, + Disgraceful among kith and kin + + Against her corner, humped and aged, + Arachne wrinkled, past enraged, + Beyond disgust or hope in guile. + Ridiculously volatile + He seemed to her last spark of mind; + And that in pallid ash declined + Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt, + Wherein throughout her frame she felt + That he, the light wind’s libertine, + Without a scoff, without a grin, + And mannered like the courtly few, + Who merely danced when light winds blew, + Impervious to beak and claws, + Tradition’s ruinous Whitebeard was; + Of whom, as actors in old scenes, + Had grannam weavers warned their weans, + With word, that less than feather-weight, + He smote the web like bolt of Fate. + + This muted drama, hour by hour, + I watched amid a world in flower, + Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid + Their gray-blue o’er the grass’s blade, + And still along the garden-run + The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun. + Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance + Her visitor performed a dance; + She puckered thinner; he the same + As when on that light wind he came. + + Next day was told what deeds of night + Were done; the web had vanished quite; + With it the strange opposing pair; + And listless waved on vacant air, + For her adieu to heart’s content, + A solitary filament. + + + + +A READING OF LIFE + + +THE VITAL CHOICE + + +I + + + OR shall we run with Artemis + Or yield the breast to Aphrodite? + Both are mighty; + Both give bliss; + Each can torture if divided; + Each claims worship undivided, + In her wake would have us wallow. + + +II + + + Youth must offer on bent knees + Homage unto one or other; + Earth, the mother, + This decrees; + And unto the pallid Scyther + Either points us shun we either + Shun or too devoutly follow. + + + +WITH THE HUNTRESS + + + THROUGH the water-eye of night, + Midway between eve and dawn, + See the chase, the rout, the flight + In deep forest; oread, faun, + Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; + Ravenous all the line for speed. + See yon wavy sparkle beck + Sign of the Virgin Lady’s lead. + Down her course a serpent star + Coils and shatters at her heels; + Peals the horn exulting, peals + Plaintive, is it near or far. + Huntress, arrowy to pursue, + In and out of woody glen, + Under cliffs that tear the blue, + Over torrent, over fen, + She and forest, where she skims + Feathery, darken and relume: + Those are her white-lightning limbs + Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. + Mountains hear her and call back, + Shrewd with night: a frosty wail + Distant: her the emerald vale + Folds, and wonders in her track. + Now her retinue is lean, + Many rearward; streams the chase + Eager forth of covert; seen + One hot tide the rapturous race. + Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, + Up on a flash the lighted mound + Leaps she, bow to shoulder, shaft + Strung to barb with archer’s craft, + Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet + Songs to see, past pitch of sweet. + Fearful swiftness they outrun, + Shaggy wildness, grey or dun, + Challenge, charge of tusks elude: + Theirs the dance to tame the rude; + Beast, and beast in manhood tame, + Follow we their silver flame. + Pride of flesh from bondage free, + Reaping vigour of its waste, + Marks her servitors, and she + Sanctifies the unembraced. + Nought of perilous she reeks; + Valour clothes her open breast; + Sweet beyond the thrill of sex; + Hallowed by the sex confessed. + Huntress arrowy to pursue, + Colder she than sunless dew, + She, that breath of upper air; + Ay, but never lyrist sang, + Draught of Bacchus never sprang + Blood the bliss of Gods to share, + High o’er sweep of eagle wings, + Like the run with her, when rings + Clear her rally, and her dart, + In the forest’s cavern heart, + Tells of her victorious aim. + Then is pause and chatter, cheer, + Laughter at some satyr lame, + Looks upon the fallen deer, + Measuring his noble crest; + Here a favourite in her train, + Foremost mid her nymphs, caressed; + All applauded. Shall she reign + Worshipped? O to be with her there! + She, that breath of nimble air, + Lifts the breast to giant power. + Maid and man, and man and maid, + Who each other would devour + Elsewhere, by the chase betrayed, + There are comrades, led by her, + Maid-preserver, man-maker. + + + +WITH THE PERSUADER + + + WHO murmurs, hither, hither: who + Where nought is audible so fills the ear? + Where nought is visible can make appear + A veil with eyes that waver through, + Like twilight’s pledge of blessed night to come, + Or day most golden? All unseen and dumb, + She breathes, she moves, inviting flees, + Is lost, and leaves the thrilled desire + To clasp and strike a slackened lyre, + Till over smiles of hyacinth seas, + Flame in a crystal vessel sails + Beneath a dome of jewelled spray, + For land that drops the rosy day + On nights of throbbing nightingales. + + Landward did the wonder flit, + Or heart’s desire of her, all earth in it. + We saw the heavens fling down their rose; + On rapturous waves we saw her glide; + The pearly sea-shell half enclose; + The shoal of sea-nymphs flush the tide; + And we, afire to kiss her feet, no more + Behold than tracks along a startled shore, + With brightened edges of dark leaves that feign + An ambush hoped, as heartless night remain. + + More closely, warmly: hither, hither! she, + The very she called forth by ripened blood + For its next breath of being, murmurs; she, + Allurement; she, fulfilment; she, + The stream within us urged to flood; + Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent; O she, + Maid, woman and divinity; + Our over-earthly, inner-earthly mate + Unmated; she, our hunger and our fruit + Untasted; she our written fate + Unread; Life’s flowering, Life’s root: + Unread, divined; unseen, beheld; + The evanescent, ever-present she, + Great Nature’s stern necessity + In radiance clothed, to softness quelled; + With a sword’s edge of sweetness keen to take + Our breath for bliss, our hearts for fulness break. + + The murmur hushes down, the veil is rent. + Man’s cry, earth’s answer, heaven’s consent, + Her form is given to pardoned sight, + And lets our mortal eyes receive + The sovereign loveliness of celestial white; + Adored by them who solitarily pace, + In dusk of the underworld’s perpetual eve, + The paths among the meadow asphodel, + Remembering. Never there her face + Is planetary; reddens to shore sea-shell + Around such whiteness the enamoured air + Of noon that clothes her, never there. + Daughter of light, the joyful light, + She stands unveiled to nuptial sight, + Sweet in her disregard of aid + Divine to conquer or persuade. + A fountain jets from moss; a flower + Bends gently where her sunset tresses shower. + By guerdon of her brilliance may be seen + With eyelids unabashed the passion’s Queen. + + Shorn of attendant Graces she can use + Her natural snares to make her will supreme. + A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse + Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: + One arm at curve along a rounded thigh; + Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way + A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy, + Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. + The bud of fresh virginity awaits + The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: + She touches on the hour of happy mates; + Still is she unaware she wakens thirst. + + And while commanding blissful sight believe + It holds her as a body strained to breast, + Down on the underworld’s perpetual eve + She plunges the possessor dispossessed; + And bids believe that image, heaving warm, + Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame; + The phantom any breeze blows out of form; + A thirst’s delusion, a defeated aim. + + The rapture shed the torture weaves; + The direst blow on human heart she deals: + The pain to know the seen deceives; + Nought true but what insufferably feels. + And stabs of her delicious note, + That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard + Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat, + We answer as the midnight’s morning’s bird. + + She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries; + In her delicious laughter part revealed; + Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs, + For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. + Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: + Yon folded couples, passing under shade, + Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress, + Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. + We dolorous complainers had a dream, + Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire, + We saw stand bare of her celestial beam + The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire. + + Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips + Of upward curl to meanings half obscure; + And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips + She nods: at once that creature wears her lure. + Blush of our being between birth and death: + Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: + Her wily semblance nought of her denies; + Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, + The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm + Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; + Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. + Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. + But scorn she has for them that walk alone; + Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. + The men as chief of criminals she disdains, + And holds the reason in perceptive thought. + More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains, + Kissing cold stones, the women shrink for drought. + Those faceless discords, out of nature strayed, + Rank of the putrefaction ere decayed, + In impious singles bear the thorny wreaths: + Their lives are where harmonious Pleasure breathes + For couples crowned with flowers that burn in dew. + Comes there a tremor of night’s forest horn + Across her garden from the insaner crew, + She darkens to malignity of scorn. + A shiver courses through her garden-grounds: + Grunt of the tusky boar, the baying hounds, + The hunter’s shouts, are heard afar, and bring + Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. + These, the irreverent of Life’s design, + Division between natural and divine + Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best, + In veins of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest; + And these because the roses flood their cheeks, + Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. + With them is war; and well the Goddess knows + What undermines the race who mount the rose; + How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours, + Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: + Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds, + The strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs, + And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. + They who her sway withstand a sea defy, + At every point of juncture must be proof; + Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge + Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge + For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. + She, tenderness, is pitiless to them + Resisting in her godhead nature’s truth. + No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; + Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. + These miserably disinclined, + The lamentably unembraced, + Insult the Pleasures Earth designed + To people and beflower the waste. + Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: + For death they live, in life they die. + + Her head the Goddess from them turns, + As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. + She views her quivering couples unconsoled, + And of her beauty mirror they become, + Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum, + Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. + Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew, + Her couples whirl, sun-satiated, + Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed, + They play the music made of two: + Oldest of earth, earth’s youngest till earth’s end: + Cunninger than the numbered strings, + For melodies, for harmonies, + For mastered discords, and the things + Not vocable, whose mysteries + Are inmost Love’s, Life’s reach of Life extend. + + Is it an anguish overflowing shame + And the tongue’s pudency confides to her, + With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh, + The woman’s marrow in some dear youth’s name, + Then is the Goddess tenderness + Maternal, and she has a sister’s tones + Benign to soothe intemperate distress, + Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. + Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease + To those of her milk-bearer votaries + As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source + Direct; erratic but in heart’s excess; + Being mortal and ill-matched for Love’s great force; + Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. + And pray they under skies less overcast, + That swiftly may her star of eve descend, + Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast, + To lengthen blissful night will she befriend. + + Unfailing her reply to woman’s voice + In supplication instant. Is it man’s, + She hears, approves his words, her garden scans, + And him: the flowers are various, he has choice. + Perchance his wound is deep; she listens long; + Enjoys what music fills the plaintive song; + And marks how he, who would be hawk at poise + Above the bird, his plaintive song enjoys. + + She reads him when his humbled manhood weeps + To her invoked: distraction is implored. + A smile, and he is up on godlike leaps + Above, with his bright Goddess owned the adored. + His tales of her declare she condescends; + Can share his fires, not always goads and rends: + Moreover, quits a throne, and must enclose + A queenlier gem than woman’s wayside rose. + She bends, he quickens; she breathes low, he springs + Enraptured; low she laughs, his woes disperse; + Aloud she laughs and sweeps his varied strings. + ’Tis taught him how for touch of mournful verse + Rarely the music made of two ascends, + And Beauty’s Queen some other way is won. + Or it may solve the riddle, that she lends + Herself to all, and yields herself to none, + Save heavenliest: though claims by men are raised + In hot assurance under shade of doubt: + And numerous are the images bepraised + As Beauty’s Queen, should passion head the rout. + + Be sure the ruddy hue is Love’s: to woo + Love’s Fountain we must mount the ruddy hue. + That is her garden’s precept, seen where shines + Her blood-flower, and its unsought neighbour pines. + Daughter of light, the joyful light, + She bids her couples face full East, + Reflecting radiance, even when from her feast + Their outstretched arms brown deserts disunite, + The lion-haunted thickets hold apart. + In love the ruddy hue declares great heart; + High confidence in her whose aid is lent + To lovers lifting the tuned instrument, + Not one of rippled strings and funeral tone. + And doth the man pursue a tightened zone, + Then be it as the Laurel God he runs, + Confirmed to win, with countenance the Sun’s. + + Should pity bless the tremulous voice of woe + He lifts for pity, limp his offspring show. + For him requiring woman’s arts to please + Infantile tastes with babe reluctances, + No race of giants! In the woman’s veins + Persuasion ripely runs, through hers the pains. + Her choice of him, should kind occasion nod, + Aspiring blends the Titan with the God; + Yet unto dwarf and mortal, she, submiss + In her high Lady’s mandate, yields the kiss; + And is it needed that Love’s daintier brute + Be snared as hunter, she will tempt pursuit. + She is great Nature’s ever intimate + In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait, + Until perverted by her senseless male, + She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail, + The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame, + Elusive to allure, since he grew tame. + + Hence has the Goddess, Nature’s earliest Power, + And greatest and most present, with her dower + Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute + For meditated guile. She laughs to hear + A charge her garden’s labyrinths scarce confute, + Her garden’s histories tell of to all near. + Let it be said, But less upon her guile + Doth she rely for her immortal smile. + Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens + To push her conquests by the simplest means. + While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves + From earth’s good labours, Beauty’s Queen he serves. + + Her spacious garden and her garden’s grant + She offers in reward for handsome cheer: + Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant + The secret down a dewy leer + Of corner eyelids into haze: + Many a fair Aphrosyne + Like flower-bell to honey-bee: + And here they flicker round the maze + Bewildering him in heart and head: + And here they wear the close demure, + With subtle peeps to reassure: + Others parade where love has bled, + And of its crimson weave their mesh: + Others to snap of fingers leap, + As bearing breast with love asleep. + These are her laughters in the flesh. + Or would she fit a warrior mood, + She lights her seeming unsubdued, + And indicates the fortress-key. + Or is it heart for heart that craves, + She flecks along a run of waves + The one to promise deeper sea. + + Bands of her limpid primitives, + Or patterned in the curious braid, + Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives, + For what he gives is he repaid. + Good is it if by him ’tis held + He wins the fairest ever welled + From Nature’s founts: she whispers it: Even I + Not fairer! and forbids him to deny, + Else little is he lover. Those he clasps, + Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer,— + And be they doves or be they asps,— + Must seem to him the sovereignty fair; + Else counts he soon among life’s wholly tamed. + Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed, + Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned + The lover. Else, past ripeness, deathward bound, + He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests, + Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. + Doth man divide divine Necessity + From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s breasts + A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain + Present her; armed to bless and to constrain. + Of this he perishes; not she, the throned + On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts. + A loftier Reason out of deeper founts + Earth’s chosen Goddess bears: by none disowned + While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts, + And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky; + Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s cry, + Uplifted by the innumerable hosts. + + Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear, + When the wild sap at high tide smites + Within us; or benignly clear + To vision; or as the iris lights + On fluctuant waters; she is ours + Till set of man: the dreamed, the seen; + Flushing the world with odorous flowers: + A soft compulsion on terrene + By heavenly: and the world is hers + While hunger after Beauty spurs. + + So is it sung in any space + She fills, with laugh at shallow laws + Forbidding love’s devised embrace, + The music Beauty from it draws. + + + +THE TEST OF MANHOOD + + + LIKE a flood river whirled at rocky banks, + An army issues out of wilderness, + With battle plucking round its ragged flanks; + Obstruction in the van; insane excess + Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress + Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks, + And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone, + The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. + They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone; + A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. + Then was the gracious birth of man’s new day; + Divided from the haunted night it shone. + + That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang + Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide. + Another sun had risen to clasp his bride: + It was another earth unto him sang. + + Came Reverence from the Huntress on her heights? + From the Persuader came it, in those vales + Whereunto she melodiously invites, + Her troops of eager servitors regales? + Not far those two great Powers of Nature speed + Disciple steps on earth when sole they lead; + Nor either points for us the way of flame. + From him predestined mightier it came; + His task to hold them both in breast, and yield + Their dues to each, and of their war be field. + + The foes that in repulsion never ceased, + Must he, who once has been the goodly beast + Of one or other, at whose beck he ran, + Constrain to make him serviceable man; + Offending neither, nor the natural claim + Each pressed, denying, for his true man’s name. + + Ah, what a sweat of anguish in that strife + To hold them fast conjoined within him still; + Submissive to his will + Along the road of life! + And marvel not he wavered if at whiles + The forward step met frowns, the backward smiles. + For Pleasure witched him her sweet cup to drain; + Repentance offered ecstasy in pain. + Delicious licence called it Nature’s cry; + Ascetic rigours crushed the fleshly sigh; + A tread on shingle timed his lame advance + Flung as the die of Bacchanalian Chance, + He of the troubled marching army leaned + On godhead visible, on godhead screened; + The radiant roseate, the curtained white; + Yet sharp his battle strained through day, through night. + + He drank of fictions, till celestial aid + Might seem accorded when he fawned and prayed; + Sagely the generous Giver circumspect, + To choose for grants the egregious, his elect; + And ever that imagined succour slew + The soul of brotherhood whence Reverence drew. + + In fellowship religion has its founts: + The solitary his own God reveres: + Ascend no sacred Mounts + Our hungers or our fears. + As only for the numbers Nature’s care + Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds, + So to Divinity the spring of prayer + From brotherhood the one way upward leads. + Like the sustaining air + Are both for flowers and weeds. + But he who claims in spirit to be flower, + Will find them both an air that doth devour. + + Whereby he smelt his treason, who implored + External gifts bestowed but on the sword; + Beheld himself, with less and less disguise, + Through those blood-cataracts which dimmed his eyes, + His army’s foe, condemned to strive and fail; + See a black adversary’s ghost prevail; + Never, though triumphs hailed him, hope to win + While still the conflict tore his breast within. + + Out of that agony, misread for those + Imprisoned Powers warring unappeased, + The ghost of his black adversary rose, + To smother light, shut heaven, show earth diseased. + And long with him was wrestling ere emerged + A mind to read in him the reflex shade + Of its fierce torment; this way, that way urged; + By craven compromises hourly swayed. + + Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, + The man’s mind opened under weight of cloud. + To penetrate the dark was it endowed; + Stood day before a vision shooting wide. + Whereat the spectral enemy lost form; + The traversed wilderness exposed its track. + He felt the far advance in looking back; + Thence trust in his foot forward through the storm. + + Under the low-browed tempest’s eye of ire, + That ere it lightened smote a coward heart, + Earth nerved her chastened son to hail athwart + All ventures perilous his shrouded Sire; + A stranger still, religiously divined; + Not yet with understanding read aright. + But when the mind, the cherishable mind, + The multitude’s grave shepherd, took full flight, + Himself as mirror raised among his kind, + He saw, and first of brotherhood had sight: + Knew that his force to fly, his will to see, + His heart enlarged beyond its ribbed domain, + Had come of many a grip in mastery, + Which held conjoined the hostile rival twain, + And of his bosom made him lord, to keep + The starry roof of his unruffled frame + Awake to earth, to heaven, and plumb the deep + Below, above, aye with a wistful aim. + + The mastering mind in him, by tempests blown, + By traitor inmates baited, upward burned; + Perforce of growth, the Master mind discerned, + The Great Unseen, nowise the Dark Unknown. + To whom unwittingly did he aspire + In wilderness, where bitter was his need: + To whom in blindness, as an earthy seed + For light and air, he struck through crimson mire. + But not ere he upheld a forehead lamp, + And viewed an army, once the seeming doomed, + All choral in its fruitful garden camp, + The spiritual the palpable illumed. + + This gift of penetration and embrace, + His prize from tidal battles lost or won, + Reveals the scheme to animate his race: + How that it is a warfare but begun; + Unending; with no Power to interpose; + No prayer, save for strength to keep his ground, + Heard of the Highest; never battle’s close, + The victory complete and victor crowned: + Nor solace in defeat, save from that sense + Of strength well spent, which is the strength renewed. + In manhood must he find his competence; + In his clear mind the spiritual food: + God being there while he his fight maintains; + Throughout his mind the Master Mind being there, + While he rejects the suicide despair; + Accepts the spur of explicable pains; + Obedient to Nature, not her slave: + Her lord, if to her rigid laws he bows; + Her dust, if with his conscience he plays knave, + And bids the Passions on the Pleasures browse:— + Whence Evil in a world unread before; + That mystery to simple springs resolved. + His God the Known, diviner to adore, + Shows Nature’s savage riddles kindly solved. + Inconscient, insensitive, she reigns + In iron laws, though rapturous fair her face. + Back to the primal brute shall he retrace + His path, doth he permit to force her chains + A soft Persuader coursing through his veins, + An icy Huntress stringing to the chase: + What one the flash disdains; + What one so gives it grace. + + But is he rightly manful in her eyes, + A splendid bloodless knight to gain the skies, + A blood-hot son of Earth by all her signs, + Desireing and desireable he shines; + As peaches, that have caught the sun’s uprise + And kissed warm gold till noonday, even as vines. + Earth fills him with her juices, without fear + That she will cast him drunken down the steeps. + All woman is she to this man most dear; + He sows for bread, and she in spirit reaps: + She conscient, she sensitive, in him; + With him enwound, his brave ambition hers: + By him humaner made; by his keen spurs + Pricked to race past the pride in giant limb, + Her crazy adoration of big thews, + Proud in her primal sons, when crags they hurled, + Were thunder spitting lightnings on the world + In daily deeds, and she their evening Muse. + + This man, this hero, works not to destroy; + This godlike—as the rock in ocean stands;— + He of the myriad eyes, the myriad hands + Creative; in his edifice has joy. + How strength may serve for purity is shown + When he himself can scourge to make it clean. + Withal his pitch of pride would not disown + A sober world that walks the balanced mean + Between its tempters, rarely overthrown: + And such at times his army’s march has been. + + Near is he to great Nature in the thought + Each changing Season intimately saith, + That nought save apparition knows the death; + To the God-lighted mind of man ’tis nought. + She counts not loss a word of any weight; + It may befal his passions and his greeds + To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, + But life gone breathless will she reinstate. + + Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, + When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, + Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, + Strike camp, and onward, like the wind’s cloud-fleets. + Unresting she, unresting he, from change + To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; + She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, + Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range. + + No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, + She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; + But he, the flower at head and soil at root, + Is miracle, guides he the brute to God. + And that way seems he bound; that way the road, + With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, + Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, + He travels, urged by some internal goad. + + Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing + He would become is in his mind its child; + Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; + For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled. + So moves he forth in faith, if he has made + His mind God’s temple, dedicate to truth. + Earth’s nourishing delights, no more gainsaid, + He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth. + Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; + The star of sky upon his footway cast; + Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, + The body’s love and mind’s, whereof the soul’s. + Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, + To speed the pair unto her goal of goals. + + Or is’t the widowed’s dream of her new mate? + Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; + The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; + With her the barren Huntress alternate; + His rough refractory off on kicking heels + To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; + And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, + His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels? + May not his aspect, like her own so fair + Reflexively, the central force belie, + And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, + Be rebel at the core? What hope is there? + + ’Tis that in each recovery he preserves, + Between his upper and his nether wit, + Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; + He less the shaken thing of lusts and nerves; + With such a grasp upon his brute as tells + Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun. + A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun + Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels. + + + +THE HUELESS LOVE + + + UNTO that love must we through fire attain, + Which those two held as breath of common air; + The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; + Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain. + + Midway the road of our life’s term they met, + And one another knew without surprise; + Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; + Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret. + + To them it was revealed how they had found + The kindred nature and the needed mind; + The mate by long conspiracy designed; + The flower to plant in sanctuary ground. + + Avowed in vigilant solicitude + For either, what most lived within each breast + They let be seen: yet every human test + Demanding righteousness approved them good. + + She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared + Abandonment to help if heaved or sank + Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, + Life rosier were she but less revered. + + An arm that never shook did not obscure + Her woman’s intuition of the bliss— + Their tempter’s moment o’er the black abyss, + Across the narrow plank—he could abjure. + + Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, + And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, + Was all of earthly in their love untold, + Beyond all earthly known to them who wed. + + So has there come the gust at South-west flung + By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, + When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, + And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung. + + + +UNION IN DISSEVERANCE + + + SUNSET worn to its last vermilion he; + She that star overhead in slow descent: + That white star with the front of angel she; + He undone in his rays of glory spent + + Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise, + He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest + Incomplete, were the light for which he dies, + Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest. + + Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks; + Life’s full throb over breathless and abased: + Yet stand they, though impalpable the links, + One, more one than the bridally embraced. + + + +SONG IN THE SONGLESS + + + THEY have no song, the sedges dry, + And still they sing. + It is within my breast they sing, + As I pass by. + Within my breast they touch a string, + They wake a sigh. + There is but sound of sedges dry; + In me they sing. + + + +THE BURDEN OF STRENGTH + + + IF that thou hast the gift of strength, then know + Thy part is to uplift the trodden low; + Else in a giant’s grasp until the end + A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend. + + + +THE MAIN REGRET +WRITTEN FOR THE CHARING CROSS ALBUM + + +I + + + SEEN, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission + Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. + They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician; + Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair. + + +II + + + Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered + Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. + Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered + Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone. + + + +ALTERNATION + + + BETWEEN the fountain and the rill + I passed, and saw the mighty will + To leap at sky; the careless run, + As earth would lead her little son. + + Beneath them throbs an urgent well, + That here is play, and there is war. + I know not which had most to tell + Of whence we spring and what we are. + + + +FOREST HISTORY + + +I + + + BENEATH the vans of doom did men pass in. + Heroic who came out; for round them hung + A wavering phantom’s red volcano tongue, + With league-long lizard tail and fishy fin: + + +II + + + Old Earth’s original Dragon; there retired + To his last fastness; overthrown by few. + Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. + Then man to play devorant straight was fired. + + +III + + + More intimate became the forest fear + While pillared darkness hatched malicious life + At either elbow, wolf or gnome or knife + And wary slid the glance from ear to ear. + + +IV + + + In chillness, like a clouded lantern-ray, + The forest’s heart of fog on mossed morass, + On purple pool and silky cotton-grass, + Revealed where lured the swallower byway. + + +V + + + Dead outlook, flattened back with hard rebound + Off walls of distance, left each mounted height. + It seemed a giant hag-fiend, churning spite + Of humble human being, held the ground. + + +VI + + + Through friendless wastes, through treacherous woodland, slow + The feet sustained by track of feet pursued + Pained steps, and found the common brotherhood + By sign of Heaven indifferent, Nature foe. + + +VII + + + Anon a mason’s work amazed the sight, + And long-frocked men, called Brothers, there abode. + They pointed up, bowed head, and dug and sowed; + Whereof was shelter, loaf, and warm firelight. + + +VIII + + + What words they taught were nails to scratch the head. + Benignant works explained the chanting brood. + Their monastery lit black solitude, + As one might think a star that heavenward led. + + +IX + + + Uprose a fairer nest for weary feet, + Like some gold flower nightly inward curled, + Where gentle maidens fled a roaring world, + Or played with it, and had their white retreat. + + +X + + + Into big books of metal clasps they pored. + They governed, even as men; they welcomed lays. + The treasures women are whose aim is praise, + Was shown in them: the Garden half restored. + + +XI + + + A deluge billow scoured the land off seas, + With widened jaws, and slaughter was its foam. + For food, for clothing, ambush, refuge, home, + The lesser savage offered bogs and trees. + + +XII + + + Whence reverence round grey-haired story grew: + And inmost spots of ancient horror shone + As temples under beams of trials bygone; + For in them sang brave times with God in view. + + +XIII + + + Till now trim homesteads bordered spaces green, + Like night’s first little stars through clearing showers. + Was rumoured how a castle’s falcon towers + The wilderness commanded with fierce mien. + + +XIV + + + Therein a serious Baron stuck his lance; + For minstrel songs a beauteous Dame would pout. + Gay knights and sombre, felon or devout, + Pricked onward, bound for their unsung romance. + + +XV + + + It might be that two errant lords across + The block of each came edged, and at sharp cry + They charged forthwith, the better man to try. + One rode his way, one couched on quiet moss. + + +XVI + + + Perchance a lady sweet, whose lord lay slain, + The robbers into gruesome durance drew. + Swift should her hero come, like lightning’s blue! + She prayed for him, as crackling drought for rain. + + +XVII + + + As we, that ere the worst her hero haps, + Of Angels guided, nigh that loathly den: + A toady cave beside an ague fen, + Where long forlorn the lone dog whines and yaps. + + +XVIII + + + By daylight now the forest fear could read + Itself, and at new wonders chuckling went. + Straight for the roebuck’s neck the bowman spent + A dart that laughed at distance and at speed. + + +XIX + + + Right loud the bugle’s hallali elate + Rang forth of merry dingles round the tors; + And deftest hand was he from foreign wars, + But soon he hailed the home-bred yeoman mate. + + +XX + + + Before the blackbird pecked the turf they woke; + At dawn the deer’s wet nostrils blew their last. + To forest, haunt of runs and prime repast, + With paying blows, the yokel strained his yoke. + + +XXI + + + The city urchin mooned on forest air, + On grassy sweeps and flying arrows, thick + As swallows o’er smooth streams, and sighed him sick + For thinking that his dearer home was there. + + +XXII + + + Familiar, still unseized, the forest sprang + An old-world echo, like no mortal thing. + The hunter’s horn might wind a jocund ring, + But held in ear it had a chilly clang. + + +XXIII + + + Some shadow lurked aloof of ancient time; + Some warning haunted any sound prolonged, + As though the leagues of woodland held them wronged + To hear an axe and see a township climb. + + +XXIV + + + The forest’s erewhile emperor at eve + Had voice when lowered heavens drummed for gales. + At midnight a small people danced the dales, + So thin that they might dwindle through a sieve + + +XXV + + + Ringed mushrooms told of them, and in their throats, + Old wives that gathered herbs and knew too much. + The pensioned forester beside his crutch, + Struck showers from embers at those bodeful notes. + + +XXVI + + + Came then the one, all ear, all eye, all heart; + Devourer, and insensibly devoured; + In whom the city over forest flowered, + The forest wreathed the city’s drama-mart. + + +XXVII + + + There found he in new form that Dragon old, + From tangled solitudes expelled; and taught + How blindly each its antidote besought; + For either’s breath the needs of either told. + + +XXVIII + + + Now deep in woods, with song no sermon’s drone, + He showed what charm the human concourse works: + Amid the press of men, what virtue lurks + Where bubble sacred wells of wildness lone. + + +XXIX + + + Our conquest these: if haply we retain + The reverence that ne’er will overrun + Due boundaries of realms from Nature won, + Nor let the poet’s awe in rapture wane. + + + + +FRAGMENTS OF THE ILIAD IN ENGLISH HEXAMETER VERSE + + +ILIAD, i. 149 +THE INVECTIVE OF ACHILLES + + + “HEIGH me! brazen of front, thou glutton for plunder, how can one, + Servant here to thy mandates, heed thee among our Achaians, + Either the mission hie on or stoutly do fight with the foemen? + I, not hither I fared on account of the spear-armèd Trojans, + Pledged to the combat; they unto me have in nowise a harm done; + Never have they, of a truth, come lifting my horses or oxen; + Never in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurser of heroes, my harvests + Ravaged, they; for between us is numbered full many a darksome + Mountain, ay, therewith too the stretch of the windy sea-waters. + O hugely shameless! thee did we follow to hearten thee, justice + Pluck from the Dardans for him, Menelaos, thee too, thou dog-eyed! + Whereof little thy thought is, nought whatever thou reckest. + Worse, it is thou whose threat ’tis to ravish my prize from me, + portion + Won with much labour, the which my gift from the sons of Achaia. + Never, in sooth, have I known my prize equal thine when Achaians + Gave some flourishing populous Trojan town up to pillage. + Nay, sure, mine were the hands did most in the storm of the combat, + Yet when came peradventure share of the booty amongst us, + Bigger to thee went the prize, while I some small blessèd thing bore + Off to the ships, my share of reward for my toil in the bloodshed! + So now go I to Phthia, for better by much it beseems me + Homeward go with my beaked ships now, and I hold not in prospect, + I being outraged, thou mayst gather here plunder and wealth-store.” + + +Iliad, i. 225 + + + “BIBBER besotted, with scowl of a cur, having heart of a deer, thou! + Never to join to thy warriors armed for the press of the conflict, + Never for ambush forth with the princeliest sons of Achaia + Dared thy soul, for to thee that thing would have looked as a + death-stroke. + Sooth, more easy it seems, down the lengthened array of Achaians, + Snatch at the prize of the one whose voice has been lifted against + thee. + Ravening king of the folk, for that thou hast thy rule over abjects; + Else, son of Atreus, now were this outrage on me thy last one. + Nay, but I tell thee, and I do swear a big oath on it likewise: + Yea, by the sceptre here, and it surely bears branches and leaf-buds + Never again, since first it was lopped from its trunk on the + mountains, + No more sprouting; for round it all clean has the sharp metal clipped + off + Leaves and the bark; ay, verify now do the sons of Achaia, + Guardian hands of the counsels of Zeus, pronouncing the judgement, + Hold it aloft; so now unto thee shall the oath have its portent; + Loud will the cry for Achilles burst from the sons of Achaia + Throughout the army, and thou chafe powerless, though in an anguish, + How to give succour when vast crops down under man-slaying Hector + Tumble expiring; and thou deep in thee shalt tear at thy + heart-strings, + Rage-wrung, thou, that in nought thou didst honour the flower of + Achaians.” + + + +ILIAD, ii 455 +MARSHALLING OF THE ACHAIANS + + + LIKE as a terrible fire feeds fast on a forest enormous, + Up on a mountain height, and the blaze of it radiates round far, + So on the bright blest arms of the host in their march did the + splendour + Gleam wide round through the circle of air right up to the sky-vault. + They, now, as when swarm thick in the air multitudinous winged flocks, + Be it of geese or of cranes or the long-necked troops of the + wild-swans, + Off that Asian mead, by the flow of the waters of Kaïstros; + Hither and yon fly they, and rejoicing in pride of their pinions, + Clamour, shaped to their ranks, and the mead all about them + resoundeth; + So those numerous tribes from their ships and their shelterings poured + forth + On that plain of Scamander, and horrible rumbled beneath them + Earth to the quick-paced feet of the men and the tramp of the + horse-hooves. + Stopped they then on the fair-flower’d field of Scamander, their + thousands + Many as leaves and the blossoms born of the flowerful season. + Even as countless hot-pressed flies in their multitudes traverse, + Clouds of them, under some herdsman’s wonning, where then are the + milk-pails + Also, full of their milk, in the bountiful season of spring-time; + Even so thickly the long-haired sons of Achaia the plain held, + Prompt for the dash at the Trojan host, with the passion to crush + them. + Those, likewise, as the goatherds, eyeing their vast flocks of goats, + know + Easily one from the other when all get mixed o’er the pasture, + So did the chieftains rank them here there in their places for + onslaught, + Hard on the push of the fray; and among them King Agamemnon, + He, for his eyes and his head, as when Zeus glows glad in his thunder, + He with the girdle of Ares, he with the breast of Poseidon. + + + +ILIAD, xi, 148 +AGAMEMNON IN THE FIGHT + + + THESE, then, he left, and away where ranks were now clashing the + thickest, + Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. + Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, + Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust-cloud, + Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering + horse-hooves) + Hewed with the sword’s sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon + Followed, chasing and slaughtering aye, on-urgeing the Argives. + + Now, as when fire voracious catches the unclippèd wood-land, + This way bears it and that the great whirl of the wind, and the + scrubwood + Stretches uptorn, flung forward alength by the fire’s fury rageing, + So beneath Atreides Agamemnon heads of the scattered + Trojans fell; and in numbers amany the horses, neck-stiffened, + Rattled their vacant cars down the roadway gaps of the war-field, + Missing the blameless charioteers, but, for these, they were + outstretched + Flat upon earth, far dearer to vultures than to their home-mates. + + + +ILIAD, xi, 378 +PARIS AND DIOMEDES + + + SO he, with a clear shout of laughter, + Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise: + “Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had + pierced thee + Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath! + Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst, + They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion.” + Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes: + “Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins! + If that thou dared’st face me here out in the open with weapons, + Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. + Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole; + Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. + Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that’s emasculate, noughtworth! + Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the + slightest, + My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. + Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen + slaughtered, + Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his + blood-drops, + Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women.” + + + +ILIAD, xiv, 283 +HYPNOS ON IDA + + + THEY then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts, + Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos, + Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland. + There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant, + Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida + Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether. + There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for + concealment, + That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the + mountains, + Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis. + + + +ILIAD, xvii, 426 +CLASH IN ARMS OF THE ACHAIANS AND TROJANS + + + NOT the sea-wave so bellows abroad when it bursts upon shingle, + Whipped from the sea’s deeps up by the terrible blast of the + Northwind; + Nay, nor is ever the roar of the fierce fire’s rush so arousing, + Down along mountain-glades, when it surges to kindle a woodland; + Nay, nor so tonant thunders the stress of the gale in the oak-trees’ + Foliage-tresses high, when it rages to raveing its utmost; + As rose then stupendous the Trojan’s cry and Achaians’, + Dread upshouting as one when together they clashed in the conflict. + + + +ILIAD, xvii, 426 +THE HORSES OF ACHILLES + + + SO now the horses of Aiakides, off wide of the war-ground, + Wept, since first they were ware of their charioteer overthrown there, + Cast down low in the whirl of the dust under man-slaying Hector. + Sooth, meanwhile, then did Automedon, brave son of Diores, + Oft, on the one hand, urge them with flicks of the swift whip, and + oft, too, + Coax entreatingly, hurriedly; whiles did he angrily threaten. + Vainly, for these would not to the ships, to the Hellespont spacious, + Backward turn, nor be whipped to the battle among the Achaians. + Nay, as a pillar remains immovable, fixed on the tombstone, + Haply, of some dead man or it may be a woman there-under; + Even like hard stood they there attached to the glorious war-car, + Earthward bowed with their heads; and of them so lamenting incessant + Ran the hot teardrops downward on to the earth from their eyelids, + Mourning their charioteer; all their lustrous manes dusty-clotted, + Right side and left of the yoke-ring tossed, to the breadth of the + yoke-bow. + Now when the issue of Kronos beheld that sorrow, his head shook + Pitying them for their grief, these words then he spake in his bosom; + “Why, ye hapless, gave we to Peleus you, to a mortal + Master; ye that are ageless both, ye both of you deathless! + Was it that ye among men most wretched should come to have + heart-grief? + ’Tis most true, than the race of these men is there wretcheder nowhere + Aught over earth’s range found that is gifted with breath and has + movement.” + + + + +THE MARES OF THE CAMARGUE +FROM THE ‘MIRÈIO’ OF MISTRAL + + + A HUNDRED mares, all white! their manes + Like mace-reed of the marshy plains + Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ the shears: + And when the fiery squadron rears + Bursting at speed, each mane appears + Even as the white scarf of a fay + Floating upon their necks along the heavens away. + + O race of humankind, take shame! + For never yet a hand could tame, + Nor bitter spur that rips the flanks subdue + The mares of the Camargue. I have known, + By treason snared, some captives shown; + Expatriate from their native Rhone, + Led off, their saline pastures far from view: + + And on a day, with prompt rebound, + They have flung their riders to the ground, + And at a single gallop, scouring free, + Wide-nostril’d to the wind, twice ten + Of long marsh-leagues devour’d, and then, + Back to the Vacarés again, + After ten years of slavery just to breathe salt sea + + For of this savage race unbent, + The ocean is the element. + Of old escaped from Neptune’s car, full sure, + Still with the white foam fleck’d are they, + And when the sea puffs black from grey, + And ships part cables, loudly neigh + The stallions of Camargue, all joyful in the roar; + + And keen as a whip they lash and crack + Their tails that drag the dust, and back + Scratch up the earth, and feel, entering their flesh, where he, + The God, drives deep his trident teeth, + Who in one horror, above, beneath, + Bids storm and watery deluge seethe, + And shatters to their depths the abysses of the sea. + + _Cant._ iv. + + + + +‘ATKINS’ + + + YONDER’S the man with his life in his hand, + Legs on the march for whatever the land, + Or to the slaughter, or to the maiming, + Getting the dole of a dog for pay. + Laurels he clasps in the words ‘duty done,’ + England his heart under every sun:— + Exquisite humour! that gives him a naming + Base to the ear as an ass’s bray. + + + + +THE VOYAGE OF THE ‘OPHIR’ + + + MEN of our race, we send you one + Round whom Victoria’s holy name + Is halo from the sunken sun + Of her grand Summer’s day aflame. + The heart of your loved Motherland, + To them she loves as her own blood, + This Flower of Ocean bears in hand, + Assured of gift as good. + + Forth for our Southern shores the fleet + Which crowns a nation’s wisdom steams, + That there may Briton Briton greet, + And stamp as fact Imperial dreams. + Across the globe, from sea to sea, + The long smoke-pennon trails above, + Writes over sky how wise will be + The Power that trusts to love. + + A love that springs from heart and brain + In union gives for ripest fruit + The concord Kings and States in vain + Have sought, who played the lofty brute, + And fondly deeming they possessed, + On force relied, and found it break: + That truth once scored on Britain’s breast + Now keeps her mind awake. + + Australian, Canadian, + To tone old veins with streams of youth, + Our trust be on the best in man + Henceforth, and we shall prove that truth. + Prove to a world of brows down-bent + That in the Britain thus endowed, + Imperial means beneficent, + And strength to service vowed. + + + + +THE CRISIS + + + SPIRIT of Russia, now has come + The day when thou canst not be dumb. + Around thee foams the torrent tide, + Above thee its fell fountain, Pride. + The senseless rock awaits thy word + To crumble; shall it be unheard? + Already, like a tempest-sun, + That shoots the flare and shuts to dun, + Thy land ’twixt flame and darkness heaves, + Showing the blade wherewith Fate cleaves, + If mortals in high courage fail + At the one breath before the gale. + Those rulers in all forms of lust, + Who trod thy children down to dust + On the red Sunday, know right well + What word for them thy voice would spell, + What quick perdition for them weave, + Did they in such a voice believe. + Not thine to raise the avenger’s shriek, + Nor turn to them a Tolstoi cheek; + Nor menace him, the waverer still, + Man of much heart and little will, + The criminal of his high seat, + Whose plea of Guiltless judges it. + For him thy voice shall bring to hand + Salvation, and to thy torn land, + Seen on the breakers. Now has come + The day when thou canst not be dumb, + Spirit of Russia:—those who bind + Thy limbs and iron-cap thy mind, + Take thee for quaking flesh, misdoubt + That thou art of the rabble rout + Which cries and flees, with whimpering lip, + From reckless gun and brutal whip; + But he who has at heart the deeds + Of thy heroic offspring reads + In them a soul; not given to shrink + From peril on the abyss’s brink; + With never dread of murderous power; + With view beyond the crimson hour; + Neither an instinct-driven might, + Nor visionary erudite; + A soul; that art thou. It remains + For thee to stay thy children’s veins, + The countertides of hate arrest, + Give to thy sons a breathing breast, + And Him resembling, in His sight, + Say to thy land, Let there be Light. + + + + +OCTOBER 21, 1905 + + + THE hundred years have passed, and he + Whose name appeased a nation’s fears, + As with a hand laid over sea; + To thunder through the foeman’s ears + Defeat before his blast of fire; + Lives in the immortality + That poets dream and noblest souls desire. + + Never did nation’s need evoke + Hero like him for aid, the while + A Continent was cannon-smoke + Or peace in slavery: this one Isle + Reflecting Nature: this one man + Her sea-hound and her mortal stroke, + With war-worn body aye in battle’s van. + + And do we love him well, as well + As he his country, we may greet, + With hand on steel, our passing bell + Nigh on the swing, for prelude sweet + To the music heard when his last breath + Hung on its ebb beside the knell, + And VICTORY in his ear sang gracious Death. + + Ah, day of glory! day of tears! + Day of a people bowed as one! + Behold across those hundred years + The lion flash of gun at gun: + Our bitter pride; our love bereaved; + What pall of cloud o’ercame our sun + That day, to bear his wreath, the end achieved. + + Joy that no more with murder’s frown + The ancient rivals bark apart. + Now Nelson to brave France is shown + A hero after her own heart: + And he now scanning that quick race, + To whom through life his glove was thrown, + Would know a sister spirit to embrace. + + + + +THE CENTENARY OF GARIBALDI + + + WE who have seen Italia in the throes, + Half risen but to be hurled to ground, and now + Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough + All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those + Who blew the breath of life into her frame: + Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: Three: + Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free + From ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim. + + That aim, albeit they were of minds diverse, + Conjoined them, not to strive without surcease; + For them could be no babblement of peace + While lay their country under Slavery’s curse. + + The set of torn Italia’s glorious day + Was ever sunrise in each filial breast. + Of eagle beaks by righteousness unblest + They felt her pulsing body made the prey. + + Wherefore they struck, and had to count their dead. + With bitter smile of resolution nerved + To try new issues, holding faith unswerved, + Promise they gathered from the rich blood shed. + + In them Italia, visible to us then + As living, rose; for proof that huge brute Force + Has never being from celestial source, + And is the lord of cravens, not of men. + + Now breaking up the crust of temporal strife, + Who reads their acts enshrined in History, sees + That Tyrants were the Revolutionaries, + The Rebels men heart-vowed to hallowed life. + + Pure as the Archangel’s cleaving Darkness thro’, + The Sword he sees, the keen unwearied Sword, + A single blade against a circling horde, + And aye for Freedom and the trampled few. + + The cry of Liberty from dungeon cell, + From exile, was his God’s command to smite, + As for a swim in sea he joined the fight, + With radiant face, full sure that he did well. + + Behold a warrior dealing mortal strokes, + Whose nature was a child’s: amid his foes + A wary trickster: at the battle’s close, + No gentler friend this leopard dashed with fox. + + Down the long roll of History will run + The story of these deeds, and speed his race + Beneath defeat more hotly to embrace + The noble cause and trust to another sun. + + And lo, that sun is in Italia’s skies + This day, by grace of his good sword in part. + It beckons her to keep a warrior heart + For guard of beauty, all too sweet a prize. + + Earth gave him: blessèd be the Earth that gave. + Earth’s Master crowned his honest work on earth: + Proudly Italia names his place of birth: + The bosom of Humanity his grave. + + + + +THE WILD ROSE + + + HIGH climbs June’s wild rose, + Her bush all blooms in a swarm; + And swift from the bud she blows, + In a day when the wooer is warm; + Frank to receive and give, + Her bosom is open to bee and sun: + Pride she has none, + Nor shame she knows; + Happy to live. + + Unlike those of the garden nigh, + Her queenly sisters enthroned by art; + Loosening petals one by one + To the fiery Passion’s dart + Superbly shy. + For them in some glory of hair, + Or nest of the heaving mounds to lie, + Or path of the bride bestrew. + Ever are they the theme for song. + But nought of that is her share. + Hardly from wayfarers tramping along, + A glance they care not to renew. + + And she at a word of the claims of kin + Shrinks to the level of roads and meads: + She is only a plain princess of the weeds, + As an outcast witless of sin: + Much disregarded, save by the few + Who love her, that has not a spot of deceit, + No promise of sweet beyond sweet, + Often descending to sour. + On any fair breast she would die in an hour. + Praises she scarce could bear, + Were any wild poet to praise. + Her aim is to rise into light and air. + One of the darlings of Earth, no more, + And little it seems in the dusty ways, + Unless to the grasses nodding beneath; + The bird clapping wings to soar, + The clouds of an evetide’s wreath. + + + + +THE CALL + + + UNDER what spell are we debased + By fears for our inviolate Isle, + Whose record is of dangers faced + And flung to heel with even smile? + Is it a vaster force, a subtler guile? + + They say Exercitus designs + To match the famed Salsipotent + Where on her sceptre she reclines; + Awake: but were a slumber sent + By guilty gods, more fell his foul intent. + + The subtler web, the vaster foe, + Well may we meet when drilled for deeds: + But in these days of wealth at flow, + A word of breezy warning breeds + The pained responses seen in lakeside reeds. + + We fain would stand contemplative, + All innocent as meadow grass; + In human goodness fain believe, + Believe a cloud is formed to pass; + Its shadows chase with draughts of hippocras. + + Others have gone; the way they went + Sweet sunny now, and safe our nest. + Humanity, enlightenment, + Against the warning hum protest: + Let the world hear that we know what is best. + + So do the beatific speak; + Yet have they ears, and eyes as well; + And if not with a paler cheek, + They feel the shivers in them dwell, + That something of a dubious future tell. + + For huge possessions render slack + The power we need to hold them fast; + Save when a quickened heart shall make + Our people one, to meet what blast + May blow from temporal heavens overcast. + + Our people one! Nor they with strength + Dependent on a single arm: + Alert, and braced the whole land’s length, + Rejoicing in their manhood’s charm + For friend or foe; to succour, not to harm. + + Has ever weakness won esteem? + Or counts it as a prized ally? + They who have read in History deem + It ranks among the slavish fry, + Whose claim to live justiciary Fates deny. + + It can not be declared we are + A nation till from end to end + The land can show such front to war + As bids a crouching foe expend + His ire in air, and preferably be friend. + + We dreading him, we do him wrong; + For fears discolour, fears invite. + Like him, our task is to be strong; + Unlike him, claiming not by might + To snatch an envied treasure as a right. + + So may a stouter brotherhood + At home be signalled over sea + For righteous, and be understood, + Nay, welcomed, when ’tis shown that we + All duties have embraced in being free. + + This Britain slumbering, she is rich; + Lies placid as a cradled child; + At times with an uneasy twitch, + That tells of dreams unduly wild. + Shall she be with a foreign drug defiled? + + The grandeur of her deeds recall; + Look on her face so kindly fair: + This Britain! and were she to fall, + Mankind would breathe a harsher air, + The nations miss a light of leading rare. + + + + +ON COMO + + + A RAINLESS darkness drew o’er the lake + As we lay in our boat with oars unshipped. + It seemed neither cloud nor water awake, + And forth of the low black curtain slipped + Thunderless lightning. Scoff no more + At angels imagined in downward flight + For the daughters of earth as fabled of yore: + Here was beauty might well invite + Dark heavens to gleam with the fire of a sun + Resurgent; here the exchanged embrace + Worthy of heaven and earth made one. + + And witness it, ye of the privileged space, + Said the flash; and the mountains, as from an abyss + For quivering seconds leaped up to attest + That given, received, renewed was the kiss; + The lips to lips and the breast to breast; + All in a glory of ecstasy, swift + As an eagle at prey, and pure as the prayer + Of an infant bidden joined hands uplift + To be guarded through darkness by spirits of air, + Ere setting the sails of sleep till day. + Slowly the low cloud swung, and far + It panted along its mirrored way; + Above loose threads one sanctioning star, + The wonder of what had been witnessed, sealed, + And with me still as in crystal glassed + Are the depths alight, the heavens revealed, + Where on to the Alps the muteness passed. + + + + +MILTON +DECEMBER 9, 1608: DECEMBER 9, 1908 + + + WHAT splendour of imperial station man, + The Tree of Life, may reach when, rooted fast, + His branching stem points way to upper air + And skyward still aspires, we see in him + Who sang for us the Archangelical host, + Made Morning, by old Darkness urged to the abyss; + A voice that down three centuries onward rolls; + Onward will roll while lives our English tongue, + In the devout of music unsurpassed + Since Piety won Heaven’s ear on Israel’s harp. + + The face of Earth, the soul of Earth, her charm, + Her dread austerity; the quavering fate + Of mortals with blind hope by passion swayed, + His mind embraced, the while on trodden soil, + Defender of the Commonwealth, he joined + Our temporal fray, whereof is vital fruit, + And, choosing armoury of the Scholar, stood + Beside his peers to raise the voice for Freedom: + Nor has fair Liberty a champion armed + To meet on heights or plains the Sophister + Throughout the ages, equal to this man, + Whose spirit breathed high Heaven, and drew thence + The ethereal sword to smite. + + Were England sunk + Beneath the shifting tides, her heart, her brain, + The smile she wears, the faith she holds, her best, + Would live full-toned in the grand delivery + Of his cathedral speech: an utterance + Almost divine, and such as Hellespont, + Crashing its breakers under Ida’s frown, + Inspired: yet worthier he, whose instrument + Was by comparison the coarse reed-pipe; + Whereof have come the marvellous harmonies, + Which, with his lofty theme, of infinite range, + Abash, entrance, exalt. + + We need him now, + This latest Age in repetition cries: + For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst; + Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat + From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly + (Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask + Of hypocritical Peace,) inveterate Moloch + Remains the great example. + + Homage to him + His debtor band, innumerable as waves + Running all golden from an eastern sun, + Joyfully render, in deep reverence + Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton’s name, + Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear. + + + + +IRELAND + + + FIRE in her ashes Ireland feels + And in her veins a glow of heat. + To her the lost old time, appeals + For resurrection, good to greet: + Not as a shape with spectral eyes, + But humanly maternal, young + In all that quickens pride, and wise + To speak the best her bards have sung. + + You read her as a land distraught, + Where bitterest rebel passions seethe. + Look with a core of heart in thought, + For so is known the truth beneath. + She came to you a loathing bride, + And it has been no happy bed. + Believe in her as friend, allied + By bonds as close as those who wed. + + Her speech is held for hatred’s cry; + Her silence tells of treason hid: + Were it her aim to burst the tie, + She sees what iron laws forbid. + Excess of heart obscures from view + A head as keen as yours to count. + Trust her, that she may prove her true + In links whereof is love the fount. + + May she not call herself her own? + That is her cry, and thence her spits + Of fury, thence her graceless tone + At justice given in bits and bits. + The limbs once raw with gnawing chains + Will fret at silken when God’s beams + Of Freedom beckon o’er the plains + From mounts that show it more than dreams. + + She, generous, craves your generous dole; + That will not rouse the crack of doom. + It ends the blundering past control + Simply to give her elbow-room. + Her offspring feels they are a race, + To be a nation is their claim; + Yet stronger bound in your embrace + Than when the tie was but a name. + + A nation she, and formed to charm, + With heart for heart and hands all round. + No longer England’s broken arm, + Would England know where strength is found. + And strength to-day is England’s need; + To-morrow it may be for both + Salvation: heed the portents, heed + The warnings; free the mind from sloth. + + Too long the pair have danced in mud, + With no advance from sun to sun. + Ah, what a bounding course of blood + Has England with an Ireland one! + Behold yon shadow cross the downs, + And off away to yeasty seas. + Lightly will fly old rancour’s frowns + When solid with high heart stand these. + + + + +THE YEARS HAD WORN THEIR SEASONS’ BELT + + + THE years had worn their seasons’ belt, + From bud to rosy prime, + Since Nellie by the larch-pole knelt + And helped the hop to climb. + + Most diligent of teachers then, + But now with all to learn, + She breathed beyond a thought of men, + Though formed to make men burn. + + She dwelt where ’twixt low-beaten thorns + Two mill-blades, like a snail, + Enormous, with inquiring horns, + Looked down on half the vale. + + You know the grey of dew on grass + Ere with the young sun fired, + And you know well the thirst one has + For the coming and desired. + + Quick in our ring she leapt, and gave + Her hand to left, to right. + No claim on her had any, save + To feed the joy of sight. + + For man and maid a laughing word + She tossed, in notes as clear + As when the February bird + Sings out that Spring is near. + + Of what befell behind that scone, + Let none who knows reveal. + In ballad days she might have been + A heroine rousing steel. + + On us did she bestow the hour, + And fixed it firm in thought; + Her spirit like a meadow flower + That gives, and asks for nought. + + She seemed to make the sunlight stay + And show her in its pride. + O she was fair as a beech in May + With the sun on the yonder side. + + There was more life than breath can give, + In the looks in her fair form; + For little can we say we live + Until the heart is warm. + + + + +FRAGMENTS + + + OPEN horizons round, + O mounting mind, to scenes unsung, + Wherein shall walk a lusty Time: + Our Earth is young; + Of measure without bound; + Infinite are the heights to climb, + The depths to sound. + + * * * * * + + A WILDING little stubble flower + The sickle scorned which cut for wheat, + Such was our hope in that dark hour + When nought save uses held the street, + And daily pleasures, daily needs, + With barren vision, looked ahead. + And still the same result of seeds + Gave likeness ’twixt the live and dead. + + * * * * * + + FROM labours through the night, outworn, + Above the hills the front of morn + We see, whose eyes to heights are raised, + And the world’s wise may deem us crazed. + While yet her lord lies under seas, + She takes us as the wind the trees’ + Delighted leafage; all in song + We mount to her, to her belong. + + * * * * * + + THIS love of nature, that allures to take + Irregularity for harmony + Of larger scope than our hard measures make, + Cherish it as thy school for when on thee + The ills of life descend. + + + + +IL Y A CENT ANS + + + THAT march of the funereal Past behold; + How Glory sat on Bondage for its throne; + How men, like dazzled insects, through the mould + Still worked their way, and bled to keep their own. + + We know them, as they strove and wrought and yearned; + Their hopes, their fears; what page of Life they wist: + At whiles their vision upon us was turned, + Baffled by shapes limmed loosely on thick mist. + + Beneath the fortress bulk of Power they bent + Blunt heads, adoring or in shackled hate, + All save the rebel hymned him; and it meant + A world submitting to incarnate Fate. + + From this he drew fresh appetite for sway, + And of it fell: whereat was chorus raised, + How surely shall a mad ambition pay + Dues to Humanity, erewhile amazed. + + ’Twas dreamed by some the deluge would ensue, + So trembling was the tension long constrained; + A spirit of faith was in the chosen few, + That steps to the millennium had been gained. + + But mainly the rich business of the hour, + Their sight, made blind by urgency of blood, + Embraced; and facts, the passing sweet or sour, + To them were solid things that nought withstood. + + Their facts are going headlong on the tides, + Like commas on a line of History’s page; + Nor that which once they took for Truth abides, + Save in the form of youth enlarged from age. + + Meantime give ear to woodland notes around, + Look on our Earth full-breasted to our sun: + So was it when their poets heard the sound, + Beheld the scene: in them our days are one. + + What figures will be shown the century hence? + What lands intact? We do but know that Power + From piety divorced, though seen immense, + Shall sink on envy of the humblest flower. + + Our cry for cradled Peace, while men are still + The three-parts brute which smothers the divine, + Heaven answers: Guard it with forethoughtful will, + Or buy it; all your gains from War resign. + + A land, not indefensibly alarmed, + May see, unwarned by hint of friendly gods, + Between a hermit crab at all points armed, + And one without a shell, decisive odds. + + + + +YOUTH IN AGE + + + ONCE I was part of the music I heard + On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky, + For joy of the beating of wings on high + My heart shot into the breast of the bird. + + I hear it now and I see it fly, + And a life in wrinkles again is stirred, + My heart shoots into the breast of the bird, + As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh. + + + + +EPITAPHS + + +TO A FRIEND LOST +(TOM TAYLOR) + + + WHEN I remember, friend, whom lost I call, + Because a man beloved is taken hence, + The tender humour and the fire of sense + In your good eyes; how full of heart for all, + And chiefly for the weaker by the wall, + You bore that lamp of sane benevolence; + Then see I round you Death his shadows dense + Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall. + For surely are you one with the white host, + Spirits, whose memory is our vital air, + Through the great love of Earth they had: lo, these, + Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas, + Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost, + Partakers of a strife they joyed to share. + + + +M. M. + + + WHO call her Mother and who calls her Wife + Look on her grave and see not Death but Life. + + + +THE LADY C. M. + + + TO them that knew her, there is vital flame + In these the simple letters of her name. + To them that knew her not, be it but said, + So strong a spirit is not of the dead. + + + +ON THE TOMBSTONE OF +JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON +(d. APRIL 11, 1884) +IN HEADLEY CHURCHYARD, SURREY + + + THOU our beloved and light of Earth hast crossed + The sea of darkness to the yonder shore. + There dost thou shine a light transferred, not lost, + Through love to kindle in our souls the more. + + + +GORDON OF KHARTOUM + + + OF men he would have raised to light he fell: + In soul he conquered with those nerveless hands. + His country’s pride and her abasement knell + The Man of England circled by the sands. + + + +J. C. M. + + + A FOUNTAIN of our sweetest, quick to spring + In fellowship abounding, here subsides: + And never passage of a cloud on wing + To gladden blue forgets him; near he hides. + + + +THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME + + + WITH Alfred and St. Louis he doth win + Grander than crowned head’s mortuary dome: + His gentle heroic manhood enters in + The ever-flowering common heart for home. + + + +ISLET THE DACHS + + + OUR Islet out of Helgoland, dismissed + From his quaint tenement, quits hates and loves. + There lived with us a wagging humourist + In that hound’s arch dwarf-legged on boxing-gloves. + + + +ON HEARING THE NEWS FROM VENICE +(THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING) + + + NOW dumb is he who waked the world to speak, + And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier. + Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear: + We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. + We see a spirit on Earth’s loftiest peak + Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: + See a great Tree of Life that never sere + Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak. + Such ending is not Death: such living shows + What wide illumination brightness sheds + From one big heart, to conquer man’s old foes: + The coward, and the tyrant, and the force + Of all those weedy monsters raising heads + When Song is murk from springs of turbid source. + +_December_ 13, 1889. + + + +HAWARDEN + + + WHEN comes the lighted day for men to read + Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands + Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed, + Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands + Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge; + Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. + The sun that dropped down our horizon’s verge + Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, + Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known + By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. + A splendid image built of man has flown; + His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. + Ours the great privilege to have had one + Among us who celestial tasks has done. + + + +AT THE FUNERAL +FEBRUARY 2, 1901 + + + HER sacred body bear: the tenement + Of that strong soul now ranked with God’s Elect + Her heart upon her people’s heart she spent; + Hence is she Royalty’s lodestar to direct. + + The peace is hers, of whom all lands have praised + Majestic virtues ere her day unseen. + Aloft the name of Womanhood she raised, + And gave new readings to the Title, Queen. + + + +ANGELA BURDETT-COUTTS + + + LONG with us, now she leaves us; she has rest + Beneath our sacred sod: + A woman vowed to Good, whom all attest, + The daylight gift of God. + + + +THE YEAR’S SHEDDINGS + + + THE varied colours are a fitful heap: + They pass in constant service though they sleep; + The self gone out of them, therewith the pain: + Read that, who still to spell our earth remain. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{140} Written in December 1870, printed in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ and +published in the volume ‘Ballads and Poems.’ + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, VOLUME 3 [OF 3]*** + + +******* This file should be named 1383-0.txt or 1383-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/8/1383 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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